The Ninety-five Theses

A friar and an archbishop

Martin Luther (1483–1546), an Augustinian friar, became professor of Bible at the young university of Wittenberg in 1512, where he also preached and heard confessions. His story is told in Luther: the theology of the cross and justification, and what followed in The story of the Reformation.

The indulgence that roused him had been proclaimed by Pope Leo X for the rebuilding of St Peter's in Rome. Albert of Brandenburg, archbishop of Magdeburg and of Mainz, had paid Rome a great sum, borrowed from the Fugger bankers, for leave to hold several sees at once, and was allowed half of what the indulgence raised in his lands to repay it. Luther seems not to have known this; his letter speaks only of indulgences carried about "under your most distinguished authority, for the building of St. Peter's" Letter 5. Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, kept them out of his lands, but their best-known preacher, the Dominican Johann Tetzel, preached near the border, and people from Wittenberg crossed over to buy.

The letter is dated "on the eve of All Saints, in the year 1517" Letter 12, that is, 31 October, and its postscript commends "these Disputations" Letter 13 to the archbishop: the theses went with it. The famous scene of Luther nailing them to the Castle Church door that day rests chiefly on Melanchthon's account, written after Luther's death; Melanchthon reached Wittenberg only in 1518, and Luther never mentions it. Historians are divided on whether it happened. What is certain is that on 31 October he sent the theses with this letter to the Archbishop of Mainz.

The theses were set for an academic disputation Preamble, but no record survives that it was held. Instead they were printed, put into German and read across Germany within weeks. In 1520 a papal bull condemned many of Luther's propositions, and that year he wrote, with a letter to Leo X, Concerning Christian Liberty, which the library sets beside this work; early in 1521 he was excommunicated.

A letter and ninety-five propositions

The library holds the work as one part: the letter to Albert, then the preamble and the theses, short enough to read at a sitting. Only the short Protestation printed after the Theses is not included. The English is R. S. Grignon's, in Wace and Buchheim's First Principles of the Reformation (1883). In it Mentz is Mainz, pardons are indulgences, a curate is a parish priest, and suffrage is intercession.

The letter bows low, as manners then required: Luther is "the very dregs of humanity" and "one grain of dust" Letter 4. Yet it is plain: people believe that if they buy letters of indulgence "they are sure of their salvation", and that souls fly out of purgatory as soon as the money falls into the chest Letter 5, while "it is the first and sole duty of all bishops, that the people should learn the Gospel and Christian charity" Letter 8. Luther begs Albert to withdraw the instruction issued in his name Letter 9, or someone may arise to answer it in writing Letter 10.

Roughly, Theses 1 to 4 are on repentance, 5 to 40 on penalties, purgatory and contrition, 41 to 55 on mercy and the word, 56 to 68 on the treasure of the Church, 69 to 91 on preachers and the laity's questions, and 92 to 95 on the cross.

Repentance and pardons

In the sacrament of penance, sins after baptism were forgiven through contrition, confession and satisfaction, with the priest's absolution. Guilt and eternal punishment were remitted, but a temporal punishment remained, to be paid in this life or in purgatory. An indulgence released it, drawing on a treasure of the merits of Christ and the saints, and from the later fifteenth century popes applied indulgences to souls in purgatory by way of suffrage.

Luther begins deeper. When Christ said "Repent ye," Thesis 1 argues, he "intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence" 1.

From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”

Matthew 4:17

The Latin Bible's poenitentiam agite could be heard as do penance, for poenitentia covers repentance, penitence and the sacrament alike; the Greek metanoeō (μετανοέω) speaks rather of a turning of mind and life. So the word "cannot be understood of sacramental penance" 2; it means inward penitence, yet not that alone, for inward penitence bearing no outward fruit is nothing 3, and it lasts "till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven" 4. Repentance is not a debt settled once but the shape of a whole life.

The pope, the theses go on, can remit only the penalties that he or the canons have imposed 5, and guilt only "by declaring and warranting it to have been remitted by God" 6. The canons bind the living, not the dying 13; to carry them over into purgatory is a tare sown "while the bishops were asleep" 11. And the preachers' boast earns the sharpest line: "They preach man, who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles" 27.

The worst danger is false security. "Those who believe that, through letters of pardon, they are made sure of their own salvation, will be eternally damned along with their teachers" 32. But "Every Christian who feels true compunction has of right plenary remission of pain and guilt, even without letters of pardon" 36. Forgiveness is not bought with a document: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9).

Mercy comes before pardons. "Christians should be taught that he who gives to a poor man, or lends to a needy man, does better than if he bought pardons" 43; by charity a man grows better, by pardons only "freer from punishment" 44. If the pope knew the preachers' exactions, he would rather see St Peter's burnt than built "with the skin, flesh, and bones of his sheep" 50.

The true treasure

What, then, is the treasure from which the pope grants indulgences? Not money 57, Luther answers, and not even the merits of Christ and the saints, "for these, independently of the Pope, are always working grace to the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell to the outer man" 58. But "The true treasure of the Church is the Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God" 62, the gospel Paul gave his life to, "the good news of God’s grace" (Acts 20:24). It is hated "because it makes the first to be last" 63, as the Lord said (Matthew 20:16), while indulgences are "nets, wherewith they now fish for the riches of men" 66.

The laity's questions follow. Why does the pope not empty purgatory "for the sake of most holy charity" 82, or build St Peter's "with his own money, rather than with that of poor believers" 86? To silence them by force rather than answer them with reasons exposes the Church and the pope "to the ridicule of their enemies" 90.

The theses end with the cross. Away with the prophets who cry peace where there is none 92, like those Jeremiah rebuked for "saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace at all" (Jeremiah 6:14); blessed are those who preach the cross 93. "Christians should be exhorted to strive to follow Christ their head through pains, deaths, and hells" 94, and to trust to enter heaven "through many tribulations, rather than in the security of peace" 95.

“We must endure many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they said.

Acts 14:22

Where the theses led

At Augsburg in 1518 Cardinal Cajetan pressed Luther on Thesis 58, against Clement VI's bull of 1343 on the treasury of merits, and on his teaching that the penitent must believe the word of absolution with certainty. In 1517 Luther had written that no one "is sure of the reality of his own contrition" 30; soon he would rest assurance on God's promise, and within a few years he rejected indulgences and purgatory as without ground in Scripture.

The Catholic Church gives its own account. The Council of Trent (1563) affirmed that Christ gave the Church power to grant indulgences and that their use is wholesome, while admitting abuses and abolishing all evil gain from them. In 1967 Paul VI reformed them in Indulgentiarum doctrina: an indulgence is a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt is already forgiven, granted through the Church from the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints Catechism of the Catholic Church. It is never bought; a plenary indulgence asks for confession, communion, prayer for the pope's intentions and a heart detached even from venial sin. Temporal punishment is no vengeance from outside but the purifying of what sin leaves behind, and the indulgence is the communion of saints helping the penitent.

Lutherans confess that repentance is contrition and faith in the gospel Augsburg Confession, Article 12. Holding that Christ bore both guilt and punishment, they reject indulgences and purgatory but keep private confession and absolution, the office of the keys; the Small Catechism has the old Adam drowned by daily contrition and repentance Luther, Small Catechism. Among the Reformed, Calvin answered indulgences at length in the Institutes and grounded faith's confidence in embracing God's promises of mercy as our own III.2.16, and the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles call the Romish doctrine of pardons "grounded upon no warranty of Scripture" Thirty-nine Articles, Article 22.

All agree that there is no forgiveness without repentance, that forgiveness is God's free grace in Christ, and that grace is not for sale. Past 1900 the story runs on: in 1999 Lutherans and Catholics affirmed together basic truths of justification Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, though they still see indulgences differently (How do Catholics and Protestants differ?).

Reading it well

These are propositions for a debate, not a confession or a manifesto. Some are tentative: hell, purgatory and heaven "appear to differ as despair, almost despair, and peace of mind differ" 16; others are sharp or ironic, to draw a reply. Their author was still a friar of the Roman church. He says the pope's remission "is by no means to be despised" 38, curses whoever "speaks against the truth of apostolical pardons" 71, and still believes in purgatory 15. Do not look here for all later Protestant theology, but do not miss its seed: the gospel as the Church's true treasure.

Canonical penalties are penances set by church law; reserved cases are sins only a pope or bishop could absolve; a confessional licence let its buyer choose a confessor with power over them. Read the canon law of Theses 5 to 29 quickly at first, and slow down at Letter 8, the first four theses, Thesis 62 and the last four.

The preachers promised safety from punishment; the theses call Christians to follow Christ through tribulation. It is no gloomy ending: on that road the Christian meets not God's anger but the treasure no money can buy:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Now we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us.

2 Corinthians 4:6-7