The indulgence controversy

The indulgence controversy, as the book presents it, began with a traffic whose excesses roused Martin Luther against the Church of Rome and helped prepare the way for The Reformation. Its importance lies not only in the protest it provoked: the author makes it an example of how Providence can turn human wrongdoing toward a good end without making the wrongdoing innocent or excusable.

Background and Provocation

The account identifies the sale of indulgences as an exceptionally prominent providential circumstance behind the emergence of reform. Luther was, at the start of his attack, still a sincere member of the Church of Rome, both in conscience and in profession, and did not yet possess an enlarged conception of reformation. The author argues that, without the extravagant abuses of the sellers of indulgences drawing his attention, Luther might have lived and died within that community, as other good men had before him.

The controversy is therefore described not as the execution of a fully formed reforming program, but as a protest awakened by a particular abuse. The account gives no detailed mechanics of the sale; it emphasizes instead the scale of its excess and its effect on Luther. That distinction matters to the author’s interpretation: the controversy’s historical consequence grew beyond the scope of Luther’s initial opposition.

Public Response and Historical Consequence

The traffic had become a serious nuisance to both princes and ordinary people. Because dissatisfaction was already widespread, listeners received Luther’s challenge to the utility of indulgences eagerly. In the author’s account, the abuses did not merely furnish Luther with a reason to object; they helped make his objections heard.

The resulting reversal is central to the book’s reading of the event. What the author calls an enormity became an occasion for reform: the very extravagance of the wrongdoing was overruled for good, and the account declares that The Reformation was owing to indulgences. This is a claim about the controversy’s historical consequence, not an approval of the practice that provoked it.

Providence and Human Responsibility

The book places the controversy within a wider argument about divine purpose and human agency. It insists that people act freely and remain accountable for sinful actions, even when those actions serve a purpose established by God. Providence, in this view, does not erase the guilt of the people whose conduct it overrules.

The author illustrates the principle elsewhere through Esther’s elevation to royal rank: her beauty and the human arrangements that placed her in the palace served the deliverance of the Jews, while the author still condemns the conduct and circumstances involved. The comparison clarifies the book’s interpretation of the indulgence controversy. A beneficial consequence does not retrospectively make the means righteous; the claim is that God can bring good out of human wrongdoing without sharing its guilt.

The Limits of Strategic Justification

The controversy also supports the book’s warning against excusing religious disobedience by pointing to useful results. The author rejects the argument that accommodation or other departures from divine commands are justified whenever they appear to open a wider field of usefulness. A good outcome does not turn a transgression into obedience, just as the providential use of human ignorance does not make that ignorance innocent.

This warning extends beyond the sale of indulgences to the author’s criticism of Christians who compromise religious principles for cooperation, money, influence, or institutional strength. Such strategies, he argues, wrongly assume that God’s purposes require unauthorized means. The lesson he draws is that Providence may overrule wrongdoing, but believers are not thereby licensed to do evil in order to achieve good.