Luther's early reception

What is also striking in the historical record prior to Worms–in an era when people had more and more access to primary scriptural and patristic sources against which the teaching of the medieval Church could be measured–is just how often those who heard and read Luther became convinced by his arguments, even if they had begun by resolutely opposing him on the basis of their immersion in medieval scholastic theology. In 1516, Luther's Wittenberg colleague Karlstadt, for example, "who did not even own a Bible when he earned the doctor of theology degree or for many years afterward," appears in the record "as an opponent of Luther's interpretation of Augustine" and some of his other opinions. Yet very shortly thereafter Karlstadt "became convinced of Luther's views," not least because he had bought Augustine's works and actually read them for himself finding as he did that "the scholastic edifice collapsed." Another Wittenberg opponent, Thomas Dielsch, describes his own bondage to medieval scholasticism before Luther–impressing him in debates about Scripture–persuade him to turn instead to the study of the Church Fathers and the Bible. Faced for the first time with Luther's provocative tract The Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Johannes Burgenhagan "felt that Luther was the wickedest heretic; however, after examining it thoroughly he believed that Luther was the only man who had recognized the truth in the prevailing blindness and darkness." Luther's arguments did "prevail" for many people in the Church of his time–including many who ultimately chose not to join the Protestant movement–and the hierarchy of the Church was widely perceived on the other hand as resorting to power in the place of cogent argument. It was this that led John Eck to lament that even the papal bull of 1520 threatening Luther with excommun cation "lacked a refutation of Luther's errors on the basis of the Bible, the chuch fathers, and the decisions of church councils," I. Provan, The Reformation and the Right Reading of Scripture (Baylor 2017), 291-92.