De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio
(literally Of free will: Discourses or Comparisons) is the Latin title of a polemical work written by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1524. It is commonly called The Freedom of the Will or On Free Will in English. Background was nominally written to refute a specific teaching of Martin Luther, on the question of free will. Luther had become increasingly aggressive in his attacks on the Roman Catholic Church to well beyond irenical Erasmus' reformist agenda. Luther published in 1520 his Latin Assertio omnium articulorum (itself a response to Pope Leo X's bull Exsurge domine that threatened Luther with excommunication) which included the statement God effects the evil deeds of the impious as part of the Wycliffian claim that everything happens by pure necessity, so denying free will. Bishop John Fisher published a detailed response to the Latin version's arguments as Confutation of the Lutheran Assertion in 1523. (For the popular German version of this work, Luther sanitized his text for Article 36 to remove the arguments that "God is the cause not only of good deeds in man but also of sins, and that there is no natural power of the human will to direct man's actions either for good or for bad.") Erasmus decided necessity/free will was a subject of core disagreement deserving a public airing, and strategized for several years with friends and correspondents on how to respond with proper moderation without making the situation worse for all, especially for the humanist reform agenda.. Erasmus' eventual irenical strategy had three prongs: first, a dialogue Inquisitio de fide to turn down the general heat and danger, which asked the question of whether Lutherans were heretics and, because they accepted the Creed, proposed that Lutherans were not; second, a small book On Free Will addressed as much to issues of limits of authority, discourse, biblical interpretation, as to free will; third, a small book De immensa misericordia dei (On the Immense Mercy of God), written ostensibly as a model sermon, published the same day as On Free Will and not mentioning Luther; it set up that God was not arbitrary, against the claims of predestination. Terminology Synergism is the idea that adult salvation or justification involves some sort of co-operation (noting that the co- does not connote equality of the parties, God's grace always being in some way prior.) This is the view that Erasmus prefers in On Free Will. Monergism is the idea that God brings about an individual's salvation or justification regardless of their co-operation. This is the view associated with the early leaders of the Reformation such as Luther. Semi-Pelagianism is the idea that the beginning of faith is a free choice, with grace supervening only later. Pelagianism is the idea that humans have free will to achieve perfection Content A scholar has commented: "De Libero Arbitrio is clear in what it opposes, less so in what it affirms." Another holds "The most important and lasting legacy of Erasmus' theology was its nuance". Because of his