In the Reformation.
The fundamental skeptical issues raised by the Reformation appeared in the debate between the outstanding humanist scholar Erasmus and Luther. Erasmus, using Academic skeptical materials, insisted that the
issues in dispute could not be resolved, that one should therefore
suspend judgment and remain with the church. Luther insisted, on the other hand, that true and certain religious knowledge could and must be gained through conscience. Erasmus' view developed into a Christian Skepticism, accepting traditional Christian ity on faith after
seeing that no adequate evidence existed. Luther's view, and later that
of Calvin, proposed a new criterion--that of inner experience--while the Catholics of the Counter-Reformation employed Pyrrhonian and
Academic arguments to undermine the criterion.
Following after Erasmus, another humanist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola II (nephew of the famous count of the same name) and H.C. Agrippa von Nettesheim, a stormy occult philosopher and physician, employed the skeptical arguments against Scholastici sm, Renaissance Naturalism, and many other views to win people to the "true religion." The Catholic scholar Gentian Hervet, in the preface to his 1569 edition of Sextus, saw the Skeptical arguments as the definitive answer to Calvinism and the way to true Christianity.