Indulgences: Who Is the Real Nominalist Here?

There is a common narrative of Luther’s Reformation offered by Catholic apologists that goes something like this:

The Roman Catholic doctrine of justification simply follows from metaphysical realism. The justification/sanctification distinction introduced by the Protestants divorces the “declaring righteous” (justification) from the “being righteous” (sanctification). This divorce is the product of Luther swimming in the filthy waters of late medieval nominalism which divorces categories (names) from any underlying reality. Justification thus becomes a kind of extrinsic status quite separate from the intrinsic state of one’s soul.

There is often an accompanying allegation that Jean Calvin, Esq., applied an overly legal framework to Christian salvation, making it a matter of extrinsic punishment.

Ok.

And this is often especially compelling to those with the experiential background discussed in my previous post, Protestantism and the Dog That Caught the Car Problem.

Let’s take a step back. What was the Reformation about?

The answer you normally get is that the Reformation was about sola fide, justification by faith alone.

Ok.

When did the Reformation begin?

The answer you normally get is that the Reformation began when Fr. Martin Luther, O.S.A., nailed the 95 Theses on the door of All Saints’ Church.

Something doesn’t add up here! The 95 Theses aren’t about justification! They’re about indulgences.

Ok. Let’s come back to that.

What is an indulgence? It is a reduction in the work required to relieve the temporal punishment merited by sin.

How does it work? The Roman Church maintains a sort of cosmic slush fund, known as the Treasury of Merit, by which some of the saints’ (positive) merits can be credited to your soteriological account if the Pope so declares.

Wait a minute! Who is the nominalist here? Who is making the process of salvation a matter of extrinsic ledgers quite separate from the intrinsic state of one’s soul? Who is moving arbitrary cosmic ledgers and making Christianity a legal exercise?

In the medieval indulgences paradigm, there is this extrinsic punishment ledger, known as temporal punishment, that the Christian is constantly trying to get reduced.

So there’s a gaping hole in the aforementioned Roman narrative. And, to return to what the Reformation was about, importantly, this gaping hole was, at least in chronological terms, the catalyst for the Reformation!

Some Closing Thoughts

1. The key to understanding the state of things in late medieval Christianity, and Fr. Luther’s insight about them, and the point at which the whole message of the New Testament about Law and Gospel had gone off the rails, is Thesis 40 of the 95. I will expand on this in a later post.

   A Christian who is truly contrite seeks and loves to pay penalties for his sins; the bounty of indulgences, however, relaxes penalties and causes men to hate them — at least it furnishes occasion for hating them.

2. Rome allows the interpretation that the currency of indulgences is penance rather than punishment or purgatory, and thus that you’re dealing with something intrinsic to man’s soul here. However, two seconds of thought should reveal the ridiculousness of this, because, if the currency of an indulgence is the actual state of man’s soul, why do you need the indulgence!

   However, this does mean that Rome has left the door open to amending her errors; in fact, Rome largely bent the knee to the Prots in the 20th century in moving toward the “penance interpretation,” which is to be commended.

3. Once you understand that the late medieval concept of purgatory was this extrinsic ledger situation, and not at all the modern narrative of a time of preparing the soul for the beatific vision (which is just a corollary of Christianity), then you can see the correctness of the 39 Articles’ rejection of “The Romish Doctrine concerning Purgatory.”