June 20, 2017
Devotions: Timeline of the Reformation: 1519 – The Leipzig Debate

The Leipzig was held soon after the Heidelberg debate. Luther was invited to Heidelberg to discuss his writings, especially the issues that led him to nail the 95 Theses on the church door in Wittenberg. However, in Heidelberg he did not discuss the indulgence controversy – instead he confronted the teachings that made indulgences possible in the first place. Luther did not speak at the debate himself, but as was the custom of the day, one of his students presented Luther’s position. One of the people who was really paying close attention to all that Luther was doing and writing was John Eck. Though Eck and Luther were friends at one time, Eck would soon turn against his friend. He would go on to write extensively in defense of papal authority and traditional doctrine. Traveling throughout Europe, he organized Roman Catholic opposition to German Protestantism, and in 1530 he would go on to draft the Catholic refutation of the Lutheran creed contained in the Augsburg Confession. As Eck studied the 95 Theses he saw principles behind the Theses that would justify the teachings of John Huss. If you recall my devotion on John Huss (May 2) Huss was arrested for his teachings against the moral authority of the Pope, that Scripture should be the final authority for the church, and that the Czech people were being exploited by the Pope’s indulgences. He would be burned at the stake on July 6, 1415. Eck not only argued against Luther for his apparent similarity to Huss, Eck also believed that Luther’s teachings would undermine the supposed supernatural power of the clergy as well as their power over the laity – and if carried to their logical conclusion, according to Eck, it would destroy the whole structure of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore a second debate was scheduled to be held in Leipzig.

Karlstadt and Eck were to debate while Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon attended as spectators. Karlstadt, Luther and Melanchthon traveled in ordinary carts while two hundred students of Luther and Melanchthon walked on foot, some carrying spears to protect their teachers. Luther could not only watch the debate and soon jumped into the fray. Luther and Eck stood face to face with the debate raging back and forth. Eck would say that the Pope is the head of the church on earth, and Luther countered that Jesus Christ is the only head the church has and needs. Luther would go on to have the audacity to say that both the Pope and the Church Councils could err.

The Leipzig debate was an opportunity for Luther to further see clearly how indulgences were wrong for the church – and helped him focus more on his development of his understanding of the abuses of the church. This debate, Luther would go on to write, destroyed within him any basis for worship of saints, the reverence of relics, and the need for useless religious pilgrimages. From this debate Luther also began to form his understanding of the distinction between law and Grace, that all people can err, and Jesus Christ is the sole head of the church.

Pastor Dave

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June 19, 2017
Devotions: Timeline of the Reformation: 1517 – The 95 Theses

For many, the date of October 31, 1517 is the official beginning to the Protestant Reformation. On this date, Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses or points of debate to the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Every pivot-point in history needs an event to which people can point to and say “It began here”. And the Protestant Reformation was such a pivot-point. We know the story – sort of. Martin Luther was a priest and a monk who desperately wanted to find a G-d of love. He joined the monastery after nearly being struck by lightning and shouting to St. Anne “If you save me I will become a monk.” He lived through the ordeal, dropped out of Law School and joined a monastery. While there, he undertook the life of the monk – getting up at 2:00 am for prayers and study, attending services six times a day, and taking seriously his sinfulness. He would sleep on the cold, wet floor – he would self-flagellate – he would do the things he hoped would earn him G-d’s love and Grace. Nothing brought him closer to G-d. His teacher and mentor encouraged him to leave the monastery and go back to the University to teach. And so he did, in Wittenberg. Luther spent those years teaching and writing – and continuing to disagree on the direction and teaching of the church he loved. In 1517 Luther penned a document attacking the Catholic Church’s corrupt practice of selling “indulgences” to absolve sin. His “95 Theses,” which propounded two central beliefs—that the Bible is the central religious authority and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds—was to spark the Protestant Reformation. Although these ideas had been advanced before, Martin Luther codified them at a moment in history ripe for religious reformation. In the opening to his 95 Theses he wrote:

Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Luther sent the Theses in a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz – the date of the letter was October 31, 1517. He may have also posted them on the All Saints’ church door in Wittenberg which was the custom of the time to announce the possibility of a debate. The Theses were quickly printed, and reprinted and distributed and initiated a pamphlet war between Johann Tetzel (the indulgence king) which inevitably spread the word far and wide. He was tried for heresy, and at the Diet of Worms would be excommunicated from the church.

Luther did not consider indulgences to be as important as other theological matters which would divide the church, such as justification by faith or the bondage of the will. However, the nailing of the Theses and the debate that it sparked is that pivot-point that most scholars point to where the Christian Church was changed, for better or worse, forever.

Pastor Dave

Please collect one pack of diapers size 1 or 2 for Trinity’s Table.