Luther's Call to Action: A Consideration of To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation

Abstract

In this treatise Luther discusses the relationship of clergy and laity in the Christian church. He points out the artificial walls of superiority that the Catholic Church had created around itself and its clergy to guard its temporal and ecclesiastical powers. He then tears down those walls using Scripture and shows how many of the privileges that the Catholic clergy had arrogated to itself rightly belong to the priesthood of all believers. He goes on to propose a series of reforms that are necessary for the church to remain true to the authority that God has given all his children.