Martin Luther 95 Theses Essay Hero Essay Lesson

Luther was familiar with canon law, which had distinguished the guilt of sin from the punishment of sin.Guilt ruins the relationship of Creator and creature so that God alone can (and does) restore the relationship by the grace of forgiveness through the merits of Christ obedient to death, even death on a cross.Religiously, we are tempted to sweep the old canonical distinction away and en­dorse what Heinrich Heine satirized, “Of course God will forgive me—that is His job!” But we should consider here Nietzsche’s acerbic observation that “to forgive all is to all!

The certainty of faith that can rest in God’s grace as delivered in Christ is not yet fully accented in the Theses, although in hindsight we can detect intimations of it in the thesis about the “true treasure of the church, which is the gospel of the glory and grace of God.” Most contemporary readers of the 95 Theses live in a Protestantism that, in H.

First, it reflects the truth that Luther, when he wrote the Theses, had not yet realized all the implications of his doctrine of justification by faith.

He had yet to discover how faith is certain because it moves the believer out of self-preoccupation and into trusting God and regarding the neighbor in love.

The punishments of sin, which may be human and civil, ecclesiastical as well as divine, were understood to restore balance to the moral order that has been violated by injustice and incurred wrath.

The satisfaction of wrath is provided for by punishment, which restores equilibrium to the system thrown into disorder by injustice.