By most accounts, the Reformation began when a young monk challenged ecclesiastical and academic authorities to debate a controversial practice that had developed in the late-medieval period.

Why do we continue to remember it roughly five hundred years later?

Waving off Martin Luther’s objections to the sale of indulgences, however, might reveal some misunderstandings about what was at stake.

Under the medieval system, as it had developed, a Christian was said to have been initially justified by his baptism. In the ordinary course of things, however, a Christian would not remain justified. This was because of their propensity to sin, which we inherited from Adam in his fall.

Thus, each Christian was obligated to go to confession, receive absolution from the priest or bishop, and to fulfill acts of penance. These penances might take the form of multiple fasts per week; or, for gross sins, some might last for as long as a decade (e.g., homosexuality or bestiality); or they might be “a hundred genuflexions [sic]” or “five blows of the rod or strap so as to wound.” Different penances were assigned according to the gravity of the sin. Failure to fulfill one’s penances, it was thought, added years (sometimes by the thousands) to one’s time in purgatory (i.e., the intermediate state between death and the beatific vision).

An indulgence, however, was a remission or forgiveness of such punishments that were due Christians after this life (otherwise satisfied in purgatory) for failing to fulfill their assigned acts of penance.

But just as the requirement for permits sometimes gives rise to corruption in modern secular life, so too the assignment of penances proved to be too great a temptation for the medieval church. If the church had authority to assign “temporal punishments” in this life and purgatory, and if she had authority to remit the same, why not monetize those remissions? So Urban II (c. 1035–1099) promised a plenary indulgence to crusaders who confessed their sins. Later, Pope Sixtus IV (1414–1484) extended plenary indulgences to the dead, and the Council of Constance (1414–1418) permitted the sale of indulgences.

That permission opened the door for the Dominican monk Joahnn Tetzel (c. 1464–1519) to travel across Germany selling indulgences for the living and on behalf of the dead, using the still-memorable jingle, “When the coin the coffer clinks, the soul from purgatory springs.” The funds raised by the sale of indulgences were meant to rebuild St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Thus, deliverance from punishment had become a commercial enterprise, not unlike what we see today in the health-and-wealth theology that purports to provide divine blessings, healings, and even wealth in exchange for certain financial considerations. Read more»

R. Scott Clark | “Reformation Doctrines That Still Transform The Church” | October 28, 2025

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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