and in particular the ways in which it undermined the centrality of grace and the finality and sufficiency of the work of Christ for sinners.

If you are interested in pursuing this theme in greater detail, you can do no better than to read Thomas Tentler’s Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1977). According to Roman Catholic theology, penance is the means appointed by God to deal with sins that Christians commit after baptism. It consists of four parts: a person who has sinned and is contrite (contrition) goes to the priest and confesses (confession) his sin; the priest absolves (absolution) him and then lays upon him a temporal punishment for which he must make satisfaction.

Steven Ozment (in his book, The Age of Reform [Yale University Press]) provides this description:

“When religiously earnest people sought forgiveness for immoral behavior, they encountered a very demanding penitential system, one that provided only temporary relief, and even that with conditions attached and the threat of purgatorial suffering for unrepented sins. Full, unconditional forgiveness of sin and assurance of salvation were utterly foreign concepts to medieval theology and religious practice. Effective removal of religious guilt and anxiety this side of eternity would have meant the end of medieval religious institutions, and advocates of this-worldly perfection were roundly condemned during the Middle Ages” (216).

As Tentler explains, “one knows he is forgiven because he is willing to perform the overwhelming penitential exercises demanded by the church. The consolation of this system lies in its difficulty” (14). Whereas confession and absolution in medieval Catholicism secured forgiveness from the eternal guilt (culpa) of sin, there was still the temporal guilt that called for punishment (poena) and suffering in purgatory. Tentler explains:

“According to the medieval theology of penance, a sinner must not only be absolved from his guilt but must also pay for his sins in the form of some kind of punishment. Purgatory is the middle place of destination for people who die absolved of guilt but with an outstanding debt of temporal punishment. Not until the expiatory fires of purgatory have ‘satisfied’ this debt will they enter heaven [again, in a real sense, according to this view it is not ultimately the suffering of Christ Jesus that secures one’s place in heaven, but one’s own suffering].

Obviously absolution from guilt is far more important than remission of punishment. Nevertheless, indulgences, which are ways of reducing the punishment owed for sin, aroused controversy in the sixteenth century because Christians retained a lively interest in that intermediate suffering place and wanted to avoid its worst or, if possible, all of its pains. And that is one reason why penance – the work of ‘satisfaction’ for sin that the priest assigns the penitent in confession [notice again that it is the sinner, not the Lord Jesus, who makes ‘satisfaction’] – is vital to the practice of forgiveness” (318).

Ozment agrees, explaining that

“in the final stage of the traditional sacrament, priestly absolution transformed this eternal penalty, justly imposed by God on the sinner, into a manageable temporal penalty, that is, something the penitent could do already in this life to lessen his future punishment; for example, special prayers, fasts, almsgiving, retreats, and pilgrimages. If such works of satisfaction were neglected, the penitent could expect to burn for his laxness after death in purgatory” (216-17).

Although the granting of indulgences was quite old in the RCC, it was refined by the papal bull Unigenitus of 1343 which set forth the treasury of merits. Thompson explains: “It was proposed in that bull that the Catholic Church holds as a treasure the infinitely copious merits of Christ and of all the saints – merits far in excess of any that they themselves may have needed – and that the church may dispense these merits in the inexhaustible treasury to remit poena, that is, the recompense owed by living Christians” (Humanists and Reformers: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation, 395).

What this reveals is that Luther’s proclamation of full and final forgiveness of all guilt of all sin by grace alone, through faith alone, in the finished work of Christ alone, and all for the glory of God alone, was an overwhelming liberating and irresistibly appealing message to an oppressed and spiritually enslaved populace. Ozment sums up:

“The essential condition of the Reformation’s success was aggrieved hearts and minds; a perceived need for reform and determination to grasp it are the only things without which it can be said categorically said there would have been no Reformation” (204).

“The failure of the late medieval church to provide a theology and spirituality that could satisfy and discipline religious hearts and minds was the most important religious precondition of the Reformation” (208).

This, in the final analysis, was the spark that lit the forest fire that we know as the Protestant Reformation.

Article: Dr. Sam Storms – Ten Things You Should Know About the Protestant Reformation (original source October 31st, is the 499th anniversary of the launch of the Protestant Reformation. It was on this day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg as a protest against the abuse of the sale of indulgences. So today we look at ten things that everyone should know about the Protestant Reformation.

(1) According to church historian Philip Schaff, “The Reformation of the sixteenth century is, next to the introduction of Christianity, the greatest event in history. It marks the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern times. Starting from religion, it gave, directly or indirectly, a mighty impulse to every forward movement, and made Protestantism the chief propelling force in the history of modern civilization” (VII:1).

(2) There were many indirect causes of the Reformation, some of which include the following. The Renaissance (lit., “rebirth”) of the 14th and 15th centuries cannot be underestimated in terms of its impact on the reformation. The beginning of the Renaissance is generally dated @ 1300 a.d. and is most often associated with developments in Italy (and then by extension to other European countries). Some see it lasting well into the later years of the sixteenth century. Renaissance Humanism was characterized by several factors. There was the spirit of individualism as over against the emphasis on corporate identity in the medieval period. In the middle ages people often yielded their identity to institutions such as the church, the state, the feudal society, the guild, the university, and the monastic order. With the Renaissance came an increased sense of individuality and a focus on personal uniqueness and self-determination.

There was also a growing anthropocentrism (man-centeredness) as over against the ecclesiocentrism (church-centeredness) of the medieval period. Not God and the heavenly world but man and this world became the focus of intellectual and cultural efforts.

We should also note the cultural achievements which nurtured a sense of self-worth, dignity, etc., not tied to or dependent on the church. This period experienced a surge of activity in painting, music, poetry, other forms of literary production, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, law, ethics, etc. The “rebirth” in view with the use of the term Renaissance was specifically rebirth of classicism, i.e., the cultural archetypes of classical antiquity. There was in the Renaissance a virtual reverence for classical culture and a concerted effort to reproduce it in every way possible.

The Renaissance also witnessed an emphasis on a return to the sources of classical antiquity which yielded more accurate texts of the ancient writings, several of which undermined the church’s authority, such as the exposure of the Donation of Constantine (by Lorenzo Valla, 1405-57) and the Isidorian Decretals as forgeries. This combined with an emphasis on the original text of Scripture available to all, which served to expose the discontinuities between the NT church and the medieval RCC.

(3) One cannot understand the Reformation apart from an acknowledgment of the world-changing impact of the German, Johann Gutenberg (1390-1468) and his development of printing with movable type. Says Stephen Ozment,

“as Luther also recognized, the printing press made it possible for a little mouse like Wittenberg to roar like a lion across the length and breadth of Europe. By the end of the fifteenth century printing presses existed in over two hundred cities and towns. An estimated six million books had been printed and half of the thirty thousand titles were on religious subjects. More books were printed in the forty years between 1460 and 1500 than had been produced by scribes and monks throughout the entire Middle Ages. . . . Between 1518 and 1524, the crucial years of the Reformation’s development, the publication of books in Germany alone increased seven-fold. . . . Between 1517 and 1520, Luther wrote approximately thirty tracts, which were distributed in 300,000 printed copies” (199).

It is little wonder, then, that Luther described the new art of printing as “God’s highest and extremest act of grace, whereby the business of the Gospel is driven forward.” Continue reading →