The Leipzig Debate: a Reformation Turning Point

chapter 1 The Leipzig Debate: a Reformation Turning Point Volker Leppin and Mickey L. Mattox In the fateful series of events that led from Martin Luther’s writing of the Ninety-Five Theses on the power of indulgences in 1517 to his condemnation at the Diet of Worms in 1521, few were more significant than the Leipzig Debate of 1519. It began as a disputation between Luther’s Wittenberg colleague Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt and the Ingolstadt theologian Johannes Eck on free will and grace in the Christian life. When the topic turned to the authority of the church and papacy, however, Luther stepped in, with fateful consequences. The debate was a public affair that went on for seventeen full days, focused upon thirteen academic theses agreed to by Eck and Karlstadt beforehand, with Luther’s knowledge and cooperation. This major event took place at roughly the midpoint between Luther’s initial emergence as a public figure and his condemnation at the Diet of Worms. Leipzig marks a dramatic turning point in the causa Lutheri. After Leipzig the constellation of issues involved in the Luther affair had shifted from questions surrounding grace and repentance to the longstanding problem of authority in the church, especially that of the pope. Echoing the intense later medieval controversy concerning the relative authority of popes to church councils, Luther and Eck had debated how papal authority should be understood. Does the pope rule over all the churches as the vicar of Christ on earth? Does papal spiritual and jurisdictional authority over the whole church reflect the design and intent of Christ the Savior? More to the point, does the pope rule as a monarch in the church de iure divino, that is, as a matter of di- vine law? If so, where does that leave the authority of Holy Scripture? Questions such as these suggested a vexing series of further queries, nearly all of which had long been debated by theologians and canonists. What is the relationship between the Bible and church tradition, especially church councils and the writings of the church fathers? Whether the pope is an ecclesial monarch or not, is he subject to Scripture as the Word of God, limited, that is, in what he can say by what the Bible says? In the heated clash at Leipzig in 1519, Eck defended the position that the pope rules over all the particular churches within the one church, and that he does so de iure divino. Luther, on the other hand, publicly argued for the first time that both popes and councils could err, as he thought even a brief perusal of church history would demonstrate. For © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004414631_003 12 Leppin and Mattox support of this point he turned at Leipzig not only to Scripture, but to the history of the church and its canon law as well. This was a significant moment. Afterwards, Luther’s case seemed to his crit- ics all the more urgent, and they moved quickly to secure his excommunica- tion as a heretic. Leipzig thus marked a decisive moment in the evolution of what would become known as Protestantism, in contradistinction to “Roman” Catholicism. Leipzig increased the velocity at which the two sides moved toward these termini ad quos and thus toward ecclesiastical division. The im- portantly different positions taken by Luther and Eck at Leipzig, moreover, to some extent still divide the western churches today. The clear connection between today’s ecumenical debate and the problematic issues that first surfaced publicly at Leipzig underscores the importance of better understanding this historical episode. To do so, one must take stock not only of the complex and multifaceted historical context within which the debate occurred, but also its ramifications theologically. Both the Protestant and the Catholic communities that emerged out of the controversy in the mid- to later-sixteenth century looked back to Leipzig as a moment when some of their central convictions began to crystallize in the heat of controversy. Much of what eventually became essential to the Protestant churches and their doctrine of church and authority – as codified, for example, in the Lutheran confessional writings – first came to public expression at Leipzig. Catholic identity, too, as it was later defined in the canons and decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–1563), came to reflect approaches to papal and biblical authority that had been developed in response to the conciliar crisis, approaches that were adopted and extended by Eck at Leipzig. Thus, Leipzig became a critical moment in the shared history by which the Protestant and Catholic churches eventually went their separate ways. The public contest between Karlstadt, Luther, and Eck, each a highly skilled and devout theologian, led to the division of the western Catholic church. 1 The Leipzig Debate: Historical Context As an object of historical investigation, the Leipzig Debate presents many challenges. Some matters that have already been the subject of research illus- trate the point. Many of these are addressed in the chapters that follow. First, for example, one might ask how the different educational backgrounds and academic programs of Karlstadt, Luther, and Eck shaped them for consider- ing the difficult questions of grace and human freedom, and authority in the church. Were they perhaps representatives of the rival schools that had caused .

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