Luther's The Church Held Captive in Babylon Latin-English Edition, with a New Translation and Introduction

In August of 1520, Martin Luther published the first of three incendiary works, Address to the German Nobility, in which he urged secular authorities to take a strong hand in "reforming" the Roman church. In October, he published The Church Held Captive, and by December the deepest theological rationale appeared in The Freedom of a Christian. With these three books, the relatively unknown Friar Martin exploded onto the Western European literary and religious scene. These three works have been universally acknowledged as classics of the Reformation, and of the Western religious tradition in general. Though Reformation scholars have been reluctant to single out one as the most important of the three, Denis Janz proposes a bold case for The Church Held Captive.

In the first entirely new translation in more than a century, Janz presents Luther's text as it hasn't been read in English before. Previous translations stifle the original text by dulling the sharpest edges of its argumentation and tame Luther by substituting euphemisms for his vulgarities. In Janz's dual language edition we see the provocative, offensive, and extreme restored. In his wide-ranging introduction, Janz offers much-needed context to clarify the role of The Church Held Captive in Luther's life and the life of the Reformation. This edition is the most reader-friendly scholarly version of Luther's classic in the English language.

Denis Janz grew up in Western Canada and completed his Ph.D. in the history of Christianity at St. Michael's College in the University of Toronto. He served as Provost Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at Loyola University New Orleans, and was promoted to Professor Emeritus in 2017. His teaching, writing, and editing has covered the entire history of Christianity, while his most exacting research has focused on medieval and Reformation topics, above all Luther.

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction
(a) Orientation
(b) The Growth of Luther's New Ecclesiology: From Ecclesia Sacramentorum to Ecclesia Verbi
Beginnings
1518
The Leipzig Debate
The Aftermath of Leipzig
Ecclesiology in The Church Held Captive
Excursus: Luther's New Ecclesiology and Thomas Aquinas
(c) The Church Held Captive: Composition, Language, Title, Basic Thesis
(d) A Note on Further Developments in Luther's Ecclesiology and Sacramental Theology
(e) A Note on the Book's Early Reception History
(f) A Note on This Translation

The Church Held Captive in Babylon: A Prelude
By Martin Luther

A Letter of Introduction
From: Martin Luther, Augustinian Friar
To: Hermann Tulich, with best wishes
The Sacraments Imprisoned
The Lord's Supper
The First Imprisonment: Communion in One Kind
The Second Imprisonment: Transubstantiation
The Third Imprisonment: The Mass as Our Gift to God
Our Good Work or Christ's Testament?
Our Sacrifice or Christ's Promise?
The Sacrament of Baptism
God's Promise of Forgiveness
The Sign of this Promise
A Sacrament Corrupted by the Popes
Vows and the Freedom of Baptism
The Sacrament of Penance
A Sacrament Destroyed by Greed and Power
Contrition
Confession
Satisfaction
Confirmation
Marriage
A Non-Sacrament
Sex, Love, and Law
Sexual Morality and Christian Freedom
Ordination
An Invention of the Papal Church
Dionysius the Areopagite
Ordination and Power
Celibacy and Power
The Restoration of Christian Liberty
The Sacrament of Extreme Unction
The Distortion of Scripture
The Promise of Healing
The Promise of Forgiveness and Peace
Conclusion
Reducing the Sacraments to Two
The Gift of Recognizing God's Gifts

Bibliography

Index