Martin Luther's 95 theses question

[D. Medvedev Fan]

What was the big problem with the theses, what was said or something else?

supporting sources welcomed.

[spl_cadet]

I don't think that there as a problem so much with the Theses (Catholics agree with most, if not all, of them) but with the fact that he didn't stop with simply nailing the Theses.

[D. Medvedev Fan]

I don't think that there as a problem so much with the Theses (Catholics agree with most, if not all, of them) but with the fact that he didn't stop with simply nailing the Theses.
Could you please elaborate on that and what did happen that was a problem?

[Amazing Rando]

What was the big problem with the theses, what was said or something else?

supporting sources welcomed.

I think the biggest problem with them (from the Catholic point of view anyhow) was that they contradicted official Catholic teaching at the time. Catholic teaching and practice has since changed, so some of Luther's theses are now moot, but others are not.

[Anoetos]

I don't think that there as a problem so much with the Theses (Catholics agree with most, if not all, of them) but with the fact that he didn't stop with simply nailing the Theses.

That's interesting, because the books I read indicate that the Church came after him when he preached against Tetzel.

Tetzel ought not to have preached the way he did, this is uncontested, but that a Professor of Sacred Scripture at a podunk school would presume to preach against and humilate in debate an officer of the Inquisition and purveyor of the Pope's special indulgence was more than they were willing to stand for.

Enter Cajetan and Eck.

[Anoetos]

Maybe SPL agrees with Pope Julius that once Tetzel came along teaching "When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!", Luther should have kept his fat Saxon mouth shut.

[1.61803399]

Maybe SPL agrees with Pope Julius that once Tetzel came along teaching "When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!", Luther should have kept his fat Saxon mouth shut.

Can't speak for SPL...

He should have addressed his concern to those who could have changed it from within. Tetzel himself, or his superiors, would have been the aprropriate course of action. He could have even written directly to the pope, but spreading dissent is/was not the right way to do it.

[Darth Executor]

Maybe SPL agrees with Pope Julius that once Tetzel came along teaching "When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs!", Luther should have kept his fat Saxon mouth shut.

:lol:

[themuzicman]

Can't speak for SPL...

He should have addressed his concern to those who could have changed it from within. Tetzel himself, or his superiors, would have been the aprropriate course of action. He could have even written directly to the pope, but spreading dissent is/was not the right way to do it.
Yeah, we all know how well the Catholic church deals with dissenters in the ranks, especially at that time... :ahem:

[1.61803399]

Yeah, we all know how well the Catholic church deals with dissenters in the ranks, especially at that time... :ahem:

The Church was in error with the severity of the Inquistion. It was, however, as much a political entity as a spiritual one, requiring it to keep the peace. Where the Inquisiton was the worst, the religious wars were the least...

A call for reform, without the defiant nature of Luther's theses may have worked. In fact, the true Reform of the Church happend not to long after the "reformation" began.

Pax Christi!

[Chytraeus]

This question needs more historical context than has been provided so far.

Actually, the intitial actions of Martin Luther probably would not have caused so much trouble, as he was following the proper decorum of the day. He heard an officer of the church teach something that he thought was unbiblical and blasphemous, he wrote up a number of theses about why this teaching was wrong, and he proposed a debate at the local university. If that is all that had happened, the reformation would have taken a much quieter and less dramatic start. However, there was this nasty new invention by Gutenburg that had recently been purchased by some of Luther's wealthier students.

Apparently they took his theses down from the where they were posted for the proposed debate, translated them from Latin into German so that everyone could read them, set up a printing press to make copies, and before the debate could ever take place every literate German and most of his illiterate friends and realatives within a 500 mile radius knew what Luther was proposing.

This was frequently a problem for Luther. He was a very dynamic and passionate young man who had a flamboyant and charismatic way about him that people liked. Besides that, he was preaching the central aspect of the Gospel that had not been specifically taught in public in many years, being lost in tradition and corruption. The people where hungry for his teachings, just like the people of the 1st century were hungry for the teaching of the Apostles. What Luther intended to be a private discussion for the elite and learned of the Roman church because the garden party converation of the plebians.

Actually, when Luther looked back on the theses later he denounced them for his nievite about the Pope, for he had not yet realized how much greed and pride had come to rule this office. Luther say the obvious truth of what he was teaching and assumed that such a vaunted leader of the church of God on earth could not possible be against its wide-spread publication. However, he was very much against it.

Now, Tetzle eventually ended up in jail as a heritic because he had indeed, even in the eyes of Rome, gone too far. In fact, his own reactions to Luther probably got him into more trouble with Rome than his original sermons that got Luther so rialed up. He continued to preach even more dynamically in favor of indulgences to the point where his sermons stunk all the way to the Vatican. Meanwhile, they were trying to draw Luther back into their fold (quite unsuccessfully, one might add).

The biggest problem was the in preaching the Gospel against indulgences, Luther hit the church where it hurt the most, the pocket book. The new Pope, Gregory, had decided to make his name go down in history as the Pope who had St. Peter's Basilica built. Although the work on the great church began under Gregory, he died many years before it was finished. However, such a construction was going to cost a lot of money, and with the RC church being as much a political machine as it was a church, they had spent almost all their money in the crusades and the war against the Turks who were trying to invade Europe. They just didn't have the money to build this great Basilica that was to rival the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (the main Orthodox cathedral).

If the church accepted Luther's proposed changes they freared that they would not only never raise enough money to build the Basilica, but they might not even have enough money to continue to support the war against the Turks. Therefore, even if they thought Luther might be right, they would not have been able to make the changes he was calling for. There were some within the Roman church who did think that Luther was right, and to a much larger extent than most of us protestants are willing to admit, their voices were heard during the Counter Reformation Council at Trent. For this reason, some modern revisionist historians hold out a glimmer of hope that the rift between the Lutherans and the Catholics can be over come without either one giving up their prised doctrinal statements.

Nothing could be further from the truth. At this point not only would the Catholic church to give up most of the condemnations posted in the Council of Trent against the teachings of Luther, but also a large number of doctrinal statements from both Vatican 1 and 2, or the Lutherans would have to surrender their entire Book of Concord.

In the end, though, the 95 Theses were only the beginning. Luther eventually published many more theses and books with venomous statements against the teachings and leadership of the Roman Catholic church. Luther would never have been excommunicated for just the 95 Theses, but when you add to them the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, the Bondage of the Will, his Commentary on Galatians, and all the many pamphlets and tracts, his fate was sealed.

Since the Roman church had a very entrenched sense of higherarchy and importance of men in important positions, they most certainly were not prepared to let a young theology professor at an upstart university to teach them about doctrine. They were under the dilusion that if God wanted to correct them that He would send someone important enough to be listened to. Apparently they had forgotten the message of the carpenter's Son from Nazareth.