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Martin Luther's 95 Issues

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I got 95 problems and the Church is 1 In history class, we were learning about Martin Luther’s 95 Theses’s so I decided to look into it further. While doing research, I found reliable sources on the internet to include my textbook about Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, and how he wanted to debate these with other scholars. My objective in this paper is to discover if the issues that he presented for debate illustrate the problems in the Church of his day? First off I found that the paper that was attached to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg was titled “Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.” Within the paper Martin invited other theologians to said church to debate the enclosed 95 topics and …show more content…

To which Martin addresses, “The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and according to them, nothing should be imposed on the dying” (Adolph, #8). Then why is the Catholic Church is selling indulgences for those who have since passed? They are insinuating to the living relatives if they paid a few coins, they could save their loved one from the flames of purgatory (Kagan, 325). The church/priests are using guilt/greed to line their pockets with coins while forgetting to abide by their own rules/canons. With that being said there is nothing that the church should charge for, since that person is no longer under canonical penalties according to Martin’s list and should be released from them (Adolph, #13). Furthermore you have the Pope charging/giving letters of pardon for people under the guise that they are gifts from God. Martin wrote that every Christian who is truly repentant has a right to full remission of penalty/guilt even without a letter of pardon (Adolph, #36). So who gave the Pope the power to pardon in the name of God? I think the church themselves decreed it and made it so. In conclusion, it would seem that the basis for this whole debate was Martin Luther did not think that the Catholic Church or any other church for that matter should sell something (indulgences) to another individual since they did not have the power to forgive sins or release sinners from purgatory in the first place. According to the Bible only God has the power to do

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