Truth Unites - Indulgences: Patristic Vs. Medieval

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Indulgences represent an example of the Protestant concern about accretions in church history. In this video I highlight three ways indulgences change from the patristic to the medieval era. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

One of the Protestant concerns about church history is that in the medieval West, there's a furthering and advancement of a kind of legalistic and transactional and even financial understanding of salvation, such that the free grace of God given to us in the gospel is obscured. And in the 16th century, there's kind of a recovery of this understanding of our standing before God. Romans 5-1, peace with God, and all that that entails. and that this had been hugely obscured in the centuries leading up to the 16th century. And I've talked a little bit about this in my video on purgatory. Here I want to talk about indulgences.

Now, there's a lot to say about indulgences. In this video, I'm just going to focus on the historical development from the patristic era to the medieval era. And kind of a simple video in some ways, just very focused on that. So I'll define indulgences and then give three examples of how they changed over time. time. And the reason I find this topic helpful is not just because of the importance of understanding indulgences, just that issue itself, but also because I think the Protestant concern about this issue is kind of illustrative and representative of the general concern we have to greater and lesser degrees on lots of other issues in church history, where when we use the word accretions, we're talking

about things that are coming into the mix in church history. And the thing is, the beginning of them, as well as each individual change along the way, are understandable, they could be benign, they could even be godly. But the cumulative effect of the whole, when you just go from point A to point B and you look like a thousand years later is not good. And this is what happens with indulgences. They just mushroom up more and more and more into greater excess and greater abuse as you get further into the medieval period, such that I think it's hard for us to even understand and appreciate how terrible life was for lay Christians in that context. And it's helpful for us to remember that. Now, especially because we often hear these appeals to continuity with the church

fathers. And they, you know, so the idea is the Catholic Church is in continuity with the church fathers. And these appeals smuggle in so much change and so much development. It's like when people, it reminds me of when people take a political, a contemporary progressive, political or cultural issue, and they'll appeal to the vision of the founding fathers. And they'll quote from the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution or something. And they'll cast their current agenda or issue as kind of the unfolding of that original dream or vision. The American experiment is unfolding and now today this is the next, you know, it's like, it's kind of a superficial understanding of historical continuity because there's so much change. And that's how Protestants

feel about many of the changes through our church history and this appeal to continuity and indulgences are representative of that. So hopefully this will be helpful to talk through. First, what is an indulgence? Basically, an indulgence is a remission of temporal punishments that is granted by the Church. So the Catechism describes an indulgence as a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, which the faithful Christian, who is duly disposed, gains under certain prescribed conditions through the action of the church, which, as the Minister of Redemption, dispenses and applies with authority the treasury of the satisfactions of Christ and all of the saints. And indulgences can be. And indulgences can

be either partial or plenary or full. And you really, to get indulgences, you have to understand this theology of temporal punishments versus eternal punishments. In Catholic theology, this distinction works in this kind of technical and systematic way, and it drives a lot. So sin has this kind of double consequence. So eternal punishment is ultimately in hell. And so, you know, if you commit a mortal sin, let's say you stop going to mass or you decide you want to use contraception or something like this. Under normal circumstances, unless this is a mortal sin. So unless there's exceptional circumstances, this is a mortal sin. If you die prior to confession, you go to hell, not purgatory hell. But then there's temporal punishment. This is temporal punishment has more to do with the process of being

purified from sin, and this happens in this life, and then it's finished in purgatory for many. And you can read about that distinction right in the next paragraph of the catechism after the one I just quoted. Now, this distinction is how Catholics respond to the charge that Protestants often make that indulgences and the whole idea of temporal punishment detract from the sufficiency of Christ's death for dealing with the punishment of sin. They say, well, it deals with the punishment, the eternal punishment, just not the temporal punishment, because they build a whole theology out of this distinction between these two kinds of punishment,

and then temporal punishment is seen in this kind of transactional context. So when the Council of Trent responded to the reformer's concerns about indulgences, they acknowledged, though, the acknowledgments of Trent are always so vague. They never set the parameters so clearly. Like, okay, what are you saying specifically? But they acknowledged abuses in the practice of indulgences, but they affirm indulgences and, in fact, pronounce an anathema on anyone who says that indulgences are useless or who denies that the church has the right to grant them. Here's from the Council of Trent. The Sacred Holy Synod teaches and enjoins that the use of indulgences for the Christian people most salutary and approved of by the authority of sacred council.

is to be retained in the church, and it condemns with anathema those who either assert that they are useless or who deny that there is in the church the power of granting them. Now, by the way, some people try to downplay anathemas as though they're not as severe consequence. And they'll say, well, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're separated from God or that this is a threat of damnation. It's just a warning in terms of your ecclesiastical standing and things like this. And I just think that that's wrong.

Historically, anathemas were consistently understood to everywhere I'm aware of as threatening damnation and separation from God. One of the ways you can see that is at Nicaea 2. So after Nicaa 2, the bishops write a letter to the emperor and Irene, the empress, and they're explaining, you know, we're anathematizing the iconoclasts. Here's what that means, and they say, anathema is nothing less than complete. separation from God and they compare the iconoclasts to just the heretics of old and they're very clear about what that means.

So just to be very clear, the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent anathematizes those who deny the church's power to grant indulgences or if they say that they are useless. Now the Protestant concern obviously is that this whole theology is post-apostolic. It's not biblical, it's an accretion that kind of slowly comes in over time. And it has the net effect of obscuring the gospel. The very things the gospel makes clear, this theology makes murky and kind of ominous, and I'll talk more about that. So in response to that, people do argue from various biblical passages like Colossians 124,

and they try to find indulgences. They try to get the whole theology in which indulgences function from principles in the New Testament. To me, it seems like building a castle on these tiny little toothpicks. There's these tiny little hints and then you're trying to build so much out of it. But the other thing people do is they try to argue from church history and say that this is patristic and they try to argue for continuity from the patristic practice to the medieval practice. And so the purpose of this video is just to highlight some of the differences and how different they were.

And I want to highlight three in particular. I just want to be clear, though, I'm going to describe some medieval practices. I want to be clear that that's not necessarily representative of official Catholic theology today. So we're just looking at the history here, how things change from patristic to medieval. And I'll just mention three things. The first is that in the patristic era, there are these various forms of penance that develop, especially for serious and public sins. So for people who have renounced the faith during persecution or for serious sins like adultery or murder

or even things like bestiality or practicing divinization or consulting a magician, or all kinds of things. It's kind of interesting to read through. You can read through the canons of the Synod of Al-Qyra. Enkaira, An-K-R-A-N-C-Y-R-A in 314, and it's giving all these kinds of canonical requirements for the completion of penance for these different kinds of sin.

And what stands out is how rigorous it was. I mean, the sins are serious sins. It's not just everyday sins. And the canonical requirements for fulfilling the penitential process are very severe. I mean, like, for example, if you steal something from the church, you could be a penitent for seven years, for example, a long time. And so the focus is on serious and public sins. Okay.

And then corresponding to that, that you get the development of various ways of relaxing the canonical requirements. If someone is showing true contrition, for example, the punishment can be reduced in various ways. But even the relaxation are very rigorous. You might be fasting one day out of three for several years. You might be among the catacumans for years while you're in the penitential process. It's extremely rigorous. And all of this is slowly developing throughout the patristic era.

And then by the time you get, it's not until the medieval era, that you get the kind of full system with the treasury of merit, which I'll talk about, purgatory, and kind of what we usually think of when we think about indulgences. Now, during that process of development, one of the things that happens is indulgences become more and more common, and the rigor goes completely out the window. Okay. And it ceases to be for just serious publicly known sins. it becomes for all kinds of sins and even for just general good standing.

So Martin Kemnitz, the Lutheran the theologian, puts it like this. He says, since the satisfactions of the ancients, together with public penitents, have completely ceased and been abolished in the papalist church. They are arguing about an empty title and about the shadow of a thing which no longer exists. And they sell indulgences for satisfactions of a kind that no longer exist. So he's basically saying the frequency of the practice of indulgences and the loss of any sense of rigor in the actual and how it actually plays out means you're not even talking about the same thing. You can't use the same word, indulgence for what's going on in the fourth century, for example, and in the 14th. They're totally different for those two reasons.

Second change is that the practice of remitting canonical punishments in the penitential process becomes more and more transactional. So initially the whole point is to produce true contrition and penitence and repentance in the heart of the person who had committed the particular sin. But then over time, you get various positive actions that can be done that can substitute for the canonical punishments. So it starts out, you know, let's say you have 60 days of fasting on only bread and water. And then it will come about that you can substitute for that the reciting of a particular psalm

50 times or something like that or while on bended knees. So if you, you know, recite this psalm 50 times today while kneeling, then that substitutes for the fasting on bread and water for that day. Or, you know, feeding a poor person could be another, or even alms giving and things like this. So given human nature, it's not hard to see how once that starts in, it can start to develop even further. And it does very quickly. By early 9th century, there's a council in eastern, southeastern France, where you can

read the laws they're enacting, because this is during the time of Charlemagne, like 813, somewhere and there. And they're making these laws to try to rein in the abuses already because people are starting to, you know, sin with impunity in these high-handed ways and then make a pilgrimage to Rome to make up for it and things like this. It's not hard to see how people can abuse such a system and that was happening. And then as you get further into the medieval era, this just snowballs and it gets bigger and more and more financial. And this is where you start to see the idea of the treasury of merit. And this theology comes into play. The treasury of merit is basically, think of like this infinite starhouse of merits that is comprised of the merits of Jesus Christ, also of Mary,

and then also of the other saints. And in the catechism, it speaks of the merits and good works and prayers of Mary as immense, unfathomable, and even pristine. And the idea here is this, that the meritorious acts of one saint or Mary or anybody can make satisfaction for another Christian's debt of temporal punishment. And guess who has the authority to make that kind of transfer? The Pope, here's how the 14th century Pope Clement VI put it. This treasure he entrusted to Blessed Peter, the keybearer, and his successors, that they might, for just and reasonable causes, distributed to the faithful in full or partial remission of the temporal punishment due to sin. So the idea of a treasury of merit, which is under the

control of the Pope to dispense, is obviously a departure from patristic practice. Thirdly, as you get into the patristic era, so it's becoming more common, the rigor is completely gone, it's becoming more transactional and systematized, and it's also seen to be more efficacious. Indulgences come to have a greater perceived soterological power. Here's what I mean. As I read the Church Fathers, I don't think the Church Fathers generally thought of a relaxation of canonical requirements for penance as itself expiatory or as necessary for the remission temporal punishment such that if you die before you complete it you have to finish the process in

purgatory there are statements you can find especially in some of the more rigorous kind of harsh figures in the patristic era like tertullian or cyprian who will speak very highly of the penitential process and so you can interpret those statements like that like the the penitential process itself is expiatory such that the relaxation of the stated punishment is itself an expiation of sin or the temporal punishment of sin. But I think the general, more common way to think of it is that the penitential behavior is a manifestation of sincere repentance. And what procures forgiveness and restitution is the whole thing that the penitential process

is a part of, which is ultimately about repentance. And you can find so many statements in John Chrysostom or Augustine, where they're basically saying, you know, you don't need, because of course, even then people are, people are superstitious. Even in my Baptist church, people will think, if I get baptized, that makes me okay with God. And therefore, don't need to repent, right? Or it's not hard to find superstitions in church history. So you can find Augustine and Christostom speaking against this and saying, you know, you don't need pilgrimages. You don't need labors.

You don't need a sum of money. You just need a contrite heart. You just need to seek the Lord and forgive your enemies and cast off sin and rend your heart and tear your garments and fall on your knees before God and so forth. It's like Psalm 51. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. And so that's why you can find throughout the patristic era, the canonical requirements for penitential discipline vary widely from one time to another

and from one place to another. You don't have this rigid system. Penance in the early church was about maintaining purity among the people of God. That's why you had so much rigor to it and showing publicly that the church does not have fellowship with sin and trying to motivate true contrition in the process of repentance and so forth. And the difference between that and what eventually accrues in the medieval era is so massive. I mean, you think of John Chrysostom, someone like that who's so fiery in his rebukes and in his moral indebtors. indignation. Can you imagine what Krasostin would say about medieval indulgences? When I picture that,

I think of Krasostom with fire shooting out of his ears. I can't imagine how indignant he would be. Just looking at how indignant he was at things happening in his own life. And what happens is because things just get worse and worse and worse. And it becomes horrifically abusive. And I think there can be a temptation to downplay or minimize these terrible things that happen. But, you know, you have people procuring the maximum amount of money. You'll have a pope who grants a plenary indulgence under one set of conditions. A subsequent pope will nullify that and then jack up the price. You'll have people commissioned specifically to go out and collect funds for particular projects,

granting indulgences amassing huge amounts of money. And indulgences for the dead that are... earning huge, you know, thousands of years out of purgatory. Kempnitz talks about going into a cathedral in a German city, and there's a prayer listed on the doorway, and it says, whoever recites this prayer with good intent daily, will get 8,000 years out of purgatory. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that's happening on the ground level.

I'm not saying that Catholics are bound to that in their official theology, but that was what was going on. It's so different from patristic practices. Or you'll find, like, you know, there's a cathedral in, Or there's a chapel in Jerusalem and there's 29, 28 steps on the entryway to this chapel. And the idea is whoever with devotion walks up the steps for each step, they get nine years out of purgatory. And if you go up on your knees, you also will relieve one soul from purgatory. These are the kinds of things that are going on.

Those are not really radical examples. And then you have indulgences offered for military adventures. The Crusades, the ones that I've looked into most because I regard the Waldensians as kind of ancestors of mine theologically and spiritually, and they were horrifically persecuted. And, you know, you can find indulgences as part of the motivation for that. So like in 1487, Pope Innocent VIII writes a bull offering a plenary indulgence for all who participate in a crusade against the Waldensians. It's as nasty as you can imagine. He calls for them to be crushed like venomous snakes. And it's truly sickening to look into these things and see what happened

to them. I won't even go into it. I'll just say, as bad as you can imagine, and I dare you to research those things yourself, or look up the 1655 massacre of the Waldensians. These things are they're as bad as you can possibly imagine. And as much as it's painful to consider such things today, we have to do so because this is part of the history. This is part of what gets us to the present moment. And we have to know what happened, you know. What happened?

And it wasn't just, you know, put it like this, the women and children were not spared in these horrific military actions. And indulgences are part of the goal. You know, you're granted an indulgence if you participate. And so today, Catholics and Protestants can alike look back on those episodes and be horrified by them. But the point is, this is obviously 10 million miles away from what Augustin and Chrysostom are talking about. And they would be horror. I mean, think of the fire coming out of Christostom's ears.

I can't even imagine what he would have said. And so this kind of summative point here is this is illustrative of a broader Protestant concern, namely that sins and errors do pile up and build up like accretions in church history. And when they do so, we need to go back to apostolic teaching and practice, as it's given to us in the scriptures and go back to purity. And just to conclude in this way, the reason I'm so concerned about an issue like indulgences is the whole theology that it participates in has the effect, unfortunately, of of creating tremendous anxiety.

I see this, the same anxiety I anticipate was in the hearts and minds and consciences of medieval lay Christians. I see that same thing in people today. People who are wrestling with, you know, there's all kinds of questions that it produces. What if I commit a mortal sin and I don't get to a priest in time or I can't confess in time? And how do I know if I've committed a mortal sin? And what if I'm in the wrong church? What if I'm damned to hell because I didn't make the right theological judgment of this church versus that church or just purgatory?

There are a few things more terrifying than purgatory. And the modern doctrine of purgatory is a much toned down compared to what it was at the time of the Reformation. But still, you know. And the reason we're burdened about this is because we think it represents an obscuring of something the gospel has made clear. And we, in other words, what Jesus Christ. alone has done through his finished work on the cross is sufficient to relieve all punishments of sin without qualification such that everyone who simply repents of their sin and trust in Jesus is placed into a permanent status of peace with God. Romans 5-1, we have peace with God.

That's our status. We are adopted as his children, reconciled with him, we have citizenship in heaven. We're already ascended in the heavenlies with Christ. Catholic would agree with all of that, but there's this system of theology where at the time of your death, you might be in purgatory for a long time to finish off the temporal punishment. And we would say that does detract from the sufficiency of the work of Christ, because even if you try to say this whole system of between temporal punishment, eternal punishment, bottom line is that the whole system isn't in the scripture. And we look at things like the thief on the cross and say, that's the paradigmatic existence.

This is someone who is literally saying, I deserve crucifixion, and Jesus says, today, paradise. And we believe that's what the gospel does. And there's none of this ominous storm clouds hanging over your head of purgatory. What if I commit a mortal sin, et cetera? What if I'm in the wrong church? And all that anxiety is the very thing Jesus died to free us from. And so I'm so burdened about these issues. And I mean, I get emails and Facebook messages all the time from people who are.

they can't sleep at night because they're wrestling with these things. And my burden for them is that they would rest in the sufficiency and the security of the finished work of Jesus Christ. Thanks for watching. Let me know what you think in the comments.