What Makes You Right?
Merlin Carothers, author of the book Prison to Praise, had firsthand experience of what it is like to be declared righteous. During World War II, he joined the army. Anxious to get into some action, Carothers went AWOL but was caught and sentenced to five years in prison. Instead of sending him to prison, the judge told him he could serve his term by staying in the army for five years. The judge told him if he left the army before the five years ended, he would have to spend the rest of his term in prison. Carothers was released from the army before the five-year term had passed, so he returned to the prosecutor’s office to find out where he would be spending the remainder of his sentence. To his surprise and delight, Carothers was told that he had received a full pardon from President Truman. The prosecutor explained: “That means your record is completely clear. Just as if you had never gotten involved with the law.”
How many essentially different religions are there in the world? The preceding chapter has already shown that there are not a thousand (Meyer, Grosses Konversationslexikon, 6th ed., XVI, 784), not even four, but only two essentially different religions: the religion of the Law, that is, the endeavor to reconcile God through man’s own works, and the religion of the Gospel, that is, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, belief wrought through the Gospel by the Holy Ghost that we have a gracious God through the reconciliation already effected by Christ, and not because of our own works (χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου).
By the late Middle Ages, indulgences had become a central part of piety for many people in the Western church. It was also a useful means of financial support for a cash-strapped papacy, so that indulgence preaching was labeled a sacrum negotium (holy business). When Leo X (1475–1521) proclaimed a plenary “Peter’s Indulgence” in 1515, the stated reason was to raise money to rebuild the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Rome—the Renaissance result of which may still be seen today. It is true that half of the money raised was to go to the Augsburg banking family, the Fuggers, in order to pay a debt owed by the archbishop of Mainz, Albrecht von Brandenburg (1490–1545), who had used the loan to pay Rome for the right to hold multiple sees (including archbishop of Magdeburg and administrator of the diocese of Halberstadt) upon his accession to the see in Mainz. But this would have been considered serving the same religious purpose, namely, to support the building of St. Peter’s, and thus should not be construed as the unscrupulous act of a secularized religious leader who had no conscience and was only interested in servicing a debt. The religious benefits attached to the indulgence were surely also part of Albrecht’s concern. In any case, at the time of writing the 95 Theses, Luther knew nothing of such backroom dealings. His concerns as expressed in the 95 Theses and his letter to Albrecht were purely theological and pastoral.