An engrossing dual biography and fascinating intellectual history that examines two key figures
of European history?Erasmus of Rotterdam and Martin Luther?whose bitter rivalry gave rise to
two enduring fundamental and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious
thought Erasmus was the leading figure of the Northern Renaissance. At a time when Leonardo
Michelangelo and Raphael were revolutionizing Western art and culture Erasmus was helping
transform Europe's intellectual and religious life developing a new design for living for a
continent rebelling against the hierarchical constraints of the Roman Church. When he came out
with a revised edition of the New Testament in 1516 based on the original Greek he was hailed
as the prophet of a new enlightened age. Today however Erasmus is largely forgotten and the
reason can be summed up in two words: Martin Luther. As a young friar in remote Wittenberg
Luther was initially a great admirer of Erasmus and his diagnosis of what ailed the Catholic
Church but while Erasmus sought to reform that institution from within Luther favored a more
radical transformation. Eventually the differences between them flared into a rancorous
competition with each trying to win over Europe to his vision. In Fatal Discord Michael
Massing seeks to restore Erasmus to his proper place in the Western tradition. The conflict
between him and Luther he argues represents not just the clash of two headstrong individuals
but also of two distinct worldviews?Erasmus the humanist embracing the brotherhood of man and
the diversity of cultures within it and Luther the evangelical stressing God's power and
Christ's divinity and insisting that all recognize those beliefs as absolute and binding.
Massing argues that their conflict forms a fault line in Western thinking?the moment when two
central schools of thought Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity took shape. A
seasoned journalist who has reported on war and peace political and social issues Massing
here travels back to the early sixteenth century to recover a story that helps explain our
current fractured world?a moment when the introduction of new ways of reading the Bible set
loose social and cultural forces that helped shatter the millennial unity of Christendom and
whose echoes still resound. Massing concludes that Europe has gravitated toward a form of
Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism.
