The Reformers spilled much ink debating the legitimacy of the papacy with their Roman Catholic opponents.
Given the centrality of the papacy, that is not very surprising. Martin Luther began serious study of it in the early months of 1519. He soon became convinced that the authority claimed by the Pope was questionable. The Pope was not the head of the Church. Final authority lay in Scripture and duly-called councils.
Johann of Eck
Luther’s new view was soon put to the test in a debate with a leading Roman Catholic theologian named Johann Eck (1486–1543) at Leipzig in June and July of 1519. Eck, who took his surname from his place of birth in Germany, had a doctorate in theology and would write a major work on papal primacy in the year of his debate with Luther.
As Reformation scholar Scott Hendrix has noted: ‘More than any other person, John Eck provoked Luther to issue his first public challenge to the papacy. Eck was the catalyst who finally challenged Luther’s uneasy alliance of public loyalty and private disillusionment into public opposition [to the Pope].’
The Leipzig Disputation
During a key moment in the debate, Eck asked Luther to lay out the grounds on which he argued for his position on salvation by faith alone. Luther replied that he relied ultimately on the authority of Scripture, the authority of the Greek patristic tradition, and on councils.
As the disputation proceeded, the issue of indulgences came up and Eck sensed that Luther’s criticism of indulgences sounded a lot like that levelled by Jan Hus (1372–1415), the Czech reformer. Hus had been profoundly critical of the practice of selling indulgences because, as he argued, it could not be proven by Scripture. But Hus had been condemned subsequently by the Council of Constance in 1415 and burned as a heretic.
Eck charged Luther with being a Hussite in theology. Luther responded by asserting that some of Hus’s views were both right and Christian. The implication of Luther’s assertion was that the council which had condemned him had been dead wrong.
Eck’s glee was patent. Luther had begun by denying an infallible Pope. He had now denied the only alternative, an infallible council. Where then could infallibility be found?
Luther’s biblicism
Eck believed he had won the debate. But he was the means by which God convinced Luther that the ultimate ground of authority for theology, for the church and for life was the Bible alone. The concept of sola scriptura was hammered out by Luther in the give and take of this actual historical debate with Eck.
From this point on, Luther regarded God’s Word as the pre-eminent ‘vehicle of God’s grace’. And since the Bible, as Luther put it on another occasion, is ‘the power of God that acts upon man to transform him into a new creature,’ he came to view the preaching of the Word as utterly central to the church’s worship. ‘Where the Word is not preached, and thus not heard’, Luther maintained, ‘there can be no salvation’.
Moreover, for Luther, the ground of our relationship with God is not our religious experience, but the Word of God. So, to the person who is terrified by his or her sin and plagued with doubts, Luther says: ‘Let us learn, therefore, that amid great and horrible terrors, when the conscience feels nothing but sin and supposes that God is wrathful and Christ is hostile, we must not consult the consciousness of our own heart. No, then we must consult the Word of God.’
Here, then, was the ground of Luther’s biblicism that became a crucial element of the Reformation. It is also the historical genesis of the spirituality of the Word that has been a hallmark of all true Reformation traditions.
