THUS SETTING INTO MOTION THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION ON 10/31/1517IN 1517 A DOMINICAN friar named Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences near Wittenberg, Germany to raise money for constructing St. Peter's in Rome. According to Tetzel, those who purchased an indulgence would receive remission of purgatory. Indulgences could also be purchased on behalf of dead relatives and friends. The punch line of Tetzel's sermon was, "As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."
These sales of indulgences by the Catholic Church infuriated Luther, the professor of biblical studies at the University of Wittenberg, and he decided to hold a disputation with other faculty members on the subject.
Luther knew from his own repentance and conversion that paying an indulgence could not achieve forgiveness of sins. Shortly before posting the Ninety-five Theses, Luther began studying the Greek New Testament and his studies persuaded him that the Greek word for repentance, metanoia, meant a change of heart, not merely a performance of outward works, as Catholic theologians of his day defined it.
Luther wrote the Ninety-five Theses in Latin, intending them to be discussed by scholars, not circulated by the general populace. But as Luther himself acknowledged, in a fortnight they flew all over Germany. Translated into German and sold as far away as Rome, the Ninety-five Theses became much more than a university exercise.
For the next two decades, Luther watched the Reformation grow. Many regions in Germany accepted the Evangelical doctrines that Luther and other Reformers discovered from the Scriptures he had translated into German. Luther lived to see a second generation of evangelicals sing the hymns he had written, read his German translation of the Bible, and learn his catechism from their early childhood.
Through his life he preached and taught God's promise of redemption to the repentant sinner, rather than through the works-based "indulgence" program of the Catholic Church.
----from The One Year Christian History, Michael and Sharon Rusten
