Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history. On this episode I'm with our good friend, Dr. W Robert Godfrey, Dr Godfrey, good to see you again.

Good to be here with you, Steve. Always fun to talk about historical anniversaries with you because historians love

anniversaries.

We'll celebrate just about anything.

2019 is the 500th anniversary of a very important moment back in Luther's life from 1519 at Leipzig in the Leipzig disputation.

So we know it's at Leipzig town in Germany. Martin Luther was

pit against Johann Ek and we know that Ek means corner. So did Ek the

corner back Martin Luther into a corner in Leipzig 500 years ago?

Great question coming just as your viewers thought maybe they were finally done with Luther for a little while

having given so much attention to Luther two years ago and here he's back. He's back.

The truth is of course that we celebrated Luther in 1517 for his first public act that began to challenge the old church, But in 1517 I would argue Luther wasn't really a

Protestant yet. He became a public figure. He began to get a lot of attention, but his theology was really developing.

It had not reached any kind of settled conclusion, but because he'd become famous, he began to be invited places.

And because there was tension between the University of Leipzig and the University of Vittenberg,

an invitation went to Karlstadt, Andreas Bodenstein-Fud Karlstadt, Luther's older

colleague on the theological faculty, to to Leipzig to debate and Luther was really

annoyed that he wasn't invited so he was added to the invitation they went to Leipzig. They were there several days. A little bit of

side note is that at that time there was a man by the name of John Tetsl dying in Leipzig who had sold

indulgences that sparked Luther's action in 1517 and Luther communicated to Tetsl to try to offer him condolences

on his deathbed and comfort. But the disputation itself was formally going to be

between Ek and Luther on the matter of the Pope's

authority. But as they debated that and Luther tried to limit the Pope's authority,

...