It is 486 years since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the Castle Church door at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. The theses were rapidly circulated throughout Germany and Switzerland. A storm of protest erupted against the Roman Catholic Church, and a year later Luther was being cited by Rome for heresy. The Reformation had started. What was this controversy about? Let us look more closely at the events that led up to the crisis.

Earthly resources needed⤒🔗

By 1517, Pope Leo X was planning to rebuild St. Peter’s Church in Rome. This required money, and plenty of it! By “happy” coincidence, Rome’s search for earthly resources found common cause with the conviction of her spiritual subjects that they needed heavenly resources. The access of the laity to spiritual “wealth” was by means of indulgences. Indulgences were guarantees of spiritual benefits in this world or the next, offered to the people by the pope. Remission of ecclesiastical punishments, reduction of time spent in purgatory, and even the complete forgiveness of all sins were obtainable through indulgences. The bless­ings were based on the supposed merits of the virgin Mary and the departed “saints,” as well as the merits of Christ.

Papal exclusive rights←⤒🔗

Access into this “treasury of merit” on behalf of sinners was limited to the pope alone. His invocation of the merits of the saints was to be obtained by the prayers and pious works of the faithful. This meant in effect donating hard cash towards such public works as building hospitals, bridges, and cathedrals. This is how the pope expected to raise money for rebuilding St. Peter’s.

The main aspect of indulgences to catch hold of popular imagination was that they could buy an early release for the living and the dead from purgatory. Purgatory was the supposed place in which all, except a handful of spiritual elite and those already eternally consigned to hell (unbaptized adults, and adults who after baptism had committed “mortal sin”), could expect to “do time.” The dead unbaptized infants and baptized adults not in a state of mortal sin were, in purgatory, “purged” from the consequences of their sins by the flames of God’s judgment. Such a cleans­ing was deemed necessary even though sinners were viewed essentially as reconciled to God through the church. The severity of the pains encountered and their duration depended on the sinner’s record in this world. Fearful to go against the teaching of the church in so weighty a matter, and willing to embrace yet another possibility of earning spiritual merit by their works, many people “paid up”!

The granting of indulgences to raise money was a well-oiled system which owed nothing to the teaching of Scripture and everything to the traditions of a corrupt church.

An obscure Augustinian monk←⤒🔗

For a number of years prior to 1517, an obscure young Augustinian monk in Germany, named Martin Luther, had been trying to find peace with God. He was terrified of God’s righteousness and sought in vain to escape the prospect of the wrath of God. His terror of deity had begun as a twenty-two-year-old when he had narrowly missed being struck by lightning. Cry­ing out to St. Anne for help, he had vowed that he would become a monk, but his terror of God was again aroused as he prepared to celebrate his first mass in 1507. From then on he left no stone unturned in a vain effort to quiet his conscience. None of the spiritual palliatives offered by the church — confessions to priests, sacraments, pilgrimages, or fastings — availed.

Luther’s conversion←⤒🔗

Only after years of torment of conscience did release come, and only then as a result of Luther’s own study of the Scriptures. In 1513, Luther began to lecture from the Psalms. From 1515-1517, he lectured through Galatians. During this time he also began to study Romans and it was through his study of the latter that he came at last to understand and embrace the truth of justification by faith alone, a doctrine of which the church had completely lost sight.

This is how Luther described his conversion: “Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’ Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which, through grace and sheer mercy, God justifies us through faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise. The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning ... This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.” Neither indulgences nor any other remedy offered by the Roman Catholic Church had anything to do with Luther’s new birth. It resulted from the saving work of the Holy Spirit on his own heart using the truth of Scripture.

The lighting of the touchpaper←⤒🔗

Luther became increasingly troubled by the spiritual darkness of his fellow-countrymen and by ecclesiastical abuses, including the sale of indulgences. The lighting of the touchpaper which led to the subsequent conflagration was Luther’s response to the activity of a Dominican named John Tetzel. Tetzel was a successful promoter of indulgences and, in 1517, he plied his trade near to Wittenberg where Martin Luther resided. His message was something like this: “Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends, beseeching you and saying, ‘Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us for a pittance.’ Do you not wish to do it? Open your ears. Hear the father saying to his son, the mother to her daughter, ‘We bore you, nourished you …  Will you let us lie here in flames?’ Remember that you are able to release them, for

As soon as the coin in the coffer rings,
The soul from purgatory springs.”

Luther was thoroughly aroused and responded to the errors in radical terms. His method of publicizing his views was to nail ninety-five theses propounding evangelical truth to a church door. It was not as yet meant to be a repudiation of the whole Roman Catholic system. It was, rather, a commonly understood method of challenging others to scholarly debate. But what happened that All Saints’ Eve in Wittenberg was to have unforeseen and far-reaching consequences. The righteous anger of a newborn monk was to set Europe ablaze with the spiritual and social upheaval of the Reformation. Countless numbers of people enthralled by superstitious darkness, propagated through the traditions of the church, were to find eternal life and assurance of sins forgiven.