NEW INTEREST IN LUTHER AND CALVIN

Judging from current reprints of the works of Luther and Calvin, there seems to be a revival of interest in the Protestant Reformation.This is, undoubtedly, part of a general upturn in theological scholarship, which is a salutary reaction to the old liberalism with its cliche, “Christianity is a life, not a doctrine.” But it is remarkable that not only theologians but also psychologists and psychiatrists are sharing this interest in Luther and Calvin. This, too, can be traced to a reaction, namely, to Freudian determinism. Existentialism, especially, is stimulating a new look at the problem of freedom vs. authority, of responsibility vs. determinism. The behavioral scientists are not interested in the problem as it was formulated at the time of the Reformation and as it was developed subsequently in Protestantism. They are not concerned with the debate between Erasmus and Luther on the “Freedom of the Will,” nor with the Calvinist-Arminian controversy that came to a head at the synod of Dort early in the seventeenth century. The psychologists and psychiatrists are concerned with the effect of the Reformation theology on man, whether it helps to alienate or integrate the individual, its influence on western culture and man’s place in it. They recognize that Luther and Calvin had great influence on western man, and now they are asking whether that influence was for freedom or bondage, for maturity or immaturity, in the direction of making man more or less truly himself.

As examples of this interest I cite two influential writers, Erich Fromm and O. Hobart Mowrer. Fromm devotes a large section of his book, Escape from Freedom, to a discussion of Luther and Calvin, and Mowrer deals, particularly, with Calvinism in his recent book, The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, as well as in other of his writings. My purpose in calling attention to this is polemic. It seems to me that these scholars are missing the whole thrust of the Reformers’ concepts of freedom and responsibility, that they represent Luther and Calvin in a way that sounds strange to us who are heirs of the Protestant Reformation.

         

           

FROMM ON THE REFORMERS

According to Fromm, Luther and Calvin, in liberating men from the authority of the Church, left man alone and helpless in his innate evilness. This coincided with the situation of the poor and the middle class of their time who had been isolated by the economic and social changes involved in the transition from a feudal to a capitalistic society. Thus the doctrines of the Reformers found a fertile soil and a ready acceptance among these uprooted and struggling masses. However, instead of helping man to a positive freedom of spontaneous and creative self-expression, Luther and Calvin put man into a new bondage. To escape the anxiety of isolation and helplessness, they subjected man to another external authority which Fromm calls a “tyrannical God” (pp. 81, 82, 87). Thus the Protestant Reformation, while it liberated man from one external authority, bound him to another which, according to Fromm, was also an escape from freedom. Fromm contends that man has repeatedly been making this tragic mistake of surrendering his freedom to an external authority, and by this surrender he has exchanged his anxiety for a measure of inner peace and security. He has sold his birthright of freedom for the pottage security. The transition from feudalism to capitalism brought with it anxiety, as transitions always do, but also hostility because of the competitive atmosphere and the individual struggle involved in the rising capitalistic society. Fromm says:

“Luther and Calvin portray this all-pervading hostility. Not only in the sense that these two men, personally, belonged to the ranks of the greatest haters among the leading figures of history, certainly among religious leaders; but, which is more important, in the sense that their doctrines were colored by this hostility and could only appeal to a group itself driven by an intense, repressed hostility. The most striking expression of this hostility is found in their concept of God, especially in Calvin’s doctrine” (p. 95).

MOWRER’S APPROACH

Mowrer puts it this way:

“The essence of Luther’s position, particularly as it has filtered down to us through John Calvin and other Protestant expositors, is that man is responsible, so to say, in only one direction: capable of choosing the wrong and fully accountable for having done so, he is, however, supposedly unable to do anything whatever toward his own redemption and must wait, helplessly, upon the unpredictable favor, or ‘grace’ of God. It is, of course, not difficult to see why such a curious and one-sided doctrine was conceived and advocated with such insistence: it cut the whole logic from under the Church’s emphasis upon good works, including both penances and indulgences, and thus succeeded where more moderate programs of reform had failed. Erasmus (in the tradition of the Apostle James, Pelagius, Jerome, and later, Arminius) had insisted upon human freedom and responsibility in the matter of both evil and good and had asked only for greater honesty in the assignment of the credit for each kind of action. But Luther and Calvin, seizing upon selected segments in the teachings of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine, stridently repudiated this position, and in doing so were able to produce an ideological and institutional change of enormous historical significance” (Atlantic Monthly, July 1961, p. 89).

“There is thus, as I see it, no place for Calvinistic logic in the modem world: we have, it seems, a completely symmetrical choice between observing natural principles and prospering, on the one hand, and disregarding them and getting into trouble, on the other. And we have just as much responsibility—and deserve just as much ‘credit’ positive or negative—in the one case as in the other. If we are to end the wasteful and undignified conflict between scientific and religious world views, it must surely be along these lines…” (The Crisis in Psychiatry and Religion, p. 183).

Thus both Fromm and Mowrer charge the Reformers with binding man to a tyrannical and arbitrary authority before which man is powerless and, yet, responsible, and thus they increased, rather than decreased, anxiety.

TWO DIFFERENT STARTING POINTS AND METHODS

Now it is possible to cite chapter and verse from Luther and Calvin to show how completely they are misunderstood by Fromm and Mowrer. My polemic purpose might require this. But it is more important, and certainly at the root of the matter, to point out that their starting point is so different from that of Fromm and Mowrer, that any discussion of specific concepts simply becomes irrelevant. Fromm and Mowrer speak in a universe of discourse that makes it impossible for them to come to grips with Luther and Calvin. The Reformers are on one road while Fromm and Mowrer are on another, and they cannot meet no matter how logical and reasonable their argument may sound. Fromm also recognizes that a doctrine does not exist by itself, but that it is an integral part of a logical system (p. 68). Thus his own concepts of freedom and responsibility are also parts of his particular system, and this holds for Mowrer too. To evaluate their analysis of the Protestant Reformation, it is, therefore, necessary to uncover the roots of their thinking, as well as those of Luther and Calvin.

When we examine the point from which Fromm and Mowrer view the Protestant Reformation, and their method of analysis, it becomes clear that freedom and authority mean something different for them than for Calvin and Luther. Mowrer and Fromm assume that reality is of one piece, the natural, that which can be known and manipulated by the scientific method. Man is subject only to the laws of his natural existence; he is the autonomous, unique individual. He is free only so long as he does not surrender to any external authority. Man is sufficient to himself, and to be free he must be “Man for Himself” (Fromm). Submission to any authority outside himself is an “Escape from Freedom.” In justice to Mowrer, it must be said that he is not an avowed humanist like Fromm. Mowrer is an active churchman, and I do not question the sincerity of his religious faith. However, I do question his degree of consistency, and suggest that his thinking, like Fromm’s, proceeds from an uncritical assumption of a univocal (one-voice, natural) universe, instead of an analogical (Creator-creature) universe.

In contrast, Luther and Calvin assume a two-level reality, the natural and supernatural, creation and Creator, and their thinking is, therefore, analogical instead of univocal. They want to think God’s thoughts after him; they want to know man not only through scientific inquiry, but also. and first of all, in the light of God’s revelation. The dependence of the creature on the Creator is for them the existential, actual situation, and this dependence is the creature’s glory, not its shame, its freedom, not its bondage. To Luther and Calvin human autonomy and self-sufficiency is a delusion which does not alter the existential situation. “Even to deny God man needs life and breath from God.” Man’s attempt to escape from freedom is always and in every form a foredoomed attempt to escape from God. They begin with the assumption that God is and, therefore, God is the ultimate point of reference for every concept. On the other hand, Fromm and Mowrer begin with a “neutral” assumption, that empirical science is the only path to truth, and that freedom, responsibility, authority, and all other problems must be investigated and defined on the human level.

The starting point also determines the method; metaphysics determines epistemology. Fromm says that the character structure of a person determines the doctrines he holds. Thus the beliefs of Calvin and Luther are products of the various influences of heredity, training, culture, et cetera. He does not even entertain the possibility of a direct influence of God on a person’s character and beliefs; revelation is a meaningless concept for Fromm. He says, for example, that Luther’s authoritarian thinking comes from the fact that he had a rigid, authoritarian father, and had little love in his childhood (p. 66). Are we to infer from this that every person who submits to an external authority must have had, like Luther, a severe father and little love in childhood? And is this not trimming the body to fit the cloth?

In his methodology Fromm also asserts that the verbal form of a doctrine does not express the deeper or unconscious meaning. Psychological analysis is needed to bring the real meaning to light. Here again he assumes that reality can be known only by the scientific method. He does not mention that the psychological analysis could be quite different if it were done by a Freudian or Adlerian, by a Jungian or Existentialist. And if the conclusions of Luther need to be analyzed for their deeper meaning, then who is to analyze the analyst’s conclusions, and who is to analyze the analyzer of the analyst? And so on ad infinitum, ad absurdum, ad nauseam.

Of course, it must be conceded that both of these theories -cultural conditioning and meanings beyond words—have a measure of validity. Personality structure, subjective needs and interests, have much to do with a person’s beliefs, and real meanings are often hidden behind the media of communication. But the difficulty comes in when these theories are applied to specific persons and doctrines, especially if the religious dimension or, rather, the activity of God on man (what Luther and Calvin mean, for example, by regeneration) is ignored. And this is precisely the difficulty with Fromm’s and Mowrer’s analysis of Luther and Calvin.

BASIC DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES

If we now turn to specific doctrines, we can see that Fromm and Mowrer (Fromm more explicitly and consistently) analyze them in terms of their own uncritically accepted assumptions. For Fromm, human freedom is freedom within natural law, with man responsible only to himself (Mowrer lays more emphasis on man’s responsibility to his fellowman). For Luther and Calvin, freedom is within divine law, with man responsible to God. For Fromm, man’s helplessness and evilness is in his failure to accept himself as an autonomous, unique individual who is capable of spontaneous creativity. For Luther and Calvin, man’s helplessness and evilness is in his delusion of autonomy and his self-alienation from God. Fromm and Mowrer say that man must “save” himself; Luther and Calvin say that God must save him.

But, while Luther and Calvin insist on the Scriptural teaching that God alone saves man, they are just as insistent on human responsibility. whether for good or evil. Calvinism, especially, has never shied away from embracing both divine sovereignty and human responsibility, though ineconcilable in human logic. But, because of its two-level epistemology, Calvinism has also insisted that man is free in his decisions and fully responsible for both good and evil in the horizontal dimension, and gets “credit” accordingly. The distinction between “spiritual” and “civic” good and the doctrine of Common Grace seem foreign to these critics, and their unilateral thinking disqualifies them as analysts of Luther and Calvin. For Fromm, human activity is man’s response to himself; it is the spontaneous expression of his self-sufficiency. For Luther and Calvin, this is precisely man’s sin, because for them human activity should be man’s response to God who has given man “dominion over the works of his hands.” Fromm and Mowrer, like the Reformers, recognize that freedom is positive—freedom for—as well as negative—freedom from. Fromm wants man to be free from every external authority and be “Man for Himself.” Luther and Calvin want man to be free from every authority, including himself, so that he is

Man for God. But the real conflict is not on these segments; it is between systems.