June 24, 1519

Luther, Karlstadt, Melanchthon and colleagues (including about 200 armed students from Wittenberg University) arrive in Leipzig for the disputation with Prof. Johann Eck of Ingostadt. Eck had arrived two days earlier accompanied by a single servant.

Prior to his departure from Wittenberg, Luther had published a treatise on the question of papal primacy: An Explanation of the Thirteenth Thesis on the Authority of the Pope. In it he discusses principally the testimony of the Scriptures to which he had appealed in his thirteenth thesis. He says that the Power of the Keys which Christ (Matt. 16:16-18) had conferred on Peter was not delegated to Peter alone, but to all the disciples in common, hence to the entire congregation of the believers in Christ. This congregation of believers, now, who are sanctified by faith in Christ, is in Luther’s view the “Catholic Church.” It is not essential to this Church that it have a human head besides the Heavenly One, with whom the believers are joined as members. To prove that he has rightly understood this matter in accord with all Christendom, Luther appeals to the Creed, which says: “I believe in one holy catholic Church, the communion of saints.” His inquiry leads him to this conclusion: “I do not know whether the faith of Christians can tolerate the setting up on earth of another head for the Church universal besides Jesus Christ.”

Luther is willing to concede a certain superiority to the Roman Church. This superiority is essentially the same as that of which Paul speaks in Rom. 13:1, where he enjoins obedience to the secular authorities. The papal authority is one of “the powers that be.” In so far as it actually exists, then, alongside of other powers, Luther is willing to regard the papal power as “ordained of God.” He regards this as the strongest argument for proving that it is the duty of Christians to obey the Pope. But a primacy of the Pope that claims to have been ordained of God by an immediate act and to which submission is enforced by force and intimidation cannot be maintained by an appeal to Matt. 16. In agreement with the ancient fathers, Luther holds that Peter was the one who answered the Lord’s question is not the point: Peter was simply the spokesman for all the disciples — because the Father had revealed it to them, they had all acknowledged Jesus to be the Christ. If the Power of the Keys had been conferred on Peter alone — if Peter personally (and not the faith he demonstrated) — were the Rock on which the Church is built, then the law of consistency requires that Christ’s later word to Peter be addressed to the Roman Bishop, the Pope: “Get thee behind me, Satan.”[Matt. 16:23] Now, the fact that the Power of the Keys was not withdrawn from Peter when he erred, proves that this power was not conferred on him personally, but in him on all believers. Otherwise, it would have been withdrawn. So the Power of the Keys is wherever there is faith like Peter’s. And it follow that, whatever spiritual endowments the church at Rome possesses, every congregation, no matter how small, also possesses.  Wherever the Word of God is preached and believed, there is true faith, there is the Rock that cannot be overthrown. But wherever faith is, there is the Church, there is the bride of Christ; and the bride has all that her Bridegroom has, all that follows in the wake of faith — the keys, the Sacraments, the power, and everything else.

 

Quotation:

Ought this not force tears into our eyes that we are compelled, not only to read [in a papal decretal, that both the secular and spiritual authority have been conferred on the Pope], but also to believe it, as though an oracle had spoken it? Yes, they want to compel us to accept this as truth under pain of being burned at the stake. And yet men are dreaming that they behold the Church in a beautiful condition! They do not see Antichrist sitting in the temple of God! (An Explanation of the Thirteenth Thesis on the Authority of the Pope)