Erich Fromm on Martin Luther's faith

[usregimechange]

"In psychological terms his concept of faith means: if you completely submit, if you accept your individual insignificance, then the all-powerful God may be willing to love you and save you. If you get rid of your individual self with all of its shortcomings and doubts by utmost self-effacement, you free yourself from the feeling of your own nothingness and can participate in God's glory. Thus, while Luther freed people from the authority of the Church, he made them submit to a much more tyrannical authority, that of a God who insisted on complete submission of man and annihilation of the individual self as the essential condition to his salvation" (Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941 p. 81).

I always thought this was amazingly insightful book for all of us who have attempted to follow Thomas Jefferson's advice:

"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God, because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."