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95 Theses
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The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, commonly known as The Ninety-Five Theses, were written by Martin Luther in 1517 and are widely regarded as the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. Luther used these theses to display his displeasure with some of the Church's clergy's abuses, most notably the sale of indulgences; this ultimately gave birth to Protestantism.
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The Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, commonly known as The Ninety-Five Theses, were written by Martin Luther in 1517 and are widely regarded as the primary catalyst for the Protestant Reformation. Luther used these theses to display his displeasure with some of the Church's clergy's abuses, most notably the sale of indulgences; this ultimately gave birth to Protestantism. Luther's popularity encouraged others to share their doubts about the Church and to protest against its ways; it especially challenged the teachings of the Church on the nature of penance, the authority of the Pope and the usefulness of indulgences. They sparked a theological debate that would result in the Reformation and the birth of the various Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist denominations within Christianity.
Background
The background to Luther's Ninety-Five Theses centers on particular disputes within the Catholic Church about indulgences — remission of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven — being sold, and thus the penance for sin becoming a commercial transaction instead of a genuine change of heart. In short, the practice of indulgences became somewhat commoditized and then commercialized. So, instead of granting an indulgence as a remission of the penalty for breaking church law, making a confession, and then restoring whatever had been damaged - property or human relationships or other serious sins - an indulgence could be purchased. Luther felt that this was a gross violation of the original intention of confession, penance, and the role of indulgences and contributed to an offense to justification, a right relationship with God, or salvation, among Christians who were being falsely told that they could find absolution, that is, forgiveness of their sins, through the purchase of indulgences, rather than through the free gift of God's mercy offered in and through Jesus Christ.
The Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in the Holy Roman Empire, where the Ninety-five Theses famously appeared, held one of Europe's largest collections of religious artifacts, or holy relics. These had been piously collected by Frederick III of Saxony. At that time pious veneration, or viewing, of relics was purported to allow the viewer to receive relief from temporal punishment for sins in purgatory. By 1509 Frederick had over 5,000 relics, purportedly "including vials of the milk of the Virgin Mary, straw from the manger [of Jesus], and the body of one of the innocents massacred by King Herod."
The relics were kept in reliquaries and exhibited once a year for the faithful to venerate. "In 1509, each devout visitor who donated toward the preservation of the Castle Church received an indulgence of one hundred days per relic." This would allow the person relief of 100 days in purgatory, and thus hasten their entry into heaven.
By 1520 Frederick had increased his collection to over 19,000 relics, allowing pilgrims viewing all of them to receive an indulgence that would reduce their time in purgatory by 5,209 years.
As part of a fund-raising campaign commissioned by Pope Leo X to finance the renovation of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican priest, began the selling of indulgences in the German lands. Albert of Mainz (the Archbishop of Mainz) in Germany had borrowed heavily to pay for his high church rank and was deeply in debt. He agreed to allow the sale of the indulgences in his territory in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Luther was apparently not aware of this. Even though Luther's prince, Frederick III, and the prince of the neighboring territory, George, Duke of Saxony, forbade the sale in their lands, Luther's parishioners traveled to purchase them. When these people came to confession, they presented their plenary indulgences which they had paid good silver money for, claiming they no longer had to repent of their sins, since the document promised to forgive all their sins. Luther was outraged that they had paid money for what was theirs by right as a free gift from God. He felt compelled to expose the fraud that was being sold to the pious people. This exposure was to take place in the form of a public scholarly debate at the University of Wittenberg. The Ninety-five Theses outlined the items to be discussed and issued the challenge to any and all comers. The 95 theses were written into a book.
Initial dissemination
According to a report written by Philipp Melanchthon, Luther posted the Ninety-five Theses on the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. Some scholars have questioned the accuracy of this account, noting that no contemporaneous evidence exists for it. Others have countered that no such evidence is necessary, because this action was the customary way of advertising an event on a university campus. Church doors at the time functioned very much as bulletin boards. Still others suggest the posting may well have happened sometime in November 1517. Most agree that, at the very least, Luther mailed the theses to the Archbishop of Mainz, the pope, friends and other universities on that date.
Most recently, in February 2007, the media reported that a handwritten note by Luther's secretary Georg Rörer, found in the university library at Jena, appeared to confirm the traditional account of Luther's nailing the theses to the door. , this new find has yet to be assessed by scholars.
On October 31, 1517, Luther approached the competent church authorities with his pressing call for reform. On this day he presented them with his theses and the request that they call a halt to the unworthy activities of the indulgence preachers. When the bishops did not respond, or when they sought merely to divert him, Luther circulated his theses privately. The Ninety-five Theses spread quickly and were printed in Nuremberg, Leipzig, and Basel. Suddenly they were echoing throughout Germany and beyond its borders.
Reaction to the Ninety-five Theses
According to some, the Ninety-five Theses gained enormous popularity over a very short period of time. Luther's ideas resonated with people regardless of class, status, or wealth, at a time when such concepts were crucial to the social order.
On June 15, 1520, Pope Leo X issued a rebuttal to Luther's 95 Theses, a papal encyclical entitled Exsurge Domine. This document outlined the Magisterium of the Catholic Church's findings of where Luther had erred. The remarkable quality of this document (and Luther's) is that most of the arguments back and forth are nearly immaterial to the present theological discussion. Much of the back-and-forth include little understood concepts such as purgatory, personal understanding of contrition, and the sanctification of souls after death. [Indeed, they are both a misconstruction of orthodox doctrine carefully refined to that circumstance. The one baits the other, which strategy fails to address the fundamental issue, which might be stated as "the over-objectification (papal) versus the over-subjectification of Christianity (Lutheran)."
Some of the more understood theological concepts which Luther raised and which still divide the Christian Church today are the questions of personal salvation and remittance of sins.
Namely, can someone know if they are saved?
Does someone go through purgatory upon death or directly into paradise?
Who can remit sins?
Can anyone truly know if they are contrite before God?
These questions plagued Luther, who often resorted to mortification of the flesh so as to attempt to be perfectly contrite before God. Erasmus counseled Luther to wait until scholarship was sufficient to permit reform to be more accurate than a total dependence on the Bible, which generated both Anabaptism, Protestantism, and modern evangelicalism in the modern era. Meanwhile, Luther's Theses became a declaration of independence in Northern Europe, around which rallied enormous social changes, like the decline of feudalism, the rise of commercialism, and the discovery of the Western Hemisphere.]
As early as October 27, 1521, the chapel at Wittenberg suppressed private Masses. In 1522, much of the city began celebrating Lutheran services instead of Roman Catholic. Luther's popularity grew rapidly, mostly due to the general Roman Catholic church member's dissatisfaction with the corruption and "worldly" desires and habits of the Roman Curia. Thus began the great Protestant Reformation that spurred on the more than 30,000 Christian denominations throughout the world of today.
Bibliography
- Erwin Iserloh The Theses Were Not Posted: Luther Between Reform and Reformation. trans. by Jared Wicks, S.J.. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
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