“Breaking Free”: Martin Luther's Babylonian Captivity of the Church in Context

Abstract

After deconstructing the walls with which the Catholic Church guarded its spiritual-temporal power in his treatise To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, Luther moves on to challenge the Catholic Church’s central stronghold and sanctuary: the sacramental system by which she accompanied and controlled her members from the cradle to the grave. Luther examines the abuses connected to the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church, the chief among them being that of the Lord’s Supper. He also defends the scriptural understanding and use of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.