Martin Luther has been called “the last medieval man and the first modern one.” Though raised in the distant medieval world of witches and plagues and demons, he has profoundly shaped our own modern world.

Someone once asked Dr. Martin E. Marty, the great church historian, “If Luther were alive today, what would he be writing theses about?”

I find myself wondering if Luther would still be in hot debate with Roman Catholicism today. I realize that the Catholic language of sacrifice in the Mass has remained much the same as it was in Luther’s time. That bothered Luther a great deal. Today’s Catholic understanding of the Mass, however, really isn’t much different than what one would find in most Protestant Communion services. At least, there seems to be a whiff of such an understanding. Perhaps the Roman Catholic Church has simply articulated the message clearer than was understood before.

Furthermore, observing the modern Catholic teachings on Paul’s Letters to the Romans and the Galatians, the Catholic Church pays due attention to the roles of faith and grace, something again central to Luther’s teaching. I think Luther would have been happily smiling at what Catholicism teaches regarding those things today. I don’t think today he would have so great a problem as he did in 1517.

Plus, Vatican Council II truly reformed the Roman Church to a degree that the Council of Trent did not. Trent was a strict lock-down against Luther and the Swiss Reformers. It took 150 years for the Church to cool down. And why not? Luther had led to the fragmentation of the Western Church.

Will there ever be a reunited Western Church? Can the old wounds be healed to the point of reunification within the Western Church? It certainly does not seem probable or even plausible.

What we now have in the western world, indeed globally, are national churches and even independent churches with absolutely no eye towards a central authority within the Church. There is a reason that the Church of England is called by that name. The African Methodist-Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church has its own rich culture and history that has never known connection with the church in Rome.

These church denominations at least have dioceses that have some accountability and authority as a group. The non-denominational or independent churches, however, are (in many cases) strictly autonomous and without submission or accountability to anyone. Once a group or an individual has experienced that type of independence, it is difficult imagining them returning to a place of submission to a hierarchy.

Can there at least be meaningful dialogue and fruitful cooperation? Most assuredly, it happens already. Especially with Pope Francis who has reached out to Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Anglicans, Judaism and Islam. Francis has championed forgiveness with as much fervor as Martin Luther did. That may be Luther’s longest legacy—the triumph of forgiveness.

Luther also stands as the greatest single factor in increasing the value of the individual. What eventually emerges from Luther and the Enlightenment Period is a new kind of individual. That made democratic government possible. The role of the single voter, the single voice, is critical to modern democracies. This, of course, is under assault in our time with the cacophonous voices of the corporations raised in opposition to the individual. If Luther were alive now, he would nail a new 95 Theses to the doors of CitiGroup.

Along with that, Luther contributed to the rising status of women. Sure, he was patriarchal but we must remember not to judge people outside the context of their time and—for his day—Luther was progressive. He simply assumed that girls, along with boys, should be taught the catechism. In that regard, he anticipated co-education by a couple of hundred years.
He insisted that marriage was just as important a vocation as monasticism, and in that he accorded greater status to a woman’s role in marriage. Like the samurai of Japan, he believed in the authority of the environment. Women were certainly superior in the home. And Luther was married to and proud of a woman (the former nun, Katarina von Bora) who was, in effect, the treasurer, manager, and administrator of a rather complex business—the informal boarding house that the Luthers kept in the old monastery.

Speaking of Luther’s concept of vocation, he highlighted the connection between the gospel of forgiveness and vocation and, if that connection were understood properly, guilt and worry would diminish. Luther taught that each day is a new start. We are not shackled by what was nor are haunted by our future. Again, Luther and Francis would be teaching from the same viewpoint.

Finally, Luther and Pope Francis both teach us not to try to gain God on God’s own level but on the human level. We see God as in a cloud chamber of particle physics—not seen directly, but seen in effects on the world around us. As Luther said, “we must be content to see, not the face, but the hind parts of God.”
 

Reformation Day is celebrated every October 31 in Lutheran and many of other Protestant Churches across the globe. It is often commemorated as the day when the Western Church (the Roman Catholic Church) was fragmented again. Whereas the A.D./C.E. 1054 split between the Eastern and Western Churches remained relatively stagnant for five centuries, the fracture of the Reformation was a seismic event whose aftershocks are still felt today.

It began so innocently. Dr. Martin Luther, professor of theology at Wittenberg University and Augustinian friar, was disappointed, even disgusted, by something that was going on locally in Germany. He did not intend to rupture the Church, he only intended to correct an abuse within it.

Luther has been called “the best thing and the worst thing to happen to the Church.” You may see why.

In 1517, Archbishop Albert of Mainz had finished borrowed vast sums of money to pay for his church positions. He was a Prince Elector of Mainz which means he was one of the German princes who actually elected the Holy Roman Emperor. [Voltaire said “The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman.” It was actually a German Empire until Napoleon finished it off in 1806. Yeah, Napoleon.] But then he bought the position of Archbishop of Magdeburg. This was a common occurrence in the Middle Ages and was the topic of furious debate. It was called “simony” from the Acts of the Apostles (8:9-24) account of Simon Magus attempting to buy the power of exorcism.

Not only did he buy his position as Archbishop of Magdeburg in 1513, the next year he bought the office of Archbishop of Main even though this was prohibited by canon law. In 1518, he became a cardinal at the age of 28.

He owed Jakob Fugger, a German mining merchant and banker, over 20,000 gold ducats for the purchases of his elevations. To repay his debts, he petitioned Pope Leo X (di Medici) to sell indulgences in Mainz.

Indulgences were completely legal according to law and doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church. According to the Roman Catechism, an indulgence is a “remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian who is duly disposed gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the Church which, as the minister of redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and the saints." In other words, indulgences got you out of acts of penance. They were usually not sold but were dispensed for benefits and actions benefiting the church.

Enter Johann Tetzel. Tetzel was a Dominican friar who had also been a Grand Inquisitor in Poland. He was known for selling indulgences for money. This was the one who would be used by Albert of Mainz to raise money—through the sale of indulgences—to repay Jakob Fugger.

Tetzel, however, was not just selling indulgences—which was not beyond the acceptance of church—for getting out of penance. Tetzel began to sell indulgences as a guarantee against future sins. As in going to confession and, before the priest can pronounce penance, waving the indulgence through the screen and sneering at the priest.

Even more, it became a means, Tetzel proclaimed, of getting out of purgatory early. Tetzel had a chant that sounded something like, “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!” Mothers would buy indulgences to rescue dead children from purgatory or even for children who died unbaptized who were supposed to be in limbo.

Prince Frederick the Wise and Prince George of Saxony refused to allow such sales to go on in their provinces but the masses would simply travel Mainz to obtain the indulgences. Such people believed that these certificates granted them forgiveness of sins and began refusing to go to confessions.

Martin Luther reacted. As a professor of theology, he was incensed by the improper use of such instruments and for “buying with coin what God has already freely given.” Furthermore, it was being taught that the veneration of relics would bestow release of penance and even forgive sins.

Luther’s own prince, Frederick the Wise, was said to have had 19,000 relics. Relics which ranged from a vial of the Virgin Mary’s breast milk to a nail from the cross of Christ to straw from the manger of Jesus. There were so many frauds that Luther was said to have remarked, “I have seen five shin-bones from the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem, enough nails from the cross to make a suit of armor and enough beams from the cross to build a ship!”

The grace made available to humanity through the offices and sacraments of the Church were precious to Luther, too precious to sit silently while they were being mishandled and abused.

On the night before All Saints’ Day—on the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg—Martin Luther nailed a placard with 95 statements on indulgences, simony and the wealth of Church officials. It became known as The 95 Theses. On the same day, Luther mailed copies to Albert of Mainz and his own superior, the Bishop of Brandenburg.

It was never in Luther’s mind to break with the Church or even to stop the sale of indulgences. What he wanted was a wholesome, scholarly debate. What he got was the Protestant Revolution.

Keep that in mind. It really should not even be called the Reformation. Only the Roman Catholic Church could reform itself. Once Luther was excommunicated and was, effectively, outside the Church, all that was left was revolution.

End of Part One.