ROUGHLY EDITED TEXT CHURCH HISTORY 02 May 27, 2005 03-CH2 ***** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communications Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***** >> PAUL: That is very clear now. Thanks. I have one more question, and then I'll let someone else have a chance to chime in. As I read the theses, I notice that Luther is very critical of what preachers are saying about indulgences, but he never really says what indulgences are. I think I know, but I'd like to hear your explanation. What were indulgences? Was it the doctrine, or was it the practice of selling them that was so offensive to Luther? What was the church teaching about indulgences at the time? >> DR. PAUL ROBINSON: That's a good question because there was a real gap between the official church doctrine on indulgences and what preachers like *Tetzel actually ended up saying. This is one of the things Luther points out, and we'll get to the thesis in a minute. But we talk about indulgences usually in history of the Reformation as the Church selling forgiveness. That's technically not true. What they were actually selling was release from performing the penances required from confession. And this gets into the whole history of penance in the Middle Ages. And it's something Luther is concerned about. For example, in Thesis 34 he says, "For the grace conveyed by these indulgences relate simply to the penalties of the sacramental satisfactions decreed merely by man." In other words, this is precisely Luther's point. Talk about indulgences for what they are. They're taking away the penalties imposed by a priest or bishop or by the Pope after confession. And that makes a lot more sense when you know the history of the sacrament of penance. Originally, penance was seen as being two parts that you confess your sin; you receive forgiveness. And then of course, you will want to do something to show you're sorry. Now if you've stolen something, what you do is obvious. You give it back. But when it comes to confessing other sins where there is nothing to give back or pay back, it became a little more difficult. And so penances became assigned, and they became a little more arbitrary. It would be saying a certain number prayers, rather than giving something back. But the original idea was simply a demonstration of contrition, a demonstration of wanting to right what was wrong, change what you had done in the first place. That was, apparently, a pretty difficult idea to get across to the average people. At the very least, it wouldn't sell many indulgences. And there's another issue beyond that which is a so-called plenary indulgence. And Luther mentions this in Thesis 20. "Therefore the pope, in speaking of the plenary remission of all penalties, does not mean all in the strict sense but only those imposed by himself." A plenary indulgence means a full indulgence. It means it gets rid of all the penalties that have been imposed upon you up to that point. This is another thing that Luther said even in terms of official church teaching, there's a problem here. The pope can only remit the penalties he's imposed. It can't really be a full remission of the penalties assigned and pennants. So on the one hand Luther is pointing out that the official church doctrine is being lost in what's being taught. And he's also -- we'll get to this in a minute -- he's also getting to some issues of what the church has said that may not be correct in defending this theology of indulgences. Finally, on what's actually being taught, this is really one of the more interesting theses, Thesis 27. "There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of purgatory immediately the money clinks into the bottom of the chest." That apparently is what *Tetzel is preaching, or as another translation puts it, "When the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from preparatory springs." This is really one of the ways that preachers tried to sell the indulgences because they have a problem. Once you've bought an indulgence for yourself, you're done. Well, or are you? They decided that you could also buy them for your dead relatives, and that your purchase of an indulgence in their name would get them out of purgatory. So you see how the marketing kind of rubs up against the theology, and that's really a big part of the problem in this history of indulgences as Luther pointed out.