Bennet's is an interesting word simply because in both Latin and in German
there is one word whereas in English there are three
different words so when you see the word as a translator or as a historian in in
the original documents you have to always ask the question are they talking
about penitence that is sorrow for sin are they talking about the Sacrament of
Penance which is a very important part of indulgences or are they talking about
repentance the folks in the 16th century didn't have that dilemma because they
only had one word whether they talked German or Latin it was point attend seea
and or Busa in German it's the only word they had so we always have to guess what
it means but to understand indulgences you have to understand the Sacrament of
Penance as it develops in the Middle Ages the
Sacrament of Penance is God's second gracious right given to the church to
rescue sinners the first is baptism unfortunately when you get to be about 7
years old and your will kicks in you can begin to commit sins that basically sin
away the the grace in baptism so imagine the dilemma of somebody who has sinned
away their the grace of baptism are now in a state of sin how do they get back
into a state of grace the problem is so deep because if you die in a state of
sin mortal sin you go directly to hell you do not pass go you don't collect
$200 you're you're toast so this becomes really the center of
late medieval piety how do I get back into a state of grace and the answer is
the sacrament of penance penance itself as a sacrament consists of three parts
the first is sorrow for sin then the second is that you confess your sins
privately to a priest and thirdly finally that you do works of
satisfaction the works of satisfaction can only be understood if you understand
what's happening in penance opposed to baptism sin according to
medieval theology has two consequences guilt and punishment in baptism all the
guilt and all the punishment of any sins committed or for which we're responsible
up until the time of baptism are removed both guilt and Punishment punishment by
the way the word in Latin is poina from which you actually get point attend SIA
which means a kind of self punishment for the sins you've committed so the
three parts are contrition sorrow for sin out of love of God confession
confessing to a priest and the thing about penance which is different from
baptism is that although it removes all the guilt of sin it only reduces the
punishment from an eternal one die in a state of sin go to hell to a temporal
one what we might call chastisement or discipline for the sins that we've
committed and that temporal punishment has to be satisfied and so the third
part of penance is the satisfaction for the temporal punishment remaining for
sin after one is confessed to a priest and received absolution it's that
satisfaction that begins to build up in a person's life because the rule of
thumb was for each mortal sin you commit that is a sin that you commit willingly
knowingly against God's law you chalk up seven years of satisfaction that needs
to be done now that seven years can be immediately reduced by certain good
works almsgiving prayer fasting particularly they're mentioned in the
Sermon on the Mount by Jesus and from that then comes all kinds of other good
works that a person can do to satisfy the remaining punishment of sin but at
seven years a mortal sin given the fact that one commits mortal sins of thoughts
word and deed each day and quite often it means that that satisfaction the
amount of satisfaction needed multiplies just astronomically
geometrically
to understand what the 95 theses about what what Sacrament of Penance about we
have to understand purgatory now the word purgatory itself a good Latin word
purgatorium means place of predation what happens is for most Christians is
that they die before they've satisfied all of the penalty that they owe for the
sins they've commit they haven't satisfied everything 7 years per mortal
sin builds up into the hundreds of thousands if not millions of years of
punishment depending on how good a sinner you are that then what God has
done in God's mercy according to late medieval theology is to establish a
place of purgation where you're purged of the remaining sin in your lives and
where you satisfy the remaining punishment for those sins that had not
been taken care of during your life
purgatory unlike what many Protestants imagine
purgatory has only one exit and that's to heaven you are purged of your sin and
then you go to heaven but you cannot go from purgatory to hell there's just no
way you can do it the trouble is that the least punishment or purgation that
you undergo in purgatory is a hundred times worse than the worst punished
suffering that you might endure here on earth it's not a place you sign up for
although in his 95 theses Luther actually mentions two Saints that he
knows of who wanted to stay longer in purgatory
but the only reason they want to say longer in purgatory so that they get a
higher place in heaven in any case purgatory is that not a
place you sign up for and moreover the medieval theologians were pretty sure
that you didn't know went once in purgatory what your fate would be on
earth because we understand theology these medieval theologians would say you
do understand there's only one exit but when you're actually in that state of
predation you don't know that because that would allow you to be
rather secure even under the worst punishment and say well I'm gonna end up
in heaven anyway I can endure this a little bit longer no you actually don't
know what the soul does not know what its final disposition will be while it's
being punished in purgatory and that adds to the the real terror that
purgatory represented so there are two pastoral issues then connected to the
Sacrament of Penance the first one is you want to make sure you die in a state
of grace not in a state of sin and this will mean that particularly the very end
of life matters will be very important for which there was then also an added
sacrament the sacrament of last rites or extreme unction that would also help
move your soul from a state of sin to a state of grace and prepare you then for
the final judgment so there's that question am I in a state of sin am i in
a state of grace that's the one but the other is have I really satisfied God's
punishment for the sins that I've committed and confessed to a priest it's
that uncertainty then that is answered by the the practice of indulgences so
one may ask particularly a Protestant would ask well where is this in the
Bible the idea of a place of purgation really comes out of one of the
Beatitudes blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God
medieval theologians took that text quite literally and said therefore if
you come with the satisfaction that still needs to be or this punishment
that still needs to be satisfied for your sin if you come before God with
that you're not yet pure and Hart you have this burden of this satisfaction
that remains and therefore purgatory is a place where you in fact become pure so
that once purified you then are pure in heart and can see God and have that
beatific vision for all eternity Luther doesn't really focus on purgatory in his
comments I think for a couple of reasons the
first is once you begin to refocus the role of grace and God's mercy in a
Christians life the question of purgatory simply becomes moot it's not
that important so if you look at most of Luther's life occasionally he'll he'll
make some snide comments about purgatory but it really falls by the wayside it's
not that important and already in his explanation to the 95 theses written in
1518 so about a year after the theses themselves his defense of statements in
the 95 theses it becomes clear that he thinks that at the end of life when a
person is faced again thinking about their sins faced with death and so on
that they experience hell purgatory and suffering on earth all wrapped into one
so he no longer sees that there's much difference in terms of how a person
experiences the end of life as a sinner so that one really is in that moment
purified of all their sins satisfies all the punishment really in an instant that
this sense of terror for one sin is experienced existentially so it simply
doesn't because it's so closely related to a medieval understanding of the
Sacrament of Penance and to indulgences purgatory really
becomes is simply not that important for Luther and he never really spends much
time talking about it and furthermore the the debates that they begin to have
after the 95 theses are posted with the people that object to them quickly a
focus on other matters particularly the question of authority of the Pope
to understand an indulgence you have to realize that it's related to our English
word to be indulgent if a person so back up for a moment and and look we have to
talk a little bit about where this all comes from in the early church if you
were a fifth century Christian and you committed a heinous public sin that
everyone knew about something that would break the community of that particular
Christian congregation they would practice a form of excommunication that
would ban you from the Lord's Supper and sometimes even from the community itself
for a period of time for really heinous sins that were known in the community
that broke the the unity of that community would be around seven years
and in some cases we know in the early church a person would then sit at the
door of the church on a Sunday begging all of the members of that congregation
for forgiveness for that for the deed that they had committed now such
excommunication didn't really affect a person's relationship to God but rather
to the community if that person asking begging for forgiveness and for allow to
be allowed back into fellowship with that Christian congregation if they
became mortally ill or if they showed true deep sorrow for their sin the
bishop or pastor we would call them now but the bishop of that congregation
could be indulgent and shorten the amount of time reconcile the sinner to
this congregation earlier than that seven years that was prescribed and that
indulgence had to do with reintegrating a person into a Christian community in
the Middle Ages the whole notion of that penitential
attitude of that sinner really becomes different because they now begin to
define mortal sin not simply as those public sins but any sin of thought were
indeed that is done willfully by the believer against the law of God and
these mortal sins then each could rack up seven years and they are not simply
public heinous sins that everyone knows about but it's all the sin that you
commit and the result is that of course you then rack up these hundreds of
thousands of years and so but in the process in the Middle Ages they also
realize that this is a burden to these Christians as well and therefore the
church continues to be indulgent by saying well it's true that if you fast
or if you pray or if you give alms you really satisfy a certain amount of the
sin that you've committed not all of it but quite a bit of it but then the
church can be indulgent that is to say allow a particular prayer or your
attendance at a worship service or a particular other religious act to have
far more effect and thereby they are being indulgent and allowing say
attendance of of a Christian at the anniversary of the dedication of a
church to be worth two hundred times as much as the normal amount that that
would satisfy the normal amount that would be satisfied by that religious act
in the 11th century the Pope then begins that the the Bishop of Rome begins to
promulgate then plenary indulgences that is to say an indulgence that wipes away
all the satisfaction that would be demanded for all of the sins that you've
committed up to a certain point the plenary indulgences first proclaimed for
those who participate in the Crusades for religious reasons but that's in the
11th century by the 12th or 13th century begin to get indulgences for visiting
the tombs of the apostles in Rome or at st. James Compostela in Spain which was
thought to be the play the burial place of Saint James in any case if you
suddenly go every 25 years starts and say 1313 25 and so on you get a jubilee
indulgence and there to you if you go to Rome pray at these various places you
get a full or plenary indulgence for all of the satisfaction in the 15th century
this visiting of the Apostles tombs in Rome or st. James Compostela suddenly
comes to you in the form of letters of indulgences it's meant to be and we need
to understand this is to be a really quite remarkable grace that is being
offered by these indulgences commissioners or preachers of
indulgences in the 15th century then however there is a change that takes
place in 1476 Pope Sixtus after whom the Sistine Chapel is named one of the
interesting things as the the art of this period from Rome in part is being
paid for by the indulgences people are buying north of the Alps in any case he
proclaims for a church in Santis France that if you buy that indulgence you can
buy it not only for yourself but also for your dead relatives particularly
father and mother well you know that they were sinners if you're their child
and you know that they've racked up a lot of sin and you know now that they're
dead that their souls are suffering in purgatory so starting in 1476 in Santis
france you can begin to purchase letters of indulgences not simply for yourself
but also for the souls of those in purgatory Johann Tetzel was a dominican
he was a commissioner of indulgences which means he had preached some other
indulgences earlier on in his career I think to understand what Luther was
objecting to this specific Peter's indulgences you have to know a little
bit about the background and the background has to do with outreached who
was from brandenburg he became at a very young age a bishop but it was illegal
and according to church law to hold two archbishop bricks and when the
archbishopric of Mainz became vacant he then was selected to be the archbishop
there and rather than giving up his other archbishopric of Magdeburg he then
paid a fee to the Vatican to allow him to hold these to seize as well as there
was money involved anytime one of these large bishoprics which was also a
political entity in the Holy Roman Empire became available you always had
to pay a certain fee in order to pay that he took out a loan from the largest
banking firm in the Holy Roman Empire in Augsburg the fogers had more money than
than anyone at the time all of the powerful and rich people loan borrowed
money from them and so he had to pay back this loan and the way it was
arranged for him to do this was to take some of the of the money raised by a
Peters indulgence the ostensibly reason for this indulgence and worth about 50%
of the money was supposed to go was actually to Rome to help to build the
Basilica of st. Peter's and Paul in Rome the results of which although it took
them almost the entire 16th century to finally build it can be seen today every
time Pope Francis is presides at something in Rome it is at st. Peter's
and that's the building that was built in the 16th century the money was was
supposed to go and publicly was designated to go there people didn't
know about the backroom dealings of all breached namely that half of the money
went to pay for this for his loan from the fogers in order
for him to have gotten these offices that he then held is one of the most
powerful in fact the primate of Germany was Albrecht of Mainz loser didn't even
know about that when he criticizes indulgences he only found out later that
kind of sordid side to promulgate this indulgence Albrecht wanted to use
Franciscans they refused we know already before the Reformation before the 95
theses that indulgence breaching was not bringing in as much money as it once had
there really was a law of diminishing returns people were very skeptical about
these indulgences and so they weren't giving money so he turned instead from
the Franciscans to the Dominicans and the head Commissioner of indulgences was
in fact Johann Tetzel most likely the things that he said went far beyond the
instructions that he had received from the theologians at the Archbishop's
court every time they preached in indulgences there was an a an
instruction booklet that was made that laid out what the benefits of this
particular indulgence were and also the limitations what the what these
indulgence preachers couldn't say Tetzel clearly said things beyond that the the
famous one which was probably also already being said before debts all came
along is this little ditty as soon as money is thrown in the chest and the
cash bell rings the soul flies out of purgatory and sings there were different
versions of that and sure enough I mean he probably said that he said worse
things he said that an indulgence took care of all of not only the satisfaction
due to sin which is what an indulgence was supposed to do but it also
eliminated the the grounds for sorrow for sin contrition which meant that the
first part of of the Sacrament of Penance was being affected by this
indulgence it also was clear that the indulgence
allowed you to choose your confessor at the end of your life this is as
important as what most students do in college where they know there's a tough
professor and an easy professor well this allows you to get the easy
professor so you know you get an A you get the the very indulgent nice
Confessor for your sins at the end of your life so that you can be assured
that your time in purgatory will be much less than if you got the strict fella to
do it well Tetzel went around preaching the
the descriptions of how these he would arrive in a town all the bells would
ring all the organs in all the churches would be playing the mayor and other
city officials and the clerics would meet Tetzel at the door the papal coat
of arms would be processed and hung in the maiden Church along with the
indulgence bull itself that would sit on a satin cushion this this proclamation
of this particular indulgence and all other preaching then was banned so that
only preaching would be held in the main church by Texel for this indulgence the
indulgences themselves were individually crafted we have a couple that have come
down to us where specific sins would be mentioned there is one father who had
accidentally killed his son while trying to butcher a pig and that was apparently
a deep cause deep pain for the father and so it's written out specifically
that this sin is now completely forgiven and that all satisfaction is wiped out
those kinds of things were going on the indulgences letters themselves were
printed up ahead of time with blanks where you then could write in the name
of the person and the date and sealed then with a specific wax seal for these
letters it was really quite a big deal in the towns in which Tetzel then came
in Wittenberg in those days there were four or five maybe a few more churches
and chapels the Franciscan monastery had a church the Augustinian monastery where
Luther lived and worked also had a church and then there was the main
Church for most of its citizens of Wittenberg the small city really and
that was st. Mary's in the center of town but there was also then the castle
Church the castle Church had been rededicated as I mentioned by Raymond
parodi on January 17 1503 and at that time he proclaimed on behalf of the Pope
that anyone worshiping at the anniversary of this dedication would
receive a 200 day indulgence this is the castle Church which means it's the in
some ways the private chapel of the Prince of Saxony Frederick the elector
within a year there would be at least 6,000 masses that would be said for the
souls of those dead electors and Electress that were set up by this
foundation the elector had also wanted a university and that started then in 1502
so that they didn't have to send him to his cousin in Leipzig who had the
University of Leiden see much older so Parodi dedicates it and sure enough lo
and behold in January 17 1517 according to my reading of a sermon of Martin
Luther Martin Luther himself is now preaching at this anniversary of the
dedication so he's preaching and indulgences himself it's not just that
Tetzel is preaching at about the same time in January 1517 in the town where
Luther was born in ice-laden and then in some other towns 30 or 40 50 miles from
Wittenberg but Luther himself is is preaching a much more limited 200 day
indulgence but in the middle of the sermon Luther begins to question
indulgences he can't figure out how he can get people to be serious about their
sins and can controi sorry for the sins they've committed on the one hand and
yet preached this indulgence which really removes the need
for sorrow for sin on the other hand how can he do both at the same time we know
from later a Luther's later recollections that the Elector is
hopping mad that Luther would pose these questions in a sermon where the elector
is hoping to get a 200 day indulgence I think that that questioning as much as
Tetzel is preaching then motivates Luther to do more research into
indulgences
so what Luther does between Jo 15:17 and the 31st of October 1517 is he
does his homework he discovers the origins of indulgences which were really
means of pastoral care in the ancient church means of reconciling
excommunicated sinners with the church early and being indulgent in terms of
their ecclesiastical punishment that it had nothing originally to do with God's
punishment of our sin or God's chastisement of us as sinners he also is
reading Erasmus of Rotterdam Erasmus a very important figure in the time he
publishes a year before the 95 theses in 1516 it the first time a Greek New
Testament Luther we know uses that Greek New Testament immediately in his
lectures on Romans but he's also reading them the annotations or corrections that
Erasmus is suggesting for some of the texts Erasmus questions among other
things the translation from the standard Latin version of the New Testament of
Matthew 4:17 where Jesus stands up and says and preaches and it says in the in
the Latin in the standard Latin version do penance Erasmus notes that the Greek
word Metanoia Tay doesn't mean do penance at all but rather have a change
of mind or a change of heart and he also comments on the fact that mistakenly
people in the Middle Ages theologians had used that text as a proof text for
the Sacrament of Penance an Erasmus notes that it doesn't have anything to
do with penance and that in the ancient church penance in any case was just this
ecclesiastical right that that would excommunicate sinners blatant sinners
for a particular amount of time that's in Erasmus already a year before Luther
Luther reads that among other things he reads in canon law that this this whole
idea of the Sacrament of Penance and and of indulgences had a completely
different origin than the way in which it was being used plus his converse
patience with with the Canon lawyers the church law lawyers he discovers that
things just aren't right in terms of the preaching that's going on about
indulgences the teaching that had surrounded indulgences and so he begins
to formulate theses
so what do we know about the 95 theses in medieval University life the way you
got a degree was by defending theses that your professor had written if you
want a Bachelor of Arts degree a Master of Arts a Bachelor a Bible lesson she
ate in theology a doctor of theology or medicine or law or any of those degrees
you would publicly defend theses written by your by your teacher for example in
September 1517 Martin Luther writes out 97 theses that are defended by a student
who is getting a degree of Bachelor of Bible they are printed and it was the
rules of the University of Wittenberg that all theses that were posed for
public debate at the University had to be posted on the doors of the churches
they functioned as the the bulletin board as what you might say the the
website the official Facebook page of the university so the fact that Luther
posted then a month later of the 95 theses instead of the 97 that he had
done earlier which attacked scholastic theology this was part and parcel of
medieval university life it was not Luther trying to attack anybody it was
just him following the regulations of the the school in fact those regulations
continued after the Reformation they continued to have theses and they posted
him they posted other things as well so Luther then as a doctor of theology as a
professor at the University had the right not only to post theses that would
be defended by students but he could post theses that he himself would depend
defend in what were called quad liberal debates that is debates about anything
whatsoever Luther by this time was so concerned
about this misinformation regarding indulgences that he wanted to start a
conversation a the Intelligencia among the theologians
about indulgences and about to a lesser degree the Sacrament of Penance itself
for that he wrote up these 95 statements which he then probably posted on the
door of the castle church on the 31st of October 1517 now there are some scholars
to this day who questioned whether they were posted at all the first reference
to the posting comes after Luther's death by Philip Melanchthon one of
Luther's colleagues who wasn't there in 1517 so we don't have necessarily an
eyewitness to this but melanchthon knew they were cc's and if they weren't
posted figured they were simply because you posted all theses if luther did post
them as i believe it was simply because that's what you did with theses in a
medieval university setting luther if he posted them in my opinion didn't use
nails or hammer that first comes out in in depictions from the 18th and 19th
century that they used hammer and nails one picture in the 19th century has a
little boy on a ladder actually posting the theses on the door and Luther is
standing in front pointing back to the theses that's because they didn't think
that German professors could really understand how to use a hammer and nails
by the 19th century in the 16th century however they most likely used wax or
paste that's the way they posted these notices just think about it if you use
nails for all of the things that got posted and there were hundreds upon
hundreds of things posted in the year the door would have fallen apart
eventually in the 19th century the castle church is refurbished by the
Prussian King later the Kaiser he was called they took the 95 theses and cast
them in bronze and and that is now the door of the castle Church far more
important than the posting on the door is the posting in the mail
because we have the letter from the Swedish archive in Luther's hand dated
the 31st of October 1517 to Archbishop outbreak saying you really have to rein
in Tetzel in these other indulgences preachers for your own sake because this
is not good pastoral care of your flock who are getting misled by these people a
very good way to understand what it was that Luther was doing in modern parlance
is that Luther sent an email to the archbishop and he attached as an email
attachment then the 95 theses the email itself was received and we even know the
date on which it was received or this this cover letter on the back of the
letter the clerk who received it writes the date 11th of November 1517 when in
fact that came into the archives in the city of Halle which was one of the
central cities of the archbishop
the thesis themselves when you first look at them just seemed so random
what we've discovered recently is that there is a certain kind of organization
to them it begins with a kind of an appeal to the reader you know to listen
to them and to respond if they're able then the first four theses which Luther
says later in his explanations are not up for debate really reflect his reading
of Erasmus and canon law insane you know if you want to understand penitence it's
a lifelong thing there is not a for a while you're penitent while you're in
sin and then you're in a state of grace and then you no longer have to be sorry
for your sin no the entire life of the Christian Luther says in thesis one is
one of penitence then comes the central thesis that Luther then will prove in
the rest of the theses and that's number five where he says the Pope doesn't have
the kind of authority that these indulgences preachers claim that the
Pope has he just has he has authority over ecclesiastical penalties but not
over the penalties for sin imposed by God the rest of the theses number six
through 80 is really just a confirmation or a proof of that and then Luther
imagines objections to the way in which indulgences are being preached and so on
which comes in thesis 81 to 91 and then finally there the last four theses are
highly charged rhetorically and are much more like a kind of conclusion to a
speech that you might imagine that Luther gives so basically and then in
those six through eighty you have different sections where he is proving
different parts of his argument to make it clear that that the standard
theological arguments for indulgences are simply not they don't hold any water
that's all he wants to prove is that they're questionable
if I were to take of the 95 the most important I would say first of all it's
the first one our Lord and Master Jesus Christ insane do penance Matthew 4:17
wanted the entire life of the faithful to be one of penitence what this
represents is is Martin Luther saying our Christian life doesn't go anywhere
it doesn't get better and better every day in every way but we stay all was a
sinner before God all was justified by God's grace alone
the second thesis that I think is is really wonderful is kind of the flip
side of that if you will its thesis 62 where he says the true treasure of the
church is the most holy gospel of the glory and grace of God underneath what
Luther is concerned about is not only that in fact we are sinners but that
God's grace and not an indulgence purchased is what actually rids us of
our sin that God declares us righteous for the sake of Christ alone and the
final thesis comes at the end it's one of these rhetorically charged theses and
that it again reflects his main point where he says Christians must be
encouraged diligently to follow Christ their head through penalties death and
hell and then 95 who continues and in this way they may be confident of
entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through the
false security of peace that is the peace of indulgence buying you know that
old gospel hymn blessed assurance Jesus is mine what I used to tell my students
was that that him could not have been written without the Reformation the
notion that we have assurance from Christ's lips
about our forgiveness about our standing before God comes really from Luther's
discovery or rediscovery of this gospel of the glory and grace of God
so I mentioned that I think there it's more important that the theses were
mailed then that they were nailed and let me say a little bit about who they
were mailed to and why that's so important all of what I was the
Archbishop of Mainz which was the central archbishopric in the Holy Roman
Empire here's just an excerpt from that letter he says to the archbishop under
your most distinguished name and title papal indulgences are being disseminated
among the people for the construction of st. Peter's in Rome in these matters I
don't find so much fault with the cries of the preachers which I haven't heard
but I do be wail the people's completely false understanding gleaned from these
fellows which they spread everywhere among the common folk
luther is concerned about what people are hearing in preaching that really is
his his worry he's not really worried about the authority of the Pope he
doesn't really question it he just assumes there are limitations
unfortunately his opponents who are much more paperless in their understanding or
Curia lists as they're called who understand that the Pope's have a really
almost unlimited authority in the church they don't agree with him at all
but Luther himself thinks no if the Pope hears about this he'll say oh my
goodness gracious this is terrible what they're saying that I can do of course
the Pope can't have this authority over purgatory that people say I have or
can't have authority over God's chastisement for sin Luther thinks that
about the Pope but what he wants to do is have the archbishop rein in these
indulgences preachers not simply for theology sake but also because of bad
preaching I think if Luther were alive today that
his in it he were to write 95 theses they would be to attack bad preaching in
our day there are these charlatans who in the name of Christianity are
preaching what it was now called a prosperity gospel and there is quite
frankly nothing worse or more the opposite of true
Christianity than what is being belched out on the airwaves and by these
prosperity preachers in these church growth nick churches that is bad
preaching that misleads the people by imagining that somehow our economic
well-being is is connected to our standing before God that simply isn't
true now and that's what Luther goes after in his day do you know what Luther
says in the middle of the 95 theses and he says it also in the letter to
Albrecht he says one of the consequences of this kind of preaching of indulgences
that people should buy these letters of indulgences is that the poor are
neglected and another one of my favorite theses actually is precisely those from
45 onwards for about five or six theses where Luther says if you pass by a poor
person on your way to buy an indulgence you are not buying God's mercy but God's
wrath you're not buying an indulgence at all the same thing he says then in the
95 theses and it's one of Luther's continual themes that he's worried about
the poor in our world and what should be done in his world and what should be
done for them and I would say the same ought to be true today that if Luther
were there he would attack the way in which we have a ban in our own society
and around the world we've abandoned the poor for the sake of economic gain the
prosperity gospel is not something that is limited to Joel Olsteen and the and
and and some few mega churches here and there in my travels around the world
talking about the Reformation and teaching people I have found and
discovered pastors who have been negatively affected by the prosperity
preacher down the street in Brazil in South Africa in parts of Asia all over
the place people that I know who are faithful preachers of the gospel who are
being drowned out by kind of preachy and in some ways that's
what Luther was worried about that the gospel itself was being drowned out by
these false claims of these indulgences preachers so I think it's all over the
place particularly the prosperity gospel is is a very alluring message in a world
where we more and more measure our well-being and actually our being by
what we have what we own how we are able to use our economic power to do this
that or the other and when people see this in poor countries they want to
actually emulate this kind of message I think in many places so I would say that
that is one thing that Luther for sure would would react against I think
there's another way though that many in the church have lost the ability to name
sin as sin that they that we tend to think of of sin as a mere blemish that
if we just use the right kind of Clearasil or or whatever the latest
product is we can kind of get rid of these blemishes we call sin what Luther
realizes and it's reflected in that first thesis of the 95 theses is that
we're stuck in sin the way I would say it is that we're addicted to sin worse
than being addicted to sin however in Luther also says this later on when he
confronts Erasmus in 1525 he says not only are we addicted to sin but we're
heavy into denial we imagine that things are going well that sin is not really a
big problem and one of the reasons that the church's message falls on deaf ears
is because our ears in a sense have been filled with the lie that everything is
okay that I'm okay and you're okay as that book from the 70s proclaimed and
that we're all just getting better and better every day in every way what
Luther reminds us of what he would remind us of if he were a preacher in
today's world is precisely that we're in in an thrall
old captive to sin and evil that we can't get out of it by ourselves and
that's where Christ's mercy and grace comes were not only are we in denial
about sin we're also heavy into denial about death
just like the alcoholic is in denial about his or her alcoholism there was a
book written a generation ago by Carl Becker called the denial of death
describing a sociologist describing a Western in particular American society
and its ability to deny that people actually are dying we're still heavy
into denial about those things heavy into denial about evil in the world and
how evil actually lurks in not only every human heart but in every human
society and culture all of those things are the very things that Luther is
beginning to attack in his 95 theses as he sees bad preaching really blind
people or make people deaf to the real situation in their lives on the flip
side of that of course is that we also are in denial about the nature of God's
grace that God really does want to forgive us to proclaim us righteous and
that's why he says in that thesis 62 you know the real treasure of the church is
that glorious gospel of God's grace
one imagines that the 95 theses suddenly made Luther a household name it didn't
it was written in Latin there may have been a translation but as far as we know
there was never a printing of a German version of the 95 theses until after
Luther's death in fact when Luther hears that a translation has been made he
writes back to a friend of his in nürnberg and says don't bother with the
translation I'll write something else and lo and behold he did in March or
April he publishes from the Wittenberg Press a very simple document called a
sermon you'd almost call it an essay on indulgences and grace it's written in
German it immediately makes Luther a household name because it is republished
within two years about 20 times it's all over the place it's in German and it's
being read to a perhaps 10% of the people read and could read in those days
but it's being read aloud in the in the pubs and and you know on the street
corner and in families and homes you'd get the one reader to come it's all over
the place and it turned Luther into the first living best-selling author the
world had ever seen we think about Luther and the printing press and think
Gutenberg invented the printing press and then you wonder why it takes 60 70
years for somebody like Luther to arise part of it is that there are
improvements in printing that are taking place at the very time that Luther is
beginning to teach and publish but the other thing is that the phenomenon of a
best-selling author is absolutely new nobody knew what to make of this Luther
didn't know he had done this he just publishes something Tetzel reads this
thing writes his own rebuttal in German it's never republished and that tells
you the difference it is you have to imagine Luther like in in the story of
the Emperor's New Clothes suddenly a little boy
in the crowd says he has no clothes and everybody
my goodness gracious the emperor has no clothes loser says what so many people
had been thinking worrying about didn't know what what do we make of these
indulgences is this really what the Christian life
is all about is this how we go about receiving God's grace and mercy through
the indulgence of the Bishop of Rome Luther blows that all out of the water
so that in this essay at one point he even says so you may ask should I even
bother buying indulgences I say to you flee from them run from them as quickly
as your little legs will carry you I mean this is radical kinds of things to
say and it's very clear that Luther suddenly via the printing press but the
German printing press the the 95 theses written in latin for scholars yeah they
were talking about it but nobody else was until this sermon is published and
then Luther becomes just well he is the best-selling author for the next 10-15
years
not only did this happen accident but Luther really is a kind of
genius as soon as he realizes the power of publishing and his own ability to
communicate after all by this time 1518 he'd been a parish pastor preacher for
at least four or five years he'd been a professor he knew how to use not only
the Latin language but also German and and he just falls into this and he
understands how to use this material but he also at the same time begins a
friendship with with Lucas Cranach senior who lives in Vinton beric they
clearly they eat together often he's invited over to chronics house they they
become really best friends in many ways and cronic is this amazing artist and he
begins then first of all to to depict Luther one of his famous depictions is
of Luther as a monk in 15 19 or so 15 20 so you can see his tonsor but over the
top of his head is a dove and so you get this idea of Luther being directly
inspired by the holy spirit in the same period of time as the the the fight
really becomes not over indulgences but over papal authority and power you begin
to see some very negative depictions of the Pope one that comes out that Philip
Melanchthon and Martin Luther provided then the captions for is called The
Passion of Christ and Antichrist by this time then the papacy in Rome is
understood as the Antichrist and so you have in one side by side woodcut Jesus
washing the feet of the of the disciples and then the Pope's foot being kissed by
a king as the contrast between these two it's that kind of thing that that allows
a visual depiction of these differences another really great example of how then
visual art becomes part of the developing Reformation comes much later
and I think it's done then by cranach's son Lucas Cranach jr. and you have on
the one side Luther depicted in the pulpit invit and Burke preaching
pointing to Christ like John the Baptist behold the lamb of God who takes away
the sin of the world on half of the woodcut and on the other half of the
woodcut you have this very plump Dominican in the pulpit also preaching
but preaching indulgences and you see a parade of the indulgences cross with the
papal arms and so on and the one side it's Christ who is showing his wounds to
the Father that's where Luther is preaching about the Lamb of God on the
other side you have st. Francis showing his wounds and the wrath of God coming
down upon the indulgences preachers I mean that clearly is a later depiction
of how they understand what understood what Luther was doing in his preaching
and teaching on the one side preaching the cross of Christ and the salvation
through the Lamb of God and then this false indulgence preaching on the other
when I think of analogies between the sixteenth century what happened in the
in the Reformation with the publishing of and distribution of the ninety-five
theses and the sermon on indulgences and grace in our own day I think of one
positive exam or example that is very close to what happened in the sixteenth
century the so-called Arab Spring where people are suddenly tweeting and
facebooking and doing all of this stuff that causes changes in government across
northern Africa and nobody knew this was could happen would happen but suddenly
you have all of this kind of thing happens just overnight it's very similar
to this publication of this sermon on indulgences in grace nobody knew Luther
didn't the Pope didn't the archbishop nobody knew that this was going to
happen and suddenly you had this new this really the creation of a public of
people that were interested in what was going on and eager for the next thing to
roll off the printing presses that kind of sense and that's very similar to what
we saw happen in that so-called Arab Spring what is very different even in
that Arab Spring but certainly an other kind of modern media matters are the
fact that Luther always thought collectively he never thought
individualistically this is one of the mistaken ways that the Reformation is
understood that it's kind of the revolution of the individual against all
of these darkened powers of the dark ages you know these these church Lee
ecclesiastical powers or other powers and so you know you you you have this
call to individuals Luther if somebody had told him that's what the Reformation
was going to be he would have probably become apoplectic I can only imagine
given his harsh language that he sometimes used the kind of language he
would use to describe that Luther never thought that way he never thought
Christianity was an individual thing at all it always took place in
community one great example of this is when Luther is writing a little track
about prayer and he describes his own prayers now he prayed alone individually
in his study probably morning and evening but he
mentions he says if I have time when I want to pray I go to the church where
there are other people this is so different from the way we imagined
prayer we imagine well if I'm gonna pray I get into my closet and shut my door
and pray to the Father in secret Luther prayed that way but he thought prayer
was far more effective to be in community with other people this had
been his whole life of Prayer he understood the Psalms and the Lord's
Prayer to not simply be individualistic things at all in fact he even makes the
comment we pray not my father in heaven but our Father in heaven and so the one
fundamental difference between our own society and our own age particularly
Western culture is this notion of individualism as if our relationship to
God is simply a matter of of what I think or what I decide and and whether
I'm going to have this relationship and well and good if Asian aliy I show up
where there's some other people like-minded people in a building
somewhere Luther couldn't imagine that kind of individualistic individualizing
of Christianity in fact one of his favorite verses which we really didn't
notice until quite recently one of his favorite verses from the Bible is
Colossians 2:23 where Paul goes after what Luther translated as self chosen
spirituality that sense that the self chooses what spiritual does its own
thing you know meditates on its own apart from other people
no Luther couldn't imagine that kind of a Christian life Christian life has
lived in community it's lived around the the Lord's table as we participate
together as Christians in the Lord's Supper
in worship together praying for one another
Luther thought that was the greatest thing about prayer in church is that we
not only boys just praying to God for our own things but that we looked around
and saw other people and prayed for them and we prayed in common having never
tweeted I don't know what a tweet from Martin Luther would look like very well
maybe one of those theses that I mentioned the entire life of the
Christian is one of penitence I think one of the things that really threatens
Christianity today is the notion of a before and after in Christianity I think
it's what was threatening Luther's Christian the Christian faith in
Luther's day that we kind of once were sinners and now we're done being sinners
and now we can be Saints that is a recipe for Pharisee ISM of the worst
kind of hypocrisy of boasting in your own faith st. Paul says over and over
again that let the one who boasts boast in the Lord see I think the problem
really comes with individualism because individualism is just a pretty word for
selfishness I think that's where our real our real problem lies today and it
did in Luther's day in a way to the difference being that there it was the
self trying to find a way into God's Grace's by one's own works and so on and
today we imagine that we can do the same you know even if we don't believe in God
we can at least make everything better here on earth it denies a basic problem
with the human being Luther called it that we are curved in upon ourselves
that that really we do all things and then if we work communally then we
communally do things for ourselves so that it becomes for our nation or for
this particular group of people or that particular group of people individualism
as it's understood in our world today I think is selling people a mess of
pottage to use that old biblical term it's selling people a bridge in Brooklyn
because finally we are not alone we are in this together we cannot get away and
just have our own way it's it's a myth that we have created for ourselves and
even the charge that well certain freedoms for women for example or
minorities the movement away from slavery although there still are people
that are enslaved in our own land all of these things we say well we've made
advances there but I think of all people the quote I think that Emerson was right
that society advances as much in one place as it recedes in another rather
like the the waves crashing on a beach you know and and this means that we we
make say look at all the things that we've accomplished look at that things
are better for people and then ask ourselves the question why was it then
that in the 20th century there were more people died in the name of autocracy and
in the name of all kinds of racial theories and so on than ever before the
facts are that our notions of freedom and individualism don't always help our
neighbor and we're put on earth not to serve ourselves but to actually serve
our neighbor
one of the problems we have with Martin Luther is that he often we say too many
good things about him and we make him into this plaster st. which has to be I
mean Luther could not have imagined a worse thing he loved to mention the fact
that he was a sinner that he was mortal he he rather sometimes over he reveled
too much in some of his sins actually he even wrote to one of his colleagues in a
private letter sin boldly because he thought that this colleague was trying
too hard to pretend he wasn't a sinner you know that kind of thing no loser was
was a truly a human being he enjoyed this life as much as he realized his own
sin in this life there are several places where Luther said and did things
that later historians and theologians human beings have held him accountable
for as a Lutheran I never have to worry about making Luther into a saint he was
a sinner he said wrong things that I don't agree with that that Lutheran
churches have actually rejected outright he said some things about the peasants
during the peasants war of 1525 that were clearly not very helpful
encouraging the the princes to stab smite and slay them as he put it but
worse yet he said some some very terrible things about the Jews to be
sure his own culture the Christian culture of this time he wasn't saying
many things that were very different from what others had said but there was
a tinge of triumphalism and some of those later things that he said in 1523
on the contrary Martin Luther wrote a tract called that
Jesus Christ was born a Jew that got him into trouble because he said Jesus
Christ was born a Jew and in there he chastised the church for having
persecuted Jews he said no wonder they won't believe in Christ because of the
way we've treated him and therefore we need to treat them much better that
positive statement that he said however is matched unfortunately by
some horrendous things that he said near the end of his life he published three
tracks in 1543 specifically aimed at Jewish exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures
but also aimed at Jews Luther had very little contact with Jews but what he
said was simply horrendous because he counseled the politicians the princes of
his day to burn down their synagogues to confiscate their books and to drive them
out of the land this horrific thing was not taken as gospel truth by later
Lutheran's even by current Lutheran Lutheran's at the time several of them
objected to what he said some of them agreed there were Luther
would be quoted both for and against relationships to Jews in the later 16
into the 17th century his early tract quoted by some people who were in favor
of giving the Jewish people more rights in the Holy Roman Empire and his
negative ones of course by those who wanted to give them less rights by the
19th century those comments on the Jews had been pretty much forgotten by the
church then along comes the propaganda machine of the Nazis in the 1930s they
accused the Lutheran Church of having suppressed these ideas of Luther and
they republish particularly on the Jews in their lies and and therein lies the
problem because clearly the Nazis used Luther's tract as an excuse for the
Holocaust and that's where then later Lutheran's Lutheran churches both in
Germany the United States other places have rejected completely Luther
statements on the Jews as being not just unhelpful but wrong and in the wrong
hands such as in the Nazis hands then used for horrendous crimes and for that
we cannot justify what Luther said hiko berman wrote this brilliant biography of
Luther called Luther man between God and the devil and when he gets to this
problem of Luther's reaction to the Jews what he says is what you have he
is an example of Protestant triumphalism that Luther up until the 1540s has a
sense that he too is a sinner but in these tracks not only against the Jews
but against the Pope and against the Turks and so on adjust a whole host of
people it's as if he's kind of crossed over to the other side as if he can
judge all things and in a sense the success of the Reformation and his
unique role in it has gone to his head and so he thinks now that he can
actually act as judge jury and executioner
perhaps he is disappointed that the Jewish people upon hearing his gospel
don't then convert in large numbers perhaps that but certainly there is a
sense that loser and losers own mind himself a sinner
he gets caught up in himself and he thinks now that he can just write these
hateful tracts filled with with filthy language and by two per Asians of the
worst kind that he can write this kind of thing because in a sense he knows
God's mind and that of course is is a fatal flaw for any Christian to
understand how deeply in imaged in anti-jewish thought the people of
Luther's day were one need only go to st. Mary's in Wittenberg and see on the
side a medieval pre Luther depiction of Jews sucking from the teat of a sow
nothing could be more defamatory than that and above it talking about the
so-called Shem harmful hum for us this this special name of God that had
magical powers and and making fun of Jews Luther would have walked by that
almost every day of his life on his way to st. Mary's Church that's this evil
awful side of Christianity in the Middle Ages and also before and after that
treated Jews in such spectacularly but when one looks at that one must also
look on the ground in front of that very horrific thing where the people of
Wittenberg decided not to take that awful thing away but to use it now as a
reminder of just how hateful human beings can be to one another and so in
the mosaic down below there really is an expression of the deep guilt and and
sorrow that the people of Germany after the Holocaust and the people of
Wittenberg in particular felt as a result of the kind of anti-jewish and
then finally anti-semitic feelings and actions that took place
Luther and music is a very interesting thing now as a student he would have
learned using one of the contributions that Luther makes to Christianity is his
revitalization of music and singing there always had been singing in the
church but Luther finds a way to use all kinds of musical forms to get the
message of the gospel across he for example in some of his early musical
writings muses the ballad which was of course the Meister singers which we've
even heard of in other settings where they had I mean that was all good German
culture and he uses then the Ballad form to bring his message across
he also it's a time of transition in music at the time where you're going
from these modal forms of of singing which to our ear sound minor although
they didn't to their ear to a major keys and so at least two of his of his songs
actually more than that but at least two of its famous pieces are written in the
key of C in C major including a mighty fortress which at the
end just goes down the scale that it's just going down a C scale which was a
rather new thing to do and it shows an interesting side to Luther his music
shows that both sides of this I'm both a sinner and I'm righteous therefore I'm
both sorry for my sin all was contrite always penitent and at
the same time always joyful because of Christ so on the one side he writes a
paraphrase of psalm 130 out of the depths I cry to you O Lord o Lord hear
my prayer from depths of woe is that one in a very somber kind of peace where he
goes through psalm 130 a few years later he writes a mighty fortress as a kind of
paraphrase of psalm 46 but done in this very positive light as he's celebrating
the resurrection I've often told pastors they should use it as an Easter hymn
because it's really talking about Christ defeating death and sin in his death and
resurrection and so you have really both sides and music becomes the means by
which Luther then gets his message across because people are singing his
ballads his songs in bars or inns as one of his opponent says Luther's songs are
on the lips of all the people so you have that kind of method that he uses he
uses images he uses music he uses print media uses all of these things to get
the message of the gospel across he even says music is next to theology the
greatest gift of God
some people ask me then well what's the 95 theses all about what's good what's
really at the heart and soul of it all and like Luther I have to say a both/and
it's two things at once the one thing is very clear
Luther wants people to understand we cannot buy our way around our sin and
God's judgment on sin on the one side and on the other side because there it's
kind of like the other side of the coin we cannot possibly buy our way into
God's grace but rather Christ has done that for us on our behalf those two
things the one what the human condition is all about and the other what it is
that God's heart is all about namely that God's heart wants to save us wants
to have a relationship with us wants to speak to us wants us as God's children
those are the two things I think that our rest underneath all of the other
theses is that sense of who we are and who God is and in our own day and age
frankly as we commemorate 500 years of the Reformation those are still the
message that still is the message that needs and that can be and is being
proclaimed from Christian pulpits all across Christianity both the weight of
sin the the mess were in the problem of the human condition on the one side and
then the grace and mercy of God on the other in Jesus Christ those two together
I think still make up the heart of the Christian message to which Luther was a
witness to which you and I are a witness today
you
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