교육받은 종교인: 에라스무스의 르네상스적 시각

The Educated Christian: Erasmus’s Perspective of the Renaissance Man

에라스무스는 중세 문화에 항거하여 교회의 형식주의와 허례허식을 비판하고 학문의 발달을 통한 종교의 본질적 정신을 추구하고자 하였다. 그는 과거 희랍 로마의 고전과 문화 안에서 인간이 추구해야 할 이상과 가치를 찾았으며, 그것을 교육받는 일이 곧 진정한 기독교인이 되는 길이라고 생각하였다. 이러한 일이 가능한 까닭은 신이 인간에게 이성과 자유의지를 초월적 본성으로 부여했기 때문이며, 인간은 교육을 통하여 이성과 자유의지를 실현시킴으로써 진정한 의미의 구원을 성취하게 된다.

This study is to understand Erasmus’s view on free will and liberal education from the perspective of the Renaissance man. In Erasmus’s view on free will, human being’s soul consists of both reason and free will which are considered to be inseparable and necessarily connected to each other, and free will could be cultivated in the process of improving reason through education. Erasmus accepts the concept of free choice which plays a role in arbitrarily choosing good or evil. Furthermore, he insists that the free choice is born from free will and reason. In his view, free will and reason exist as a form or a principle of the free choice. In other words, Erasmus presupposes the metaphysical dualism of the free choice and the free will. However, free will and reason corrupted by the Fall are not destroyed but restored through education. From the standpoint of education at the present time, Erasmus’s educational theory shows that there exists a intimate the relation between knowledge and morality. More specifically, he tries to reconcile Hellenism with Hebraism and demonstrate that there exists a necessary connection between reason and free will.