74.last...'it was above all the debate with cardinal cajetan, held in augsburg in 1518, that forced the wittenberg professor into the spotlight of public attention though he would have preferred to pursue his biblical studies quietly and in peace. the cardinal was not willing to discuss, on the basis of the scriptures, the relationship of faith to indulgences, since according to him the decisions of the pope and the doctrines of scholasticism had already spoken the final word on this subject. the report that L himself wrote of this noteworthy meeting in the act augustana reveals how deeply he was affected. it almost seems as though only now, in his opposition to indulgences, this gross form of work righteousness, does it become clear to him what the gospel means when it says that the righteous man does not live from anything which he has, does, or is, but alone from faith in the liberating word of God.
when l nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church, he had not the slightest intention of breaking away from rome. even in the resolutiones, a defense of these theses, published in june, 1518, he says that he is prepared to acknowledge the decisions of the papacy as secondary sources of authority and that he is ready to recant if the church does not agree with the viewpoint he expresses. after the debate with cajetan, all this is changed. in the acta, already mentioned, he is still respectfully humble toward the ruler of the church, but his mind is made up. does cajetan demand of him that he is to admit himself wrong on the sole ground that he is in conflict with papal decrees? well, his answer is that he will not recant, unless it shall be shown him clearly from the scriptures that he holds a wrong view of justification by faith.
'for beyond the slightest doubt i am convinced that my convictions are scriptural.
this certainty had been won through his exegetical study.
'this divine truth is master even of the pope; thus i am not concerned about the judgment of a man since i know God's judgment.
did the cardinal send him away with the injunction that he was not to return until he was ready to recant? then the matter is clear:
this prince of the church will not listen to scripture.
L's reproach is that cajetan did not appeal even to a single word of the scriptures, but that he regarded the canons of the church as more important than the word of God. the conflict, therefore, cannot be avoided, for it centers in
the question whether the church is willing to let itself be ruled by the scriptures.
a little later L writes to spalatin that his only concern is for the heart of the gospel. he is willing to be robbed of all else. in a sermon concerning papal indulgences and God's grace L expresses the same thought in this sentence:
'even though all the holy teachers say this or that, they have, all together, no authority against a single testimony of the holy scriptures.
so it was easy for eck at the disputation in leipzig in 1519 to force his opponent back to this final position. it reads:
'verbum Dei super omnia verba hominum est'
(God's word is supreme above all the words of men.)
that is to say, if the sensus litteralis of a text and its exposition by the fathers of the church are not in agreement, one may not twist and turn the text until it fits the ecclesiastically approved explanations, but rather
the teaching of the church must be adjusted to the natural intent of the biblical text.
exegesis is not,
as eck presumed, a scholarly technique with which to demonstrate the agreement of the scriptures with the doctrine of the church.
it is rather the art of letting God's word say what it wishes to say.
whoever maintains that only the church is able to explain the bible seeks the meaning of the scriptures outside the word itself.
God's word is incomparably higher than the church.
the latter has been created through the word and thus cannot sit in lordly judgment upon it.
rather ought it to be judged, determined and ruled by the scriptures.
for who has conceived his own father or brought into being his creator?
no believing christian, therefore, may be compelled to accept anything by reasons that lie outside holy scripture, for the bible is the true ius divinum, the true law of the church.
in the background of this debate there is a further question:
does this law concern the scriptures in their original languages or only in the ecclesialtically approved latin text?
when eck himself, in a futile attempt to displace L's translation of the bible, issued a german translation of the vulgate, he stated expressly in his introduction that his was
'form ancient times the one sung, read, used and accepted by the holy latin church, so that one need not concern himself how the text reads in hebrew, greek or chaldean.
this disputation with eck served to make it clear to L that he had only one effective weapon with which to wage battle, absolute reliance upon the scriptures. when he rejects the infallibility of the general council of the church, he does so on the ground that the authority of the holy scripture is greater than the combined authority of the entire human race. and so his final word in the last leipzig session was an appeal to the bible as sole authority.
how far reaching the consequences of L's surrender of the multiple meaning of scripture were is seen also when he published his 'defense against the ill tempered judgment of eck'. here he considers the text from which rome had derived the authority of the pope, the words of Jesus to peter in matt. 16.18:
'you are peter and on this rock I will build My church.
L asserts that sound scriptural exegesis demands that one understand these words of the Lord in the one and original sense in which Jesus spoke them, rather than by means of allegorizing applying them to the pope. in the same document we find the following expression:
'i have learned to ascribe the honor of infallibility only to those books that are accepted as canonical. i am profoundly convinced that none of these writers have erred. all other writers, however they may have distinguished themselves in holiness or in doctrine, i read in this way:
i evaluate what they say, not on the basis that they themselves believe that a thing is true, but only insofar as they are able to convince me by the authority of the canonical books or by clear reason.
soon after the leipzig disputation L published his commentary on galatians, to which we have already referred. in the preface of this book he says specifically that the entire struggle began over the proper evaluation of scripture. he is still prepared to honor the pope as the viceroy of Christ.
'but i am obligated,
he adds,
to rank the words of the King above the words of His representative.
i must place the latter under the judgment of the former.
for i am a 'debtor of the word', however dangerous this position may be.
he begins to feel that soon he will have to choose between the church and the word. it is clear which way his decision will go.
'the urgency of the situation itself compels us to flee to the only solid rock, the scriptures.
in his writing, 'concerning the papacy of rome', he puts it this way:
'whatever the pope decides and determines i will accept,
if i may first investigate whether it is in agreement with holy scripture.
i want to submit everything to the judgment of Christ and His word.
here is the final quotation from the assertion, in which he answers the threatening papal bull of leo X:
'i do not desire that men shall praise me for being more learned than others;
i wish only to hold fast to the scriptures.
i do not desire that the scriptures shall be understood in accord with my insights or with those of someone else.
i desire only that they shall be understood in the light of and through the spirit of scripture itself.
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