Good News: You Can’t Buy Your Salvation
On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther sent what has come to be called the Ninety-Five Theses to the elector and bishop of Mainz, Albert von Brandenburg (1490–1545). This act is commonly regarded as the beginning of the Reformation, which is without a doubt the most important event in the last millennium of church history. Luther’s document raised serious theological issues with a vital element of late medieval piety, namely, the practice of selling papal indulgences. These indulgences, the Roman church claimed, granted remission of punishment for sin in this life and in purgatory. The key preacher hawking these remissions in Mainz was the Dominican friar Johann Tetzel (1465–1519). Luther took direct aim at him when he declared in thesis 27, “They preach vanity who say that the soul flies out of purgatory as soon as the money thrown into the chest rattles,” and, in thesis 35, that to preach thus was to “preach like a heathen.” Hoping to be saved through the purchase of one of these p...