Five hundred and seven years ago, on the day we’ve come to know as Halloween, Martin Luther changed the course of history.
The German Catholic priest and theology professor almost certainly had no intention of launching a movement that would turn Christendom inside-out and upside-down. But that was the outcome of a letter that he sent to Albert of Brandenburg, the local archbishop.
Enclosed in the letter was a list of 95 Theses, or theological discussion points. It has long been thought that Luther also tacked a copy of his 95 Theses onto the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg. The church door was a kind of community bulletin board. Luther apparently hoped for some public dialogue.
It’s not true, by the way, that local trick-or-treaters on that October 31 said, “Forget about knocking on Dr. Luther’s door. This year he’s giving away theses instead of Reese’s.”
Throughout his ministry, Luther had devoted himself with laser focus to one primary question: How can a sinful person ever get right with God?
Even though he was a loyal Catholic, he wasn’t sure the Church at Rome had embraced the right answer to that all-important question.
For years, Luther had tormented himself (quite literally) in an effort to live up to God’s standards of moral perfection. He never let himself off the hook. He confessed his sins up to three hours a day. He fasted obsessively, endangering his health. He slept outdoors. He whipped his own bare flesh.
The result? He didn’t feel any closer to God. Nor did he feel any love for God.
He later wrote, “My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him. Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather I hated and murmured against him.”
Consider for a moment how astonishing it is for a monk to admit his hatred of the Almighty.
While preaching through the New Testament book of Romans, however, Luther made the transforming discovery that Christ had already fully paid off his never-ending VISA bill of sin.
It gradually dawned on him that he was free. And he was loved.
“Then I grasped the truth that the justice of God is that righteousness whereby, through grace and sheer mercy, he justifies us by faith. Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.”
Luther was never the same again.
So what brought about the 95 Theses?
Luther believed the Church was in danger of substituting God’s grace (that is, we can get right with God only through God’s own lavish generosity) for human effort (that is, we can get right with God only by means of grace plus our own best efforts). For Luther, salvation was sola gratia, “by grace alone” by means of sola fide, “faith alone.”
Things came to a head in 1517 when a popular preacher and traveling “indulgence salesman” named Johann Tetzel arrived in Luther’s neighborhood on a fundraising mission.
It was quite a gimmick. Corrupt church leaders had concluded that selling forgiveness might be an effective way to gather funds to complete the construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Tetzel’s jingle was slick: “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.” Anxious peasants were assured that their departed loved ones, who were allegedly languishing in the purifying fires of purgatory, could be kickstarted on their way to heaven if only someone purchased an “indulgence” here in this world.
“Listen to the voices of your dear dead relatives and friends,” Tetzel cried, “beseeching you and saying, ‘Pity us, pity us. We are in dire torment from which you can redeem us with a pittance.’” And you thought there were no televangelists before the invention of TV.
For Luther, the last straw came when he learned that Tetzel had fleeced some of his parishioners.
The 95 Theses actually constituted a list of respectful discussion points – Luther’s way of saying, “Let’s talk. Let’s sit down together and figure out what it means to be faithful. Where does God want us to go from here?”
He apparently went public in the hope that people of good will could actually have disagreements with each other, refusing to despise, belittle, rebuke, or denounce each other along the way.
Sadly, that’s not how things turned out. The Church quickly branded the German professor a heretic. Luther himself was not exactly a shy wallflower. He and his followers became more audacious in their pronouncements and actions. Their inevitable break with Rome led to Protestantism in its many forms, along with more than a century of bitter religious warfare.
Historians will probably debate for the next 500 years whether Luther knew what he was doing.
Looking back, he himself said that he felt as if he had been a man climbing a tower in the darkness, up a winding staircase, only to find a step missing at the top. As he plunged into the darkness, he grabbed hold of a rope that began to ring a bell – loud pealing that awoke all of Europe from spiritual slumber.
For almost half a millennium, Christians remained divided over the question of salvation to which Luther devoted most of his life.
Then, on October 31, 1999, something wonderful happened – an event which has received surprisingly little publicity.
After 30 years of thoughtful conversation – the kind of measured dialogue that would have been so welcome five centuries ago – Lutherans and Catholics released a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The two “sides” finally seemed to find each other.
The declaration affirms that people are indeed saved by grace alone by means of faith alone – but that human good works are the entirely appropriate response to such amazing grace. In other words, “We are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.”
It was a wonderful sign of hope.
If by God’s grace we choose to open our hearts and heads to each other, perhaps we won’t have to spend the next 500 years wrestling for consensus on life’s most important questions.
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