Can anyone please help me find what points exactly were
discussed in teh debate. I doubt there is an excerpt but perhaps a
list of points and rebuttals.
I shall look upon another secular source (i reject Newadvent due to
catholic biased)
Encyclopedia of World Biography© on Johann Maier von Eck
http://www.bookrags.com/Johann_Eck
Karlstadt, a supporter of Luther's, obtained a copy of Eck's work
and responded publicly with a collection of 400 theses. In 1518 Eck
arranged for a debate with Luther and Karlstadt at Leipzig in the
following year. At the debate Eck quickly disposed of
Karlstadt and then took on Luther himself, skillfully drawing the
reformer into extremely heretical positions and achieving a
personal triumph
When academic recognition was slow in coming, Eck took his case to
Rome and elicited a papal bull from Leo X excommunicating Luther
and condemning his position. Eck then brought the bull back to
Germany and urged Emperor Charles V to apply force to Luther.
Following Luther's condemnation, Eck remained the defender of
Catholicism against him. Since Luther, however, refused to respond
to his challenges, Eck turned his attention to other reformers and
in a number of works condemned various theological errors.
His career as the champion of orthodoxy culminated in his
Confutation of the Protestant Augsburg Confession in
1530.
Luther's Ninety-five Theses (1517) changed Eck's life. At his
bishop's request Eck responded to the theses, and ensuing exchanges
led to the Leipzig Disputation (1519) between Eck and the
Wittenbergers Luther and Karlstadt. Shortly thereafter Eck went to
Rome and helped secure papal condemnation of Wittenberg theology.
He was commissioned (1520) to publicize in Germany the papal bull
Exsurge Domine, which condemned forty-one propositions attributed
to Luther, and which Luther publicly burned.
The rest of Eck's life was devoted largely to combating Protestants
in Germany and Switzerland. Although he had no confidence that
disputation would convince his Protestant opponents, he engaged in
debate when he thought public policy might be influencednotably in
Baden in 1524. He was the most important Catholic participant in
discussions with Protestants at Augsburg (1530) and Ratisbon
(1541). His anti-Protestant publications included the following:
defenses of papal authority (De primatu Petri, 1520), the doctrine
of purgatory (De purgatorio, 1523), the sacrament of penance (De
satisfactione and De initio poenitentiae, both 1523), and the
sacrifice of the Mass (De sacrificio missae, 1526); the Enchiridion
(1525), a manual intended to refute common Protestant errors;
cycles of sermons (German and Latin, 1530); and a German
translation of the Bible (1537). Two memoirs (Schutz red, 1540, and
Replica, 1543) are polemical tracts that also provide biographical
details.
Eck's writings were the most widely distributed anti-Protestant
theological works of his generation. He played a major role in
convincing Roman Catholic authorities that Luther's teachings were
novelties dangerous to the security of the faith. He helped shape
the strategy widely used against the Protestants: to take positions
representing a medieval consensus and, in defending them, to
anticipate possible Protestant objections, avoid scholastic
demonstration, and emphasize scriptural arguments
The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-05.
He was renowned in Germany for his dialectic skill in public
disputation and for his deep knowledge of church history and canon
law. He had been suspected of unsound theology because of some of
his humanistic ideas, but he had no hesitation in condemning
(151
the new theses of Martin Luther, with whom he held
a public discussion at Leipzig in 1519. Eager for the condemnation
of the heresy he saw in Lutheranism, he went to Rome and returned
with the papal bull condemning Luther (1520). From that time he was
a leader in the struggle against the reforming party in Germany. He
was one of the leading theologians at the Diet of Augsburg (1530).
He also attacked the Swiss reforms of Zwingli. Eck is known
as the first theologian who forced Luther into a position of
definite, open opposition to the teachings and practice of the
Roman Catholic Church
Christian Cyclopedia ( Lutheran Source)
http://www.lcms.org/ca/www/cyclopedia/02/display.asp?t1=l&word=LEIPZIGDEBATE
The most important result of the disputation was the incentive
which it gave Luther to cut loose from the whole system of
pretentious infallibility. He had, indeed, previously reached the
conclusion, -- as appears from his reply to Prierias,--that it was
possible for a council to err. But as yet he had not ventured to
take exception to any specific decision of a general council. This
was first brought about at the Leipzig disputation, under pressure
of Eck's assertion, that, in denying the divine right of the Pope,
Luther was making himself a patron of the Hussite heresy, and was
contending for a proposition which the council of Constance had
expressly condemned. At first Luther took umbrage at being
associated with Huss; his mind not yet being fully disabused of the
prejudice against the Bohemian martyr, which a century of
industrious vilification had ingrained into the minds of the
Germans generally. But on reflection he declared, of his own
accord, that several of the sentences of Huss, condemned by the
council of Constance, were most Christian and evangelical. This
naturally produced no small stir among the auditors. Eck, in a
letter to Hochstraten, says that many who had been favorable to
Luther were terrified by this daring error, and ceased to give him
countenance. To have brought his opponent to this
confession, was, no doubt, a formal victory for Eck, for it enabled
him to brand him in the eyes of Roman Catholics generally as a
manifest heretic. But what was a formal victory for Eck was a real
advantage to Luther and his cause. By assisting him to a
clearer apprehension of truth, it only increased the momentum with
which he was preparing to assail the ramparts of papal and
hierarchical sovereignty. Luther gives an account of the
disputation in Epist. cxlvii., cxlix., cli.
All agree Johann Eck was victorious in the debate. The question
though is whether the effects of Johann Eck victory was in any
sense detrimental to Luther position. The Lutherans site, will
admitting to Luther's defeat, proceed to show how it strengthened
Luther resolve and cleared his mind etc etc.
