ABSTRACT
As part of the Christian humanist recourse to Scripture of which Erasmus was the leading light there was a re-awakening of interest in the seminal Christian theologian, St. Paul (d. a.d. 69). Paul’s letters to various local churches form an extended commentary on Christ as saviour. In one of these letters, that to the Christians in Rome, Paul explained that men and women are made acceptable to God not through any efforts or merits of their own but solely through Christ’s death on the Cross which atoned for human sin. Here was the root, in Scripture, of the theology of the Reformation, first in Luther, then in Calvin.
