Indulgences After Luther

Indulgences have been synonymous with corruption in the Catholic Church ever since Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517. Tingle explores the nature and evolution of indulgences in the Counter Reformation and how they were used as a powerful tool of personal and institutional reform.

At the five-hundredth anniversary of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and the dawn of the Protestant movement, Indulgences: Luther, Catholicism, and the Imputation of Merit sets forth a revised theological interpretation of the Church’s practice of indulgences. Author Mary C. Moorman argues that Luther’s sola fide theology merely absolutized the very logic of indulgences which he sought to overthrow, while indulgences in their proper context remain an irreducible witness to the Church’s corporate nuptial covenant with Christ, by which penitents are drawn into deeper fellowship with the Church and the Church’s Lord. As Robert W. Shaffern, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Scranton, writes in his foreword to Indulgences, “Mary Moorman’s book joins a number of recent scholarly studies that revise substantially the old convictions about indulgences. She is mostly interested in how theological thinking about indulgences should be done today, with of course the help that patristic, medieval, and early modern authorities might lend. She brings to bear a broad range of primary and secondary sources on the issue of indulgences and constructs an impressive series of covalent images with which to understand the role of indulgences in today’s Christian Church.”

The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church which profoundly changed Europe. They advance Luther's positions against what he saw as the abuse of the practice of clergy selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates believed to reduce the temporal punishment for sins committed by the purchasers or their loved ones in purgatory. In the Theses, Luther claimed that the repentance required by Christ in order for sins to be forgiven involves inner spiritual repentance rather than merely external sacramental confession. He argued that indulgences led Christians to avoid true repentance and sorrow for sin, believing that they could forgo it by purchasing an indulgence.

"Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" by Martin Luther. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

This eBook edition of "The Ninety-five Theses" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church which profoundly changed Europe. They advance Luther's positions against what he saw as the abuse of the practice of clergy selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates believed to reduce the temporal punishment for sins committed by the purchasers or their loved ones in purgatory. In the Theses, Luther claimed that the repentance required by Christ in order for sins to be forgiven involves inner spiritual repentance rather than merely external sacramental confession. He argued that indulgences led Christians to avoid true repentance and sorrow for sin, believing that they could forgo it by purchasing an indulgence.

Did Martin Luther wield his hammer on the Wittenberg church door on October 31, 1517? Did he even post the Ninety-five Theses at all? This collection of documents sheds light on the debate surrounding Luther's actions and the timing of his writing and his request for a disputation on the indulgence issue. The primary documents in this book include the theses, their companion sermon ("A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace", 1518), a chronoloical arrangement of letters pertinent to the theses, and selections from Luther's Table Talk that address the Ninety-five Theses. A final section contains Luther's recollections, which offer today's reader the reformer's own views of the Reformation and the Ninety-five Theses.

The Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church which profoundly changed Europe. They advance Luther's positions against what he saw as the abuse of the practice of clergy selling plenary indulgences, which were certificates believed to reduce the temporal punishment for sins committed by the purchasers or their loved ones in purgatory. In the Theses, Luther claimed that the repentance required by Christ in order for sins to be forgiven involves inner spiritual repentance rather than merely external sacramental confession. He argued that indulgences led Christians to avoid true repentance and sorrow for sin, believing that they could forgo it by purchasing an indulgence.