[AlbionGirl]

This looks very interesting, and will take me a little while to fully read and absorb.

But for starters, how can this author make the following statement without some serious back up documentation, proving this or at the very least lending serious weight to the contention:

Erasmus was a Renaissance rationalist who placed reason above Scripture. Therefore the truth of Scripture was not that important to him.

If this is elaborated on further on in the piece, please disregard the question.

[HarleyD]

Erasmus was a Renaissance rationalist who placed reason above Scripture. Therefore the truth of Scripture was not that important to him.

Historically most of those in the Church were Renaissance rationalists. I believe the author is correct in his assertion and this is even verified by the Catholic website newadvent.com. Below is a very small excerpt about the life of Erasmus.

It is a kind of textbook for the study of the Latin language, and introduction to the purely natural formal training of the mind, and a typical example of the frivolous Renaissance spirit. The defects of ecclesiastical and monastic life are in this work held up to pitiless scorn; moreover, he descends only too often to indecent and cynical descriptions. His edition of the Greek original of the New Testament, "Novum Instrumentum omne" (Basle, 1516), no model of text-critical scholarship, was accompanied by a classical Latin translation destined to replace the Vulgate. Among the notes, partly textual criticism, partly exegetical comments, were inserted sarcastic slurs on the ecclesiastical conditions of the period. In a general introduction he discussed the importance of the Scriptures and the best method of studying them. Although the Complutensian edition offered a better text and was also printed, but not published, at an earlier date, yet the edition of Erasmus remained for a long time authoritative on account of his high reputation, and became the basis of the textus receptus or received text. No less instrumental in preparing the way for the future Reformation, by setting aside the scholastic method and undermining the traditional authority of the Scriptures, were the "Paraphrases of the New Testament" (1517 and later).