Terence J. Martin

Nothing is more central to the religious thinking of Erasmus of Rotterdam than the reality of Christ—in his eyes, that supreme revelation of divine mercy embodied in the life of Jesus of Nazareth to which Christian scriptures variously testify, but also the divine presence undergirding that life-centering ethic of love and peace, what Erasmus calls the "philosophy of Christ." The purpose of this book is to distill the Christological elements from his vast corpus in a manner that shows the range, coherence, and value of Erasmus' thinking on Christological questions. While Erasmus works within the broad parameters of orthodox teaching, his critical skills with languages, accent on rhetoric in theology, keen sense of irony, appreciation for the limits of human knowledge, incipient sense of history, emphasis on the welfare of humanity, and passionate defense of peace, give his work a distinctive stamp and thereby make a singular contribution to the history of Christology. What Erasmus contributes to discussions of the divinity of Christ is a counsel of restraint in metaphysical speculation, an accent on the revelatory breadth of the eternal Word of God, and an invitation to think of Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God. But the central impulse of the Christology of Erasmus is the affirmation of the full incarnation of Christ in human existence, abstaining as much as possible from docetic insulation of the divine from the struggles of human experience, in order to highlight the redemptive capacity of Christ for the transformation of human life. With that, the ethical capstone of Erasmus' reflections on Christ centers on the responsibility to imitate Christ's love for others, and thus for advancing the cause of peace in personal and social life. This books adds the voice of this remarkable Catholic humanist to the history of theological discussions in the early modern era, while also restoring its rightful place in the broader history of Christology.

Tapping into selected works of Erasmus of Rotterdam, this book offers a series of philosophical meditations designed to retrieve and deploy a distinctively Erasmian manner of thinking—one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony. In purpose, it takes a philosophical route, addressing perennial questions of self-knowledge—what we can know and how best to communicate what we take to be true, what we ought to do or how we should live, and what we might hope for or what would offer us fulfilment. In method, however, this work taps into the various strategies of irony at play in the works of Erasmus, looking for guidance in handling these age-old questions. What readers will find in Erasmus is a knack for playfully reversing appearances and realities, a penchant for pushing disturbing questions relentlessly to the limit, and a skill for juxtaposing oddly matched opposites. Again and again, Erasmus presses readers to rethink these fundamental questions with dexterity and nuance, ever ready to appreciate the surprising and unsettling upshot of ironic insight.The practical result—as the meditations of this book illustrate—is animble defense of ironic truth-telling, a staunch but idiosyncratic complaint for peace, and a daring defense of pleasure in religious life. On each score, irony of the Erasmian sort is a manner of thinking especially well-suited for creatures like ourselves—richly complex, wonderfully odd, and often full of folly, yet somehow complacent and often dogmatic—precisely because such ironic thinking has the power to prod and prompt fruitful reflection on our lives. Truth and Irony is an invitation to think in an Erasmian manner—in short, to think ironically about the truth of our lives for the sake of enhancing human existence.

Efforts to speak about religion regularly get mired in confusion and conflict. Terence Martin argues that such talk might go better if participants adopted certain postures and practices of speech -- in particular, the habit of critical thinking, a sense of irony, and an irenic approach to opposition. In this book, he takes his method from the conviction that literary dialogues on religious topics are useful tutors with respect to both the problems and the possibilities of religious discussion. In demonstrating the value of religious dialogue, Martin also provides fresh readings of Plato and Lucian, Anselm and Erasmus, and Hume and Diderot.