Yet, the coming on board of the Global Anglican Future Conference, which is what GAFCON stands for, is possibly one of the most significant issues of our time. Without exaggerating, it is of such moment as Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. This was what led inexorably to the Reformation of the Church and the birth of Protestantism.
It is one of the ironies of today’s living and lifestyle that the mundane gets maximum attention, while the important, the fundamental are relegated to the back burner. That is why the on-going developments in the worldwide Anglican Communion have yet to find space, to my knowledge, on the front page of any newspaper or magazine. That is therefore why, dear reader, you can be forgiven if your reaction upon reading the headline is this piece is ga-what?
Yet, the coming on board of the Global Anglican Future Conference, which is what GAFCON stands for, is possibly one of the most significant issues of our time. Without exaggerating, it is of such moment as Martin Luther’s nailing of the 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. This was what led inexorably to the Reformation of the Church and the birth of Protestantism.
To understand this comparison, it is necessary to understand the import of the 95 Theses, its essence and its aftermath. Church History has it that Martin Luther, a Professor of theology at Wittenberg University who doubles as the priest at the town’s City Church therefore responsible for the salvation of the parish made one significant observation. He noticed that fewer and fewer members of the congregation were coming to him for confession. His investigation revealed that the people were going to neighbouring towns to buy what is known as Indulgences, particularly, the Peter's Indulgence.
What are indulgences, you may wonder. According to Wikipedia, Indulgences had a firm root in Roman Catholic theology which posits that “faith alone, whether fiduciary or dogmatic, cannot justify man; and that only such faith as is active in charity and good works can justify man. These good works could be obtained by donating money to the church.” In operating this theological concept, the Church even had a Papal commissioner for indulgences.
It was recorded that the from about 1508, trade in Indulgences rose very sharply because both the Papal Court and Bishop Albrecht von Brandenburg Germany's representative for the sale of indulgence were in great financial trouble.
This was the setting when a Dominican Friar, Johann Tetzel, was appointed commissioner for indulgences and sent to Germany, to sell indulgences to raise money to rebuild St Peter's Basilica in Rome. This was in the period 1516-1517.
It is this practice that had virtually become a substitute for confession, thus seemingly allowing people to “buy” their salvation. This was completely repulsive to Luther, who strongly believed that to receive the grace of God; you had to live a life of humility.
Tetzel’s ostentatious style of selling the indulgences in the region around Luther’s Wittenberg territory did not help matters. It was said that stories started making the rounds that “Tetzel could redeem the sins of the deceased.” He was also famously quoted as declaring that: “When the money clangs in the box, the souls spring up to heaven.".
Luther would have none of that! So, on October 31, 1517, he wrote to Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, to protest the sale of indulgences enclosing in his letter a copy of his "Disputation of Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences," which was to become known as The 95 Theses.
Those who know would testify that since Luther saw his disputation as a scholarly objection to church practices rather than an attempt to confront the church the tone of his writing was largely mild, or Hans Hillerbrand put it, “searching rather than doctrinaire.” Which probably explained the covering note to the theses which reads: “Out of love for the truth and from desire to elucidate it, the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and Sacred Theology, and ordinary lecturer therein at Wittenberg, intends to defend the following statements and to dispute on them in that place. Therefore he asks that those who cannot be present and dispute with him orally shall do so in their absence by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.”
A perusal of the theses, however, would reveal that some of the theses did have an undercurrent of challenge. Thesis 89, for instance, pointedly asked: “Why does the pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of St. Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”
Church fathers took Luther’s concerns tardily, indeed with considerable levity. The man to whom the letter was addressed, Cardinal Albrecht of Hohenzollern, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, had personal reasons for ignoring Luther. Pope Leo X had given his consent to the archbishop to use part of the indulgence income to pay certain personal debts of his. So he didn’t as much as formally acknowledge the letter, even when its contents were circulating like wild fire. His tentative reaction was to set up a panel of experts to scrutinize the letter for heresy and then forwarded it to Rome.
Pope Leo was to respond over the next three years, with what he described as “great care as is proper." He deployed a series of papal theologians and envoys against Luther probably hoping the matter would die down of its own accord. This attitude was discernible from the fact that sometimes in 1518 he was quoted as dismissing Luther as, "a drunken German" who "when sober will change his mind".
While Rome fiddled, Luther's writings were circulating widely abroad. By 1519, he had garnered audience for his viewpoints in France, England, and Italy. As a result, students thronged to Wittenberg to hear him speak. His creative juice was flowing too. Three of his best known works, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation; On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church; and Christian were published in 1520:
Church history has it that the Pope finally reacted on May 30th in 1519 by formally demanding an explanation from Luther who wasted no time in writing a summary and explanation of his theses to the Pope. Predictably, although the Pope was believed to have conceded some of the points to Luther, he simply could not accept the challenge to his authority implied by Luther’s exertions. He summoned Luther to Rome to on this score. Intervention came from Frederick the Wise, the Saxon Elector, who did not want one of his subjects to be sent to Rome to be judged by Italians. He prevailed on the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V who needed his support to arrange a compromise.
By the arrangement that resulted, the summons to Rome was cancelled, and instead Luther went to Augsburg in October 1518 to meet the papal legate, Cardinal Thomas Cajetan. In spite of long hours of debates and arguments, still nothing was resolved. While Cajetan held on to the opinion that the practice of indulgences had to be right, otherwise, God Himself would have revealed the fraud, Luther stood his ground rejecting what he saw as the ‘sanctification of history.”
As a result, the Pope formally warned Luther through an edict, called the papal bull asking him to recant 41 sentences extracted from his writings, including the 95 Theses, within 60 days or risk excommunication.
Although other attempts were made at resolution of the crisis, Luther was excommunicated by Pope Leo X on January 3, 1521, about three weeks after he made a bonfire of the papal bull and other related documents in a public show of defiance on December 10, 1520. Of course that wasn’t the end of the story. One thing led to the other and the reformation resulted.
Now, I have taken you through this excursion into the life and times of Dr Martin Luther and the eventual birth of Protestantism, because of the parallels between what happened then and what has been happening in the Anglican Church in the last one decade or so which culminated in Jerusalem 2008, the Global Anglican Future Conference. (Continues Next Week)
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