thesis 86

by Dr. Martin Luther, 1517

Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences by Dr. Martin Luther (1517)

Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and Lecturer in Ordinary on the same at that place. Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter. In the Name our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. 1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said Poenitentiam agite, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance. 2. This word cannot be understood to mean sacramental penance, i.e., confession and satisfaction, which is administered by the priests. 3. Yet it means not inward repentance only; nay, there is no inward repentance which does not outwardly work divers mortifications of the flesh. 4. The penalty [of sin], therefore, continues so long as hatred of self continues; for this is the true inward repentance, and continues until our entrance into the kingdom of heaven. 5. The pope does not intend to remit, and cannot remit any penalties other than those which he has imposed either by his own authority or by that of the Canons. 6. The pope cannot remit any guilt, except by declaring that it has been remitted by God and by assenting to God's remission; though, to be sure, he may grant remission in cases reserved to his judgment. If his right to grant remission in such cases were despised, the guilt would remain entirely unforgiven. 7. God remits guilt to no one whom He does not, at the same time, humble in all things and bring into subjection to His vicar, the priest. 8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and, according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying. 9. Therefore the Holy Spirit in the pope is kind to us, because in his decrees he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity. 10. Ignorant and wicked are the doings of those priests who, in the case of the dying, reserve canonical penances for purgatory. 11. This changing of the canonical penalty to the penalty of purgatory is quite evidently one of the tares that were sown while the bishops slept. 12. In former times the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition. 13. The dying are freed by death from all penalties; they are already dead to canonical rules, and have a right to be released from them. 14. The imperfect health [of soul], that is to say, the imperfect love, of the dying brings with it, of necessity, great fear; and the smaller the love, the greater is the fear. 15. This fear and horror is sufficient of itself alone (to say nothing of other things) to constitute the penalty of purgatory, since it is very near to the horror of despair. 16. Hell, purgatory, and heaven seem to differ as do despair, almost-despair, and the assurance of safety. 17. With souls in purgatory it seems necessary that horror should grow less and love increase. 18. It seems unproved, either by reason or Scripture, that they are outside the state of merit, that is to say, of increasing love. 19. Again, it seems unproved that they, or at least that all of them, are certain or assured of their own blessedness, though we may be quite certain of it. 20. Therefore by "full remission of all penalties" the pope means not actually "of all," but only of those imposed by himself. 21. Therefore those preachers of indulgences are in error, who say that by the pope's indulgences a man is freed from every penalty, and saved; 22. Whereas he remits to souls in purgatory no penalty which, according to the canons, they would have had to pay in this life. 23. If it is at all possible to grant to any one the remission of all penalties whatsoever, it is certain that this remission can be granted only to the most perfect, that is, to the very fewest. 24. It must needs be, therefore, that the greater part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and highsounding promise of release from penalty. 25. The power which the pope has, in a general way, over purgatory, is just like the power which any bishop or curate has, in a special way, within his own diocese or parish. 26. The pope does well when he grants remission to souls [in purgatory], not by the power of the keys (which he does not possess), but by way of intercession. 27. They preach man who say that so soon as the penny jingles into the money-box, the soul flies out [of purgatory]. 28. It is certain that when the penny jingles into the money-box, gain and avarice can be increased, but the result of the intercession of the Church is in the power of God alone. 29. Who knows whether all the souls in purgatory wish to be bought out of it, as in the legend of Sts. Severinus and Paschal. 30. No one is sure that his own contrition is sincere; much less that he has attained full remission. 31. Rare as is the man that is truly penitent, so rare is also the man who truly buys indulgences, i.e., such men are most rare. 32. They will be condemned eternally, together with their teachers, who believe themselves sure of their salvation because they have letters of pardon. 33. Men must be on their guard against those who say that the pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to Him; 34. For these "graces of pardon" concern only the penalties of sacramental satisfaction, and these are appointed by man. 35. They preach no Christian doctrine who teach that contrition is not necessary in those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessionalia. 36. Every truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without letters of pardon. 37. Every true Christian, whether living or dead, has part in all the blessings of Christ and the Church; and this is granted him by God, even without letters of pardon. 38. Nevertheless, the remission and participation [in the blessings of the Church] which are granted by the pope are in no way to be despised, for they are, as I have said, the declaration of divine remission. 39. It is most difficult, even for the very keenest theologians, at one and the same time to commend to the people the abundance of pardons and [the need of] true contrition. 40. True contrition seeks and loves penalties, but liberal pardons only relax penalties and cause them to be hated, or at least, furnish an occasion [for hating them]. 41. Apostolic pardons are to be preached with caution, lest the people may falsely think them preferable to other good works of love. 42. Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend the buying of pardons to be compared in any way to works of mercy. 43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons; 44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty. 45. 45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God. 46. Christians are to be taught that unless they have more than they need, they are bound to keep back what is necessary for their own families, and by no means to squander it on pardons. 47. Christians are to be taught that the buying of pardons is a matter of free will, and not of commandment. 48. Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting pardons, needs, and therefore desires, their devout prayer for him more than the money they bring. 49. Christians are to be taught that the pope's pardons are useful, if they do not put their trust in them; but altogether harmful, if through them they lose their fear of God. 50. Christians are to be taught that if the pope knew the exactions of the pardon-preachers, he would rather that St. Peter's church should go to ashes, than that it should be built up with the skin, flesh and bones of his sheep. 51. Christians are to be taught that it would be the pope's wish, as it is his duty, to give of his own money to very many of those from whom certain hawkers of pardons cajole money, even though the church of St. Peter might have to be sold. 52. The assurance of salvation by letters of pardon is vain, even though the commissary, nay, even though the pope himself, were to stake his soul upon it. 53. They are enemies of Christ and of the pope, who bid the Word of God be altogether silent in some Churches, in order that pardons may be preached in others. 54. Injury is done the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or a longer time is spent on pardons than on this Word. 55. It must be the intention of the pope that if pardons, which are a very small thing, are celebrated with one bell, with single processions and ceremonies, then the Gospel, which is the very greatest thing, should be preached with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies. 56. The "treasures of the Church," out of which the pope. grants indulgences, are not sufficiently named or known among the people of Christ. 57. That they are not temporal treasures is certainly evident, for many of the vendors do not pour out such treasures so easily, but only gather them. 58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the Saints, for even without the pope, these always work grace for the inner man, and the cross, death, and hell for the outward man. 59. St. Lawrence said that the treasures of the Church were the Church's poor, but he spoke according to the usage of the word in his own time. 60. Without rashness we say that the keys of the Church, given by Christ's merit, are that treasure; 61. For it is clear that for the remission of penalties and of reserved cases, the power of the pope is of itself sufficient. 62. The true treasure of the Church is the Most Holy Gospel of the glory and the grace of God. 63. But this treasure is naturally most odious, for it makes the first to be last. 64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is naturally most acceptable, for it makes the last to be first. 65. Therefore the treasures of the Gospel are nets with which they formerly were wont to fish for men of riches. 66. The treasures of the indulgences are nets with which they now fish for the riches of men. 67. The indulgences which the preachers cry as the "greatest graces" are known to be truly such, in so far as they promote gain. 68. Yet they are in truth the very smallest graces compared with the grace of God and the piety of the Cross. 69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all reverence. 70. But still more are they bound to strain all their eyes and attend with all their ears, lest these men preach their own dreams instead of the commission of the pope. 71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolic pardons, let him be anathema and accursed! 72. But he who guards against the lust and license of the pardon-preachers, let him be blessed! 73. The pope justly thunders against those who, by any art, contrive the injury of the traffic in pardons. 74. But much more does he intend to thunder against those who use the pretext of pardons to contrive the injury of holy love and truth. 75. To think the papal pardons so great that they could absolve a man even if he had committed an impossible sin and violated the Mother of God -- this is madness. 76. We say, on the contrary, that the papal pardons are not able to remove the very least of venial sins, so far as its guilt is concerned. 77. It is said that even St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could not bestow greater graces; this is blasphemy against St. Peter and against the pope. 78. We say, on the contrary, that even the present pope, and any pope at all, has greater graces at his disposal; to wit, the Gospel, powers, gifts of healing, etc., as it is written in I. Corinthians xii. 79. To say that the cross, emblazoned with the papal arms, which is set up [by the preachers of indulgences], is of equal worth with the Cross of Christ, is blasphemy. 80. The bishops, curates and theologians who allow such talk to be spread among the people, will have an account to render. 81. This unbridled preaching of pardons makes it no easy matter, even for learned men, to rescue the reverence due to the pope from slander, or even from the shrewd questionings of the laity. 82. To wit: -- "Why does not the pope empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love and of the dire need of the souls that are there, if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a Church? The former reasons would be most just; the latter is most trivial." 83. Again: -- "Why are mortuary and anniversary masses for the dead continued, and why does he not return or permit the withdrawal of the endowments founded on their behalf, since it is wrong to pray for the redeemed?" 84. Again: -- "What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for pure love's sake?" 85. Again: -- "Why are the penitential canons long since in actual fact and through disuse abrogated and dead, now satisfied by the granting of indulgences, as though they were still alive and in force?" 86. Again: -- "Why does not the pope, whose wealth is to-day greater than the riches of the richest, build just this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of poor believers?" 87. Again: -- "What is it that the pope remits, and what participation does he grant to those who, by perfect contrition, have a right to full remission and participation?" 88. Again: -- "What greater blessing could come to the Church than if the pope were to do a hundred times a day what he now does once, and bestow on every believer these remissions and participations?" 89. "Since the pope, by his pardons, seeks the salvation of souls rather than money, why does he suspend the indulgences and pardons granted heretofore, since these have equal efficacy?" 90. To repress these arguments and scruples of the laity by force alone, and not to resolve them by giving reasons, is to expose the Church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christians unhappy. 91. If, therefore, pardons were preached according to the spirit and mind of the pope, all these doubts would be readily resolved; nay, they would not exist. 92. Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Peace, peace," and there is no peace! 93. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, "Cross, cross," and there is no cross! 94. Christians are to be exhorted that they be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hell; 95. And thus be confident of entering into heaven rather through many tribulations, than through the assurance of peace.

This text was converted to ASCII text for Project Wittenberg by Allen Mulvey, and is in the public domain. You may freely distribute, copy or print this text. Please direct any comments or suggestions to:

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Stanford Humanities Today

Arcade: a digital salon.

Scott Ferguson and Brendan Cook

Lo, Christ is never strong in us till we be weak. As our strength abateth, so groweth the strength of Christ in us; when we are clean emptied of our own strength, then are we full of Christ’s strength. And look, how much of our own strength remaineth in us, so much lacketh there of the strength of Christ. – William Tyndale, Obedience of a Christian Man Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers? – Martin Luther, Thesis 86

Issuing a direct challenge to seemingly unshakable economic truths, the contemporary chartalist school of political economy known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has argued that money is a boundless public utility and that at bottom employment is a creature of the state. As MMT economist Stephanie Kelton explains in a recent piece for The Los Angeles Times , this means that a currency-issuing polity can always afford to employ persons in service of social and environmental needs. Such targeted state spending should not precipitate harmful inflation, Kelton maintains, provided that government mobilizes available material resources and collective knowhow to realize its politically determined aims.

Chartalists like Kelton offer the left a genuine alterative to neoliberal privation and a novel foundation for politics. Still, possibilities for social and environmental justice tomorrow will also hinge on the struggle over defining money’s past, and chartalist historiography remains in its infancy. Pioneering efforts by Alfred Mitchell Innes , Michael Hudson , and Christine Desan notwithstanding, contemporary chartalism lacks a rich archive of social artefacts and demands more robust and interdisciplinary methods. This is where the complex historiographic methods practiced in the humanities can make a tremendous contribution to the chartalist project. Indeed, if the future of money is to be forged in the fires of its still-largely obscure history, the humanities can play a crucial role in mining money’s social past for its repressed social potentials.

Take, for example, the recent account of the Protestant Reformation by Davide Cantoni, Jeremiah Dittmar, and Noam Yuchtman. Published by VoxEU and later featured by Naked Capitalism , the essay contends that the tremendous economic transformation that accompanied the Reformation was precipitated by the breakup of a previously monopolized “market for salvation” and resulted in an “immediate and large secularization” of investment and production more generally.

It is clear that the authors’ entire thesis relies upon unquestioned neoclassical assumptions about the virtues of competitive markets, pricing on the margin, rational expectations, and econometric evidence; this alone should raise the eyebrow of any critical chartalist. Yet when viewed from an interdisciplinary historical perspective, their neoclassical fable of the Reformation melts into thin air.

The authors’ foundational error is to treat the Universal Church not as a governmental institution, as it would be in a chartalist reading, but as a sort of independent contractor providing religious services to interested individuals. They start by affirming earlier scholarship, which casts the various organs of the Church as “producers of salvation” for the lay Christians who served as the product’s “consumers.”

Having begun here, they introduce a second “product.” In addition to manufacturing salvation, the Church is also a supplier of legitimacy for so-called “secular rulers,” by which the authors primarily mean the monarchs of the emergent nation-states. Before the age of reform, the papacy held a spiritual monopoly, they explain, providing the crowned heads of Christendom with salvation, and especially legitimacy, for a very steep price. With the introduction of the new reformed confessions, however, the monopoly was broken, and sovereigns of every faith found they could now purchase the endorsement of religious leaders at a bargain. This meant that resources once diverted towards “religious” ends could be put to other, more “secular” uses.

Although it is hard to deny that the weakness of the papacy after 1517 allowed even Catholic rulers to enlarge the scope of their power, the rest of the account presented by Cantoni, Dittmar, and Yuchtman is far less credible. Their least plausible gesture is to stress a one-dimensional narrative of secularization at the expense of a more nuanced understanding of the evolving role of religion in European society.

The development of secular civil society in the West is obviously much debated. Was it a product of the later age Enlightenment? Or a gradual process unfolding over the course of many centuries? Instead of choosing either of these more plausible theories, the authors try to make the Reformation a dramatic turning point. Rather than a single step along a very long road, it is the site of a sudden realignment of social resources and political power away from the realm of the sacred, a moment when “human capital and fixed investment shifted sharply from religious to secular purposes.” The authors speak of a decline in the study of theology, “which paid off specifically in the religious sector,” of “increased [labor] demand in the secular sector,” and a reorientation of construction projects “towards the interests of secular lords — palaces and administrative buildings.”

This simplistic division is a mistake, and not because the transfer of social resources from the institutional church to monarchies and republics was imaginary; that it took place is beyond controversy. Instead we need to question the framing of the shift in terms of an opposition of “religious” and “secular.” Were the so-called “secular rulers” who benefited from the weakening of papal authority really less religious in their orientation?

Take the example of England! While Henry VIII dissolved most, although not all of the monasteries, it never occurred to him to abolish the English Church. Instead he placed himself at its head, appointing bishops, overseeing the indoctrination of his subjects, and setting the patterns of their worship; he did not abolish the papacy so much as take the pope’s place. He also laid claim upon the pope’s authority to punish heresy within his realm, a function enthusiastically continued by his children and successors, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. Can we really describe the empowerment of these rulers as a decline of the sacred at the expense of the secular?

And England is hardly an exception. The Catholic monarchs of Iberia inserted themselves even more dramatically into the spiritual lives of their subjects, and it was left to the “secular” town government of Geneva to establish perhaps the most systematically theocratic regime in the history of Western Europe.

The same may be said of the authors’ assertions regarding “secular” labor demand and “secular” construction projects. They speak of the “hiring of lawyers rather than theologians,” but a law degree had been a reliable path to success in the Roman curia since at least the thirteenth century; it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the popes of the later middle ages employed more tax attorneys than doctors of theology. The authors also classify “palaces” as “secular” building projects, in contrast to churches and shrines, but this would be news to the architects and builders of the great ecclesiastical palaces of fifteenth-century Rome.

Moreover, by including “administrative buildings” on the “secular” side of the balance, the authors return to their original error. To treat courthouses and chanceries as more appropriate to a king or a prince than a cardinal or a pope means more than simply ignoring how many were built or refurbished to serve the needs of the massive papal bureaucracy. Ultimately, it is to forget that the pre-Reformation church was not a private provider of this or that service, but a source of political authority in its own right. It was not simply an impediment to the aspirations of would-be theocrats in London or Madrid, but their rival: a sophisticated and self-conscious governing project directed towards the collective life of Latin Christianity.

It is because Cantoni, Dittmar, and Yuchtman fail to recognize the political nature of the papacy that their simplified account of a rapid lurch towards secularization is necessary in the first place. Since they cannot acknowledge the real similarities between royal and papal regimes, they must resort to a forced opposition of kings and popes, royal lawyers and church lawyers, princes’ palaces and bishops’ palaces. They mistake a revolution in political and monetary governance for a story of markets, consumerism, and individual bargaining. As a consequence, they set forth a simplified and exaggerated story of secularization.

Their thinking allows no room for a different story, one not of supply and demand, provider and customer, but of contesting government enterprises, the decline of one, the papacy, and the rise of others in its place. They have already decided that the history of humanity is a story of producing and consuming, and buying and bargaining, and so this is what they find. And because this understanding is derived from a later era, namely the Enlightenment, they must impose the Enlightenment’s opposition of religion and secularism upon their account of the profoundly religious society of Reformation Europe. What is worse, by suppressing the Reformation’s true political contours, the authors misrepresent the period’s complex history and its potential meaning for a future politics.

The great irony here is that it was the same age of Reformation which the authors so gravely misunderstand that cleared the way for the reductive vision of politics and economics upon which they rely. The later middle ages had nourished a number of diverse intellectual traditions, many of which anticipated chartalism’s sense of the potential of the state to answer the needs of the people.

In the era of Aquinas, Dante, and Accursius, a capacious and expansive understanding of law, government, sovereignty, and, above all, of currency, still seemed possible. It did not appear ridiculous to declare, as Dante does in De Monarchia, that the Empire cannot become insolvent because all things ultimately belong to the emperor.

In contrast, the greatest minds of the Reformation, Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, helped complete the work of stifling and foreclosing these traditions, work begun with the parallel development of Humanism and Nominalism in the fourteenth century. In their ostensibly theological writings on God’s power and Christ’s redeeming grace, the reformers developed a style of contracted, zero-sum thinking which, extended to political economy, makes the limitation of public spending seem natural and inevitable. Such thinking is on full display in the two epigraphs above.

The claim of the English reformer William Tyndale that Christ is only strong when the individual is weak is a metaphysical foreshadowing of the modern Liberal doctrine that the state’s power to spend must come at the expense of the private wealth of the citizen. The underlying logic of such a statement points toward a notion of “private money” being “taken” by a grasping state apparatus which is already adumbrated in Luther’s famous Theses.

Laying the groundwork for the later emergence of Liberal political economy and the modern system of nation-states, the reformers actively purged late-medieval conceptions of the monetary instrument as a public utility from the collective imagination. Instead, they construed money as a private, finite and decentered instrument, and sovereign governments as constrained by taxation revenues and borrowing. In historicizing the Reformation through a narrative of market maneuvering, Cantoni, Dittmar, and Yuchtman mirror the Reformation period’s self-serving repression of chartalism and bar chartalism’s political potential from expanding the contemporary political imagination.

History is not a transparent window onto bygone times; it is an opaque antechamber to still-undetermined futures. For this reason, chartalists need to tell fresh and compelling stories about money’s complex political and social history. In the meantime, we must insist that if money is irreducible to market exchange, so too is its past. Otherwise, the fate of collective life will remain imprisoned in a dismal story that the Reformation scripted long ago.

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The 95 Theses by Dr. Martin Luther

The Ninety-Five Theses were written by Martin Luther in 1517 and are widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation.

Overview ● Full Text

The Ninety-Five Theses protest against clerical abuses, especially nepotism, simony, usury, pluralism, and the sale of indulgences.

It is believed that, according to university custom, on October 31, 1517, Luther posted the Ninety-Five Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg.

In those days it was common for scholars to announce a debate by posting a list of Quaestiones Disputatae (disputed questions) on the door of the main church in town. People would gather to hear their scholars debate. It is likely that Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses for this purpose.

The full text of the Ninety-Five Theses follow, along with our own comments:

DISPUTATION ON THE POWER AND EFFICACY OF INDULGENCES COMMONLY KNOWN AS THE 95 THESES

BY DR. MARTIN LUTHER

Out of love and concern for the truth, and with the object of eliciting it, the following heads will be the subject of a public discussion at Wittenberg under the presidency of the reverend father, Martin Luther, Augustinian, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and duly appointed Lecturer on these subjects in that place. He requests that whoever cannot be present personally to debate the matter orally will do so in absence in writing.

Out of love and concern for the truth . Martin Luther is concerned with truth. Truth needed to shine forth to everybody. It had long been obscured by Catholic clerics.

THESIS 1. When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, said “Repent”, He called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

THESIS 2. The word cannot be properly understood as referring to the sacrament of penance, i.e. confession and satisfaction, as administered by the clergy.

cannot be … the sacrament of penance . Centuries of tradition had eroded sacramental confession to a powerless ritual. It was commonly done by rote. People often confessed the same sins over and over. Clerics were bored with it, and they merely consulted manuals that told them what penance to assign.

THESIS 3. Yet its meaning is not restricted to repentance in one’s heart; for such repentance is null unless it produces outward signs in various mortifications of the flesh.

produces outward signs . It is one thing to feel sorry for your sins. It is another thing altogether to change your life accordingly. The weakness in sacramental confession is that it requires sorrow, but does not require people to change their lives.

THESIS 4. As long as hatred of self abides (i.e. true inward repentance) the penalty of sin abides, viz., until we enter the kingdom of heaven.

THESIS 5. The pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties beyond those imposed either at his own discretion or by canon law.

The pope . Here we get to the crux of the matter. For centuries, the Catholic church had popes who were corrupt.

THESIS 6. The pope himself cannot remit guilt, but only declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God; or, at most, he can remit it in cases reserved to his discretion. Except for these cases, the guilt remains untouched.

himself cannot remit guilt . Many people have the mistaken notion that a cleric forgives sin.

declare and confirm that it has been remitted by God . The truth is that only God can forgive sin.

THESIS 7. God never remits guilt to anyone without, at the same time, making him humbly submissive to the priest, His representative.

THESIS 8. The penitential canons apply only to men who are still alive, and, according to the canons themselves, none applies to the dead.

THESIS 9. Accordingly, the Holy Spirit, acting in the person of the pope, manifests grace to us, by the fact that the papal regulations always cease to apply at death, or in any hard case.

THESIS 10. It is a wrongful act, due to ignorance, when priests retain the canonical penalties on the dead in purgatory.

THESIS 11. When canonical penalties were changed and made to apply to purgatory, surely it would seem that tares were sown while the bishops were asleep.

tares were sown . That is, “weeds” were sown.

the bishops were asleep . The job of a shepherd is to feed and protect the people under your authority. They are called to vigilance. But many of the bishops were like corrupt politicians and thought only of themselves.

THESIS 12. In former days, the canonical penalties were imposed, not after, but before absolution was pronounced; and were intended to be tests of true contrition.

THESIS 13. Death puts an end to all the claims of the Church; even the dying are already dead to the canon laws, and are no longer bound by them.

THESIS 14. Defective piety or love in a dying person is necessarily accompanied by great fear, which is greatest where the piety or love is least.

THESIS 15. This fear or horror is sufficient in itself, whatever else might be said, to constitute the pain of purgatory, since it approaches very closely to the horror of despair.

THESIS 16. There seems to be the same difference between hell, purgatory, and heaven as between despair, uncertainty, and assurance.

the same difference . This is an interesting comparison. Charting it out, it looks like this:

THESIS 17. Of a truth, the pains of souls in purgatory ought to be abated, and charity ought to be proportionately increased.

THESIS 18. Moreover, it does not seem proved, on any grounds of reason or Scripture, that these souls are outside the state of merit, or unable to grow in grace.

on any grounds of reason or Scripture . Those are two great ways to consider an idea:

• Is it Scriptural?
• Does it make sense?

THESIS 19. Nor does it seem proved to be always the case that they are certain and assured of salvation, even if we are very certain ourselves.

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.

those imposed by himself . The Catholic church announces that certain sins result in a penalty of such-and-such number of years in Purgatory. Then they announce that the penalty can be reduced if you give money to the Catholic church.

THESIS 21. Hence those who preach indulgences are in error when they say that a man is absolved and saved from every penalty by the pope’s indulgences.

THESIS 22. Indeed, he cannot remit to souls in purgatory any penalty which canon law declares should be suffered in the present life.

THESIS 23. If plenary remission could be granted to anyone at all, it would be only in the cases of the most perfect, i.e. to very few.

THESIS 24. It must therefore be the case that the major part of the people are deceived by that indiscriminate and high-sounding promise of relief from penalty.

THESIS 25. The same power as the pope exercises in general over purgatory is exercised in particular by every single bishop in his bishopric and priest in his parish.

THESIS 26. The pope does excellently when he grants remission to the souls in purgatory on account of intercessions made on their behalf, and not by the power of the keys (which he cannot exercise for them).

THESIS 27. There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of the purgatory immediately the money clinks in the bottom of the chest.

the money clinks in … the chest . There was a heinous practice. The cleric announced that as soon as your money clinked into the bottom of the plate, at that very moment the soul of your loved one would be instantaneously liberated from Purgatory.

THESIS 28. It is certainly possible that when the money clinks in the bottom of the chest avarice and greed increase; but when the church offers intercession, all depends in the will of God.

THESIS 29. Who knows whether all souls in purgatory wish to be redeemed in view of what is said of St. Severinus and St. Pascal? (Note: Paschal I, pope 817-24. The legend is that he and Severinus were willing to endure the pains of purgatory for the benefit of the faithful).

THESIS 30. No one is sure of the reality of his own contrition, much less of receiving plenary forgiveness.

No one is sure of the reality of his own contrition . That is, we do not even know if our contrition is sincere.

THESIS 31. One who bona fide buys indulgence is a rare as a bona fide penitent man, i.e. very rare indeed.

THESIS 32. All those who believe themselves certain of their own salvation by means of letters of indulgence, will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.

THESIS 33. We should be most carefully on our guard against those who say that the papal indulgences are an inestimable divine gift, and that a man is reconciled to God by them.

THESIS 34. For the grace conveyed by these indulgences relates simply to the penalties of the sacramental “satisfactions” decreed merely by man.

THESIS 35. It is not in accordance with Christian doctrines to preach and teach that those who buy off souls, or purchase confessional licenses, have no need to repent of their own sins.

THESIS 36. Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence.

THESIS 37. Any true Christian whatsoever, living or dead, participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church; and this participation is granted to him by God without letters of indulgence.

participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church . The grace of our Jesus Christ is not withheld from any Christian believer.

granted to him by God without letters of indulgence . God does not need the pope’s permission in order to grant the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

THESIS 38. Yet the pope’s remission and dispensation are in no way to be despised, for, as already said, they proclaim the divine remission.

THESIS 39. It is very difficult, even for the most learned theologians, to extol to the people the great bounty contained in the indulgences, while, at the same time, praising contrition as a virtue.

THESIS 40. A truly contrite sinner seeks out, and loves to pay, the penalties of his sins; whereas the very multitude of indulgences dulls men’s consciences, and tends to make them hate the penalties.

the very multitude of indulgences . The selling of indulgences was a widespread practice, and people everywhere were duped.

THESIS 41. Papal indulgences should only be preached with caution, lest people gain a wrong understanding, and think that they are preferable to other good works: those of love.

THESIS 42. Christians should be taught that the pope does not at all intend that the purchase of indulgences should be understood as at all comparable with the works of mercy.

THESIS 43. Christians should be taught that one who gives to the poor, or lends to the needy, does a better action than if he purchases indulgences.

does a better action . It is far better to live the Christian life than to purchase indulgences.

THESIS 44. Because, by works of love, love grows and a man becomes a better man; whereas, by indulgences, he does not become a better man, but only escapes certain penalties.

THESIS 45. Christians should be taught that he who sees a needy person, but passes him by although he gives money for indulgences, gains no benefit from the pope’s pardon, but only incurs the wrath of God.

THESIS 46. Christians should be taught that, unless they have more than they need, they are bound to retain what is only necessary for the upkeep of their home, and should in no way squander it on indulgences.

squander it on indulgences . To purchase an indulgence is to squander your money.

THESIS 47. Christians should be taught that they purchase indulgences voluntarily, and are not under obligation to do so.

THESIS 48. Christians should be taught that, in granting indulgences, the pope has more need, and more desire, for devout prayer on his own behalf than for ready money.

THESIS 49. Christians should be taught that the pope’s indulgences are useful only if one does not rely on them, but most harmful if one loses the fear of God through them.

THESIS 50. Christians should be taught that, if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers, he would rather the church of St. Peter were reduced to ashes than be built with the skin, flesh, and bones of the sheep.

if the pope knew the exactions of the indulgence-preachers . Did the pope know what the indulgence preachers were saying?

the church of St. Peter were reduced to ashes . Would a pope really prefer the Vatical to be burned to the ground than to give up the profit from the selling of indulgences?

THESIS 51. Christians should be taught that the pope would be willing, as he ought if necessity should arise, to sell the church of St. Peter, and give, too, his own money to many of those from whom the pardon-merchants conjure money.

THESIS 52. It is vain to rely on salvation by letters of indulgence, even if the commissary, or indeed the pope himself, were to pledge his own soul for their validity.

THESIS 53. Those are enemies of Christ and the pope who forbid the word of God to be preached at all in some churches, in order that indulgences may be preached in others.

THESIS 54. The word of God suffers injury if, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is devoted to indulgences than to that word.

THESIS 55. The pope cannot help taking the view that if indulgences (very small matters) are celebrated by one bell, one pageant, or one ceremony, the gospel (a very great matter) should be preached to the accompaniment of a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.

THESIS 56. The treasures of the church, out of which the pope dispenses indulgences, are not sufficiently spoken of or known among the people of Christ.

THESIS 57. That these treasures are not temporal are clear from the fact that many of the merchants do not grant them freely, but only collect them.

THESIS 58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and the saints, because, even apart from the pope, these merits are always working grace in the inner man, and working the cross, death, and hell in the outer man.

THESIS 59. St. Laurence said that the poor were the treasures of the church, but he used the term in accordance with the custom of his own time.

the poor were the treasures of the church . This was a noble thing for Laurence to say. And for it, Emperor Valerian executed him.

THESIS 60. We do not speak rashly in saying that the treasures of the church are the keys of the church, and are bestowed by the merits of Christ.

THESIS 61. For it is clear that the power of the pope suffices, by itself, for the remission of penalties and reserved cases.

THESIS 62. The true treasure of the church is the Holy gospel of the glory and the grace of God.

the Holy gospel . This is the greatest thing that we Christians have: the Good News of the Lord Jesus Christ.

THESIS 63. It is right to regard this treasure as most odious, for it makes the first to be the last.

THESIS 64. On the other hand, the treasure of indulgences is most acceptable, for it makes the last to be the first.

THESIS 65. Therefore the treasures of the gospel are nets which, in former times, they used to fish for men of wealth.

men of wealth . Only those who are wealthy enough to purchase an indulgence could be saved.

THESIS 66. The treasures of the indulgences are the nets which to-day they use to fish for the wealth of men.

THESIS 67. The indulgences, which the merchants extol as the greatest of favours, are seen to be, in fact, a favourite means for money-getting.

THESIS 68. Nevertheless, they are not to be compared with the grace of God and the compassion shown in the Cross.

THESIS 69. Bishops and curates, in duty bound, must receive the commissaries of the papal indulgences with all reverence.

THESIS 70. But they are under a much greater obligation to watch closely and attend carefully lest these men preach their own fancies instead of what the pope commissioned.

THESIS 71. Let him be anathema and accursed who denies the apostolic character of the indulgences.

THESIS 72. On the other hand, let him be blessed who is on his guard against the wantonness and license of the pardon-merchant’s words.

THESIS 73. In the same way, the pope rightly excommunicates those who make any plans to the detriment of the trade in indulgences.

THESIS 74. It is much more in keeping with his views to excommunicate those who use the pretext of indulgences to plot anything to the detriment of holy love and truth.

THESIS 75. It is foolish to think that papal indulgences have so much power that they can absolve a man even if he has done the impossible and violated the mother of God.

THESIS 76. We assert the contrary, and say that the pope’s pardons are not able to remove the least venial of sins as far as their guilt is concerned.

are not able to remove the least . God is the one who forgives of sins.

THESIS 77. When it is said that not even St. Peter, if he were now pope, could grant a greater grace, it is blasphemy against St. Peter and the pope.

THESIS 78. We assert the contrary, and say that he, and any pope whatever, possesses greater graces, viz., the gospel, spiritual powers, gifts of healing, etc., as is declared in I Corinthians 12:28.

I Corinthians 12:28 . God has set some in the assembly: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracle workers, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, and various kinds of languages.

THESIS 79. It is blasphemy to say that the insignia of the cross with the papal arms are of equal value to the cross on which Christ died.

equal value to the cross . How could people imagine such a thing?

THESIS 80. The bishops, curates, and theologians, who permit assertions of that kind to be made to the people without let or hindrance, will have to answer for it.

THESIS 81. This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult for learned men to guard the respect due to the pope against false accusations, or at least from the keen criticisms of the laity.

THESIS 82. They ask, e.g.: Why does not the pope liberate everyone from purgatory for the sake of love (a most holy thing) and because of the supreme necessity of their souls? This would be morally the best of all reasons. Meanwhile he redeems innumerable souls for money, a most perishable thing, with which to build St. Peter’s church, a very minor purpose.

for the sake of love . Love would motivate the pope to liberate people from Purgatory without them needing to PAY FOR IT.

he redeems innumerable souls for money . Instead, the pope only liberated people from Purgatory if they would PAY FOR IT.

THESIS 83. Again: Why should funeral and anniversary masses for the dead continue to be said? And why does not the pope repay, or permit to be repaid, the benefactions instituted for these purposes, since it is wrong to pray for those souls who are now redeemed?

THESIS 84. Again: Surely this is a new sort of compassion, on the part of God and the pope, when an impious man, an enemy of God, is allowed to pay money to redeem a devout soul, a friend of God; while yet that devout and beloved soul is not allowed to be redeemed without payment, for love’s sake, and just because of its need of redemption.

THESIS 85. Again: Why are the penitential canon laws, which in fact, if not in practice, have long been obsolete and dead in themselves,—why are they, to-day, still used in imposing fines in money, through the granting of indulgences, as if all the penitential canons were fully operative?

THESIS 86. Again: since the pope’s income to-day is larger than that of the wealthiest of wealthy men, why does he not build this one church of St. Peter with his own money, rather than with the money of indigent believers?

the pope’s income … is larger than that of the wealthiest . The pope misused the millions of Catholics around the world as his own income stream.

THESIS 87. Again: What does the pope remit or dispense to people who, by their perfect repentance, have a right to plenary remission or dispensation?

THESIS 88. Again: Surely a greater good could be done to the church if the pope were to bestow these remissions and dispensations, not once, as now, but a hundred times a day, for the benefit of any believer whatever.

THESIS 89. What the pope seeks by indulgences is not money, but rather the salvation of souls; why then does he suspend the letters and indulgences formerly conceded, and still as efficacious as ever?

THESIS 90. These questions are serious matters of conscience to the laity. To suppress them by force alone, and not to refute them by giving reasons, is to expose the church and the pope to the ridicule of their enemies, and to make Christian people unhappy.

THESIS 91. If therefore, indulgences were preached in accordance with the spirit and mind of the pope, all these difficulties would be easily overcome, and indeed, cease to exist.

THESIS 92. Away, then, with those prophets who say to Christ’s people, “Peace, peace,” where in there is no peace.

THESIS 93. Hail, hail to all those prophets who say to Christ’s people, “The cross, the cross,” where there is no cross.

THESIS 94. Christians should be exhorted to be zealous to follow Christ, their Head, through penalties, deaths, and hells.

be zealous to follow Christ . This is the goal for any Christian: to wholeheartedly follow Jesus Christ.

THESIS 95. And let them thus be more confident of entering heaven through many tribulations rather than through a false assurance of peace.

This text of “The 95 Theses by Dr. Martin Luther” courtesy of Senn High School. There are no stated copyright restrictions and the translation is assumed to be in the Public Domain.

Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotations on this page are from the  World English Bible  and the  World Messianic Edition . These translations have no copyright restrictions. They are in the Public Domain.

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Martin Luther's 95 Theses

Here they are, all of the Martin Luther 95 theses, posted on the church door in  Wittenberg, Germany, October 31, 1517 .

(Or read a summary of the 95 theses .)

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Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, in saying, "Repent ye, etc.," intended that the whole life of his believers on earth should be a constant penance.

2. And the word "penance" neither can, nor may, be understood as referring to the Sacrament of Penance, that is, to confession and atonement as exercised under the priest's ministry.

3. Nevertheless He does not think of inward penance only: rather is inward penance worthless unless it produces various outward mortifications of the flesh.

4. Therefore mortification continues as long as hatred of oneself continues, that is to say, true inward penance lasts until entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.

5. The Pope will not, and cannot, remit other punishments than those which he has imposed by his own decree or according to the canons.

6. The Pope can forgive sins only in the sense, that he declares and confirms what may be forgiven of God; or that he doth it in those cases which he hath reserved to himself; be this contemned, the sin remains unremitted.

7. God forgives none his sin without at the same time casting him penitent and humbled before the priest His vicar.

8. The canons concerning penance are imposed only on the living; they ought not by any means, following the same canons, to be imposed on the dying.

9. Therefore, the Holy Spirit, acting in the Pope, does well for us, when the latter in his decrees entirely removes the article of death and extreme necessity.

10. Those priests act unreasonably and ill who reserve for Purgatory the penance imposed on the dying.

11. This abuse of changing canonical penalty into the penalty of Purgatory seems to have arisen when the bishops were asleep.

12. In times of yore, canonical penalties were imposed, not after, but before, absolution, as tests of true repentance and affliction.

13. The dying pay all penalties by their death, are already dead to the canons, and rightly have exemption from them.

14. Imperfect spiritual health or love in the dying person necessarily brings with it great fear; and the less this love is, the greater the fear it brings.

15. This fear and horror - to say nothing of other things - are sufficient in themselves to produce the punishment of Purgatory, because they approximate to the horror of despair.

16. Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven seem to differ as perfect despair, imperfect despair, and security of salvation differ.

17. It seems as must in Purgatory love in the souls increase, as fear diminishes in them.

18. It does not seem to be proved either by arguments or by the Holy Writ that they are outside the state of merit and demerit, or increase of love.

19. This, too, seems not to be proved, that they are all sure and confident of their salvation, though we may be quite sure of it.

20. Therefore the Pope, in speaking of the perfect remission of all punishments, does not mean that all penalties in general be forgiven, but only those imposed by himself.

21. Therefore, those preachers of indulgences err who say that, by the Pope's indulgence, a man may be exempt from all punishments, and be saved.

22. Yea, the Pope remits the souls in Purgatory no penalty which they, according to the canons, would have had to pay in this life.

23. If to anybody complete remission of all penalties may be granted, it is certain that it is granted only to those most approaching perfection, that is, to very few.

24. Therefore the multitude is misled by the boastful promise of the paid penalty, whereby no manner of distinction is made.

25. The same power that the Pope has over Purgatory, such has also every bishop in his diocese, and every curate in his parish.

26. The Pope acts most rightly in granting remission to souls, not by the power of the keys - which in Purgatory he does not possess - but by way of intercession.

27. They preach vanity who say that the soul flies out of Purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles.

28. What is sure, is, that as soon as the penny rattles in the chest, gain and avarice are on the way of increase; but the intercession of the church depends only on the will of God Himself.

29. And who knows, too, whether all those souls in Purgatory wish to be redeemed, as it is said to have happened with St. Severinus and St. Paschalis.

30. Nobody is sure of having repented sincerely enough; much less can he be sure of having received perfect remission of sins.

31. Seldom even as he who has sincere repentance, is he who really gains indulgence; that is to say, most seldom to be found.

32. On the way to eternal damnation are they and their teachers, who believe that they are sure of their salvation through indulgences.

33. Beware well of those who say, the Pope's pardons are that inestimable gift of God by which man is reconciled to God.

34. For the forgiveness contained in these pardons has reference only to the penalties of sacramental atonement which were appointed by men.

35. He preaches like a heathen who teaches that those who will deliver souls out of Purgatory or buy indulgences do not need repentance and contrition.

36. Every Christian who feels sincere repentance and woe on account of his sins, has perfect remission of pain and guilt even without letters of indulgence.

37. Every true Christian, be he still alive or already dead, partaketh in all benefits of Christ and of the Church given him by God, even without letters of indulgence.

38. Yet is the Pope's absolution and dispensation by no means to be contemned, since it is, as I have said, a declaration of the Divine Absolution.

39. It is exceedingly difficult, even for the most subtle theologists, to praise at the same time before the people the great wealth of indulgence and the truth of utter contrition.

40. True repentance and contrition seek and love punishment; while rich indulgence absolves from it, and causes men to hate it, or at least gives them occasion to do so.

41. The Pope's indulgence ought to be proclaimed with all precaution, lest the people should mistakenly believe it of more value than all other works of charity.

42. Christians should be taught, it is not the Pope's opinion that the buying of indulgence is in any way comparable to works of charity.

43. Christians should be taught, he who gives to the poor, or lends to a needy man, does better than buying indulgence.

44. For, by the exercise of charity, charity increases and man grows better, while by means of indulgence, he does not become better, but only freer from punishment.

45. Christians should be taught, he who sees his neighbor in distress, and, nevertheless, buys indulgence, is not partaking in the Pope's pardons, but in the anger of God.

46. Christians should be taught, unless they are rich enough, it is their duty to keep what is necessary for the use of their households, and by no means to throw it away on indulgences.

47. Christians should be taught, the buying of indulgences is optional and not commanded.

48. Christians should be taught, the Pope, in selling pardons, has more want and more desire of a devout prayer for himself than of the money.

49. Christians should be taught, the Pope's pardons are useful as far as one does not put confidence in them, but on the contrary most dangerous, if through them one loses the fear of God.

50. Christians should be taught, if the Pope knew the ways and doings of the preachers of indulgences, he would prefer that St. Peter's Minster should be burnt to ashes, rather than that it should be built up of the skin, flesh, and bones of his lambs.

51. Christians should be taught, the Pope, as it is his bounden duty to do, is indeed also willing to give of his own money - and should St. Peter's be sold thereto - to those from whom the preachers of indulgences do most extort money.

52. It is a vain and false thing to hope to be saved through indulgences, though the commissary - nay, the Pope himself - was to pledge his own soul therefore.

53. Those who, on account of a sermon concerning indulgences in one church, condemn the word of God to silence in the others, are enemies of Christ and of the Pope.

54. Wrong is done to the word of God if one in the same sermon spends as much or more time on indulgences as on the word of the Gospel.

55. The opinion of the Pope cannot be otherwise than this:- If an indulgence - which is the lowest thing - be celebrated with one bell, one procession and ceremonies, then the Gospel - which is the highest thing - must be celebrated with a hundred bells, a hundred processions, and a hundred ceremonies.

56. The treasures of the Church, whence the Pope grants his dispensation are neither sufficiently named nor known among the community of Christ.

57. It is manifest that they are not temporal treasures, for the latter are not lightly spent, but rather gathered by many of the preachers.

58. Nor are they the merits of Christ and of the saints, for these, without the Pope's aid, work always grace to the inner man, cross, death, and hell to the other man.

59. St. Lawrence called the poor of the community the treasures of the community and of the Church, but he understood the word according to the use in his time.

60. We affirm without pertness that the keys of the Church, bestowed through the merit of Christ, are this treasure.

61. For it is clear that the Pope's power is sufficient for the remission of penalties and forgiveness in the reserved cases.

62. The right and true treasure of the Church is the most Holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

63. This treasure, however, is deservedly most hateful, for it makes the first to be last.

64. While the treasure of indulgence is deservedly most agreeable, for it makes the last to be first.

65. Therefore, the treasures of the Gospel are nets, with which, in times of yore, one fished for the men of Mammon.

66. But the treasures of indulgence are nets, with which now-a-days one fishes for the Mammon of men.

67. Those indulgences, which the preachers proclaim to be great mercies, are indeed great mercies, forasmuch as they promote gain.

68. And yet they are of the smallest compared to the grace of God and to the devotion of the Cross.

69. Bishops and curates ought to mark with eyes and ears, that the commissaries of apostolical (that is, Popish) pardons are received with all reverence.

70. But they ought still more to mark with eyes and ears, that these commissaries do not preach their own fancies instead of what the Pope has commanded.

71. He who speaks against the truth of apostolical pardons, be anathema and cursed.

72. But blessed be he who is on his guard against the preacher's of pardons naughty and impudent words.

73. As the Pope justly disgraces and excommunicates those who use any kind of contrivance to do damage to the traffic in indulgences.

74. Much more it is his intention to disgrace and excommunicate those who, under the pretext of indulgences, use contrivance to do damage to holy love and truth.

75. To think that the Popish pardons have power to absolve a man even if - to utter an impossibility - he had violated the Mother of God, is madness.

76. We assert on the contrary that the Popish pardon cannot take away the least of daily sins, as regards the guilt of it.

77. To say that St. Peter, if he were now Pope, could show no greater mercies, is blasphemy against St. Peter and the Pope.

78. We assert on the contrary that both this and every other Pope has greater mercies to show: namely, the Gospel, spiritual powers, gifts of healing, etc. (1.Cor.XII).

79. He who says that the cross with the Pope's arms, solemnly set on high, has as much power as the Cross of Christ, blasphemes God.

80. Those bishops, curates, and theologists, who allow such speeches to be uttered among the people, will have one day to answer for it.

81. Such impudent sermons concerning indulgences make it difficult even for learned men to protect the Pope's honor and dignity against the calumnies, or at all events against the searching questions, of the laymen.

82. As for instance: - Why does not the Pope deliver all souls at the same time out of Purgatory for the sake of most holy love and on account of the bitterest distress of those souls - this being the most imperative of all motives, - while he saves an infinite number of souls for the sake of that most miserable thing money, to be spent on St. Peter's Minster: - this being the very slightest of motives?

83. Or again: - Why do masses for the dead continue, and why does not the Pope return or permit to be withdrawn the funds which were established for the sake of the dead, since it is now wrong to pray for those who are already saved?

84. Again: - What is this new holiness of God and the Pope that, for money's sake, they permit the wicked and the enemy of God to save a pious soul, faithful to God, and yet will not save that pious and beloved soul without payment, out of love, and on account of its great distress?

85. Again: - Why is it that the canons of penance, long abrogated and dead in themselves, because they are not used, are yet still paid for with money through the granting of pardons, as if they were still in force and alive?

86. Again: - Why does not the Pope build St. Peter's Minster with his own money - since his riches are now more ample than those of Crassus, - rather than with the money of poor Christians?

87. Again: -Why does the Pope remit or give to those who, through perfect penitence, have already a right to plenary remission and pardon?

88. Again: - What greater good could the Church receive, than if the Pope presented this remission and pardon a hundred times a day to every believer, instead of but once, as he does now?

89. If the Pope seeks by his pardon the salvation of souls, rather than money, why does he annul letters of indulgence granted long ago, and declare them out of force, though they are still in force?

90. To repress these very telling questions of the laymen by force, and not to solve them by telling the truth, is to expose the Church and the Pope to the enemy's ridicule and to make Christian people unhappy.

91. Therefore, if pardons were preached according to the Pope's intention and opinion, all these objections would be easily answered, nay, they never had occurred.

92. Away then with all those prophets who say to the community of Christ, "Peace, peace", and there is no peace.

93. But blessed be all those prophets who say to the community of Christ, "The cross, the cross," and there is no cross.

94. Christians should be exhorted to endeavor to follow Christ their Head through Cross, Death, and Hell,

95. And thus hope with confidence to enter Heaven through many miseries, rather than in false security.

Read a summary of the 95 theses ; a listing of the three main points , in the words of Martin Luther.

More Martin Luther...

• The 95 Theses

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Justification by Allegiance

Thursday, march 26, 2009, martin luther's 86th thesis, no comments:, post a comment, blog archive.

• Martin Luther's 95th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 94th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 93rd Thesis
• Martin Luther's 92nd Thesis
• Martin Luther's 91st Thesis
• Martin Luther's 90th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 89th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 88th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 87th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 86th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 85th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 84th Thesis
• Martin Luther's 83rd Thesis
• Martin Luther's 82nd Thesis
• Martin Luther's 81st Thesis
• Martin Luther's 80th Thesis
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• Is it Time to Put "Justification by Faith" to Rest?

The Protestant Reformation

Protestantism, discontent with the roman catholic church.

The Protestant Reformation was the schism within Western Christianity initiated by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other early Protestants.

Learning Objectives

Explain the main motivating factors behind the Protestant Reformation

Key Takeaways

• The Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, by priests who opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice.
• Following the breakdown of monastic institutions and scholasticism in late medieval Europe, accentuated by the Avignon Papacy, the Papal Schism, and the failure of the Conciliar movement, the 16th century saw a great cultural debate about religious reforms and later fundamental religious values. John Wycliffe and Jan Hus were early opponents of papal authority, and their work and views paved the way for the Reformation.
• Martin Luther was a seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation who strongly disputed the sale of indulgences. His Ninety-Five Theses criticized many of the doctrines and practices of the Catholic Church.
• The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation spearheaded by the new order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), specifically organized to counter the Protestant movement.
• Conciliar movement : A reform movement in the 14th-, 15th-, and 16th-century Catholic Church that held that supreme authority in the church resided with an Ecumenical council, apart from, or even against, the pope. The movement emerged in response to the Western Schism between rival popes in Rome and Avignon.
• the Western Schism : A split within the Catholic Church from 1378 to 1418, when several men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope.
• doctrine : List of beliefs and teachings by the church.
• ecclesiastic : One who adheres to a church-based philosophy.
• indulgences : In Catholic theology, a remission of the punishment that would otherwise be inflicted for a previously forgiven sin as a natural consequence of having sinned. They are granted for specific good works and prayers in proportion to the devotion with which those good works are performed or prayers recited.
• Council of Trent : Council of the Roman Catholic Church set up in Trento, Italy, in direct response to the Reformation.

The Protestant Reformation, often referred to simply as the Reformation, was a schism from the Roman Catholic Church initiated by Martin Luther and continued by other early Protestant reformers in Europe in the 16th century.

Although there had been significant earlier attempts to reform the Roman Catholic Church before Luther—such as those of Jan Hus, Geert Groote, Thomas A Kempis, Peter Waldo, and John Wycliffe—Martin Luther is widely acknowledged to have started the Reformation with his 1517 work The Ninety-Five Theses.

Luther began by criticizing the selling of indulgences, insisting that the pope had no authority over purgatory and that the Catholic doctrine of the merits of the saints had no foundation in the gospel. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura  (by the scripture alone) and sola fide (by faith alone). The core motivation behind these changes was theological, though many other factors played a part, including the rise of nationalism, the Western Schism that eroded faith in the papacy, the perceived corruption of the Roman Curia, the impact of humanism, and the new learning of the Renaissance that questioned much traditional thought.

Roots of Unrest

Following the breakdown of monastic institutions and scholasticism in late medieval Europe, accentuated by the Avignon Papacy, the Papal Schism, and the failure of the Conciliar movement, the 16th century saw a great cultural debate about religious reforms and later fundamental religious values. These issues initiated wars between princes, uprisings among peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the Church, which sparked many reform movement within the church.

These reformist movements occurred in conjunction with economic, political, and demographic forces that contributed to a growing disaffection with the wealth and power of the elite clergy, sensitizing the population to the financial and moral corruption of the secular Renaissance church.

The major individualistic reform movements that revolted against medieval scholasticism and the institutions that underpinned it were humanism, devotionalism, and the observantine tradition. In Germany, “the modern way,” or devotionalism, caught on in the universities, requiring a redefinition of God, who was no longer a rational governing principle but an arbitrary, unknowable will that could not be limited. God was now a ruler, and religion would be more fervent and emotional. Thus, the ensuing revival of Augustinian theology, stating that man cannot be saved by his own efforts but only by the grace of God, would erode the legitimacy of the rigid institutions of the church meant to provide a channel for man to do good works and get into heaven.

Humanism, however, was more of an educational reform movement with origins in the Renaissance’s revival of classical learning and thought. A revolt against Aristotelian logic, it placed great emphasis on reforming individuals through eloquence as opposed to reason. The European Renaissance laid the foundation for the Northern humanists in its reinforcement of the traditional use of Latin as the great unifying language of European culture. Since the breakdown of the philosophical foundations of scholasticism, the new nominalism did not bode well for an institutional church legitimized as an intermediary between man and God. New thinking favored the notion that no religious doctrine can be supported by philosophical arguments, eroding the old alliance between reason and faith of the medieval period laid out by Thomas Aquinas.

The great rise of the burghers (merchant class) and their desire to run their new businesses free of institutional barriers or outmoded cultural practices contributed to the appeal of humanist individualism. To many, papal institutions were rigid, especially regarding their views on just price and usury. In the north, burghers and monarchs were united in their frustration for not paying any taxes to the nation, but collecting taxes from subjects and sending the revenues disproportionately to the pope in Italy.

Early Attempts at Reform

The first of a series of disruptive and new perspectives came from John Wycliffe at Oxford University, one of the earliest opponents of papal authority influencing secular power and an early advocate for translation of the Bible into the common language. Jan Hus at the University of Prague was a follower of Wycliffe and similarly objected to some of the practices of the Roman Catholic Church. Hus wanted liturgy in the language of the people (i.e. Czech), married priests, and to eliminate indulgences and the idea of purgatory.

Hus spoke out against indulgences in 1412 when he delivered an address entitled Quaestio magistri Johannis Hus de indulgentiis . It was taken literally from the last chapter of Wycliffe’s book, De ecclesia , and his treatise, De absolutione a pena et culpa. Hus asserted that no pope or bishop had the right to take up the sword in the name of the Church; he should pray for his enemies and bless those that curse him; man obtains forgiveness of sins by true repentance, not money. The doctors of the theological faculty replied, but without success. A few days afterward, some of Hus’s followers burnt the papal bulls. Hus, they said, should be obeyed rather than the Church, which they considered a fraudulent mob of adulterers and Simonists.

In response, three men from the lower classes who openly called the indulgences a fraud were beheaded. They were later considered the first martyrs of the Hussite Church. In the meantime, the faculty had condemned the forty-five articles and added several other theses, deemed heretical, that had originated with Hus. The king forbade the teaching of these articles, but neither Hus nor the university complied with the ruling, requesting that the articles should first be proven to be un-scriptural. The tumults at Prague had stirred up a sensation; papal legates and Archbishop Albik tried to persuade Hus to give up his opposition to the papal bulls, and the king made an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile the two parties.

Hus was later condemned and burned at the stake despite promise of safe-conduct when he voiced his views to church leaders at the Council of Constance (1414–1418). Wycliffe, who died in 1384, was also declared a heretic by the Council of Constance, and his corpse was exhumed and burned.

Jan Hus burned at the stake: Execution of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance in 1415. His death led to a radicalization of the Bohemian Reformation and to the Hussite Wars in the Crown of Bohemia.

The Creation of New Protestant Churches

The Reformation led to the creation of new national Protestant churches. The largest of the new church’s groupings were the Lutherans (mostly in Germany, the Baltics, and Scandinavia) and the Reformed churches (mostly in Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Scotland).

Response from the Catholic Church to the Reformation

The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent and spearheaded by the new order of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), specifically organized to counter the Protestant movement. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, turned Protestant. Southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central Europe was a site of fierce conflict escalating to full-scale war.

Council of Trent by Pasquale Cati: Painting representing the artist’s depiction of The Council of Trent. It met for twenty-five sessions between December 13, 1545, and December 4, 1563, in Trento (then the capital of the Prince-Bishopric of Trent in the Holy Roman Empire), apart from the ninth to eleventh sessions held in Bologna during 1547.

Luther and Protestantism

Martin Luther was a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation; he strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money, famously argued in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517.

Describe Luther’s criticisms of the Catholic Church

• Martin Luther was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk and seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation.
• Luther strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money, called indulgences, which he argued in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517.
• When confronted by the church for his critiques, he refused to renounce his writings and was excommunicated by the pope and deemed an outlaw by the emperor.
• Luther’s translation of the Bible into the vernacular made it more accessible to the laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture.
• indulgences : A way to reduce the amount of punishment one has to undergo for sins, usually through the saying of prayers or good works, which during the middle ages included paying for church buildings or other projects.
• excommunication : An institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it.
• Ninety-five Theses : A list of propositions for an academic disputation written by Martin Luther in 1517. They advanced Luther’s positions against what he saw as abusive practices by preachers selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates that would reduce the temporal punishment for sins committed by the purchaser or their loved ones in purgatory.

Martin Luther (November 10, 1483–February 18, 1546) was a German professor of theology, composer, priest, monk and seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. Luther came to reject several teachings and practices of the Roman Catholic Church. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money, proposing an academic discussion of the practice and efficacy of indulgences in his Ninety-five Theses of 1517. His refusal to renounce all of his writings at the demand of Pope Leo X in 1520 and the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms in 1521 resulted in his excommunication by the pope and condemnation as an outlaw by the emperor.

Luther taught that salvation and, subsequently, eternal life are not earned by good deeds but are received only as the free gift of God’s grace through the believer’s faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin. His theology challenged the authority and office of the pope by teaching that the Bible is the only source of divinely revealed knowledge from God, and opposed priestly intervention for the forgiveness of sins by considering all baptized Christians to be a holy priesthood. Those who identify with these, and all of Luther’s wider teachings, are called Lutherans, though Luther insisted on Christian or Evangelical as the only acceptable names for individuals who professed Christ.

His translation of the Bible into the vernacular (instead of Latin) made it more accessible to the laity, an event that had a tremendous impact on both the church and German culture. It fostered the development of a standard version of the German language, added several principles to the art of translation, and influenced the writing of an English translation, the Tyndale Bible. His hymns influenced the development of singing in Protestant churches. His marriage to Katharina von Bora, a former nun, set a model for the practice of clerical marriage, allowing Protestant clergy to marry.

In two of his later works, Luther expressed antagonistic views toward Jews, writing that Jewish homes and synagogues should be destroyed, their money confiscated, and their liberty curtailed. Condemned by virtually every Lutheran denomination, these statements and their influence on antisemitism have contributed to his controversial status.

Portrait of Martin Luther: Martin Luther (1528) by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Personal Life

Martin Luther was born to Hans Luther and his wife Margarethe on November 10, 1483, in Eisleben, Saxony, then part of the Holy Roman Empire. Hans Luther was ambitious for himself and his family, and he was determined to see Martin, his eldest son, become a lawyer.

In 1501, at the age of nineteen, Martin entered the University of Erfurt. In accordance with his father’s wishes, he enrolled in law school at the same university that year, but dropped out almost immediately, believing that law represented uncertainty. Luther sought assurances about life and was drawn to theology and philosophy, expressing particular interest in Aristotle, William of Ockham, and Gabriel Biel.

He was deeply influenced by two tutors, Bartholomaeus Arnoldi von Usingen and Jodocus Trutfetter, who taught him to be suspicious of even the greatest thinkers and to test everything himself by experience. Philosophy proved to be unsatisfying, offering assurance about the use of reason but no assurance about loving God, which to Luther was more important. Reason could not lead men to God, he felt, and he thereafter developed a love-hate relationship with Aristotle over the latter’s emphasis on reason. For Luther, reason could be used to question men and institutions, but not God. Human beings could learn about God only through divine revelation, he believed, and scripture therefore became increasingly important to him.

Luther dedicated himself to the Augustinian order, devoting himself to fasting, long hours in prayer, pilgrimage, and frequent confession. In 1507, he was ordained to the priesthood, and in 1508, von Staupitz, first dean of the newly founded University of Wittenberg, sent for Luther to teach theology. He was made provincial vicar of Saxony and Thuringia by his religious order in 1515. This meant he was to visit and oversee eleven monasteries in his province.

Start of the Reformation

In 1516, Johann Tetzel, a Dominican friar and papal commissioner for indulgences, was sent to Germany by the Roman Catholic Church to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man; justification rather depends only on such faith as is active in charity and good works. The benefits of good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.

On October 31, 1517, Luther wrote to his bishop, Albert of Mainz, protesting the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his “Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” which came to be known as the Ninety-five Theses . Historian Hans Hillerbrand writes that Luther had no intention of confronting the church, but saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices, and the tone of the writing is accordingly “searching, rather than doctrinaire.” Hillerbrand writes that there is nevertheless an undercurrent of challenge in several of the theses, particularly in Thesis 86, which asks, “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”

The first thesis has become famous: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” In the first few theses Luther develops the idea of repentance as the Christian’s inner struggle with sin rather than the external system of sacramental confession.

In theses 41–47 Luther begins to criticize indulgences on the basis that they discourage works of mercy by those who purchase them. Here he begins to use the phrase, “Christians are to be taught…” to state how he thinks people should be instructed on the value of indulgences. They should be taught that giving to the poor is incomparably more important than buying indulgences, that buying an indulgence rather than giving to the poor invites God’s wrath, and that doing good works makes a person better while buying indulgences does not.

Luther objected to a saying attributed to Johann Tetzel that “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” He insisted that, since forgiveness was God’s alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Luther closes the Theses by exhorting Christians to imitate Christ even if it brings pain and suffering, because enduring punishment and entering heaven is preferable to false security.

It was not until January 1518 that friends of Luther translated the Ninety-five Theses from Latin into German and printed and widely copied it, making the controversy one of the first to be aided by the printing press. Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months, they had spread throughout Europe.

Ninety-five Theses  

1517 Nuremberg printing of the Ninety-five Theses as a placard, now in the Berlin State Library.

Excommunication and Later Life

On June 15, 1520, the pope warned Luther, with the papal bull Exsurge Domine, that he risked excommunication unless he recanted forty-one sentences drawn from his writings, including the Ninety-five Theses , within sixty days. That autumn, Johann Eck proclaimed the bull in Meissen and other towns. Karl von Miltitz, a papal nuncio , attempted to broker a solution, but Luther, who had sent the pope a copy of On the Freedom of a Christian in October, publicly set fire to the bull and decretals at Wittenberg on December 10, 1520, an act he defended in Why the Pope and his Recent Book are Burned and Assertions Concerning All Articles . As a consequence, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X on January 3, 1521, in the bull Decet Romanum Pontificem .

The enforcement of the ban on the Ninety-five Theses fell to the secular authorities. On April 18, 1521, Luther appeared as ordered before the Diet of Worms. This was a general assembly of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in Worms, a town on the Rhine. It was conducted from January 28 to May 25, 1521, with Emperor Charles V presiding. Prince Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, obtained a safe conduct for Luther to and from the meeting.

Johann Eck, speaking on behalf of the empire as assistant of the Archbishop of Trier, presented Luther with copies of his writings laid out on a table and asked him if the books were his, and whether he stood by their contents. Luther confirmed he was their author, but requested time to think about the answer to the second question. He prayed, consulted friends, and gave his response the next day:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.

Over the next five days, private conferences were held to determine Luther’s fate. The emperor presented the final draft of the Edict of Worms on May 25, 1521, which declared Luther an outlaw, banned his literature, and required his arrest: “We want him to be apprehended and punished as a notorious heretic.” It also made it a crime for anyone in Germany to give Luther food or shelter, and permitted anyone to kill Luther without legal consequence.

By 1526, Luther found himself increasingly occupied in organizing a new church, later called the Lutheran Church, and for the rest of his life would continue building the Protestant movement.

An apoplectic stroke on February 18, 1546, deprived him of his speech, and he died shortly afterwards, at 2:45 a.m., aged sixty-two, in Eisleben, the city of his birth. He was buried in the Castle Church in Wittenberg, beneath the pulpit.

Reluctant Revolutionary : PBS Documentary about Martin Luther the “Reluctant Revolutionary.” Luther opposed the Catholic Church’s practices and in 1517 he wrote his Ninety-five Theses, which detailed the church’s failings. His actions led to the start of the Protestant Revolution.

Calvinism is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice of John Calvin and is characterized by the doctrine of predestination in the salvation of souls.

Compare and contrast Calvinism with Lutheranism

• Calvinism is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice of John Calvin and other Reformation -era theologians.
• Calvin’s theological critiques mostly broke with the Roman Catholic Church, but he differed from Luther on certain theological points, such as the idea that Christ died only for the elect instead of all humanity, like Luther believed.
• Calvin’s “Ordinances” of 1541 involved a collaboration of church affairs with the Geneva city council and consistory to bring morality to all areas of life. Geneva became the center of Protestantism.
• Protestantism also spread into France, where the Protestants were derisively nicknamed ” Huguenots,” and this touched off decades of warfare in France.
• Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536–1559) was one of the most influential theologies of the era and was written as an introductory textbook on the Protestant faith.
• Five Points of Calvinism : The basic theological tenets of Calvinism.
• Huguenots : A name for French Protestants, originally a derisive term.
• predestination : The doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul.

Calvinism is a major branch of Protestantism that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice of John Calvin and other Reformation-era theologians.

Calvinists broke with the Roman Catholic Church but differed from Lutherans on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, theories of worship, and the use of God’s law for believers, among other things. Calvinism can be a misleading term because the religious tradition it denotes is and has always been diverse, with a wide range of influences rather than a single founder. The movement was first called Calvinism by Lutherans who opposed it, and many within the tradition would prefer to use the word Reformed. While the Reformed theological tradition addresses all of the traditional topics of Christian theology, the word Calvinism is sometimes used to refer to particular Calvinist views on soteriology (the saving of the soul from sin and death) and predestination, which are summarized in part by the Five Points of Calvinism. Some have also argued that Calvinism as a whole stresses the sovereignty or rule of God in all things, including salvation. An important tenet of Calvinism, which differs from Lutheranism, is that God only saves the “elect,” a predestined group of individuals, and that these elect are essentially guaranteed salvation, but everyone else is damned.

John Calvin: A portrait of John Calvin, one of the major figures in the Protestant Reformation, by Holbein.

Origins and Rise of Calvinism

First-generation Reformed theologians include Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), Martin Bucer (1491–1551), Wolfgang Capito (1478–1541), John Oecolampadius (1482–1531), and Guillaume Farel (1489–1565). These reformers came from diverse academic backgrounds, but later distinctions within Reformed theology can already be detected in their thought, especially the priority of scripture as a source of authority. Scripture was also viewed as a unified whole, which led to a covenantal theology of the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as visible signs of the covenant of grace. Another Reformed distinctive present in these theologians was their denial of the bodily presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Each of these theologians also understood salvation to be by grace alone, and affirmed a doctrine of particular election (the teaching that some people are chosen by God for salvation). Martin Luther and his successor Philipp Melanchthon were undoubtedly significant influences on these theologians, and to a larger extent later Reformed theologians. The doctrine of justification by faith alone was a direct inheritance from Luther.

Following the excommunication of Luther and condemnation of the Reformation by the pope, the work and writings of John Calvin were influential in establishing a loose consensus among various groups in Switzerland, Scotland, Hungary, Germany, and elsewhere. After the expulsion of Geneva’s bishop in 1526, and the unsuccessful attempts of the Berne reformer Guillaume (William) Farel, Calvin was asked to use the organizational skill he had gathered as a student of law to discipline the “fallen city.” His “Ordinances” of 1541 involved a collaboration of church affairs with the city council and consistory to bring morality to all areas of life. After the establishment of the Geneva academy in 1559, Geneva became the unofficial capital of the Protestant movement, providing refuge for Protestant exiles from all over Europe and educating them as Calvinist missionaries. These missionaries dispersed Calvinism widely, and formed the French Huguenots in Calvin’s own lifetime, as well as caused the conversion of Scotland under the leadership of the cantankerous John Knox in 1560. The faith continued to spread after Calvin’s death in 1563, and had reached as far as Constantinople by the start of the 17th century.

Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536–1559) was one of the most influential theologies of the era. The book was written as an introductory textbook on the Protestant faith for those with some previous knowledge of theology, and covered a broad range of theological topics, from the doctrines of church and sacraments to justification by faith alone and Christian liberty. It vigorously attacked the teachings Calvin considered unorthodox, particularly Roman Catholicism, to which Calvin says he had been “strongly devoted” before his conversion to Protestantism.

Controversies in France

Protestantism spread into France, where the Protestants were derisively nicknamed “Huguenots,” and this touched off decades of warfare in France, after initial support by Henry of Navarre was lost due to the “Night of the Placards” affair. Many French Huguenots, however, still contributed to the Protestant movement, including many who emigrated to the English colonies.

Though he was not personally interested in religious reform, Francis I (1515–1547) initially maintained an attitude of tolerance arising from his interest in the humanist movement. This changed in 1534 with the Affair of the Placards. In this act, Protestants denounced the mass in placards that appeared across France, even reaching the royal apartments. The issue of religious faith having been thrown into the arena of politics, Francis was prompted to view the movement as a threat to the kingdom’s stability. This led to the first major phase of anti-Protestant persecution in France, in which the Chambre Ardente (“Burning Chamber”) was established within the Parliament of Paris to handle the rise in prosecutions for heresy. Several thousand French Protestants fled the country during this time, most notably John Calvin, who settled in Geneva.

Calvin continued to take an interest in the religious affairs of his native land and, from his base in Geneva, beyond the reach of the French king, regularly trained pastors to lead congregations in France. Despite heavy persecution by Henry II, the Reformed Church of France, largely Calvinist in direction, made steady progress across large sections of the nation, in the urban bourgeoisie and parts of the aristocracy, appealing to people alienated by the obduracy and the complacency of the Catholic establishment.

Interior of a Calvinist Church: Calvinism has been known at times for its simple, unadorned churches and lifestyles, as depicted in this painting by Emanuel de Witte c.1661.

Calvinist Theology

The “Five Points of Calvinism” summarize the faith’s basic tenets, although some historians contend that it distorts the nuance of Calvin’s own theological positions.

The Five Points:

• “Total depravity” asserts that as a consequence of the fall of man into sin, every person is enslaved to sin. People are not by nature inclined to love God, but rather to serve their own interests and to reject the rule of God. Thus, all people by their own faculties are morally unable to choose to follow God and be saved because they are unwilling to do so out of the necessity of their own natures.
• “Unconditional election” asserts that God has chosen from eternity those whom he will bring to himself not based on foreseen virtue, merit, or faith in those people; rather, his choice is unconditionally grounded in his mercy alone. God has chosen from eternity to extend mercy to those he has chosen and to withhold mercy from those not chosen. Those chosen receive salvation through Christ alone. Those not chosen receive the just wrath that is warranted for their sins against God.
• “Limited atonement” asserts that Jesus’s substitutionary atonement was definite and certain in its purpose and in what it accomplished. This implies that only the sins of the elect were atoned for by Jesus’s death. Calvinists do not believe, however, that the atonement is limited in its value or power, but rather that the atonement is limited in the sense that it is intended for some and not all. All Calvinists would affirm that the blood of Christ was sufficient to pay for every single human being IF it were God’s intention to save every single human being.
• “Irresistible grace” asserts that the saving grace of God is effectually applied to those whom he has determined to save (that is, the elect) and overcomes their resistance to obeying the call of the gospel, bringing them to a saving faith. This means that when God sovereignly purposes to save someone, that individual certainly will be saved. The doctrine holds that this purposeful influence of God’s Holy Spirit cannot be resisted.
• “Perseverance of the saints” asserts that since God is sovereign and his will cannot be frustrated by humans or anything else, those whom God has called into communion with himself will continue in faith until the end.

The Anabaptists

The Anabaptists were a group of radical religious reformists formed in Switzerland who suffered violent persecution by both Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Explain why the Anabaptists were ostracized by much of Europe

• Anabaptists are Christians who believe in delaying baptism until the candidate confesses his or her faith in Christ, as opposed to being baptized as an infant.
• Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th century by both Protestants and Roman Catholics, including being drowned and burned at the stake.
• Anabaptists were often in conflict with civil society because part of their belief was to follow scripture at all costs, no matter the wishes of secular authority.
• Continuing persecution in Europe was largely responsible for the mass emigrations to North America by Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites, some of the major branches of Anabaptists.
• Ulrich Zwingli : A leader of the Reformation in Switzerland who clashed with the Anabaptists.
• infant baptism : The practice of baptizing infants or young children, sometimes contrasted with what is called “believer’s baptism,” which is the religious practice of baptizing only individuals who personally confess faith in Jesus.
• Magisterial Protestants : A phrase that names the manner in which the Lutheran and Calvinist reformers related to secular authorities, such as princes, magistrates, or city councils; opposed to the Radical Protestants.

Anabaptism is a Christian movement that traces its origins to the Radical Reformation in Europe. Some consider this movement to be an offshoot of European Protestantism, while others see it as distinct.

Anabaptists are Christians who believe in delaying baptism until the candidate confesses his or her faith in Christ, as opposed to being baptized as an infant. The Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites are direct descendants of the movement. Schwarzenau Brethren, Bruderhof, and the Apostolic Christian Church are considered later developments among the Anabaptists.

The name Anabaptist means “one who baptizes again.” Their persecutors named them this, referring to the practice of baptizing persons when they converted or declared their faith in Christ, even if they had been “baptized” as infants. Anabaptists required that baptismal candidates be able to make a confession of faith that was freely chosen, and so rejected baptism of infants. The early members of this movement did not accept the name Anabaptist, claiming that infant baptism was not part of scripture and was therefore null and void. They said that baptizing self-confessed believers was their first true baptism. Balthasar Hubmaier wrote:

I have never taught Anabaptism…But the right baptism of Christ, which is preceded by teaching and oral confession of faith, I teach, and say that infant baptism is a robbery of the right baptism of Christ.

Anabaptists were heavily persecuted during the 16th century and into the 17th century because of their views on the nature of baptism and other issues, by both Magisterial Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Anabaptists were persecuted largely because of their interpretation of scripture that put them at odds with official state church interpretations and government. Most Anabaptists adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount, which precluded taking oaths, participating in military actions, and participating in civil government. Some who practiced re-baptism, however, felt otherwise, and complied with these requirements of civil society. They were thus technically Anabaptists, even though conservative Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites, and some historians, tend to consider them as outside of true Anabaptism.

Spread of the Anabaptists 1525–1550 in Central Europe: After starting in Switzerland, Anabaptism spread to Tyrol (modern-day Austria), South Germany, Moravia, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Anabaptism in Switzerland began as an offshoot of the church reforms instigated by Ulrich Zwingli. As early as 1522 it became evident that Zwingli was on a path of reform preaching when he began to question or criticize such Catholic practices as tithes, the mass, and even infant baptism. Zwingli had gathered a group of reform-minded men around him, with whom he studied classical literature and the scriptures. However, some of these young men began to feel that Zwingli was not moving fast enough in his reform. The division between Zwingli and his more radical disciples became apparent in an October 1523 disputation held in Zurich. When the discussion of the mass was about to be ended without making any actual change in practice, Conrad Grebel stood up and asked “what should be done about the mass?” Zwingli responded by saying the council would make that decision. At this point, Simon Stumpf, a radical priest from Hongg, answered, saying, “The decision has already been made by the Spirit of God.”

This incident illustrated clearly that Zwingli and his more radical disciples had different expectations. To Zwingli, the reforms would only go as fast as the city council allowed them. To the radicals, the council had no right to make that decision, but rather the Bible was the final authority on church reform. Feeling frustrated, some of them began to meet on their own for Bible study. As early as 1523, William Reublin began to preach against infant baptism in villages surrounding Zurich, encouraging parents to not baptize their children.

The council ruled in this meeting that all who refused to baptize their infants within one week should be expelled from Zurich. Since Conrad Grebel had refused to baptize his daughter Rachel, born on January 5, 1525, the council decision was extremely personal to him and others who had not baptized their children. Thus, when sixteen of the radicals met on Saturday evening, January 21, 1525, the situation seemed particularly dark.

At that meeting Grebel baptized George Blaurock, and Blaurock in turn baptized several others immediately. These baptisms were the first “re-baptisms” known in the movement. This continues to be the most widely accepted date posited for the establishment of Anabaptism.

Anabaptism then spread to Tyrol (modern-day Austria), South Germany, Moravia, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Persecutions

Roman Catholics and Protestants alike persecuted the Anabaptists, resorting to torture and execution in attempts to curb the growth of the movement. The Protestants under Zwingli were the first to persecute the Anabaptists, with Felix Manz becoming the first martyr in 1527. On May 20, 1527, Roman Catholic authorities executed Michael Sattler. King Ferdinand declared drowning (called the third baptism) “the best antidote to Anabaptism.” The Tudor regime, even the Protestant monarchs (Edward VI of England and Elizabeth I of England), persecuted Anabaptists, as they were deemed too radical and therefore a danger to religious stability. The persecution of Anabaptists was condoned by ancient laws of Theodosius I and Justinian I that were passed against the Donatists, which decreed the death penalty for any who practiced re-baptism. Martyrs Mirror , by Thieleman J. van Braght, describes the persecution and execution of thousands of Anabaptists in various parts of Europe between 1525 and 1660. Continuing persecution in Europe was largely responsible for the mass emigrations to North America by Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites.

Burning of an Anabaptist: The burning of a 16th-century Dutch Anabaptist, Anneken Hendriks, who was charged by the Spanish Inquisition with heresy.

The Anglican Church

Beginning with Henry VIII in the 16th century, the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Catholic Church.

Describe the key developments of the English Reformation, distinguishing it from the wider reformation movement in Europe.

• The English Reformation was associated with the wider process of the European Protestant Reformation, though based on Henry VIII’s desire for an annulment of his marriage, it was at the outset more of a political affair than a theological dispute.
• Having been refused an annulment by the pope, Henry summoned parliament to deal with annulment, and the breaking with Rome proceeded.
• After Henry’s death his son Edward VI was crowned, and the reformation continued with the destruction and removal of decor and religious features, which changed the church forever.
• From 1553, under the reign of Henry’s Roman Catholic daughter, Mary I, the Reformation legislation was repealed, and Mary sought to achieve reunion with Rome.
• During Elizabeth I’s reign, support for her father’s idea of reforming the church continued with some minor adjustments. In this way, Elizabeth and her advisors aimed at a church that found a middle ground.
• Canon Law : The body of laws and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority (church leadership), for the government of a Christian organization or church and its members.
• annulment : Legal term for declaring a marriage null and void. Unlike divorce, it is usually retroactive, meaning that this kind of marriage is considered to be invalid from the beginning, almost as if it had never taken place. They are closely associated with the Catholic Church, which does not permit divorce, teaching that marriage is a lifelong commitment that cannot be dissolved through divorce.
• nationalism : A belief, creed, or political ideology that involves an individual identifying with, or becoming attached to, one’s nation. In Europe, people were generally loyal to the church or to a local king or leader.
• Puritans : Group of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries founded by some exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England.

The English Reformation was a series of events in 16th-century England by which the Church of England broke away from the authority of the pope and the Roman Catholic Church. The English Reformation was, in part, associated with the wider process of the European Protestant Reformation, a religious and political movement that affected the practice of Christianity across most of Europe during this period. Many factors contributed to the process—the decline of feudalism and the rise of nationalism, the rise of the common law, the invention of the printing press and increased circulation of the Bible, and the transmission of new knowledge and ideas among scholars, the upper and middle classes, and readers in general. However, the various phases of the English Reformation, which also covered Wales and Ireland, were largely driven by changes in government policy, to which public opinion gradually accommodated itself.

Role of Henry VIII and Royal Marriages

Henry VIII ascended the English throne in 1509 at the age of seventeen. He made a dynastic marriage with Catherine of Aragon, widow of his brother, Arthur, in June 1509, just before his coronation on Midsummer’s Day. Unlike his father, who was secretive and conservative, the young Henry appeared the epitome of chivalry and sociability. An observant Roman Catholic, he heard up to five masses a day (except during the hunting season). Of “powerful but unoriginal mind,” he let himself be influenced by his advisors from whom he was never apart, by night or day. He was thus susceptible to whoever had his ear.

This contributed to a state of hostility between his young contemporaries and the Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. As long as Wolsey had his ear, Henry’s Roman Catholicism was secure; in 1521, he defended the Roman Catholic Church from Martin Luther’s accusations of heresy in a book he wrote—probably with considerable help from the conservative Bishop of Rochester, John Fisher—entitled The Defence of the Seven Sacraments , for which he was awarded the title “Defender of the Faith” by Pope Leo X. Wolsey’s enemies at court included those who had been influenced by Lutheran ideas, among whom was the attractive, charismatic Anne Boleyn.

Anne arrived at court in 1522 from years in France, where she had been educated by Queen Claude of France. Anne served as maid of honor to Queen Catherine. She was a woman of “charm, style and wit, with will and savagery which made her a match for Henry.” By the late 1520s, Henry wanted his marriage to Catherine annulled. She had not produced a male heir who survived into adulthood, and Henry wanted a son to secure the Tudor dynasty.

Henry claimed that this lack of a male heir was because his marriage was “blighted in the eyes of God”; Catherine had been his late brother’s wife, and it was therefore against biblical teachings for Henry to have married her—a special dispensation from Pope Julius II had been needed to allow the wedding to take place. Henry argued that this had been wrong and that his marriage had never been valid. In 1527 Henry asked Pope Clement VII to annul the marriage, but the pope refused. According to Canon Law the pope cannot annul a marriage on the basis of a canonical impediment previously dispensed. Clement also feared the wrath of Catherine’s nephew, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, whose troops earlier that year had sacked Rome and briefly taken the pope prisoner.

Portrait of Henry VIII (1491–1547): Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539–1540.

In 1529 the king summoned parliament to deal with annulment, thus bringing together those who wanted reform but disagreed what form it should take; it became known as the Reformation Parliament. There were common lawyers who resented the privileges of the clergy to summon laity to their courts, and there were those who had been influenced by Lutheran evangelicalism and were hostile to the theology of Rome; Thomas Cromwell was both.

Cromwell was a lawyer and a member of Parliament—a Protestant who saw how Parliament could be used to advance the Royal Supremacy, which Henry wanted, and to further Protestant beliefs and practices Cromwell and his friends wanted.

The breaking of the power of Rome proceeded little by little starting in 1531. The Act in Restraint of Appeals, drafted by Cromwell, declared that clergy recognized Henry as the “sole protector and Supreme Head of the Church and clergy of England.” This declared England an independent country in every respect.

Meanwhile, having taken Anne to France on a pre-nuptial honeymoon, Henry married her in Westminster Abbey in January 1533.

Henry maintained a strong preference for traditional Catholic practices and, during his reign, Protestant reformers were unable to make many changes to the practices of the Church of England. Indeed, this part of Henry’s reign saw trials for heresy of Protestants as well as Roman Catholics.

The Reformation during Edward VI

When Henry died in 1547, his nine-year-old son, Edward VI, inherited the throne. Under King Edward VI, more Protestant-influenced forms of worship were adopted. Under the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, a more radical reformation proceeded. Cranmer introduced a series of religious reforms that revolutionized the English church from one that—while rejecting papal supremacy—remained essentially Catholic to one that was institutionally Protestant. All images in churches were to be dismantled. Stained glass, shrines, and statues were defaced or destroyed. Roods, and often their lofts and screens, were cut down and bells were taken down. Vestments were prohibited and either burned or sold. Chalices were melted down or sold. The requirement of the clergy to be celibate was lifted. Processions were banned and ashes and palms were prohibited.

A new pattern of worship was set out in the Book of Common Prayer (1549 and 1552). These were based on the older liturgy but influenced by Protestant principles. Cranmer’s formulation of the reformed religion, finally divesting the communion service of any notion of the real presence of God in the bread and the wine, effectively abolished the mass. The publication of Cranmer’s revised prayer book in 1552, supported by a second Act of Uniformity, “marked the arrival of the English Church at protestantism.” The prayer book of 1552 remains the foundation of the Church of England’s services. However, Cranmer was unable to implement all these reforms once it became clear in the spring of 1553 that King Edward, upon whom the whole Reformation in England depended, was dying.

Catholic Restoration

From 1553, under the reign of Henry’s Roman Catholic daughter, Mary I, the Reformation legislation was repealed, and Mary sought to achieve reunion with Rome. Her first Act of Parliament was to retroactively validate Henry’s marriage to her mother and so legitimize her claim to the throne.

After 1555, the initial reconciling tone of the regime began to harden. The medieval heresy laws were restored and 283 Protestants were burned at the stake for heresy. Full restoration of the Catholic faith in England to its pre-Reformation state would take time. Consequently, Protestants secretly ministering to underground congregations were planning for a long haul, a ministry of survival. However, Mary died in November 1558, childless and without having made provision for a Catholic to succeed her, undoing her work to restore the Catholic Church in England.

Elizabeth I

Following Mary’s death, her half-sister Elizabeth inherited the throne. One of the most important concerns during Elizabeth’s early reign was religion. Elizabeth could not be Catholic, as that church considered her illegitimate, being born of Anne Boleyn. At the same time, she had observed the turmoil brought about by Edward’s introduction of radical Protestant reforms. Communion with the Catholic Church was again severed by Elizabeth. Chiefly she supported her father’s idea of reforming the church, but she made some minor adjustments. In this way, Elizabeth and her advisors aimed at a church that included most opinions.

Elizabeth I and the Church of England : Dr. Tarnya Cooper, the National Portrait Gallery’s Chief Curator and Curator of Sixteenth Century Portraits, discusses Elizabeth I’s solution to religious turmoil in England.

Two groups were excluded in Elizabeth’s Church of England. Roman Catholics who remained loyal to the pope were not tolerated. They were, in fact, regarded as traitors because the pope had refused to accept Elizabeth as Queen of England. Roman Catholics were given the hard choice of being loyal either to their church or their country. For some priests it meant life on the run, and in some cases death for treason.

The other group not tolerated were people who wanted reform to go much further, and who finally gave up on the Church of England. They could no longer see it as a true church. They believed it had refused to obey the Bible, so they formed small groups of convinced believers outside the church. One of the main groups that formed during this time was the Puritans. The government responded with imprisonment and exile to try to crush these “separatists.”

Reformation and Division, 1530–1558 : Professor Wrightson examines the various stages of the reformation in England, beginning with the legislative, as opposed to doctrinal, reformation begun by Henry VIII in a quest to settle the Tudor succession. Wrightson shows how the jurisdictional transformation of the royal supremacy over the church resulted, gradually, in the introduction of true religious change. The role played by various personalities at Henry’s court, and the manner in which the king’s own preferences shaped the doctrines of the Church of England, are considered. Doctrinal change, in line with continental Protestant developments, accelerated under Edward VI, but was reversed by Mary I. However, Wrightson suggests that, by this time, many aspects of Protestantism had been internalized by part of the English population, especially the young, and so the reformation could not wholly be undone by Mary’s short reign. The lecture ends with the accession of Elizabeth I in 1558, an event which presaged further religious change.

The French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion (1562–98) is the name of a period of fighting between French Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots).

Discuss how the patterns of warfare that took place in France affected the Huguenots

• Protestant ideas were first introduced to France during the reign of Francis I, who firmly opposed Protestantism, but continued to try and seek a middle course until the later stages of his regime.
• As the Huguenots gained influence and displayed their faith more openly, Roman Catholic hostility to them grew, spurning eight civil wars from 1562 to 1598.
• The wars were interrupted by breaks in peace that only lasted temporarily as the Huguenots’ trust in the Catholic throne diminished, and the violence became more severe and Protestant demands became grander.
• One of the most infamous events of the wars was the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, when thousands of Huguenots were killed by Catholics.
• The pattern of warfare followed by brief periods of peace continued for nearly another quarter-century. The proclamation of the Edict of Nantes, and the subsequent protection of Huguenot rights, finally quelled the uprisings.
• Edict of Nantes : Issued on April 13, 1598, by Henry IV of France; granted the Huguenots substantial rights in a nation still considered essentially Catholic.
• Huguenots : Members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries; inspired by the writings of John Calvin.
• Real Presence : A term used in various Christian traditions to express belief that in the Eucharist, Jesus Christ is really present in what was previously just bread and wine, and not merely present in symbol.

The French Wars of Religion (1562–1598) is the name of a period of civil infighting and military operations primarily between French Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots). The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and the House of Guise, and both sides received assistance from foreign sources.

The exact number of wars and their respective dates are the subject of continued debate by historians; some assert that the Edict of Nantes in 1598 concluded the wars, although a resurgence of rebellious activity following this leads some to believe the Peace of Alais in 1629 is the actual conclusion. However, the Massacre of Vassy in 1562 is agreed to have begun the Wars of Religion; up to a hundred Huguenots were killed in this massacre. During the wars, complex diplomatic negotiations and agreements of peace were followed by renewed conflict and power struggles.

Between 2,000,000 and 4,000,000 people were killed as a result of war, famine, and disease, and at the conclusion of the conflict in 1598, Huguenots were granted substantial rights and freedoms by the Edict of Nantes, though it did not end hostility towards them. The wars weakened the authority of the monarchy, already fragile under the rule of Francis II and then Charles IX, though the monarchy later reaffirmed its role under Henry IV.

Introduction of Protestantism

Protestant ideas were first introduced to France during the reign of Francis I (1515–1547) in the form of Lutheranism, the teachings of Martin Luther, and circulated unimpeded for more than a year around Paris. Although Francis firmly opposed heresy, the difficulty was initially in recognizing what constituted it; Catholic doctrine and definition of orthodox belief was unclear. Francis I tried to steer a middle course in the developing religious schism in France.

Calvinism, a form of Protestant religion, was introduced by John Calvin, who was born in Noyon, Picardy, in 1509, and fled France in 1536 after the Affair of the Placards. Calvinism in particular appears to have developed with large support from the nobility. It is believed to have started with Louis Bourbon, Prince of Condé, who, while returning home to France from a military campaign, passed through Geneva, Switzerland, and heard a sermon by a Calvinist preacher. Later, Louis Bourbon would become a major figure among the Huguenots of France. In 1560, Jeanne d’Albret, Queen regnant of Navarre, converted to Calvinism possibly due to the influence of Theodore de Beze. She later married Antoine de Bourbon, and their son Henry of Navarre would be a leader among the Huguenots.

Affair of the Placards

Francis I continued his policy of seeking a middle course in the religious rift in France until an incident called the Affair of the Placards. The Affair of the Placards began in 1534 when Protestants started putting up anti-Catholic posters. The posters were extreme in their anti-Catholic content—specifically, the absolute rejection of the Catholic doctrine of “Real Presence.” Protestantism became identified as “a religion of rebels,” helping the Catholic Church to more easily define Protestantism as heresy. In the wake of the posters, the French monarchy took a harder stand against the protesters. Francis I had been severely criticized for his initial tolerance towards Protestants, and now was encouraged to repress them.

Tensions Mount

King Francis I died on March 31, 1547, and was succeeded to the throne by his son Henry II. Henry II continued the harsh religious policy that his father had followed during the last years of his reign. In 1551, Henry issued the Edict of Châteaubriant, which sharply curtailed Protestant rights to worship, assemble, or even discuss religion at work, in the fields, or over a meal.

An organized influx of Calvinist preachers from Geneva and elsewhere during the 1550s succeeded in setting up hundreds of underground Calvinist congregations in France. This underground Calvinist preaching (which was also seen in the Netherlands and Scotland) allowed for the formation of covert alliances with members of the nobility and quickly led to more direct action to gain political and religious control.

As the Huguenots gained influence and displayed their faith more openly, Roman Catholic hostility to them grew, even though the French crown offered increasingly liberal political concessions and edicts of toleration. However, these measures disguised the growing tensions between Protestants and Catholics.

The Eight Wars of Religion

These tensions spurred eight civil wars, interrupted by periods of relative calm, between 1562 and 1598. With each break in peace, the Huguenots’ trust in the Catholic throne diminished, and the violence became more severe and Protestant demands became grander, until a lasting cessation of open hostility finally occurred in 1598.

The wars gradually took on a dynastic character, developing into an extended feud between the Houses of Bourbon and Guise, both of which—in addition to holding rival religious views—staked a claim to the French throne. The crown, occupied by the House of Valois, generally supported the Catholic side, but on occasion switched over to the Protestant cause when it was politically expedient.

St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre

One of the most infamous events of the Wars of Religion was the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572, when Catholics killed thousands of Huguenots in Paris. The massacre began on the night of August 23, 1572 (the eve of the feast of Bartholomew the Apostle), two days after the attempted assassination of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, the military and political leader of the Huguenots. The king ordered the killing of a group of Huguenot leaders, including Coligny, and the slaughter spread throughout Paris and beyond. The exact number of fatalities throughout the country is not known, but estimates are that between about 2,000 and 3,000 Protestants were killed in Paris, and between 3,000 and 7,000 more in the French provinces. Similar massacres took place in other towns in the weeks following. By September 17, almost 25,000 Protestants had been massacred in Paris alone. Outside of Paris, the killings continued until October 3. An amnesty granted in 1573 pardoned the perpetrators.

The massacre also marked a turning point in the French Wars of Religion. The Huguenot political movement was crippled by the loss of many of its prominent aristocratic leaders, as well as many re-conversions by the rank and file, and those who remained were increasingly radicalized.

St. Bartholomew Massacre painting by François Dubois, a Huguenot painter: Born circa 1529 in Amiens, Dubois settled in Switzerland. Although Dubois did not witness the massacre, he depicts Admiral Coligny’s body hanging out of a window at the rear to the right. To the left rear, Catherine de’ Medici is shown emerging from the Château du Louvre to inspect a heap of bodies.

War of the Three Henrys

The War of the Three Henrys (1587–1589) was the eighth and final conflict in the series of civil wars in France known as the Wars of Religion. It was a three-way war fought between:

• King Henry III of France, supported by the royalists and the politiques;
• King Henry of Navarre, leader of the Huguenots and heir-presumptive to the French throne, supported by Elizabeth I of England and the Protestant princes of Germany; and
• Henry of Lorraine, Duke of Guise, leader of the Catholic League, funded and supported by Philip II of Spain.

The war began when the Catholic League convinced King Henry III to issue an edict outlawing Protestantism and annulling Henry of Navarre’s right to the throne. For the first part of the war, the royalists and the Catholic League were uneasy allies against their common enemy, the Huguenots. Henry of Navarre sought foreign aid from the German princes and Elizabeth I of England.

Henry III successfully prevented the junction of the German and Swiss armies. The Swiss were his allies, and had come to invade France to free him from subjection, but Henry III insisted that their invasion was not in his favor, but against him, forcing them to return home.

In Paris, the glory of repelling the German and Swiss Protestants all fell to the Duke of Guise. The king’s actions were viewed with contempt. People thought that the king had invited the Swiss to invade, paid them for coming, and sent them back again. The king, who had really performed the decisive part in the campaign, and expected to be honored for it, was astounded that public voice should thus declare against him. The Catholic League had put its preachers to good use.

Open war erupted between the royalists and the Catholic League. Charles, Duke of Mayenne, Guise’s younger brother, took over the leadership of the league. At the moment it seemed that he could not possibly resist his enemies. His power was effectively limited to Blois, Tours, and the surrounding districts. In these dark times the King of France finally reached out to his cousin and heir, the King of Navarre. Henry III declared that he would no longer allow Protestants to be called heretics, while the Protestants revived the strict principles of royalty and divine right. As on the other side ultra-Catholic and anti-royalist doctrines were closely associated, so on the side of the two kings the principles of tolerance and royalism were united.

In July 1589, in the royal camp at Saint-Cloud, a Dominican monk named Jacques Clément gained an audience with the King and drove a long knife into his spleen. Clément was killed on the spot, taking with him the information of who, if anyone, had hired him. On his deathbed, Henri III called for Henry of Navarre, and begged him, in the name of statecraft, to become a Catholic, citing the brutal warfare that would ensue if he refused. He named Henry Navarre as his heir, who became Henry IV.

Edict of Nantes

Fighting continued between Henry IV and the Catholic League for almost a decade. The warfare was finally quelled in 1598 when Henry IV recanted Protestantism in favor of Roman Catholicism, issued as the Edict of Nantes. The edict established Catholicism as the state religion of France, but granted the Protestants equality with Catholics under the throne and a degree of religious and political freedom within their domains. The edict simultaneously protected Catholic interests by discouraging the founding of new Protestant churches in Catholic-controlled regions. With the proclamation of the Edict of Nantes, and the subsequent protection of Huguenot rights, pressures to leave France abated.

In offering general freedom of conscience to individuals, the edict gave many specific concessions to the Protestants, such as amnesty and the reinstatement of their civil rights, including the right to work in any field or for the state and to bring grievances directly to the king. This marked the end of the religious wars that had afflicted France during the second half of the 16th century.

The Witch Trials

Between the 15th and 18th centuries in Europe, many people were accused of and put on trial for practicing witchcraft.

Demonstrate how natural events and pandemics contributed to the hysteria surrounding the witch trials of the 16th through 18th centuries

• In early modern Europe, there was widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christianity. Those who were accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being Devil worshipers.
• In medieval Europe, the Black Death was a turning point in peoples’ views of witches. The death of a large percentage of the European population was believed by many Christians to have been caused by their enemies.
• The peak of the witch hunt was during the European wars of religion, peaking between about 1580 and 1630.
• Over the entire duration of the trials, which spanned three centuries, an estimated total of 40,000–100,000 people were executed.
• The Witch Trials of Trier in Germany was perhaps the biggest witch trial in European history. It led to the death of about 386 people, and was perhaps the biggest mass execution in Europe during peacetime.
• While the witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid-17th century, they became more prominent in the American colonies.
• An estimated 75% to 85% of those accused in the early modern witch trials were women, and there is certainly evidence of misogyny on the part of those persecuting witches.
• Johannes Kepler : A German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution.

The witch trials in the early modern period were a series of witch hunts between the 15th and 18th centuries, when across early modern Europe, and to some extent in the European colonies in North America, there was a widespread hysteria that malevolent Satanic witches were operating as an organized threat to Christendom. Those accused of witchcraft were portrayed as being worshippers of the Devil, who engaged in sorcery at meetings known as Witches’ Sabbaths. Many people were subsequently accused of being witches and were put on trial for the crime, with varying punishments being applicable in different regions and at different times.

In early modern European tradition, witches were stereotypically, though not exclusively, women. European pagan belief in witchcraft was associated with the goddess Diana and dismissed as “diabolical fantasies” by medieval Christian authors.

Background to the Witch Trials

During the medieval period, there was widespread belief in magic across Christian Europe. The medieval Roman Catholic Church, which then dominated a large swath of the continent, divided magic into two forms—natural magic, which was acceptable because it was viewed as merely taking note of the powers in nature that were created by God, and demonic magic, which was frowned upon and associated with demonology.

It was also during the medieval period that the concept of Satan, the Biblical Devil, began to develop into a more threatening form. Around the year 1000, when there were increasing fears that the end of the world would soon come in Christendom, the idea of the Devil had become prominent.

In the 14th and 15th centuries, the concept of the witch in Christendom underwent a relatively radical change. No longer were witches viewed as sorcerers who had been deceived by the Devil into practicing magic that went against the powers of God. Instead they became all-out malevolent Devil-worshippers, who had made pacts with him in which they had to renounce Christianity and devote themselves to Satanism. As a part of this, it was believed that they gained new, supernatural powers that enabled them to work magic, which they would use against Christians.

A Witch feeding her familiars: An image of a witch and her familiar spirits taken from a publication that dealt with the witch trials of Elizabeth Stile, Mother Dutten, Mother Devell, and Mother Margaret in Windsor, 1579.

While the witch trials only really began in the 15th century, with the start of the early modern period, many of their causes had been developing during the previous centuries, with the persecution of heresy by the medieval Inquisition during the late 12th and the 13th centuries, and during the late medieval period, during which the idea of witchcraft or sorcery gradually changed and adapted. An important turning point was the Black Death of 1348–1350, which killed a large percentage of the European population, and which many Christians believed had been caused by evil forces.

Beginnings of the Witch Trials

While the idea of witchcraft began to mingle with the persecution of heretics even in the 14th century, the beginning of the witch hunts as a phenomenon in its own right became apparent during the first half of the 15th century in southeastern France and western Switzerland, in communities of the Western Alps, in what was at the time Burgundy and Savoy.

Here, the cause of eliminating the supposed Satanic witches from society was taken up by a number of individuals; Claude Tholosan for instance had tried over two hundred people, accusing them of witchcraft in Briançon, Dauphiné, by 1420.

While early trials fall still within the late medieval period, the peak of the witch hunt was during the period of the European wars of religion, between about 1580 and 1630. Over the entire duration of the phenomenon of some three centuries, an estimated total of 40,000 to 100,000 people were executed.

The Trials of 1580–1630

The height of the European witch trials was between 1560 and 1630, with the large hunts first beginning in 1609. During this period, the biggest witch trials were held in Europe, notably the Trier witch trials (1581–1593), the Fulda witch trials (1603–1606), the Basque witch trials (1609–1611), the Würzburg witch trial (1626–1631), and the Bamberg witch trials (1626–1631).

The Witch Trials of Trier in Germany was perhaps the biggest witch trial in European history. The persecutions started in the diocese of Trier in 1581 and reached the city itself in 1587, where they were to lead to the deaths of about 368 people, and as such it was perhaps the biggest mass execution in Europe during peacetime.

The Examination of a Witch by Matteson: 1853 painting by Thompkins H. Matteson, American painter.

In Denmark, the burning of witches increased following the reformation of 1536. Christian IV of Denmark, in particular, encouraged this practice, and hundreds of people were convicted of witchcraft and burned. In England, the Witchcraft Act of 1542 regulated the penalties for witchcraft. In the North Berwick witch trials in Scotland, over seventy people were accused of witchcraft on account of bad weather when James VI of Scotland, who shared the Danish king’s interest in witch trials, sailed to Denmark in 1590 to meet his betrothed, Anne of Denmark.

The sentence for an individual found guilty of witchcraft or sorcery during this time, and in previous centuries, typically included either burning at the stake or being tested with the “ordeal of cold water” or judicium aquae frigidae . Accused persons who drowned were considered innocent, and ecclesiastical authorities would proclaim them “brought back,” but those who floated were considered guilty of practicing witchcraft, and burned at the stake or executed in an unholy fashion.

Decline of the Trials

While the witch trials had begun to fade out across much of Europe by the mid-17th century, they continued to a greater extent on the fringes of Europe and in the American colonies. The clergy and intellectuals began to speak out against the trials from the late 16th century. Johannes Kepler in 1615 could only by the weight of his prestige keep his mother from being burned as a witch. The 1692 Salem witch trials were a brief outburst of witch hysteria in the New World at a time when the practice was already waning in Europe.

Witch Trials and Women

An estimated 75% to 85% of those accused in the early modern witch trials were women, and there is certainly evidence of misogyny on the part of those persecuting witches, evident from quotes such as “[It is] not unreasonable that this scum of humanity, [witches], should be drawn chiefly from the feminine sex” (Nicholas Rémy, c. 1595) or “The Devil uses them so, because he knows that women love carnal pleasures, and he means to bind them to his allegiance by such agreeable provocations.” In early modern Europe, it was widely believed that women were less intelligent than men and more susceptible to sin.

Nevertheless, it has been argued that the supposedly misogynistic agenda of works on witchcraft has been greatly exaggerated, based on the selective repetition of a few relevant passages of the Malleus Maleficarum . Many modern scholars argue that the witch hunts cannot be explained simplistically as an expression of male misogyny, as indeed women were frequently accused by other women, to the point that witch hunts, at least at the local level of villages, have been described as having been driven primarily by “women’s quarrels.” Especially at the margins of Europe, in Iceland, Finland, Estonia, and Russia, the majority of those accused were male.

Barstow (1994) claimed that a combination of factors, including the greater value placed on men as workers in the increasingly wage-oriented economy, and a greater fear of women as inherently evil, loaded the scales against women, even when the charges against them were identical to those against men. Thurston (2001) saw this as a part of the general misogyny of the late medieval and early modern periods, which had increased during what he described as “the persecuting culture” from what it had been in the early medieval period. Gunnar Heinsohn and Otto Steiger in a 1982 publication speculated that witch hunts targeted women skilled in midwifery specifically in an attempt to extinguish knowledge about birth control and “repopulate Europe” after the population catastrophe of the Black Death.

The Terror of History: The Witch Hunt in Early Modern Europe, UCLA : Professor Ruiz, UCLA department chair and Premio del Rey prize for best book in Spanish history before 1580 for his Crisis and Continuity: Land and Town in Late Medieval Castile , was speaker for the UCLA History Alumni Faculty Lecture, cohosted by the UCLA Alumni Association and UCLA Department of History. Ruiz spoke to an audience of more than eighty history department alumni and guests. Watch his lively and engaging presentation.

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Volume 44 - Issue 1

Disputation for scholastic theology: engaging luther’s 97 theses.

The essay first seeks to unpack the anthropological and soteriology teaching of Martin Luther’s diatribe “against scholastic theology,” that is, against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian moral anthropology in his 97 Theses of September 1517. Second, the essay turns to ways in which the theological task is located by Luther in the history of sin and grace, thus connecting his teaching against the anthropology of the scholastics with his methodology for studying theology academically, further clarifying the precise nature of the objections to scholasticism raised by Luther and other reformers (such as Calvin). Third, the essay concludes by charting a set of four protocols for systematic or scholastic theology today, so as to reconfigure the intellectual practice as an exercise in intellectual asceticism or discipleship that is part of the broader process of the sanctification of human reason.

In fall 1517, a German monk offered theses for disputation which would shake the faith and practice of the world around him. 1 They cut against the grain of ecclesiastical and theological practice and would set a course for ongoing reform and challenge according to God’s Word. We do well to consider afresh those principal concerns at the root of the Protestant Reformation. So we turn again to Wittenberg, to Luther, and to the 97 theses. That’s right. On September 4, 1517, Luther participated in a disputation regarding sin and the will, nature and the experience of Christian salvation. This academic disputation, (much) later dubbed the “Disputation against scholastic theology,” has not gained the level of acclaim garnered by the later “95 Theses or Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences,” but they will capture our attention and prompt some thinking regarding what shape theological practice might take this side of Luther’s witness. 2

These theses actually cut right to the heart of so many of Luther’s abiding concerns. Far more than the focus on indulgences to come two months later, these theses turn directly to issues of human nature and divine salvation. They forecast in many ways that great text which would so mark Luther’s legacy, his 1525 response to Erasmus entitled The Bondage of the Will . They thread the needle of assaulting the latent tradition which he finds so marred by hubristic excess without shirking his abiding commitment to learn from Augustine, who had himself been a formative thread of that late medieval fabric. 3 In many ways, these theses, like the Heidelberg Disputation of the following year, will do the hard work of beginning to connect the emerging Reformational vision of sin and grace with matters of intellectual authority and theological formation. Here we see the force and the tension of Luther’s theology.

In this essay I want to argue with Luther seemingly against Luther. That is, by tracing Luther’s anthropology and soteriology through, I will seek to show that today a scholastic theology with certain disciplined protocols in place prompts us to lean against our sinful proclivities and to linger longer before the life-giving Word of God. In so doing, however, I will seek to sketch an approach to scholastic theology which ties its task to the pursuit of theological discipleship and even intellectual asceticism. To do so means that the description offered here differs from some lingering assumptions about scholasticism and about the practice of systematic theology today and challenges the disciplinary status quo in some fundamental ways. As much as the argument seeks to argue for the ongoing need for the theological calling, then, it also aims to reorient the way in which that practice follows in much of its modern exercise by reorienting systematic theology as a form of intellectual asceticism. 4 In so doing Luther is a genuine prompt, in as much as he not only reflected upon the stranglehold of sin (in the 97 theses) but also sought in multiple ways to orient theology around his account of sin and grace (in various texts). While arguing with Luther regarding our sinful proclivities and our dire need for God’s gracious intervention even in the life of the mind, then, we will also turn beyond and, to some extent, against Luther to espouse an argument for a distinctly scholastic practice of theology so as to further those spiritual ends. Four specific aspects regarding the shape of a sanctifying approach to scholastic theology will conclude the proposal.

Unto those ends, the essay first seeks to unpack the anthropological and soteriology teaching of Luther’s diatribe “against scholastic theology,” that is, against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian moral anthropology in his 97 theses. Second, the essay turns to ways in which the theological task is located by Luther in the history of sin and grace, thus connecting his teaching against the anthropology of the scholastics with his methodology for studying theology academically and clarifying the precise nature of the objections to scholasticism raised by Luther and other reformers (such as Calvin). Third, the essay concludes by charting a set of four protocols for systematic or scholastic theology today, so as to reconfigure the intellectual practice as an exercise in intellectual asceticism or discipleship that is part of the broader process of the sanctification of human reason.

1. With Luther against Semi-Pelagian or Pelagian Moral Anthropology: Analysis of the 97 Theses of September 1517

Luther did not pull punches. Whether in woodcuts or theses, homilies or treatises, he was not hesitant to name names and give addresses. So here in his 97 theses from September 1517, he took many luminaries to task: Aristotle and Ockham, the Cardinal and Gabriel, Porphyry and the philosophers, the Scholastics and Scotus. 5 Take Aristotle alone as an example. “Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace,” Luther claims “in opposition to the scholastics” (Thesis 41). He will specifically oppose the Philosopher’s contentions regarding happiness (Thesis 42), but more often ranges rather widely by saying, first, that “it is an error to say that no man can become a theologian without Aristotle” (Thesis 43); second, that “no one can become a theologian unless he becomes one without Aristotle” (Thesis 44); third, “briefly, the whole Aristotle is to theology as darkness is to light” (Thesis 50); and fourth, “even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question” (Thesis 53). He only comes up for air, as it were, to offer Porphyry similar, even if more abbreviated, treatment, saying that “it would have been better for the church if Porphyry with his universals had not been born for the use of theologians” (Thesis 52). Yet “in these statements,” he concludes, “we wanted to say and believe we have said nothing that is not in agreement with the Catholic church and the teachers of the church” (conclusion). 6

Knowledge, lies, and exaggeration—these terms frame the beginning of Luther’s theses. “To say that Augustine exaggerates in speaking against heretics is to say that Augustine tells lies almost everywhere. This is contrary to common knowledge” (Thesis 1). To fall foul of this problem would grant victory to Pelagius and the heretics (Thesis 2) and make “sport of the authority of all doctors of theology” (Thesis 3). While Luther begins widely, using generalities such as “against heretics” or even employing the phrase “almost everywhere,” it becomes plain that his eye is upon the Pelagian controversy, for he shifts immediately and without comment to say, in Thesis 4, that “It is therefore true that man, being a bad tree, can only will and do evil.” Over against “common opinion,” he adds that “the inclination is not free, but captive” (Thesis 5). Nor can the will regulate or reform itself, as if its ill bent were merely a temporary conundrum, for “it is false to state that the will can by nature conform to common precept” (Thesis 6). “As a matter of fact,” Luther states, “without the grace of God the will produces an act that is perverse and evil” (Thesis 7). Long before Erasmus’s writings on freedom provoke Luther’s 1525 Bondage of the Will , he warns lest the church be tempted into giving any quarter to ideas of innate moral neutrality or goodness. Thus lies the path of Pelagius.

Luther walks a tightrope here in affirming the depravity of the human creature. Over against the Manicheans, he first states that “it does not, however, follow that the will is by nature evil, that is, essentially evil” (Thesis 8). “It is nevertheless innately and inevitably evil and corrupt” (Thesis 9). 7 Somehow essential or natural evil is excluded, while innate and inevitable evil is affirmed. A good while later, Luther will speak “in opposition to the philosophers” by saying that “We are not masters of our actions, from beginning to end, but servants” (Thesis 39). He later gives a concrete example, speaking of anger and lust (cf. Matt 5:21–30). “Outside the grace of God it is indeed impossible not to become angry or lust” (Thesis 65), but “it is by the grace of God that one does not lust or become enraged” (Thesis 67). Luther offers a summative remark and then a further clarification. First, the summative remark: “Therefore it is impossible to fulfill the law in any way without the grace of God” (Thesis 68). Then the further clarification: “As a matter of fact, it is more accurate to say that the law is destroyed by nature without the grace of God” (Thesis 69). If Thesis 8 said that the will is not naturally, that is, essentially evil, then Thesis 69 plainly must speak of nature in a different vein, circumscribed by the fuller phrase “nature without the grace of God.” This depiction of graceless nature riffs not on that described in Thesis 8 (nature or essence) but on what appeared in Thesis 9 (the innate and inevitable evil and corruption of the will). Luther plainly wants to affirm the created goodness of the human will, as well as its utter derangement and degradation with the onset of evil and the loss of grace.

Where then comes hope? Can such a vivid depiction of sinfulness find its way beyond utter despair and misanthropic despondency? Luther gestures toward grace at this point as a way of pointing ultimately unto God. “The best and infallible preparation for grace and the sole disposition toward grace is the eternal election and predestination of God” (Thesis 29). Luther not only affirms the divine prevenience here but also goes on to deny certain assumed qualifications or supplements. First, “on the part of man, however, nothing precedes grace except indisposition and even rebellion against grace” (Thesis 30). 8 Second, human struggle does not identify its own need or the divine remedy, for Luther goes on to say that “this is false, that doing all that one is able to do can remove the obstacles to grace” (Thesis 33). 9 Our problem is twofold: “in brief, man by nature has neither correct precept nor good will” (Thesis 34). Humans not only walk in what he deems an “invincible ignorance” or perceptional darkness, but they are also disinclined to the true, the good, and the beautiful.

Grace does not come at the prompting of human ingenuity, nor does the human even incline themselves to its provision. But grace does provide. Indeed, over against all the language of inability and of darkness, one must cast Luther’s powerful affirmation of the reality of grace. “The grace of God is never present in such a way that it is inactive, but it is a living, active, and operative spirit; nor can it happen that through the absolute power of God an act of friendship may be present without the presence of the grace of God” (Thesis 55).

Friendship proves to be a central term in the argument here. “An act of friendship is not the most perfect means for accomplishing that which is in one,” nor even “for obtaining the grace of God or turning toward and approaching God” (Thesis 26). Yet “an act of friendship is done,” though Luther is impelled to clarify “not according to nature, but according to prevenient grace” (Thesis 20). And this prevenient grace really affects the will. While “everyone’s natural will is iniquitous and bad” (Thesis 88), “grace as a mediator is necessary to reconcile the law with the will” (Thesis 89). “The grace of God is given for the purpose of directing the will, lest it err even in loving God” (Thesis 90). Luther here notes the shadow side of the bound will, namely, that human distortion can mar even that which is pious. Even love of God can be inflected in such a way that it ceases in so doing to follow the direction of the one whom it is thereby loving. 10

Underneath all this talk of willing and of warfare, of friendship and of formation, Luther eventually comes to talk of loves. He does so by asking “what is the good law?” He offers two demurrals. First, “not only are the religious ceremonials not the good law and the precepts in which one does not live (in opposition to many teachers)” (Thesis 82), “but even,” second, “the Decalogue itself and all that can be taught and prescribed inwardly and outwardly is not good law either” (Thesis 83). Human custom nor even divine mandate does not in and of itself constitute the good law, not until one presses further to the true definition. “The good law and that in which one lives is the love of God, spread abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Thesis 84). Love fulfills the law (Rom 13:8), yet law forms love (John 15:7, 10).

Indeed, the need for law from the outside matches disordered love. “Anyone’s will hates it that the law should be imposed upon it; if, however, the will desires imposition of the law it does so out of love of self” (Thesis 86). Indeed, “anyone’s will would prefer, if it were possible, that there would be no law and to be entirely free” (Thesis 85). The human desires to go their own way. 11 This waywardness takes a particularly disturbed tack when it comes time to reflect on human efforts to reform or revitalize our problematic proclivities. Even—perhaps especially—in our moral programs, our own self-direction becomes most apparent and harmful.

Luther accents this ironic fate when coming to the conclusion of the disputation where he offers his final two theses regarding the proper relation of our will and God’s own will. First, “we must make our will conform in every respect to the will of God” (Thesis 96, explicitly disagreeing with Cardinal Cajetan). Second, we conform our will unto God’s “so that we not only will what God wills, but also ought to will whatever God wills” (Thesis 97). In other words, it is not enough to bring our questions to the surface and to conform to God’s answers. We must do the difficult work of self-examination and of intellectual and moral repentance such that we trace God’s direction still further unto the very questions up for consideration. God not only answers the need, but God defines the need itself. Not only moral energy but also a distinctly Christian epistemology, swirling round the vocation of theological discernment, marks the dependent yearning of the sin-sick human. God does not merely give truthful answers, but he provides the life-giving questions.

Perhaps an analogy will help. Imagine struggling with a severe course of an auto-immune disease. Months of struggle did not go as one would have expected, for the normal rhythms of palliative and medical care did not offer reprieve from ills. Typical remedies actually worsened the situation, and finally one was shipped to the emergency room in a truly dire situation. When clarity came, the takeaway was rather direct: the immune system is one’s own worst enemy, for its efforts to protect and to strengthen are actually precisely what undercuts one’s own flourishing. So ongoing care requires scaling down the strength of the immense system, a bombardment of force meant to weaken the defenses which themselves weaken the self. What might strike us is the way in which this is true spiritually as well. Not only our moments of utter disinterest in God or even of stick-necked insouciance, but also our pious and zealous attempts at reform actually further our sin-sick struggles. We demand the recalibration of our wills by God’s own will, so that we no longer harm ourselves by inclining toward rhythms of evil excess or of moral malpractice. As Luther says, we need a mediator (Thesis 89). And as he insists, resting on that mediator will involve professing that “to love God is at the same time to hate oneself and to know nothing but God” (Thesis 95). We suffer inability not only in addressing but also in identifying the actual character of our plight.

With that finale in mind, we do well to turn to ask how Luther’s theses might help prompt us to consider the task of academic, that is, scholastic theology today. Luther not only alerts us to the stranglehold of sin and the need for grace, but he gestures toward the way this must shape the practice of theological work also. Because the theologian is a moral agent before God—a sin-sick sinner panged by death, Devil, and the depravity within—his protest of Semi-Pelagian and Pelagian anthropology and his celebration of God’s radical grace must impinge on the process of divine revelation and of God’s sanctification of human reason.

2. With Luther for Scholastic Theology: Theological Parameters for Intellectual Discipline

Theology does not hold a monopoly on concerns regarding moral formation. In his 1911 Cambridge Inaugural Lecture as Kennedy Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge, A. E. Housman addressed “The Confines of Criticism.” 12 He began with survey, noting the ways in which British and German literary criticism had drifted into non-critical forms of analysis. “In short, while the English fault is to confuse this study with literature, the German fault is to pretend that it is mathematics.” 13 Each tendency marked a drift toward an extraneous mode of mental functioning, either that of literary creation or of sequential and numerical method. Both ruin literature in their own way by pressing it into another mission, whether of a socio-political, moral, or scientific tilt. When Housman probes the root of these tendencies, he says “there is a very formidable obstacle: nothing less than the nature of man himself.” 14 And “our first task is to get rid of them, and to acquire, if we can, by humility and self-repression, the tastes of the classics.” 15 To this anthropological diagnosis, Housman also offered a prescription: “we must be born again.” 16 But what hope or future expectation can be offered by this moral critic? Housman concludes only with this offering: “It is well enough to inculcate the duty of self-examination, but then we must also bear in mind its difficulty, and the easiness of self-deception.” 17

Luther’s anthropology seems to agree with Housman regarding the “nature of man himself” and the fundamental need to be born again, lest we take up the task of theology and comport it toward the protocols of other fields, whether of the politeia or the psyche . But Luther and the Reformed Christian are not left with mere self-examination, not even primarily with self-examination. In the remainder of this essay, I want to explore the ways, first, in which the divine discipleship of our theological reason is necessitated by Luther’s anthropology and, second, the manner in which a particular form of scholastic theology may help channel such reform and maturation of the theologian.

Martin Luther knew that theological practice must be defined with distinctly theological categories. This could be his undoing, of course, as he sometimes reduced theology to the topics of the justifying God and the sinning human in his extrapolations on Psalm 51. 18 In that kind of claim, he clearly locates the theological task within the orbit of sin and redemption; indeed, sufficiently and solely within such an orbit. 19 His constriction there—tying theology notably and narrowly to justification—evidences a concern to think the theological task within the matrix of redemption from slothful or hubristic reason. In another notable text, the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, he offered his perceptive vision of the difference between the theologian of glory and the theologian of the cross. Again, questions might be raised regarding whether or not this is an overly constricted breadth—with “cross” standing in for the posture of faith in its full range and perhaps with an overly lush antipathy to the full spectrum of revealed media for theological contemplation—but we can appropriate this approach without falling into any latent historicism. Michael Korthaus has shown this theme to be one that attains any methodological significance only in the twentieth century, as it appears only six times in this small portion of the early Luther’s corpus. 20 While it has been cherished by those who have sought to tether metaphysical contemplation rather constrictively to the historically immanent, it need not take such a parasitic approach to the classical tradition of Christian dogma. In a more chastened form focused on the question of the theological practitioner (rather than so much on the object of that theological practice), the theology of cross serves as yet another reminder that we deal here with the sanctification of reason. 21 In at least these two ways, then, Luther was committed to locating the practice of theology amidst the valleys of human sin and the vista of divine grace.

Luther sought to address the practice of theology in light of sin and grace in a still third frame. Luther identified three rules for theology in his comments on Psalm 119, where David heralds the law of the Lord as life-giving. Luther identified the call to oratio , first, wherein “you should immediately despair of your reason and understanding.… But kneel down in your little room and pray to God with real humility and earnestness, that he through his dear Son may give you His Holy Spirit, who will enlighten you, lead you, and give you understanding.” 22 Luther next summoned us to meditatio , a second action wherein the theologian joins with David to “talk, meditate, speak, sing, hear, read, by day and night, and always about nothing except God’s Word and commandments.” 23 Oswald Bayer says here that “Luther swims against the tide of common opinion in not seeing the process of listening turned inwards but rather opened outwards.” Rather, “when we meditate,” he says, “we do not listen to our inner selves, we do not turn inwards, but we go outside ourselves. Our inner beings live outside themselves in God’s Word alone.” 24 Third, the monk calls us to tentatio that we might find suffering to be our teacher. Spiritual attack ( Anfechtung ) will come for the little Christian who meditates on God’s Word, for the one who meditates will say, with David in Psalm 119 and elsewhere, that the Word drew enemies of varying sorts. But the student will also be able to say of those enemies what Luther spoke of the papists and the fanatics, namely, that “they have made a fairly good theologian of me, which I would not have become otherwise.” 25

Prayer and suffering are worthy topics, yet we will focus our attention now upon meditation as Luther’s second concern for true theology. 26 In particular, we want to consider what it means to lead a life ordered to the external Word of God and in what ways this shapes the academic practice of theological contemplation or meditation. In his 1535 Lectures on Galatians , Luther would say: “And this is the reason why our theology is certain: it snatches us away from ourselves and places us outside ourselves, so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God, which cannot deceive.” 27 How do we contemplate these promises and that truth such that we are taken out of ourselves and offered true certainty?

Before we conclude by suggesting four protocols of scholastic reflection and its attention to the external, life-giving Word of God, we do well to linger briefly over the adjective “scholastic.” In either the post-Reformation or the post-manualist moments, for Protestants and Roman Catholics respectively, scholastic can sometimes be taken simply as a prompt for traditional or historic protocols. Along those lines, we do well to observe that the dominant tradition of the late medieval university and the via moderna (Gabriel Biel especially) were opposed ardently by Luther. 28 But we dare not read his opposition as a global dismissal of tradition or of medieval academic culture. In a letter penned to Johannes Lang on May 18, 1517, Luther had offered this assessment of changes afoot at the University of Wittenberg: “Our theology and St. Augustine are by God’s help prospering in our university, while Aristotle descends gradually toward a coming everlasting oblivion. The lectures on the Sentences are being despised, and no one can hope to have hearers unless he lectures on Scripture, on St. Augustine, or on some other ecclesiastical doctor.” 29

Luther was not assaulting tradition as tradition nor even the protocols of academic theology, but a specific set of anthropological judgments that he deemed to be out of step with Augustine and, more significantly, the soundings he had made in lecturing on Holy Scripture (especially on Romans, the Psalms, and Hebrews at this point). More significantly, though, scholasticism defines a method which is matched to and prompted by the material under examination. As L. M. de Rijk defined it, scholasticism in either its medieval or later Protestant forms is “a collective noun denoting all academic, especially philosophical and theological, activity that is carried out according to a certain method, which involves both in research and education the use of a recurring system of concepts, distinctions, proposition-analyses, argumentative strategies, and methods of disputation.” 30 Historiography of scholastic method has taken a markedly contextual turn in the last fifty years, observing ways in which the moniker “scholastic” related to protocols and methods rather than any particular ideological inflection. The methods were meant to vary by way of subject matter, so that the object delimits its approach and defines its analysis.

Particular protocols follow from this material-molded approach to theology. To take but one example: in his forays into assessing John Calvin’s relationship to the practice of scholastic thought, Richard Muller has identified four features of this sort of academic theology in the late medieval or early modern university context: scholastic theology identifies an order and mental pattern suitable to the debate at hand, uses the thesis or questio to frame discussion, orders theses to be discussed by way of thesis and standard objections, and then refutes objections and provides exposition of the correct answer. 31 These protocols in varying ways belie a commitment to follow the organization of the subject matter, not one’s own predilections, and to remain alert to opposing viewpoints lest one drift into myopic narrowness or remain in unchallenged confusion. A look to other settings of a scholastic order would accent different protocols, and theological students will rejoice to learn that this need not involve reinstituting the public disputation as the chief protocol for examining students of divinity.

A commitment to tradition will come only indirectly then, to the extent which tradition or traditions are themselves overt prompts from the subject of theology itself, namely, divine self-revelation. In the case of theological contemplation, the triune God upon whose face we seek to gaze and whose name alone we seek to exalt has given birth not only to our wisdom but to a whole host of heavenly confessors and a lively communion of saints, within whose chorus we take our part. So scholastic commitment is not inherently opposed to the textualism of humanistic studies in the sixteenth century, though it would come into conflict with iterations of literary study that refused to read those texts as apostolic scripture and insisted on orienting its focus upon them in the guise of comparative religious literature of the ancient world. 32 A fully orbed Trinitarian theology of revelation will insist that the prophet ministry of the Risen Christ involves the unique instrumentality of the words of his prophets and apostles (Heb 4:12–13), as well as the realization that his “Word dwells richly” amidst the testimony of the whole company of the redeemed (Col 3:16–17). Any scholastic or tradition-marked characteristics of theology, then, ought to flow from the entailments of divine action and its promised forms, not from some presumption of the antique or exotic bearing intrinsic force. The rule of faith and rule of love govern the protocols of our intellectual life and the way in which we presently honor the past and look unto the future. In a sense, then, a scholastic bent to theology follows from a spiritual vision regarding the intellectual life. If we are to throw ourselves into the tasks of the academic life, then we want to do so out of an abiding commitment to the cause of intellectual asceticism. 33

Without suggesting that disputations or a question-and-answer format is necessary, a scholastic or academic study of theology helps frame and form our spiritual contemplation of the God who has revealed himself climactically in Jesus Christ and in his life-giving Word. While scholasticism defines the procedures and not necessarily any predetermined philosophical results of our academic inquiry, these methods are themselves motivated by certain anthropological and moral principles. Indeed, there are specifically theological reasons for accenting particular academic protocols as they help foster theological virtues, habits, practices, and order that marks the well-equipped man or woman of God (2 Tim 3:16–17). Those working recently in intellectual history and the history of the university have rightly noted that scholasticism does not reduce to a particular philosophical, ethical, or theological commitment, over against some older suggestions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that scholastic method carried with it a full bore commitment to a particular set of material principles. While a scholastic method does not necessarily equate to a full bore philosophy, and while scholastic method is not homogenous, we do well to note nonetheless that intellectual protocols match anthropological and theological principia .

3. Scholastic Protocols for Sanctifying Systematic Theology: Four Practices for Theology Today Prompted by Luther’s Reformational Teaching on Sin and Grace

If not quodlibet or recitations of catechisms, then what might scholastic protocols look like today? I conclude by suggesting four patterns of scholastic or systematic theological procedure for our consideration today. 34 These principles flow from two realities attested in Luther’s theses: first, that human being is marked by a need for sustenance from beyond and further imprinted by a sinful distortion to close in upon itself and, second, that the triune God acts so as to give and to glorify life in Christ. These are meant to be protocols for theological practice in the land of the gospel and this time of God’s patience, a time which the apostle Peter tells us is meant for intellectual repentance (2 Pet 3:15). Luther’s theses may well fund certain scholastic disciplines, but these protocols and the theology espoused by Luther would summon much common description and practice of “systematic theology” to account. It is not the status quo , but a spiritual quest of intellectual asceticism and theological repentance before God’s life-giving Word that we wish to describe here.

First, a scholastic approach to theological reflection will seek to draw our attention to the breadth of God’s Word. Concern for order and scope matches the Pauline claim regarding the value of the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). The Marcionite challenge was the first threat to the Christian faith in the post-apostolic era, and it struck at the roots of the canonical form of the Christian way. In that second century challenge, Irenaeus and others had to manifestly demonstrate that the prophetic witness of the Old Testament and the scripturally-infused texts of the apostles were bound together with the witness of Paul and the other evangelists. 35 The early theologians commended the catholic faith by attesting the wholeness (lit. kata holos ) of Scripture, namely, that the triune confession of one God in three persons was an achievement of a two testament canon and that, apart from the perduring pressure of the prophets of Israel, the doctrine of God would take quite different form. 36

Biblical breadth may be lopped off or excised in a variety of ways. Canonical amputation can occur in other areas—anthropological and sexual matters being particularly obvious instances in contemporary discourse 37 —but this matter of the being of God is surely the most salient and significant. Scholastic theology prompts us to read and then to read on, not to get snagged merely in the genre, corpus, or epoch that transfixes our curiosity or encourages our ecclesiastical niche or comports most with pertinent issues in our cultural moment. Rather, scholastic theology disciplines us to be alert to the whole counsel of God, for “ all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable” (2 Tim 3:16, emphasis mine). In so doing the scholastic prompt of exploring biblical breadth pushes against any parochialism (of the denominational tradition, of one’s socio-political formation, or of personal predilection) and pressures toward a catholic theology of the whole.

Second, a scholastic approach to theological reflection will summon us to fix anew our emphases and priorities in the places where God’s own Word draws our attention. The question of order and sequence, as well as the attendant concern for proportion, helps alert us to another area of biblical formation. Because even our love can go awry by perhaps willing with God though not, as Luther put it, willing “whatever God wills,” we must be reoriented to the north star of God’s own light. Invariably our experience raises questions and our reason sees connections, but our own forays into intellectual reflection must always be taken before the Word’s own self-presentation. What does the whole counsel of God commend? What bears “first importance” (1 Cor 15:3) over against its secondary and tertiary matters? We can go astray not only in misperceiving an element of the biblical tapestry but in failing to distinguish the foreground from the background. Only attention to the whole canonical canvas will bring into relief the relative emphasis and consequent prioritization that best conveys the elements of biblical doctrine.

An exercise in Luther reception can illustrate the point. How might priorities go haywire? One need only prioritize justification as the criterion of the gospel and treat it ahead of the person of Christ, that is, the whole Christ. In the approach of Gerhard Forde and the self-proclaimed “Radical Lutherans” we can see the kind of disorder caused by treating one crucial strand of Christology and soteriology as if it were the leading and lone article of that confession. Christ becomes functionally a cipher for the balm of the conscience. Such approaches may lay claim to following the (early) words of Philipp Melanchthon: “to know Christ is to know his benefits.” 38 But Melanchthon presumed a trinitarian and Christological metaphysics—and a contemplative focus in liturgy and theology upon the triune God’s perfection—that his post-Kantian and post-Ritschlian heirs no longer embody. Failing to proclaim Christ in his fullness and eternality before Christ in his justifying capacity leads not only to a misprioritization but an outright distortion of the doctrine of justification. 39 The justifying word easily becomes the affirming conscience, rather distant from the concrete life, death, and resurrection of the Redeemer. A response to these “radical” readings of Luther that have flowed from the early twentieth century Luther renaissance need not in any way renege on the sufficiency of Christ or the peace that he brings, but it will take the form of always tethering peace and reconciliation to his concrete action and union with his person. By refusing to sever the person and work of Christ, theology can accent the whole Christ and insist that the gift of his person marks a higher priority than any single blessing found therein, whether justification or sanctification. Only by attending to priorities will we be alert to the manifold principles of divinity.

Third, a scholastic approach to theological practice provokes us to attend to the ways in which the Holy Scriptures take common terms and employ them to fundamentally singular purposes. Luther turned toward the way in which Aristotelian thought had been brought into the fold of Christian divinity in the late medieval period. After running the gauntlet of critical analysis in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (with the input of Averroes and Avicenna, as well as Albert and Thomas), the philosopher’s categories were employed in Christian ethics and theology. Luther retorts: “It is an error to maintain that Aristotle’s statement concerning happiness does not contradict Christian doctrine” (Thesis 42). The notion of beatitude apparently suffered from definitional ambiguity and an overly pacific posture by the schoolmen toward the descriptions of the philosopher. Indeed, Luther says that “it is very doubtful whether the Latins comprehended the correct meaning of Aristotle” (Thesis 51). But the error was not only theirs, for “even the more useful definitions of Aristotle seem to beg the question” (Thesis 53). In challenging reason and its absorption by the contemplation of faith in recent Latin theology, Luther reminds us that terms do not come in self-explanatory, singular fashion. They must be defined, and Christian divinity must turn to the Word of God for such direction in discerning whether the language of the Gentiles can be employed in a given instance or whether there must be a distinction drawn.

Scholastic theology serves a crucial missiological purpose, therefore, in casting light upon the ways in which we have only human words to use in our testimony of God and our pointing to his own Word. Common terms are employed, to be sure, yet the divine communication through ordinary human language transfigures and puts the common to a sacred use, and our own witness must regularly return to reflect on the ways in which latent assumptions about the meaning of stock language can tempt or incline us to misperceptions. Our vocabulary draws on adoption and marriage to convey fellowship with God, though the divine family cannot be construed along sociological lines. We do know the love of God, so rich and full that Song of Songs can employ erotic imagery to convey it, and yet it is qualitatively distinguished from and analogically related to other experiences of love shown and love lost. 40 Particularly in a culture marked more and more by biblical illiteracy, we must observe how even colloquial engagement of the biblical writings is cross-cultural. We must be alerted to ways in which God cannot be constrained within the bounds of our terms as common construed. Systematic theology’s scholastic mode serves missiological purposes, in as much as we are increasingly alert to the fact that the claims of the gospel and the categories of the “whole counsel of God” are “foolishness to the Greeks.” 41

Fourth, a scholastic approach to theological practice demands of us an accounting for what manner of cohesion may be observed in our pilgrim state, lest we be satisfied with a fragmented witness to the way in which Christ speaks his Word (Heb 1:1–2). We can be tempted perhaps to itemize the themes and the idioms of scripture as an index of distinct topics to be accessed each in their own distinct manner. Perhaps the need to think coherently becomes most apparent when addressing the moral entailments of the way of Jesus. Whereas our contemporaries might be prone to assess the virtues of discipleship as nothing more than social mores or group preferences, these moral entailments extend from basic Christian confessions. 42

So Paul’s words in Romans 4 manifest the way in which the posture of faith befits the human creature who has been created wholly by God’s life-giving Word, resurrected in the Spirit’s raising of Jesus from the dead, and now also justified and granted the full rights and privileges as an heir of Abraham. Faith ethically matches the metaphysical frame of these creational and covenantal actions by the triune God. 43 Apart from viewing the summons to trustful existence in such a doctrinal frame, the call to conversion becomes something without depth and meaning, a reduction to arbitrary moral posturing. Indeed, apart from a fit with the metaphysical and moral frame of elemental Christian doctrines, the summons to faith actually suggests a potentially misanthropic calling for the human. Such was Nietzsche’s judgment. Yet we do not view the call of Jesus in a vacuum. The one who beckons us to follow is the one who made us, the one raised by the Father’s power, and the one who names us as righteous and well-pleasing in union with him. Thus, his call that we submit our will unto his own and that with him we journey through the valley by faith en route to the paradise of the redeemed is no summons to slavish surrender and no manifesto for misanthropic misery. Rather, the call of Jesus—the morals of life in this one—are the most elemental and glorifying of any humanisms, because the human has been viewed first and only within a theological matrix marked by inflections across the scope and sequence of the divine economy. God gives life. Live by borrowed breath. God raises the dead. Live by his power. God justifies the ungodly and adopts the orphan. Live by his declaration. Appreciating the links between creation and new creation, as well as the delightful news of Jesus’s resurrection that stitches them together, helps grant depth and beauty to his summons to us. Scholastic theology does not tuck items away in boxes, but it does prompt us always to ask how the varied divine works manifest God’s being and pressure us to work by way of reduction ( reductio ), that is, of tracing all truths back unto God. Scholastic theology will demand of us questions of a metaphysical register, lest morality and the salvific economy flit around like disjointed phenomena.

These comments are mere sketches of four principles for a scholastic theology today. Even when extended more fully, these four moves will not erase questions or remove quandaries. In each respect, these protocols of a scholastic or systematic theology call for us to remain alert and to stay vigilant—indeed, that is precisely the point of scholastic practice as a protocol for pilgrim theology. This attentiveness takes a particular form. We are neither emboldened to spiritual self-mastery nor to intellectual self-defense, as if fear of ignorance or incoherence calls for us to be on guard. Just the opposite. In these ways, we have been sketching how the “fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Ps 111:10) and beginning to tease out protocols by which that fear might take disciplinary shape in our academic enterprises. Luther has reminded us of our terrible need for that formative discipline given our sin-sick and death-doused condition, where even our efforts at intellectual repentance remain hamstrung by self-direction. Affirming that kind of reformational or Augustinian anthropology has prompted an argument for the significance of theological practice taking scholastic shape as a means of turning outward and entrusting one’s intellectual journey unto the source of all wisdom. If we want our theology to be not only a practice of methodological competence and material conversation but ultimately a formation of Christian wisdom, then our alertness to the anthropological condition in Luther’s “Disputation against Scholastic Theology” should be paired with a concerted vision for theological contemplation by also offering a “Disputation for Scholastic Theology.”

[1] This essay was delivered as an inaugural lecture for the John Dyer Trimble Chair of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando on 6 September 2017. Many thanks to Scott Swain and Ryan Peterson for feedback.

[2] Martin Luther, “Disputation Against Scholastic Theology, 1517,” in Career of the Reformer 1 , Luther’s Works 31, ed. Harold J. Grimm, trans. Harold J. Grimm (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1957), 3–16 (citations of Luther’s Works are hereafter abbreviated LW ); see WA 1:221–28 for the German original in the so-called Weimar Ausgabe. Numbering varies in editions as Thesis 55 has been divided into two theses in the work of Vogelsang, leading to a total of 98 theses.

[3] On the complicated legacy of reading Augustine on all sides, see now Arnoud S. Q. Visser, Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500–1620 , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[4] Sarah Coakley has also sought to reorient the discipline in an ascetic register, albeit in a very non-scholastic fashion (see her God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay “On the Trinity” [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014]). For interaction with her proposal and an argument that a more focused scholastic protocol might more effectively serve her stated purgative-spiritual goals, see Michael Allen, “Dogmatics as Ascetics,” in The Task of Dogmatics: Explorations in Theological Method , ed. Oliver Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2017), 189–209.

[5] On the scholastic backdrop of the disputation, see especially Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963); David C. Steinmetz, “Luther among the Anti-Thomists,” in Luther in Context , 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 47–58; Brian Gerrish, “Luther Against Scholasticism,” in Grace and Reason: A Study in the Theology of Luther (Oxford; Clarendon, 1962), 114–37. Jared Wicks has addressed a “Wittenberg Augustinianism” evident in these early texts ( Man Yearning for Grace: Luther’s Early Spiritual Teaching [Washington, DC: Corpus, 1968], 178, 197). Indeed, Luther spoke of a theology shared with Andreas von Karlstadt as “our theology” and of their community as “us Wittenberg theologians.” His first thesis given in this disputation was adapted from a line by Karlstadt (Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet [New York: Random House, 2017], 209).

[6] Unfortunately we do not possess further argumentation or qualification for these theses (as with either the famous 95 theses regarding indulgences or those prepared later for the Heidelberg Disputation in 1518), on which see the helpful assessment of Jared Wicks, Man Yearning for Grace, 372–73.

[7] On the anti-Manichaean and anti-Pelagian readings of Augustine’s corpus, see Steinmetz, “Luther and Augustine on Romans 9,” in Luther in Context , 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 21.

[8] Luther consistently reads Gregory of Rimini as the one scholastic theologian avoiding the error of Thomas, Scotus, and Ockham (as in his 1519 “Resolutions on Propositions debated at Leipzig”); see Steinmetz, “Luther among the Anti-Thomists,” 57. Cf. Risto Saarinen, “Weakness of Will: Reformation Anthropology between Aristotle and the Stoa,” in Anthropological Reformations: Anthropology in the Era of Reformation , ed. Anne Eusterschulte and Hannah Wälzholz, Refo500 28 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 17–32.

[9] Latin: facere quod in se est .

[10] The issue of hypocrisy arises regularly in the theses (see Theses 76–78 especially).

[11] See Theo Dieter, Der junge Luther und Aristoteles. Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Theologie und Philosophie , Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 105 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2001), 80–107.

[12] A. E. Housman, The Confines of Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

[13] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 37.

[14] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 40.

[15] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 34–35.

[16] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 35.

[17] Housman, The Confines of Criticism , 43.

[18] Martin Luther, LW 12:305; see WA 40 II:319; see also Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation , ed. Thomas H. Trapp (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 38–39.

[19] Otto Hermann Pesch has argued that this approach to theology varies greatly from that of Thomas Aquinas. One need not affirm Pesch’s distinction to affirm that Luther rightly locates theology amidst the vagaries and valleys of the spiritual journey, the gifts and the grain of the economy of redemption. See Otto Hermann Pesch, “Existential and Sapiential Theology—The Theological Confrontation Between Luther and Thomas Aquinas,” in Catholic Scholars Dialogue with Luther , ed. Jared Wicks (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1970), 61–81; see also Michael Root, “Continuing the Conversation: Deeper Agreement on Justification as Criterion and on the Christian as simul iustus et peccator ,” in The Gospel of Justification in Christ: Where Does the Church Stand Today? , ed. Wayne Stumme (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 42–61.

[20] Michael Korthaus, Kreuzestheologie: Geschichte und Gestalt eines Programmbegriffs in evangelischen Theologie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 405. See Martin Luther, “Heidelberg Disputation, 1518,” LW 31:35–70; cf. Lectures on Genesis 1–5 , LW 1:11, 13, 14 (on 1:2), 45 (on 6:5–6), 72 (on 6:18).

[21] John Calvin also offers something of a theologia crucis in his reading of the Corinthians Epistles, on which see Michael Allen, “John Calvin’s Reading of the Corinthians Epistles,” in Reformation Readings of Paul: Explorations in History and Exegesis , ed. Michael Allen and Jonathan Linebaugh (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 175–81.

[22] LW 34:285–86. (translation altered by Oswald Bayer); WA 50:659, lines 5–21.

[23] LW 34:286; WA 50:659, lines 22–35.

[24] Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way , 53.

[25] LW 34:286–87; WA 50:660, lines 1–16.

[26] See especially Ronald Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. 111–24.

[27] Luther, Lectures on Galatians , LW 27:387; WA 40 I: 589–90.

[28] On the prevalence of Biel behind the disputation, see especially Leif Grane, Contra Gabrielem: Luthers Auseinandersetzung mit Gabriel Biel in der Disputatio contra scholasticam theologiam, 1517 , Acta Theologica Danica 4 (Kopenhagen: Gyldendal, 1962), 371–85.

[29] Letter to Johannes Lang, May 18, 1517, in WA,Br 1 : no. 41.

[30] L. M. de Rijk, Middeleeuwse wijsbegeerte: Traditie en vernieuwing (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1977), 25 (cited in Martin Bac and Theo Pleizier, “Reentering Sites of Truth: Teaching Reformed Scholasticism in the Contemporary Classroom,” in Scholasticism Reformed: Essays in Honour of Willem J. Van Asselt , ed. Maarten Wisse, Marcel Sarot, and Willemian Otten [Leiden: Brill, 2010], 36).

[31] Richard A. Muller, “Scholasticism in Calvin: A Question of Relation and Disjunction,” in The Unaccommodated Calvin: Studies in the Foundation of a Theological Tradition , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 28. The literature on scholasticism in its medieval and post-Reformation settings has burgeoned in recent years; for introduction and survey, see especially Ulrich G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology , trans. Michael J. Miller (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010); and Willem. J. Van Asselt, with T. Theo J. Pleizier, Pieter L. Rouwendel, and Maarten Wisse, Introduction to Reformed Scholasticism , trans. Albert Gootjes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2011).

[32] On this adaptation of reading strategies, see Michael Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010); Jeffrey Morrow, “The Politics of Biblical Interpretation: A ‘Criticism of Criticism,’” New Blackfriars 91 (2010), 528–45; Morrow, “The Bible in Captivity: Hobbes, Spinoza and the Politics of Defining Religion,” ProEccl 19 (2010), 285–99. The significant shift here is the tilt toward historicism, on which see now Frederick Beiser, The German Historicist Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

[33] Language of intellectual discipleship or asceticism has been helpfully unpacked in Fergus Kerr, “Tradition and Reason: Two Uses of Reason, Critical and Contemplative,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 6 (2004), 37–49; Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ , Christian Theology in Context (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 36, 81, 140. Some parallel approaches in medieval literature are thoughtfully analyzed by Peter M. Candler, Jr., Theology, Rhetoric, Manuduction, Or Reading Scripture Together on the Path to God , Radical Traditions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), with regard to the use of the language of ductus , skopos , and an itinerarium , though his theological account fails to press on to offer much covenantal or Christological specificity in its broadly participationist metaphysics and also offers a severely mangled reading of early Protestant theology and the development of sola Scriptura (esp. 13–16); similarly inclined, though overly focused on categories of embodiment, is Nathan Jennings, Theology as Ascetic Act: Disciplining Christian Discourse (New York: Peter Lang, 2010).

[34] The concept of systematic theology is not without debate regarding definition either. For a survey of recent approaches and a proposal with which I am largely sympathetic, see John Webster, “Introduction: Systematic Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , ed. John Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain Torrance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1–15.

[35] Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching , trans. John Behr (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 68.

[36] See esp. Brevard Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 376; C. Kavin Rowe, “Biblical Pressure and Trinitarian Hermeneutics,” ProEccl 11 (2002), 295–312; Christopher Seitz, The Character of Christian Scripture: The Significance of a Two-Testament Bible , Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

[37] Luke Timothy Johnson, Scripture and Discernment: Decision Making in the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 70–75; Stephen Fowl, Engaging Scripture: A Model for Theological Interpretation (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 97–127; Sylvia Keesmaat, “Welcoming in the Gentiles: A Biblical Model for Decision Making,” in Living Together in the Church: Including Our Differences , ed. Greig Dunn and Chris Ambidge (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2004), 30–49, for a supposedly pneumatologically-prompted counter-argument to Israelite Scripture regarding same sex unions in Acts 10–15. For a critical reply, see Michael Allen and Scott Swain, Reformed Catholicity: The Promise of Retrieval for Theology and Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 74–78. Such canonical reconfiguration began prior to debates regarding gender identity or same-sex unions, in discussions regarding gender and ecclesiastical office (see, e.g., Mark Husbands, “Reconciliation as the Dogmatic Location of Humanity: ‘Your Life is Hidden with Christ in God,’” in Women, Ministry, and the Gospel: Exploring New Paradigms , ed. Mark Husbands and Timothy Larsen [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007], 127–47).

[38] Philipp Melanchthon, Loci Communes in Melanchthon and Bucer , ed. Wilhelm Pauck, Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1969), 21.

[39] See the penetrating analysis of David Yeago, “Gnosticism, Antinomianism, and Reformation Theology: Reflections on the Costs of a Construal,” ProEccl 2 (1993), 37–49.

[40] Similar concerns could be raised regarding so many other biblical and doctrinal terms, as, e.g., Richard Hays raises the now popular term “liberation” as another pertinent illustration ( The Moral Vision of the New Testament [New York: Harper, 1995], 203–4).

[41] See Lesslie Newbigin, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988); John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 4–5.

[42] See especially Oliver O’Donovan’s repeated argument that moral theology is neither an addendum to nor a mere repetition of Christian doctrine but is a thinking out or unfolding of the moral involvements of various doctrinal claims (e.g., “Sanctification and Ethics,” in Sanctification: Explorations and Proposals , ed. Kelly M. Kapic [Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014], 150–66).

[43] See the repeated emphasis on this connection as viewed through three doctrinal lenses (creational, Christological, and eschatological) in David Kelsey, Eccentric Existence: A Theological Anthropology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009).

Michael Allen

Michael Allen is John Dyer Trimble professor of systematic theology and academic dean at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida.

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The Boundaries of the Gift of Tongues: With Implications for Cessationism and Continuationism

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Towards a Definition of New Testament Prophecy

A response to tom schreiner, other reviews in this issue.

Transforming Mission Theology

Intercultural Hermeneutics

The Lord Is Good: Seeking the God of the Psalter

Justification

The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics

Review of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses #theclassics

I first published this Review of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, in January 2014, but decided to republish it again, because this year marks the 500th anniversary of the reformation. This post gives context to Martin Luther's 95 Thesis because I added information from a course I took on the History of Architecture.

Introduction: Martin Luther's 95 Theses

Background: Martin Luther's 95 Theses

Pope Julius II commissioned Donato Bramante to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica. Bramante, a painter, who applied himself to architecture, had a very good architectural plan for the church. However, the project got stalled because he did not know how to build the dome.

Pope Julius II died on February 21, 1513, and was replaced by Pope Leo X. Pope Leo X was elected on March 9 th of that year. Pope Leo X, Patron of the Arts, was a member of the powerful and wealthy de Medici family of Florence. Born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, he commissioned Raphael to complete the renovation to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica.

After the project stalled when Bramante had been working on it, several architects were brought in to correct the problem. Michelangelo’s plan was subsequently accepted. Pope Leo X was,

“Determined to make Rome in general and St. Peter’s Basilica in particular cultural monuments. He commissioned many of the attractions that astound modern-day visitors to Rome. He enlisted the services of Raphael and Dürer and Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.”

All these commissions depleted the church treasuries, so Pope Leo X needed money to finance the renovations. He was not willing to use any of his own. At the same time, Albert of Mainz wanted the new title, Archbishop of Mainz, but needed approval from the Pope to dispense of his other two titles.

Pope Leo X and Albert agreed on a sum that would ensure the Pope got the funds he needed. Albert got the position he wanted. But there was a big problem since Albert’s wealth was in land ownership and not currency. To solve the issue, Albert went to his Dominican priest, Johann Tetzel, for assistance.

Tetzel devised a scheme to sell indulgences, which means that anyone with money could buy an indulgence, and would be promised forgiveness of all sins – past and future. Quite the scheme, and on top of that, Tetzel created a marketing jingle touting the benefits of buying an indulgence – “Every time a coin in the coffer rings, A soul from purgatory it springs.” Pope Leo X granted his blessings.

“The selling of indulgences grew out of the medieval sacrament of penance, which entailed four steps: contrition, confession, satisfaction and absolution….”

About Martin Luther

Born on November 10, 1483 in Eisleben, Germany, Martin Luther was a religious leader, reformer and hymnologist. “In 1517, Luther posted his “95 Theses for an academic debate on indulgences on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.”

The Theses went viral, and in 1518, he was called before Cardinal Cajetan, and commanded to renounce his theses, which he refused. “Here I stand. I can do no other.””

The 95 Theses went viral because at that time the printing press had been invented.

Read my profile, “ Martin Luther – Religious Reformer and Symbol Of Protestantism .”

Summary of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses

In Thesis 5, Luther states that the Pope does not have the authority to forgive sins, and demonstrates that Tetzel’s indulgences are invalid. In Theses 36 and 37, he proclaims that if people are truly repentant, they will be forgiven and have no need for letters of pardon.

In Thesis 82, Luther asks the question “Why does the pope not empty purgatory, for the sake of holy love, and for the sake of desperate souls that are there?” Luther raised this question because one of the touted benefits of buying an indulgence was that it immediately gets people out of purgatory.

In Thesis 86, he speaks against the Pope financing the renovations of St. Peter’s Basilica with money from the poor, instead of using his own wealth, which was greater than the riches of the richest. Martin Luther’s 95 Theses (Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences) consists of a list of questions and arguments put forward for debate.

Martin Luther used his 95 theses to reject the validity of indulgences. There are two central beliefs in 95 Theses – the Bible is the central religious authority, and that humans may reach salvation only by their faith and not by their deeds.

Conclusion: Martin Luther's 95 Theses

Reading Martin Luther's 95 Theses will make you think. On top of that, it is still relevant today. If used as a metaphor, the buying of an indulgence is similar to taking a shortcut and refusing to do things the right way. It’s expecting to reap a crop, without having planted the seeds.

The book is about religious dogma, but there are still lessons for today. And you don’t have to be a Christian to read Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

With this in mind, I recommend that you read Martin Luther's 95 Theses. And the good news is that it is a short read!

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Ninety-Five Theses that Changed the World

Pamphlet to the first memory of the publication of the theses of Martin Luther in 1517

On the eve of All Saint’s Day , October 31, 1517, Martin Luther  posted the ninety-five theses, which were part of his dissertation criticizing on practices within the Catholic Church regarding baptism and absolution, on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg , according to university custom. This event is widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation .

“The pope’s indulgence is not a gift from God in which people are reconciled with God, but only a forgiveness of the punishments imposed by the Church.” – Martin Luther, The 95 Theses, 33-34 (1517)

Repentence as Financial Transaction

We already dedicated a blog post to Martin Luther,[ 5 ] the iconic figure of Protestant Reformation. Today is the anniversary of his act of posting the ninety-five theses on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, according to university custom. Just before, he had written to Albert of Mainz , the Archbishop of Mainz in Germany protesting against the sale of indulgences. He enclosed in his letter a copy of his “ Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences ,” which came to be known as The Ninety-Five Theses . Indulgences are nothing else but remissions of temporal punishment due for sins which have already been forgiven. The Catholic Church ‘s practice of indulgences being sold was received as that the penance for sin simply represents a financial transaction rather than genuine contrition. No wonder that Luther argued in his Theses that the sale of indulgences was a gross violation of the original intention of confession and penance . Christians were being falsely told that they could find absolution through the purchase of indulgences.

Milk of the Virgin Mary

In 1517, Luther was a fellow at the University of Wittenberg , Saxony, in the Holy Roman Empire . Five years before in 1512 , he had received his doctorate in theology and was received into the senate of the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg. The All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, where the Ninety-Five Theses famously appeared, held one of Europe’s largest collections of holy relics. At that time pious veneration of relics was purported to allow the viewer to receive relief from temporal punishment for sins in purgatory. By 1520 over 19,000 relics had been collected by Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, purportedly “ including vials of the milk of the Virgin Mary, straws from the manger [of Jesus], and the body of one of the innocents massacred by King Herod. “

A Fund Raising Campaign for Saint Peter in Rome

As part of a fund-raising campaign commissioned by Pope Leo X to finance the renovation of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome,[ 6 ] Johann Tetzel , a Dominican priest and papal commissioner for indulgences, began the sale of indulgences in the German lands. With his famous slogan

“ As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory [also attested as ‘into heaven’] springs “,

he rather successfully sold papal indulgences all over Germany. Roman Catholic theology stated that faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man; justification rather depends only on such faith as is active in charity and good works ( fides caritate formata ). The benefits of good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.

Luther’s Outrage

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 thereof in their respective 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.

Luther Nails up his 95 Theses at Wittenberg, engraving by Auguste Blanchard, from Historic scenes in the life of Martin Luther (1862)

God Alone can grant Forgiveness

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. In particularly in Thesis 86, Luther asks:

“ Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money? “.

Luther insisted that, since forgiveness was God’s alone to grant, those who claimed that indulgences absolved buyers from all punishments and granted them salvation were in error. Christians, he said, must not slacken in following Christ on account of such false assurances.

The Initial Spark for the Protestant Reformation

While Luther’s theses had far-reaching impact leading to the Protestant reformation, the actual story of the posting of the theses on the church door, even though it has settled as one of the pillars of history, has little foundation in truth. The story is based on comments made by Philipp Melanchthon ,[ 8 ] theological reformer and colleague of Luther, though it is thought that he was not in Wittenberg at the time. It was not until January 1518 that friends of Luther translated the 95 Theses from Latin into German, printed, and widely copied, making the controversy one of the first in history to be aided by the printing press. Within two weeks, copies of the theses had spread throughout Germany; within two months throughout Europe.

References and Further Reading:

• [1] The original 95 theses of Martin Luther (in Latin), Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum
• [2]  The 95 Theses in English translation
• [3]  Biographical website for Martin Luther
• [4]  Martin Luther at English Bible History
• [5]  Martin Luther – Iconic Figure of the Reformation, SciHi Blog
• [6]  St Peter’s Basilica in Rome , SciHi Blog
• [7]  Martin Luther at Wikidata
• [8]  Philipp Melanchton – the First Systematic Theologician of the Protestant Reformation , SciHi Blog
• [9] Andrew Pettegree, Martin Luther, the Reformation, and the Creation of a Media Phenomenon , Harvard Divinity School @ youtube
• [10] Robert Neumüller : 95 Thesen und die Gegenreformation , Dokumente, die die Welt bewegen, 2016
• [11]  Leppin, Volker; Wengert, Timothy J. (2015).   “Sources for and against the Posting of the   Ninety-Five Theses “ .   Lutheran Quarterly .   29 : 373–398.
• [12] Marius, Richard  (1999).  Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death . Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
• [13]  Timeline for Martin Luther, via Wikidata

Harald Sack

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Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Answering the 95 Theses Against Dispensationalism, Part 20

Thesis 86

Despite the tendency of some dispensationalist scholars to interpret the Kingdom Parables negatively, so that they view the movement from hundredfold to sixty to thirty in Matt 13:8 as marking “the course of the age,” and in Matt 13:31-33 “the mustard seed refers to the perversion of God’s purpose in this age, while the leaven refers to the corruption of the divine agency” ( J. D. Pentecost), Christ presents these parables as signifying “the kingdom of heaven” which He came to establish and which in other parables he presents as a treasure.

It has to said that the composers of these 95 Theses have not proven themselves shining examples in rightly representing the opinions of dispensationalists. A quick perusal of several authors (e.g. Pentecost, Things To Come and the commentaries on Matthew by Toussaint and by Glasscock) revealed they believed nothing of the sort about Matthew 13:8, unless, of course, it is the standard view that the four soils represent four kinds of receptors (hearts) and their attitudes to the Word. Those whose hearts receive the Word grow in understanding (Toussaint). Is this objectionable?

On the “Mustard Seed,” Ed Glasscock wisely states, “Trying to identify the birds is useless speculation, and to build doctrine from such obscure analogy is dangerous” (292). He may well be right. Pentecost’s negative view is based upon the way the Lord used “birds” in the previous parable (13:4, 19) so it cannot be brushed aside simply because it is “negative.” Perhaps Pentecost’s interpretation is wrong? Some dispensationalists disagree with it (e.g. Toussaint and Glasscock). Christian interpreters get it wrong sometimes. What one must ask is whether they provide any decent textual and theological arguments for their view. At any rate, one would not expect to be at the pointed end of a “thesis” just because certain brethren didn’t like your “negative” explanation.

With respect to the “leaven” in Matthew 13:33, before complaining about the negativity of dispensationalists, it would be salutary for these objectors to at least think seriously about three things. First, they might think about the fact that “the kingdom of heaven” in Matthew 13 is depicted by Jesus as containing evil (13:19, 36-42). Second, “leaven” definitely has its share of negative connotations in the OT (Exod. 12:15, 19; Lev. 2:11, 6:17; Deut. 16:4; Amos 4:4-5), and these continue unabated into the NT (Matt. 16:6, 1 Cor. 5:6-7, Gal. 5:9). Only here are we supposed to put a positive spin on it. But why? Doesn’t a “negative” interpretation make sense? Granted, it doesn’t do much to support the postmillennialism of many on the Nicene Council. Nor does it help those who hate dispensationalism. But surely the burden of proof is on those who do not believe “leaven” in Matthew 13:33 is to be interpreted negatively!

In the third place, it is usual to ask “how would the first hearers have understood it?” Well, they were God-fearing Jews. How do you think they would have viewed the reference to leaven?

Somebody is reading “the gospel” into a context where it does not belong. The Parable of the Leaven (which. remember, is “hidden” in the bread) illustrates the negative aspects of the Kingdom (13:4-7,19-22, 28-29, 48) prior to the Second Coming (Matt. 13:39-43, 49-50). The sanguine interpretation of the kingdom as always containing nothing but good, which seems to be at the heart of this thesis, is based, we have to say it, on a slovenly exegesis of the chapter. If the dispensational interpretations are wrong they must be demonstrated to be such. I have not yet come across a convincing counter to this view in any non-dispensational exegesis of these passages.

Thesis 87

Despite dispensationalism’s historic argument for cultural withdrawal by claiming that we should not “polish brass on a sinking ship” ( J. V. McGee) and that “God sent us to be fishers of men, not to clean up the fish bowl” (Hal Lindsey), the New Testament calls Christians to full cultural engagement in “exposing the works of darkness” (Eph 5:11) and bringing “every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:4-5).

The rhetorical flourishes of McGee and Lindsey are just that. The fact is that many dispensationalists have been notable for their engagement of the culture, especially through inner-city missions, etc. Some ministries seek to equip young believers in worldview analysis (notably David Noebel’s “Summit Ministries”). John MacArthur and others have spoken out on many cultural issues.

But the gist of the complaint is that Christians are called to “full cultural engagement.” Presumably dispensationalists are guilty of ignoring Ephesians 5:11 and 2 Corinthians 10:5 more than their Reformed counterparts? Perhaps we should all drop what we’re doing and start counting noses? Like the Sheep and the Goats, we could have dispensationalists on the right hand and the non-dispensationalists on the left (or just the reverse if the Nicene Council are doing the counting!).

In all seriousness it can hardly be a litmus test of the scriptural pedigree of a system whether more or less of its adherents are engaging culture. For one thing, there would have to be agreement on what that phrase means. And anyway, the verses cited do not tell us any more than to engage the world as good witnesses to our profession (Eph. 5:11), with a fully thought-out Christian worldview (2 Cor. 5:10). That most Christians, of whatever persuasion, fail dismally in the former and are clueless about the latter hardly makes these verses suitable goads for one set of believers to use against another. Paul wrote them so that we would all become less world-like and more Christ-like, whether we engage culture or not.

Thesis 88

Despite dispensationalism’s practical attempts to oppose social and moral evils, by its very nature it cannot develop a long-term view of social engagement nor articulate a coherent worldview because it removes God’s law from consideration which speaks to political and cultural issues.

Most dispensationalists would say that the Law (meaning here the Ten Commandments) is not a rule of life that the Christian is under. The Church is not a theocratic government. I have already briefly commented on the relation between the Law and the Christian under Thesis 18. Some pertinent material from a response to a recent interlocutor on this subject follows:

For example, how do we know that stealing or adultery is wrong? Simple, we go to Scripture (Exod. 20:14-15 in the OT ; Rom. 13:9 in the NT ). Why is it wrong? I answer, because these commandments reflect God’s own character (e.g., He is truthful, just, faithful, etc.), and as such they possess normative moral authority over a Christian. Thus, if one is to be “conformed to the image of Christ” he will be conformed more and more to the Decalogue. This is important to notice since the Law cannot regulate behavior as a “rule of faith.” This is why I stress the internal function of the Law (love) and not the external function. Thus understood, “the law is a spiritual guide.” The Law as an external standard has absolutely no authority over the Christian (e.g. Gal. 2:16, 19; 3:1-3, 11-12). Have you noticed how Paul employs the Commandments (though not the Sabbath) in his Epistles? Look, for instance, at Ephesians 6:1-3. See how the Apostle uses the Sixth Commandment to reinforce the normative force of his injunction for children to obey their parents. Again, in Romans 13:8-10 can one see how Paul enjoins Christian love by referring to the Law! This is because the Ten Commandments (well, nine of them) are Divine disclosures of ethical norms based on the attributes of God.

We do not need to believe the Law is a rule of life for the Christian to engage in politics and dialog with the culture. We have the Triune God and His perfections, plus the commands of the NT to instruct us. However, I do not wish to evade the charge of the lack of a dispensationalist worldview, (off-target as this particular one is). Indeed, I wish to redirect the charge and hop on to my soapbox with it upon my lips.

The sad fact is that most dispensationalists (the vast majority) are guilty of not developing a dispensationalist worldview. In fact most would say that they don’t need to because dispensationalism is not a full-orbed system of theology. It just corrects Reformed theology at points in ecclesiology and (especially) eschatology. Dispensationalists are usually content to hang on to the apron-strings of Reformed theologians in every area save these two. This is why one often finds no fresh thinking by dispensationalists in areas like apologetics, worldview, or ethics. And except for those few who have embraced the thinking of Cornelius Van Til, there is a dogged reliance upon natural theology which pervades the works of dispensationalist’s writing on these subjects. Not until dispensationalists stop seeing their theology in this myopic way will things change.

But having said all that, I do not believe the problem is with dispensational theology, but with those who believe it who are guilty of not developing it on its own principles in every area.

Thesis 89

Despite the dispensationalists’ charge that every non-dispensational system “lends itself to liberalism with only minor adjustments” (John Walvoord), it is dispensationalism itself which was considered modernism at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The best I can come up with is “Eh??” For those who earlier wished to enlighten us about the researches of the later Wittgenstein (Thesis 35) it is disappointing to see them glide so effortlessly into the fallacy of equivocation. Perhaps the combined Doctors on the Nicene Council can produce one example of a true dispensationalist who was a theological liberal cum modernist. Over to them.

Paul Henebury Bio

Paul Martin Henebury is a native of Manchester, England and a graduate of London Theological Seminary and Tyndale Theological Seminary (MDiv, PhD). He has been a Church-planter, pastor and a professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics. He was also editor of the Conservative Theological Journal (suggesting its new name, Journal of Dispensational Theology , prior to leaving that post). He is now the President of Telos School of Theology .

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Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense.

( ESV , Proverbs 19:11)

Fresh Breeze

Luther’s top ten theses, although it is hard to believe, only a very small portion of evangelicals have actually read them. here are number 1, number number 27, number 36, and seven more..

14 OCTOBER 2017 · 15:00 CET

Let me start today by asking a question.

Have you read Luther’s 95 theses?

Although it is hard to believe, only a very small portion of evangelicals have actually read them. However, I confess that this fact is not all that surprising. After all, it is quite a tedious theological document with a few moments of intellectual and spiritual brilliance.

The 95 theses are nothing in comparison with Luther’s later masterpieces such as ‘The Bondage of the Will’ (1525) or ‘The Minor Catechism’ (1529).

All I want to do in this week’s article is to quote my top ten theses from Luther’s list of ninety-five. I hope it may go some way to helping you all to sitting down to read them yourselves.

So, let me hand you over to my friend, Martin. Enjoy!

TOP TEN THESES

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said: Repent (Matthew 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

Thesis # 27

They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.

Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.

Thesis # 37

Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.

Thesis # 54

Injury is done to the Word of God when, in the same sermon, an equal or larger amount of time is devoted to indulgences than to the Word.

Thesis # 62

The true treasure of the church is the most holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.

Thesis # 72

Let him who guards against lust and licence of the indulgence preachers be blessed.

Thesis # 82

Why does the Pope not empty Purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church? The former reason would be most just; the latter is most trivial.

Thesis # 86

Why does not the Pope, whose wealth is greater today that the wealth of the richest Crassus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers?

Thesis # 94

Christians should be exhorted to be diligent in following Christ, their Head, through penalties, death and hell.

Will Graham

Published in: Evangelical Focus - Fresh Breeze - Luther’s Top Ten Theses

Thesis 86 – 95 Reflections

86. Again, “Why does the pope, whose riches today are more substantial than the richest Crassus, not simply construct the Basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of the poor faithful?”

I grew up in Minneapolis, MN. My favorite sports teams since childhood are all things Minnesota: the Twins, the Timberwolves (I was so excited when they first came to Minnesota!), the Gophers, the North Stars (still a little bitter about that one), the Wild when they came to replace the North Stars, and the Vikings. Now, truth be told, I’m not a huge sports fan. I follow many of these teams out of convenience. I don’t care to know who’s truly good and worth following, so I keep it simple. I’ve always been bothered by the absurd amount of money that flows for the sake of sporting events. At approximately $75 billion, the NFL would be the 71 st largest country in the world in Gross Domestic Product, ahead of 120 other countries. Certainly nothing to sneeze at! That’s why I got very annoyed when the Vikings demanded a new stadium, in partnership with the public taxpayers of Minnesota, or they would consider moving to a new city. They got their stadium, and it’s marvelous, but why did a franchise of what would be the 71 st largest country in the world need that assistance?!? The stadium itself cost around $1.1 billion. The Vikings were worth an estimated $1 billion at the time, and their owner, Zygi Wilf, was estimated to be around there at the time, as well. Needless to say, between the rich Vikings, the owner, and the rich partners associated with all of them, they could’ve self-funded the stadium, but instead, the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis contributed almost half of the cost, whether the taxpayers wanted to or not.

The same argument is being made by the laity here according to Martin Luther regarding the funding of Saint Peter’s Basilica. If it’s that important to the Pope, and it seems that the Pope is doing quite well, why can’t the Pope simply take care of it rather than adding what amounted to a salvation tax upon the people? I have no idea as to whether or not Pope Leo X could personally afford such an undertaking. The papacy, as far as I understand it, was in reality rather strapped for cash, but the prominent appearance of regality was enough for the laity to assume otherwise.

The giving of money to the Church for any reason ought to be Spirit led, between God and the giver, for the purposes of advancing the Kingdom. We, as those already forgiven, already welcomed into God’s eternal presence, give out of the gratitude of what God has given us and we give out of a missional heart, one that wants to see others know the great Good News as we have heard it. It is a much different commitment to give out of this gratitude than to give out of the fear of punishment unless you purchase an indulgence. This commitment, out of the joy of the heart, does not feel like work, does not feel like suffering, because through such giving you spread the joy and freedom of the Gospel.

Yours in Christ,

Pastor Bryan Simmons

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Tiger of the week photographer carla williams ’86’s thesis is back in the spotlight.

For her senior thesis, Carla Williams ’86 mounted an exhibition of 74 photographic self-portraits. Her adviser Emmet Gowin remembers the show as perhaps the best thesis he advised in his 36 years on the Princeton faculty. “There are images here which are painful, fearful, proud, strong, humorous, sensuous, tender and even faintly frightening,” Gowin wrote in 1986 of the body of work Williams produced in her dorm room — a 1901 Hall single her senior year — with a secondhand Speed Graphic 4x5 camera. 

Williams went on to craft a career as a scholar, teacher, and merchant of photography, but her college work didn’t gain a wider audience until it was published last year as a monograph with the title  Tender , which later won the First PhotoBook award at the 2023 Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Awards. Shortly after publication last fall, the images were  exhibited once again  — for the first time since her Princeton thesis show — at Higher Pictures Generation, a gallery in Brooklyn, New York.

Williams didn’t take art classes in high school in Los Angeles, where she grew up, but she enjoyed a course in Italian Renaissance art and applied to take a photography course the next semester.

“I had an interview with Emmet,” Williams remembers, “and from the moment I stepped into the basement of 185 Nassau Street, I knew. It was the smell of it, the sound of it. By the time I got to the classroom and office area, I wanted in.”

Williams started making self-portraits in her first photography class, and she initially focused on the genre for practical reasons. “I wanted to learn how to use the large-format viewfinder on the camera,” she says, “so I thought, ‘Let me use myself as a subject until I get up to speed.’”

But there was a deeper rationale for her project. “I was a young Black woman,” she says. “I was curious to see my likeness. I was taking Peter Bunnell’s History of Photography course, and I wasn’t represented in what I was seeing.” 

Williams did take some of the works she studied in the course as models, including Alfred Stieglitz’s portraits of Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Weston’s portraits of female nudes. She says she was also influenced by images of naked women in the collection of  Penthouse  and  Playboy  magazines her father kept in their home. 

 “Once she began to take self-portraits, her personhood, her sensibility started to really come out,” Gowin says of Williams. “It was totally uncommon in that era for women to take themselves as the central subject of everything they did. She was able to sustain a level of invention and beauty that’s still astonishing.”   

And, he adds, her “willingness to accept chance and imperfection” in the photographs themselves, “to take what you get and make the most of it, is a really strong characteristic. It made her work more personal.”

Williams earned an MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico after graduating from Princeton, but she never marketed her work aggressively. She was uncomfortable with the commercial aspects of the art world, and, she says, “In the early 1990s, Black photographers were only just starting to be shown.”  

Instead, Williams worked as a curator of photography, first at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles and then at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. In 2002, she co-authored  The Black Female Body: A Photographic History , a foundational work on the topic, with curator and scholar Deborah Willis. Williams taught photography for five years at the Rochester Institute of Technology, but in 2014 she moved to New Orleans to open a store featuring fine and decorative arts by Black artists and designers.

“There was no conscious moment of feeling done” as a photographer, Williams says. “It just wasn’t my focus. At that point I had no plans to pursue photography.”    

After Williams had to close her store at the start of the pandemic, she scanned all of the photographs in her house, created a website, and put some of the images on her store’s Instagram page. One of her customers, the photographer Paul Mpagi Sepuya, noticed the self-portraits on Instagram and recommended them to publisher Paul Schiek, who suggested Williams put out a book of her work. 

Through Schiek, Williams was introduced to the gallery Higher Pictures, which proposed restaging Williams’ senior thesis exhibition. “It delighted me that someone else was thinking about the show besides me,” Williams says. “I had my trepidations about some of the images holding up, but I trusted the gallerists.”

Gowin came to the November opening of the show, which was composed mostly of original prints from the thesis exhibition with the same presentation and sequencing. “The first thing we said was that it was better than we had thought,” Williams says. “It was a revelation that it had stood the test of time. I was quite delighted.”

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THE DISPENSATIONAL MYSTERY

Thesis #86 of 95-The current age is not the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies in a spiritualized form but in terms of salvation history is a dispensation established to recruit Gentiles to the Messianic community. Thesis #87 of 95-The Gentile's unexpected, and according to Paul "unnatural" incorporation into the messianic community was to create "the fellowship pertaining to the secret (plan) hidden in God". Although fore-ordained by the Father, this augmentation resulted from the refusal of God's first-choice nation to acknowledge their Messiah even after His resurrection and ascension to glory. BIBLICAL REFERENCES Eph3:9-10 (Paul), shedding light on the administration (or fellowship) of the secret (plan) that in previous ages had been hidden in God; so that the multifaceted nature of His wisdom might become known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. Acts18:6 But when (the Jewish leaders) resisted and blasphemed, (Paul) shook out his garments and said to them, "Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean, so from now on I will go to the Gentiles." Rom11:11 (The Jews) did not stumble so as to fall, did they? Far from it! For as a result of their rejection salvation has come to the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy! Rom11:16-17a If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are as well. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you (Gentiles), being a wild olive, were grafted in among them and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. COMMENTS The mysteries set out in these two related theses were the focal point of my first book "Fellowship of the Secret". It resulted from what I am clear was a revelation from the Holy Spirit. But it was the Apostle Paul who first disclosed such mysteries. All, humanly speaking

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Elements of the Jewish faith tradition, including Torah observance and other Jewish practice, appear to be increasingly common among believers in Jesus. This development is troubling many Christians who, for doctrinal and practical reasons, believe it is heretical and brings division within the body of Christ (ecclesia). The objective of this research is to critically examine the biblical case against making a distinction between Jews and Gentiles within the ecclesia, considering the narrative of Acts 10:1–11:18, 15:1–28:31, and a key metaphor in Ephesians 2:14–16. Does the text validate or refute the notion that the ecclesia should make a distinction between its Jewish and its Gentile members? Three specific problems were addressed in five research papers for this compilation thesis, each employing methods of biblical exegesis and logical argumentation. The three research problems addressed were: i) the interpretation of Peter’s vision; ii) the evaluation of three key texts which appear to refute the theory of intra-ecclesial Jew-Gentile distinction; and iii) the example of the very early ecclesia with regard to making distinction between Jews and Gentiles. Peter’s vision, in Acts 10:9–16, was shown to have a single meaning: Gentiles have been purified by God. Its message had nothing to do with unclean foods, so the popular Christian interpretation that the vision signalled the termination of Jewish dietary laws (and the Mosaic Law in general) is not substantiated. In Acts 11:12, the Spirit told Peter to accompany Cornelius’ messengers without dispute. There is no sound basis for interpreting the Spirit’s command to mean that Peter should go, ‘making no distinction’ between the Gentiles of Cornelius’ household and Peter’s Jewish kinsmen. Acts 11:12, therefore, does not eradicate the prevailing distinction between Jews and Gentiles nor the theological significance thereof. Similarly, Peter’s comment that God made ‘no distinction’ between Gentile and Jewish Jesus believers when he purified their hearts by faith (Acts 15:9) cannot be generalised to mean that the ecclesia is an undifferentiated mix of Jews and Gentiles. The context, including direct speech of Peter and James, constrains the interpretation to a restricted, soteriological sense: there is ‘no distinction’ between them in terms of how they are saved. These findings are further validated throughout the remainder of Acts, where the leaders of the ecclesia, especially Paul, teach and practise making distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus by their varied obligations to Torah. Finally, Paul’s metaphor for the ecclesia in Ephesians 2:15, ‘one new man,’ is examined to determine which of two contradictory interpretations he intended: homogenous uniformity or compound unity. The certain outcome is the latter: the ecclesia comprises Jesus believing Jews and Gentiles without compromising Jewish particularity or heritage. Such ‘unity with distinction’ of former enemies is achieved by Christ without erasing those distinctions, and Messianic Jews form a bridge between Israel and the nations. The studies conclude that the text and teaching of Acts 10:1–11:18, 15:1–28:31, and Ephesians 2:14–16 continue the biblical norm for making distinction between Jews and Gentiles within the ecclesia. Thus, the biblical case against making a distinction between Jews and Gentiles within the ecclesia is flawed. Major implications of the conclusion include doctrines concerning the identity and election of Israel, the Christian church’s relation to Israel, the structure of the church (as a twofold unity composed of Jews and Gentiles), and the varied applicability of Torah (and Jewish practice) for Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus. Making distinction between Jews and Gentiles in the ecclesia results in: i) a clear and hermeneutically consistent eschatology; ii) reconciliation of seemingly self-contradicting actions and writings of Paul; iii) protection of Gentile believers in Jesus from unnecessarily seeking to become Jewish; and iv) a unity of Jewish and Gentile believers as complementary (yet distinct) parts of the whole body of Christ, each a blessing to the other in fulfilment of God’s promise to Abraham.

David Rudolph

Serge Ruzer

Duke University Dissertation

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