Date of Award
5-1-2005
Document Type
Seminar Paper
Degree Name
Master of Sacred Theology (STM)
Department
Historical Theology
First Advisor
Paul Raabe
Scripture References in this Resource (separated by semi-colons)
Matthew 16:24; Matthew 4:17; Matthew 16:19; Psalm 19:12; Mark 16:16; Matthew 18:18; John 20:23;
Abstract
The history of the practice of penance from the early church to the dawn of the Reformation in the Western church is a rich story of continual change. The early church did not have a uniform doctrine and practice of penance and neither did the Western church even after Martin Luther's lifetime. The purpose of this paper is to study and explain the reasoning behind Luther's initial rejection of the Roman Catholic doctrine and practice of penance as found in various writings of Luther up until his 1520 work The Babylonian Captivity of the Church. It is the thesis of this paper that while Luther's rejection of penance as a sacrament is made on the basis of Augustinian terminology, this is but a minor reason for Luther's decision, and that there are three substantive reasons for Luther's rejection of penance as a sacrament.
Recommended Citation
Korsch, Robin, "Luther's Reformation of Penance" (2005). Master of Sacred Theology Seminar Papers. 39.
https://scholar.csl.edu/stmsp/39
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
