Happy Reformation Day

October 31st. For millions of people all over the country, and the world, today is Halloween. But for Christians this date is the date of a very important event in our faith, that sadly not a lot of Christians know about. On this day in 1517, a little German monk named Martin Luther did something that sparked what has come to be known as the Protestant Reformation. On October 31st, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, to the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

In his Theses Luther took issue with the sale of Indulgences by the Catholic Church to the faithful. An indulgence is a letter from the Pope granting full or partial remission of temporal punishment for sins that have already been forgiven, making the sale of an indulgence for the forgiveness of sin a financial transaction as opposed to a spiritual one. I believe that the original intent or purpose of an indulgence was a way of granting remission of the penalty due to a person who had violated the law of the Roman Catholic Church. But what happened was that instead of making a confession of guilt to the priest, and restoring or replacing whatever had been damaged, property, human relationships, etc. as penance, an indulgence could be purchased instead. Then people would not have to make restitution for their crimes against others. Luther saw this as a great violation of the original purpose of confession, penance and justification. This practice of buying an indulgence did not promote a right relationship with God or salvation, because Christians were being told that they could find absolution, which is forgiveness of their sins, through the purchase of an indulgence rather than through the free gift of grace and mercy that is offered to all by His grace through faith in His Son Jesus Christ.

But you might be asking yourself, why was such an error committed on the part of the Catholic Church at the time. I don't believe it was to purposely deceive the people. The reigning Pope at that time was Leo X. Leo had a vision to restore Christ's church. But Leo's way of going about that was not to go back to the teachings of the historical church. Leo was much too literal for that. He wanted to restore Christ's church by building a new church. So he came up with and designed what is today known as St. Peter's Basillica in Rome, Italy. But as much money as the Vatican had at that time, it still wasn't enough to accomplish this goal of Leo's. Albert of Mainz, who was the Archbishop of Mainz, Germany, was heavily in debt because he paid a lot of money to attain his rank of Archbishop in the Catholic Church. So to pay back his debt, he allowed John Tetzel to sell indulgences in the territories that he controlled as long as he would get a cut of the proceeds from the sale of indulgences. He could then use that money to pay off his debts. Luther was not aware of this. Luther's prince, Frederick III of Saxony and the prince of the territory next door, George, Duke of Saxony had outlawed the sale of indulgences in their lands, which meant that the people in these towns had to travel a great distance to purchase an indulgence for the forgiveness of sins.

These people paid a lot of money to purchase an indulgence and they brought these plenary indulgences to confession to show Luther that their sins had already been forgiven by the Church and they didn't need to confess their sins to a priest or to make restitution for what they had done. This angered Luther greatly because it was such a violation of scripture and it was this situation that prompted Martin Luther to write the 95 Theses. So here, without further adieu, I present to you the document that sparked the Protestant Reformation. The 95 Theses. Keep in mind that it was not Luther's intention to break away from the RCC and to start another church. These Theses were points for debate that would be discussed at the University of Wittenberg. Luther requested that those who could not be present to debate these points in person, write a letter containing their thoughts about these serious theological and spiritual matters.

*The 95 These can be viewed here:

http://www.spurgeon.org/~phil/history/95theses.htm