Pope Leo X and Martin Luther: A Dialogue

I. Introduction

A discussion takes place in Purgatory. The German Reformer Martin Luther is visiting the pope Leo X and it has been granted, by heavenly authorization, that you can see and interact in real time with the speakers.

Luther and the Pope both now have the advantage of 500 years of reflection and the benefit of several bibliographical sources... and, of course, they now know how to use the Internet. 

II. Merit

Leo X: Since you Protestants always want to twist our words, let me set you straight on what we are talking about here.

First of all, Merit refers to good works by which human beings have a legitimate claim to receive individual salvation or eternal life from God. In other words, your good works (well, not yours, because you are evil…despite what my successor John Paul II says, my excommunication of you stands.) Be that as it may, the good works of the faithful make them worthy of heaven.

Luther: You haven’t changed in 500 years, your “Holiness.” Do you speak ex cathedra, your “Magnificence,” or will your successors have to keep fixing up after you? Are you saying that people by their good works alone can earn their way into heaven? What about grace?

Leo X: Listen and learn from the wisdom of the Holy Fathers.
St. Ignatius says, “where the labor is great, the gain is all the more.”

St. Tertullian says, “God becomes a debtor to the man who performs good works.”

Your own beloved St. Augustine says, “The Lord has made Himself a debtor, not by receiving their good works and owing them something for them, but because he promised to reward their good works. Man cannot say to God, ‘Give me back payment for what you received from me’ but only ‘Grant me what you promised me.’ ”
(Augustine, Enarr in Ps. 83, 16).

Now regarding grace, I demand that you Protestants stop twisting our words. Here’s what the Holy Mother Church has always taught about grace and merit:
Listen again to Augustine. “Man can merit nothing before God has bestowed grace upon him. Grace alone works every one of our good merits in us. When God rewards our merits, he is rewarding His own gifts in us.”
 (Augustine, Ep. 194, 5, 19 against Pelagians)

Luther: I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Leo X: Silence before your betters.
Hear the infallible words of the Council of Trent. “If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works without divine grace through Christ Jesus: let him be anathema.”
(Can 1, Canon of Justification I, Council of Trent, D 811)

You see, man can do nothing without God’s grace. As early as the 2nd Council of Orange, my honorable predecessors proclaimed:
“There are no merits at all which precede the grace of justification. When a person performs good works, they deserve a reward. But those very works cannot be performed without God’s grace which precedes them.” 
(D 191; 2nd Council of Orange)

Luther: Stop right there, your “Eminence”.
You know as well as I do that the sola gratia of Trent is not the sola gratia we Reformers have defended with our very lives.

Since you are so concerned about word-twisting, let Augustine speak clearly for himself without your Magisterial distortions. Now you listen to Augustine:
 “People work so hard to find in man’s will something good of his own which was not given to them by God. What they can possibly find, I know not.”
(Aug. Lib. de Precator. Merit. et Remiss. 2.)

Mr. Pope, does this sound like Augustine shares your view of merit?

Indeed, as he says elsewhere, “If God left man dependent on his own without God making him willing, the temptations are so numerous and great that man’s will would succumb from its own weakness. God has rescued man from the weakness of his own will by his irresistible divine grace. No matter how weak man’s will is, by God’s grace, it will not fail.”
(Aug. de Corruptione et Gratia,)

There is no place for meritorious works of the sort you desperately seek in Augustine’s writings.

Here is what another humble servant of the Lord says. I think you may have heard of him. His name is John Calvin.
“Any honest person will discover that all human works are worth nothing but filth. What people think of as righteousness, before God is nothing but wickedness.”
(Calvin, Inst, III, 12, 4)

I also have something to say about your so-called merit.
“If we look to the spiritual birth and substance of a true Christian, we shall soon extinguish all value of good works. For they are of no use to us, neither to purchase sanctification, nor to deliver us from sin, death, devil or hell. Little children are saved only by faith, without any good works. Therefore, faith alone justifies…It is disgraceful that we miserable, sinful wretches will rebuke God, and hit him in the teeth with our works, and think that we are justified with those works before him. But God will not allow it.”
(Martin Luther, Tabletalk – Justification CCCIV)

III. Pope Leo X and Martin Luther - Indulgences

Leo X: Who’s the Pope here anyway, you or me?

Luther: You are. Now tell us about this repugnant thing you call “Indulgences.”

Leo X: Your ignorance and irreverence grow across the centuries. Listen up, you have a lot to learn. An indulgence is a remission of temporal punishments due to sin, which I and my bishops bestow upon those who are truly penitent.

Luther: I can’t wait to hear the rest.

Leo X: I shall quote from the Council of Trent.
“Christ himself gave his Church the power of granting indulgences. Mat 16:19, says, ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.’ Therefore, since the earliest days of the Church, the holy Magisterium teaches and commands that indulgences are to be used in the Church. It condemns those with anathema who assert that they are useless or deny that the Church has the power to grant them.”
(Decree Concerning Indulgences, Council of Trent, Session 25, D 989)

Luther: Are you that us that people can buy forgiveness of their sins?

Leo X: My patience is running out with your impertinence. You know that is not what we teach.
The objections made against indulgences spring from ignorance and malice. The charge that an indulgence is for forgiveness of sins is false. The Church clearly teaches that indulgences are granted after a person has already been forgiven either through the Sacrament of Penance or by an act of Perfect Contrition. I repeat: An indulgence does not forgive sin but only remits the temporal punishments due to sins.
(Poole, Dogmatic Theology X, Sacraments III, p 236)

Luther: So what does the work of Christ accomplish under your system?

Leo X: Since you once were a good Roman Catholic monk, you cannot have forgotten about the Treasury of Merit, which is the place where the Church draws from the infinite merits of the work of Christ. This saving work of Jesus Christ is called the treasury of the Church because it removes the temporal penalties due to sin, by means of the indulgences.
(Rahner, Dictionary of Theology, “Treasury of the Church”)

Luther: “It is wrong to say that a man is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgences.”
(Thesis #21)

Leo X: “You are a heretic if you say that the treasures of the Church, from which the pope grants indulgences, are not the merits of Christ and of the saints.”
(Lateran Council, Leo X, Errors of Martin Luter, #17, Denzinger 757)

Luther: “The man who actually buys indulgences is as rare as he who is really penitent; indeed, he is exceedingly rare.”
(Thesis #31)

Leo X: “You are a heretic if you say indulgences are pious frauds of the faithful.”
(Lateran Council, Leo X, Errors of Martin Luter, #18, Denzinger 758)

Luther: “Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.”
(Thesis #36)

Leo X: “You are a heretic if you say that indulgences do not remit of the penalty due to sin for those who acquire them.”
(Lateran Council, Leo X, Errors of Martin Luter, #19, Denzinger 759)

Luther: “It is vain to trust in salvation by indulgence letters, even though the indulgence commissary, or even the pope, were to offer his soul as security.”
(Thesis #52)

Luther: My friend Wycliffe sums up the matter when he says, “It is foolish to believe in the indulgences of the pope and bishops.”