![]() This type of teaching greatly unsettled the young Luther as he could not find anything like it in Scripture, he saw nothing of this kind of grace in the Bible. The preachers would exhort that the people’s loved ones would be released form purgatory as soon as “the penny tinkles in the box. These preachers of indulgences urged the people to buy these indulgences for their own benefit and the benefits of their departed loved ones. Many received Tetzel as a messenger of heaven who would be able to free their loved ones. During this time a great hawker of indulges, Johann Tetzel began to do his biddings around many areas associated to Luther. Peter’s cathedral provided the basis for Pope Julius II and Pope Leo X to raise funds for the project by the selling of indulgences. The doctrine grew out of medieval theology, and was fully theorized and justified by Thomas Aquinas. Though it may be granted individually by bishops or archbishops, the Pope has the authority and power to grant it to all Catholics. In Roman Catholicism, an indulgence means the remission of the temporal (not eternal) punishment of sin (not of sin itself), on condition of penitence and the payment of money to the church or to some charitable object. In early April 1517, Luther launched a war against Scholastic theology, most namely the sale of Papal indulgences. During his time as a lecture at the University of Wittenberg, Luther began to fully articulate and define his understandings of what have become known as salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. His mentor Johann von Staupitz was a strong Augustinian in that he held to the theology of God’s sovereign and unconditional grace, and he used this teaching to comfort the young Luther, that it was God’s free and undeserved mercy that Luther could trust in to find hope. ![]() This kind of theology drove Luther to deep despair as he saw it nearly impossible for how once could possibly merit favor from a holy God in their deeply sinful state. The major tenants of this Neo-Pelagian scholasticism was an emphasis on natural free will, effort, and merit in obtaining divine grace. Much of the theology that was espoused in the university at this time was the Scholastic theology of William of Ockham and Gabriel Biel. Very much to the displeasure of his parents Luther became an Augustinian friar and began his study of theology. Anne that if he would be spared he would become a monk. However, not long into his studies, Luther, during a lightning storm, was merely struck by lightning and in a moment of sheer terror cried out to St. Luther originally went to the University of Erfurt at the age of eighteen where he trained with the intention of becoming a lawyer. He was born to a copper miner and grew up in Mansfield in the center of Germany’s mining industry. Martin Luther was born in 1483 during a time when the Renaissance was permeating throughout all of Europe with the invention of Gutenburg’s printing press.
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