Wednesday, January 29, 2020

95 theses

Everybody knows about the 95 theses, but for some reason I'd never read more than a sampling of them. They're short: have a look for yourself.

From what I've read, even the oddest sounding ones are based on something that was really happening at the time. The official doctrine might have claimed the contrary, but the peddlers were using the "money clinks, soul flies out of purgatory" spiel.

Some of them are listed separately but are clearly clauses of a single claim.

Some are clearly not quite right: "Christians are to be taught that the pope, in granting indulgences, needs and thus desires their devout prayer more than their money." Given what this (and previous popes) were like ("Let us enjoy the papacy since God has given it to us"), that is most kindly described as wishful thinking. Luther's later description of the pope as anti-Christ was perhaps a bit abusive, but not without some warrant.

Others read a little strangely, such as #93.

Overall, I'm not sure how many of these would be found objectionable by modern Catholic theologians. OTOH, Quite a few species of Protestants would object to something like #7: "God remits guilt to no one unless at the same time he humbles him in all things and makes him submissive to the vicar, the priest."

Probably if the papacy of the era had not been so deeply invested in claiming "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth" for themselves, the whole quarrel would have evaporated without a trace. Of course the indulgence racket wouldn't have gotten going in the first place if the papacy had been less over-reaching, so maybe that's a tautology.

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