Luther and Freud on God

It is difficult to imagine Martin Luther, 16th-century church reformer, and Sigmund Freud, father of 20th-century psychoanalysis, as respectful conversation partners. Given Luther’s anti-Semitic views, it is easy to hear his condemnation of Freud as a heretic and as the personification of everything that is wrong with the Jews who have rejected God’s gift of grace. From Freud’s perspective of religion as infantile wish fulfillment, Luther would need long-term, intensive psychoanalysis to work through his obsessional neuroses. (Erik Erikson has already suggested conflicts Luther should face in analysis in Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, 1962.) Despite the irresolvable conflict between Luther’s devout theism and Freud’s adamant atheism, I propose that there is a basis for conversation: Luther and Freud were actually arguing against comparable ideas of God (although their subsequent re-creations were radically different).

How can there be similarities between the unquestionable ontological reality of Luther’s God and the projected, non-existent God of Freud? To discern them necessitates circumventing any discussion of the reality of God and attending instead to perceptions of God. Ana-Maria Rizzuto’s idea of “God representation” is central to this project. She argues that “no child in the Western world, brought up in ordinary circumstances, completes the Oedipal cycle without forming at least a rudimentary God representation, which he may use for belief or not.” (Rizzuto, The Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study, 1979, p. 48) Rizzuto differentiates between “concepts of God” which are generally seen to result from intentional, intellectual, theological processes, and which may preclude any emotional engagement or acceptance, and “God representations” which include a concept of God but require its integration with images and sources of the representation, which “requires a persistent psychic work of soul searching, self-scrutiny, and internal re-elaboration of the representation.” (Rizzuto, Birth, pp. 47-48)

The impetus for much of the work of Luther and Freud was their perceptions of God, based

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on their emotional and experiential struggles with the prevailing concepts of God, rather than merely on intellectual ideas. Freud, despite his denial of the existence of a divine being, held an identifiable God representation, which was surprisingly similar to the understanding of God against which Luther struggled. Both men were concerned about human suffering, both believed that prevailing understandings of God were implicated in suffering, and both presented alternative concepts of God that were intended to help alleviate suffering.

The concept of God dominant in Luther’s (1483-1546) context is easily discerned by looking at his life, beginning with the infamous thunderstorm vow he made when lightning struck too close: “Help me, St. Anne, I will become a monk!” (Roland H. Bainton, Here I Stand, 1950, p. 25) In our time it is almost impossible to imagine the devils, witches, evil spirits, and hell and damnation that, in Luther’s milieu, threatened the Christian from all sides. A 1493 woodcut entitled Christ the Judge Sitting Upon the Rainbow (Bainton, Here, p. 31) illustrates the terror of death and judgment permeating his culture. A lily extending from Christ’s right ear symbolizes the redeemed who are being ushered into paradise by angels. A sword protruding from his left ear symbolizes the “doom of the damned, whom the devils drag by their hair from the tombs and cast into the flames of hell.” (Bainton, Here, p. 30) Everyone would one day rise from the dead and stand before the judgment seat to await the words “well done” or “depart from me into the everlasting fire.” (Matthew 25:31-46 NRSV) Only the righteous could escape God’s wrath.

In light of his context, it is clear that the question that drove the young Luther into a spiritual crisis was rooted in the belief that he needed to do something to earn salvation: ‘How do I, a sinner, become acceptable in the eyes of a holy and righteous God?’ The theology he had learned proclaimed Christ’s work of atonement inadequate. Luther’s overly-scrupulous self-examination constantly revealed his dilemma, that he could have done more:

…the fear of being damned led to the desire that God might not exist. Within him there grew up a hatred against this God who expects the impossible … who ties his grace to the condition of accomplishing the impossible. (Bernhard Lohse, A Short History of Christian Doctrine, trans. F. Ernest Stoeffler, 1966, p. 103)

Admittedly, Luther’s spiritual struggles were unusually intense. Yet they were rooted in a representation of God as an unforgiving and uncompassionate judge holding the promise of paradise in exchange for radical obedience to His indiscernible and seemingly capricious will. Driven by his own pain to struggle with this concept of God, Luther came to believe this concept was harmful, even damning, to all Christians.

The words “righteousness of God” (Romans 3:21, NRSV) terrified Luther. A righteous God must punish. In what Luther described as his “tower experience,” it came to him that “the righteousness of God is his mercy, and that he makes us righteous through it.” (Luther’s Works, Vol. 54, 1999, p. 309) “By the righteousness of God we’re justified and saved through Christ.” (Works, 54, pp. 193-194) Christ—God incarnate—was seen as the one who carried the sin and suffering of humanity to the cross. Although simplistic, this description gives a sense of the shift in Luther’s God representation from a transcendent, wrathful judge to one whose love for humanity is established in suffering and death on the cross and whose power is shown in the resurrection. In the process of this shift, Luther transformed the “abstract question of a just God into an existential quest that concerned the whole human being, encompassing thought and action, soul and body, love and suffering.” (Heiko A. Obermann, Luther: Man between God and the Devil, trans Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart, 1982, p. 151) Life, healing, and hope can be found in this God representation.

The depth of Freud’s (1856-1939) atheism is obvious in his antagonism toward religion. Not only did he not believe in the existence of God, but he also diagnosed belief in God as pathological. In light of that, description of Freud’s God representation can only be a description of his projection of a God representation onto believers. Freud saw God as the father figure onto which infantile wishes for protection are projected and for whom an individual has ambivalent, unresolved Oedipal feelings of fear and hatred. God is both loving father and angry judge, although the angry judge holds dominance. God’s task is “to even out the defects and evils of civilization, to attend to the sufferings which men inflict on each other….” (Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. James Strachey, 1961. p. 22) God is a controlling and punishing judge who demands and ultimately rewards appropriate behavior (control of sexual

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 and destructive instincts). God is also a protector—although the reality of human suffering indicates a lack of effectiveness, maybe even a capriciousness, in that role.

Freud believed that there is no God and that civilization should abandon the illusions of religion, submit to fate, and face up to the ordinary unhappiness of a reasoned, scientific view of reality. However, using Luther’s explanation of the first Commandment, “We are to fear, love and trust God above anything else” (Luther, “The Small Catechism,” The Book of Concord, ed. T. G. Tappert, 1959, p. 347), it can be argued that because Freud placed his love of and trust in science above anything else, Reason (or Logos) can be named as his God representation. After acknowledging that Reason may only be able to fulfill a small part of what “God” had promised in the past, Freud maintained, “it is possible for scientific work (Logos) to gain some knowledge about the reality of the world, by means of which we can increase our power and in accordance with which we can arrange our life.” (Freud, Illusion, p. 70)

Luther and Freud transformed surprisingly similar perceptions of God—God representations they experienced as inadequate and harmful. Although their reconstructions are significantly different, each can contribute to a contemporary conversation. In a world that, since September 11, 2001, has lost a sense of safety, Luther’s image of God’s presence in the suffering of humanity offers comfort, just as Freud’s vision of the power of human reason to decrease suffering offers hope. Conversation—constructive conversation—between their followers is possible.

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