1. Two Graces, Indulgences, and Luther’s Understanding of Punishments
It comes as a surprise that Luther begins his treatise by saying, “Indulgences are the very merit of Christ and of his saints and so should be treated with all reverence.”13 This is different from what Luther declares in the Ninety-Five Theses,14 but he immediately adds in the Tractatus that the indulgences have become “a shocking exercise of greed.” He complains that “you hear no one instructing people about what indulgences are, about how much they grant, or what purpose they serve.”15 In his treatise, Luther attempts to answer these questions, but he does it in a tentative way, partly acknowledging his ignorance.
From the outset, Luther uses the distinction between two graces to address the problem. This may be seen as the second surprise of the Tractatus. In the context of indulgence theologies and practices, the word grace was very often used with different meanings. Luther identifies one type of grace “as remission of penance and imposed satisfaction”16 or as “a release from the temporal punishment imposed by a confessor.” He calls this grace of remission “extrinsic.” Later, Luther would no longer call this remission of penalties “grace.” But here he distinguishes this extrinsic grace from an intrinsic one that he calls “infused grace”17 or “the grace which makes a person righteous or more righteous.”18 Luther’s main theological interest is in the inner condition of human beings and in how “infused grace” transforms them, while due to his topic, he first discusses punishments and their remission. In doing so, he offers a new understanding of punishments.
A third surprise might be that Luther speaks of purgatory as something to be taken for granted. He talks about a “temporal punishment imposed by a confessor, which one must undergo either on earth or in purgatory, if it still remains [at death].”19 Insofar as penalties are imposed by a priest, indulgences are able to take them away, even if a person has to suffer them in purgatory! “The pope can, of course, release a soul from purgatory with regard to the penance he has himself imposed or could impose. The wording of the papal bull indicates this: ‘so far as the keys of holy mother Church extends’ and ‘mercifully release from imposed penances.’”20 This is quite remarkable, especially in light of theses 8 to 13 of the Ninety-Five Theses,21 which argue that canonical penalties are imposed only on people living on earth and should not be changed into the penalty of purgatory. In any case, this remission of penalties only relates to punishments imposed by a priest.
Here we face a problem that seems to have been overlooked by most Luther scholars. In our Tractatus as well as in the Ninety-Five Theses, Luther addresses those punishments imposed by the church rather than by God.22 In thesis 5, he states, “The pope neither desires nor is able to remit any penalties except those imposed by his own discretion or that of the canons.”23 But the much more serious problem for medieval Christians was the punishments that were understood as being demanded by divine justice—punishments that one had finally to endure in purgatory and from which one hoped to get indulgence. Penalties imposed by a confessor allow for suffering the penalties on earth that are demanded by divine justice, although the latter requirements might go far beyond what the priests imposed. The final point of reference concerning satisfaction is the punishments called for by divine justice. It is highly astonishing that Luther does not address this point, because it is of central importance for understanding indulgences. A basic principle in the medieval understanding of penance was that “God does not forgive any sin unpunished,” a principle stemming from Augustine that was developed throughout medieval times.24 Already Tetzel, in his first reaction to the Ninety-Five Theses, appeals to this principle: “This satisfaction (since God does not suffer any offence without penalty) happens by punishment or by an equivalent that is accepted by God.”25
It seems that it was Luther’s opponents who challenged him to address the question of punishment due to divine justice in his Explanations, and he was reluctant to do that. In the fifth explanation, Luther identifies different kinds of penalties, raising the question of which punishment could be remitted by the pope. The sixth kind of punishment “is that which they say divine justice requires in order that it may be satisfied.”26 The phrase they say indicates that Luther takes up an idea of others while distancing himself from it. He is not quite clear what this kind of punishment should be. For him, it is one of two things: either the third kind of punishment that he mentions and calls “that voluntary and evangelical punishment which is to put into effect by spiritual penance in accordance with 1 Cor. 11[:31]: ‘If we were to judge ourselves surely we should not be judged by the Lord’”27 or the fifth kind of punishment, “the canonical punishment, which is instituted by the church.”28 But he makes his own objection that it must be different from these two kinds if it is meant to be the sixth kind of punishment. Luther considers that it is an intensification of those two kinds, but finally, he states: “I am absolutely convinced that there is no such punishment. First, because by no authority of Scripture, of teachers, or of the accepted interpretation of the canons can it be taught that there is such punishment.”29 As indicated, there was a long history of this understanding; it is very difficult to explain why Luther does not seem to have been aware of this. Even if he completely disagreed with it, one would expect him to address it as a serious error. Nevertheless, in his Explanations he continues to consider whether this might be associated with the fourth kind of punishment he mentions: namely, that God punishes the sins of his people with the rod according to Psalm 89:30–33.30 But this would not create a new type of punishment; it would only emphasize the third or the fourth ones. In A Sermon on Indulgence and Grace, Luther declares, “No one can defend the position with any passage from Scripture that God’s righteousness desires or demands any punishment or satisfaction from sinners except for their heartfelt and true contrition or conversion alone—with the condition that from that moment on they bear the cross of Christ and practice the aforementioned works [prayer, fasting, alms] (but not as imposed by anyone).”31
According to the rules of medieval disputations, the position of the opponent had to be reproduced correctly; otherwise, one would not speak to the point and lose the debate. Since talking about “plenary indulgences” just refers to the punishments called for by divine justice, at least with most medieval theologians, one would imagine that Luther would have formulated a set of theses addressing this basic difference in understanding punishment from the outset, while in fact, he discusses in detail the relatively minor problem of whether canonical penalties can be transformed into purgatory in the aforementioned six theses from 8 to 13.32
In medieval theology, two aspects of punishment were distinguished: a punitive aspect, according to which punishment completes what is owed to God’s justice for violating the divine order, and a medicinal aspect, which aims at changing sinners to help them not commit the same sin again. With respect to the first aspect, medieval theologians were convinced that someone else could perform the penitential work on behalf of the sinner; with respect to the second aspect, this was not possible.33 If someone wished to get healthy again, he or she needed to take the medicine himself. The distinction was meant t...
