SOURCE: Tracy, James D. “The Philosophy of Christ.” In Erasmus of the Low Countries, pp. 104-15. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

In the essay below, Tracy considers Erasmus's reform doctrine in the context of political and religious developments of his age. In his reform writings, Tracy claims, Erasmus struggles with the failures of the contemporary church to exemplify the doctrines of the Gospels.

Erasmus began speaking of “the philosophy of Christ” (sometimes “Christian philosophy”) in works about 1515. Already in Julius Exclusus he seems on the threshold of introducing the idea when St. Peter contrasts the divine simplicity of Christ's teaching with the worldly arrogance of Pope Julius II:

The teaching of Christ [disciplina Christi] demands a heart wholly purged of the influence of worldly anxieties. Our great master did not come down from heaven to earth to give men some easy or common philosophy. It is not a...