It’s official. As the post below notes, indulgences are back. Well, they never really went away, but the Vatican has recently been pushing them with new-found fervour. As noted below, you can check it out here or find it on the cover of yesterday’s New York Times.
I just want to add some thoughts jumping off from where the previous post left off.
As a Protestant, I get a little worried about indulgences. (By the way, terms matter here. If you don’t know what an indulgence is, see my appendix below.) The sale of indulgences was a major spur of the Reformation. Luther felt that, in practice, the Church was essentially selling salvation. Consequently, his re-articulation of the Gospel underscored the un-mediated path Jesus’ cross opens for the sinner to approach God and receive grace by faith. In other words, you could bypass the middle man and go straight to the CEO of Mercy, Inc.
I believe, with all the good folks at Mockingbird, that people are saved by grace (one-way love) alone through faith alone. As singer-songwriter Jason Harrod says, “Mercy is the only thing worth anything” (From his “gangsta-folk” song “Molly” off his album, Harrod and Funck, recorded with Brian Funck). So it’s not an understatement to say I have issues with indulgences.
But let’s look at the silver lining. There are some good things here:
- The Catholic church, in highlighting indulgences, wants to redirect
people to the reality of sin. A Catholic bishop says just that in the article. And we need as much of this as we can get. As songwriter Bill Mallonee (frontman of the amazing indie/alt-country Vigilantes of Love) has said in a recent interview, “The Good News doesn’t make any sense until you know what the bad news is. And the bad news isn’t that we have a few harmless peccadilloes and we screwed up on the way between high school and college or whatever—it’s deeper than that. It’s unrelenting.” If you need confirmation on the reality of sin and your own life doesn’t give you enough clues, watch AMC’s Mad Men. Nevertheless, many people don’t realize that gnawing feeling inside them is a need for absolution. This act by the Catholic church may help some people see that.
2. The revival of indulgences makes the Gospel relevant. It makes
what Mockingbird stands for a lot clearer. There really are different understandings of salvation. Imagine a system in which you needed priestly absolution and an indulgence to be totally free-and-clear before God. Now imagine a system where a man or woman arrives at the same forgiven place by nothing he or she does, but merely says, “God, forgive me,” upon realizing his or her own sinful state, and it’s done. 100%. There really is a difference. And that difference matters.
Appendix: What’s an indulgence? In Roman Catholic teaching, after you’ve confessed your sins to a priest and that priest has absolved you, there are still lingering effects of your sin. So even though you are forgiven, you still have to endure “temporal punishment” to cleanse you further. This is done through penance—either in this life, or if that’s not enough, in purgatory. An indulgence is when then church says, “OK, we remove part or all of your temporal punishment if you perform some kind good work of devotion.” So to review: Commit a sin, go to confession, get forgiven. But you still have the temporal punishment to deal with. So go to a priest, do the good work he prescribes, and receive a partial or full (“plenary”) indulgence. By the way, in this system, the indulgence draws on a treasury of merit stocked with the good works of Christ and all the saints.
COMMENTS
14 responses to “Indulge Me”
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Thanks Aaron. You’ve always struck me as a “glass half-full kind of a guy”:)
Seriously though, you’re right. The darker the surroundings the more brilliant and relieving light is.
The plain truth is that Jesus said, “Your sins are forgiven” and “It is finished” and he meant it. To argue that there is more to do seems to argue that he is a liar.
AZ,
Loved your post, but I just want to call a spade a spade. There is no silver linning in indulgences period. True as the bishop says there is sin in this world, but the answer is not nor will it ever be an indulgence, they are leading people astray with a false gospel, which is no gospel at all.
The whole concept of a “Treasury of Merit” is such a terrible abstraction—I’m glad Benedict is anti-abortion, but seriously. . .
Anonymous: “Treasury of Merit” is hugely problematic and gets at the problem pointed out in the article: how does one quantify sin? St. Paul (and Jesus) say that if you break one part of the Law, you are guilty of breaking all of it.
Jacob: Thanks for the “truth in love” (wink). I guess I would say that any thing that makes the Law/Gospel dialect clearer, more stark, is helpful. You are right about it being a false gospel, but perhaps some need to go through this process to discover that. The Law is a schoolmaster that leads people to Christ. I pray that indulgences will function in that way for some, just as some schools of evangelical piety have done that for others–including yours truly. I had to experience “not-Gospel” in order to want and, indeed, recognize the light of the true Gospel.
This is a great discussion.
I, of course, disagree with the idea of indulgences as an attempt to “reach God”. We understand that, as fitz Allison said,
“A lot of nonsense is talked about our looking for God and our trying to find him. Yet, actually, the reverse is the case.” (Fear, Love and Worship)
We know that God, in His mercy, through Jesus Christ’s submission, has done all that needs to be done to reconcile us to the Father.
It IS finished.
And, as much as this RC idea of indulgences made to pay for sins and/or “lingering effects” of sin, is an affront to the Gospel, I believe that, within some streams of Protestantism, there may be far dangerous ideas.
At least the RC idea of indulgences is clear, to most of us. It is sort of “works” based, and the RC’s are mostly happy to cocede that (at least partly) as opposed to “faith” based.
But what of a religion that purports to be “faith” based that actually isn’t?
What about the idea that faith is qualitive. That some faith isn’t enough. That there is this measure of faith that needs to be “attained” and that without the “right” amout of faith, one is… screwed.
And worse, faith actually may be measured in dollars and cents.
There is an awful lot of this on tv.
I’m less worried about an RC view of indulgences and good works as a way to garner God’s favor than I am a distortion of what “faith” really is.
And I’m guessing that “on the ground”, this is a bigger threat to a true understanding of what it means to be saved by grace alone through faith alone than the idea of indulgences may be.
Hey Burton,
I hear what you are saying, and experientially I can relate because the sale of indulgences seems ridiculous if you grew up in the Protestant church. To many of us, it’s obvious that the RC is wrong, and it is or has been less obvious that some of the Protestant emphasis on the work of the Christian is equally wrong. SO, in that sense the Protestant distractions “feel” worse.
That said, I think that they are both equally terrible. Both point people away from the cross and to themselves as the answer to their sin. Both make Christ’s work on the cross overkill because we only needed a little help if any at all. If we could/should do it on our own in any fashion, whether through indulgences or Christian obedience, then Jesus terribly over-estimated the problem and died an extremely painful death for nothing.
Anyhow, the RC and many Protestant denoms are showing evidence of the same problem with their theology; it all boils down to an incorrectly high view of people and a way too low view of Christ and his cross.
Sean,
Agreed.
are you typing all of that on your Iphone from a ski-lift?–good work:)
I wish I were that talented with my iPhone, but sadly I am not.
The thing to keep in mind here–and I think this is interesting–that indulgences are not about justification, or salvation. Indulgences are only for the redeemed. In a way, they seem to me (and I ccould be wrong, since I’m not Roman Catholic) is that they are, looking at them in the best light and with a lot of charity, a pastoral response to a real thing: the fact that even after sins are forgiven, there are lingering, real-world practical consequences. And indulgences are a way of trying to assauge those things. They parallel in the evangelical world is more devotional time to “renew the mind.” More Bible, more prayer, more service. Which is kind of what indulgences look like. It’s just that evangelicals do not have priests that can broker the transfer of merit from the saints to your account. So as an evangelical, perhaps you have to work that much harder.
The Gospel response to all this, I think, is to take those lingering dark places in your soul… and to continue to bathe them with the pure water of the Gospel. Isn’t this what St. Paul was doing throughout his epistles?
AZ,
You stud! Sorry had to say that in light of the pic:)
Anyhow, I hear what you are saying. You are very charitable in your explanation of the intention of indulgences, but I don’t think it really changes what is ultimately being implied by indulgences and the continuous evangelical work. That is that the pain you are experiencing right now as a result of your sin has in some way not been dealt with or, I think more accurately, can be dealt with now through human effort. Either way, it is an ultimate distraction from the already completed work of Jesus Christ.
I think you are right that the Gospel responds by bringing the person, in the midst of their pain and the inability to assuage it, back to the beginning as it were, back to the cross. Indulgences and evangelical effort unfortunately always lead us to believe that we are to move on from the cross to some other solution for the consequences of our sin when, as you clearly know, it is the place where we stay. In other words, we never move on from our baptism in this world.
You said this at the end of your comment, but I just like hearing it in my own words because I am egotistical and self-centered, and I want to show off my non-ivy college education:) Ohhhh, no you didn’t! Couldn’t resist!;)
Aaron–insightful as always.
Now, I don’t want to be accused of being a “Calvin hater,” but I do think that the insecurity that you observed in Evangelicalism is somewhat due to his influence.
In his book The Age of Reform , Stepehn Ozment argues that it was Calvin who “Re-Catholicized” the Reformation in much the same way you are describing–He writes:
“In Calvinism, the presence or absence of good works came to be taken as a commentary on one’s eternal destiny. . .
Luther too expected true believers to be busy with good works, but their presence did not constitute an indirect commentary on one’s salvation nor their absence the suggestion of anyone’s eternal damnation” (379)
IMHO– For a brief moment during the Reformation, people were given the unequivocal and unqualified message of the Gospel. They were told, without a doubt, that Jesus’ atonining substitution, oblation, sacrifice, etc. .for them was sufficient for the salvation, sanctification and preservation of life. Understandably, this living by faith and not by sight is difficult (!) and forces constant humility due to the impossibility of a perfect work and constant reliance on that which comes from outside–extra nos–and must be “simply” believed.
Pastorally, much of Protestantism–and all traditions are implicated herin–sacrificed the joy and freedom that the Gospel brings on the altar of pragmatism and enlightened self-interest.
Luther, on the other hand, believed that the Gospel produced those things that the law commanded as a result of the freedom which it promised. Mixing of these two, Law and Gospel, has the same results as flat-out rejection of both and ultimately leaves people stuck in the terrifying insecurity of “when have I done enough?”
And that’s when you buy an indulgence;)
Love you Aaron! You are always such a good sport.
Hey fellows. GREAT thread. thanks.
Btw… there’s a recent book detailing the many ways current Protestant churches in the US have abandoned the Reformation insight into salvation by grace alone through faith alone on account of the work of Christ alone.
It’s sharply critical of churches on both the left and the right (especially the right) in their substitution of Works for Grace. Basically Protestant indulgences.
It’s by our friend Mike Horton of the White Horse Inn. It is called “Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church.” Good book.
http://www.amazon.com/Christless-Christianity-Alternative-Gospel-American/dp/0801013186