The Reformation: The Temple of David Redux

When David made himself "King of the Jews" - the very "sin" for which Jesus would later be labeled and crucified - he broke the covenant that the Jews had established with Yahweh  on Mount Sinai by breaking the First Commandment: "Thous shalt have no other gods before me." In those days, kings were viewed as gods, after all, for they operated above the law and their decrees were "infallible" and thus beyond questioning. He would also set out to build a temple, which served as a central bank, to consolidate both wealth and power in his own hands (rather than God's) by outlawing all other places of worship but the temple. And by doing so, he would lay the ground work for monopolizing religious power in the hand of his son Solomon, by forcing all Jews to rely on the 'money changers' in that temple to purchase the things they needed to make their required sacrifices to God.

In Germany in 1517, the Catholic Church would pretty much do the exact same thing as David, monopolizing indulgences to fund the building of its own temple/bank - St. Peter's Basilica in Rome - and breaking both the 1st Commandment and the "new covenant" by declaring itself to be as "infallible" as God himself (by claiming that it is God that speaks through the Church, of course, which is pretty much what David and every other "King" has always claimed). In the same way David's desire to consolidate power in his own hands by his decree to build a temple would ultimately lead to rebellion among the 10 northern tribes, so the Pope's desire to elevate papal power to the "infallible" level of that of God, and the funding of the building of the "temple" of St. Peter's, would produce the exact same effect, serving as the spark that ignited the powder keg that today we call the Protestant Reformation.

While the Reformation is usually blamed on Martin Luther, it was actually caused by the Catholic Church following in the footsteps of King David, and succumbing to its quest to "be like God," as foretold in the Book of Genius and as offered to Christ in the desert by the devil.

The question we are left with to ponder from such moves, however, is where was the Holy Spirit in all of this, since Catholics believe the Holy Spirit is responsible for always "guiding" the Church?

CONTEXT OF PAPAL OVERREACTION TO MARTIN LUTHER

After the crises of the Babylonian Captivity and the Great Schism, the papacy was extremely sensitive to the any challenge to papal power. As a result, papal theologian Sylvester Prierias interpreted Luther's 95 theses, which included criticism of the sale of indulgences and the Treasure House of Merit in general (explained below), as a direct attack on the absolute power of the pope, even though Luther had no such intention in mind. To those criticisms, then, the papacy therefore overreacts to defend its claims to power (hell hath no fury like a pope who's power is challenged), much in the same way Caiaphas sought to defend the power of the Sanhedrin by overreacting to the criticisms of Jesus, and Herod the Great sought to protect his monarchy by overreacting to the birth of Jesus by killing all of the first born children of Bethlehem. As a result, the pope issues decrees asserting that the pope is "infallible" in all matters of faith, claiming further that his authority surpassed even that of the Bible - these were claims the Church had never made before.

In these decrees, we see how the Catholic Pope became Joseph Caiaphas, known simply as Caiaphas in the New Testament, "the Jewish high priest who is said to have organized the plot to kill Jesus," who was also said to have been involved in the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus. We also see how the Pope wished to assert his absolute power over all Christians in the same way King David sought to do the same thing over the Tribal League and thus all the Tribes of Israel and Judah (which is why David had the support of the Philistines).  

We even see this parallel in the Conciliarism reform movement in the Catholic Church in general, during the 14th-, 15th- and 16th-century. In the same way the Tribal League opposed the monarchy of David, in short, so Conciliarism held that supreme authority in the Church resided with an Ecumenical Council, apart from, or even against, the pope. This movement emerged in response to the Western Schism between rival popes in Rome and Avignon.

THE BANK AS THE TEMPLE & THE POPE AS THE SERPENT

So, how did the Catholic Church cause the Reformation? Well, like most wars and unrest, it was caused by the banks. Here's how. 

Albrecht of Brandenburg became the archbishop of Mainz in 1514 by purchasing that office from the pope for a very large sum of money, which was not an uncommon thing to do in those days. Such a position was sought after for various reasons, but mostly because it provided a good income with minimal work and practically no oversight - one Bishop of Strasbourg never preached a sermon or heard confession in 28 years, for example.  In Albrecht's case, the price was no doubt more than normal, for he was only 16 at the time, which was typically too young to hold such a position.

Lacking the kind of money one needed to purchase such a valuable position within the Church, Albrecht  borrowed it form the giant Fugger Bank of Augsburg, headed by Jacob "the rich." Having spent his handsome income from the Church on the comforts and pleasures of the day,when he was eventually pressed by the bank for repayment on the loan, he had no money to spare. So he appealed to the pope. But the pope informed him that the building of the new St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome (again, yet another bank/temple like that David sought to build, and that Christ would eventually threaten to destroy)  had left the church insolvent.

So, to dig themselves out of the debt they had both fallen into, one through simony and the other by following in the footsteps of David, they decided to sell the real estate of heaven through indulgences. Indulgences were based on the idea that, if the saints and apostles had led such holy lives and gained such merit in the eyes of God that when they died  they did not have to use all of their merit to get into heaven, the excess merit was left to the Church to dole out for others. The Church was thus free to "sell" the excess of "merit" it had inherited from all those dead saints, to all the living who, terrified of hell, sought to spend their life savings on securing a seat in heaven.

The excess amount of such "merit" was stored up in what the Church called "The Treasure House of Merit."  It was the sale of this excess "merit" that would become the Indulgence Crisis of 1517. 

Since a lot of indulgences would need to be sold to cover the cost of both of these expenses, the pope turned to his top indulgence salesmen, Johannes Tetzel, a man who sometimes used questionable tactics, and often promised - much like the serpent in the Garden of Eden - that the "indulgences" did far more than the Church claimed they actually would. In fact, Tetzel told buyers that those indulgences could be used for other than their intended purposes, including to be saved up in advance of sins, and as a means of not only avoiding confession (and since the priests could use the information gained in the confessional as a means of spying on people and use such secrets agaisnt them if need be, this was a very attractive way around that) but of getting deceased relatives out of purgatory. Like a modern day marketing guru, Tetzel even sold those indulgences with a catchy jingle: "As soon as your coin in my coffer rings, a soul up from purgatory springs."

In Wittenburg, right next door, Martin Luther was not just a professor but also a priest in the parish church. He was, thus, in charge of the eternal fate of his parishioners' souls. And when he heard that a number of people had bought indulgences from Tetzel, he became understandably worried.

Luther was not opposed to the sale of indulgences as they had been traditionally conceived by the church, but he had two objections in the way those indulgences were being sold in 1517. The first was that Tetzel was selling those indulgences under false pretenses, which Luther feared might prevent one from going to heaven. And the second was that Luther questioned the idea of the "Treasure House of Merit," as well as whether the Pope had the power to actually sell those "merits" at all. 

These concerns were listed in Luther's famous Ninety-Five Theses, which he did not nail to the door of Wittenburg, but instead sent to archbishop Albrechet, the very person responsible for the sale, who then forwarded it to the pope, who had masterminded the whole spiritual ponzi scheme in the first place. Famously absent from this equation, of course, is the Holy Spirit, unless it can be said that the Holy Spirit was questioning the Church through Martin Luther, in the same way Christ had questioned the Sanhedrin.