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MARTIN LUTHER
by
Michael D. Breidenbach
4 . 12 . 18
I n the popular telling of Martin Luther’s story, nothing could have stopped the Protestant
reformer from challenging the dogma of his day. “Here I stand, I can do no other,” he
allegedly pledged to those who would decide his fate at the Diet of Worms in 1521. Neither
interrogations nor papal excommunication deterred the former Augustinian monk from
speaking his conscience. The Protestant Reformation seems to have started and progressed
But could the Catholic Church have done anything, besides changing its own dogma, to
Just before Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther in early 1521, the provincial theologian had
elaborated his Ninety-Five Theses into a new system of theology. In 1520, he wrote three
major treatises at a pace that would put any tenure-track theologian to shame: in August, the
Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation; in October, On the Babylonian Captivity of
the Church; and in November, On the Freedom of a Christian. But Luther was not the rst to
not only because of what Luther did, but because of what the pope did not do.
The pope did not call a general council promptly to resolve the theological disagreements.
General councils were the undisputed way to solve dogmatic and doctrinal disputes. Just a
century prior, the Council of Constance (1414–1418) had condemned two theologians as
heretics: Jan Hus and John Wycli e. A council was the only authority that all Christians—
In a dedication letter to Pope Leo attached to Freedom of a Christian, Luther argued that the
“Court of Rome” had become so corrupt that he had been compelled “to appeal from your
seat [the Chair of Peter] to a future council.” Luther added that he remained “fearless of the
futile decrees of your predecessors … who in their foolish tyranny prohibited such an action.”
What Luther requested was not radical. The Council of Constance had declared that
councils should be convened every ten years. But subsequent popes had failed to do this—the
only councils in the ensuing years were the Council of Basel-Ferrara-Florence in 1431 and the
Fifth Lateran Council, which closed a few months before Luther wrote his Ninety-Five
Theses.
Constance had also declared that councils enjoyed higher authority than the pope in
declaring dogma and doctrine. Luther concurred. In his letter to Leo, Luther warned the
ponti that his courtly “ atters … are in error,” for they “raise you above councils and the
universal Church.”
In a distinction that was a catchphrase for the conciliarist movement, Luther understood
himself to be criticizing the Court, not the Church, of Rome. The Court of Rome, “more
corrupt than any Babylon or Sodom,” has led “the Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of
all churches,” to “become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels,
the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell.” It is the Court of Rome, Luther maintained, that
Luther believed that an ecumenical council could reform the Church, and he had appealed to
its authority. Yet in his 1519 Leipzig debate with Catholic theologian Johann Eck and his 1521
speech at the Diet of Worms, Luther also contended that councils had erred and contradicted
each other, as when the Fifth Lateran Council overturned Constance’s decree that councils
ecumenical council at Mantua in 1537, Luther saw the opportunity to receive a favorable
judgment that would reverse the pope’s condemnations, and he prepared for the proceedings
By 1539, however, he had lost all con dence in the forthcoming council. He found that “the
conclusions at which the council will arrive have been already determined.” The pope, he
charged, had prejudiced his case; the bishops would no longer be free to judge. Luther
When a council nally met in 1545 at Trent, the Church’s intervention was too late: Luther
had written all his major treatises, and his followers continued his work after his death one
year later. But had there been a Council of Worms, rather than a Diet of Worms, perhaps the
Luther had initially appealed to a council in an attempt to reform the Catholic Church from
within. Without con dence that the Church would convene a legitimate council, he chose to
reform the Church from without. Both of their decisions exacerbated a controversy that
continues today.
For contemporary Protestants such as Stanley Hauerwas who justify Protestantism by the
perceived need to reform the Church from the outside, the “conciliar option” o ers an
alternative: reform from within, such as the early Luther counseled. Could the Protestant
Of course, holding frequent councils might weaken the faithful’s religious assent to the pope
and the ordinary magisterium. But today we may be experiencing the dangers on the other
side. Predicated too strictly on the power of the ponti , Church authority may become
increasingly absolutist. By relying too much on the ad hoc determinations of local bishops,
table.
Michael D. Breidenbach is assistant professor of history at Ave Maria University and a 2019 visiting
research scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.