Calvin and Luther

Calvin's theology exhibits the same spirit as Luther's, both theologically and psychologically. Like Luther, Calvin opposes authority of the church and blind acceptance of its doctrines. Yet, religion for him is rooted in the powerlessness of man, self-humiliation and the destruction of human pride. To paraphrase Calvin: Only he who despises this world can devote himself to the next. I see that both theologians contradict their claim about man's pathetic status implicitly - both are quite certain that correct views, concerning incredible mysteries, such as the nature of man, the universe, and god, are neatly within their grasp. How can Calvin see man as so low, and yet, so capable of appreciating such mysteries? How can Calvin see himself as both pond scum and enlightened and elected? My answer is that he doesn't see things this way at all. His narcissim shows through in his work.

Self Humiliation as a Means to God

Calvin teaches that we should humilate ourselves and that this very self-humilation is the means to reliance on God's strength. "For nothing arouses us to repose all confidence and assurance of mind on the Lord, so much as diffidence of ourselves, and anxiety arising from a consciousness of our own misery (From the IRC, Book 3, chapter IX, 1)

Yet, it is clear that within all this groveling, there is plenty of room for good works and prideful boasting. Just look at the contradiction that is implied here: We can outgrovel each other, we can grovel better than others, and by our groveling, we save ourselves, even though we are told that this groveling is an effect, and not a cause. Calvin will go to some lengths to attempt to squash this line of thought.

Like Luther, Calvin preaches that the individual should not feel that he is his own master, nor should he even bother to use his mind to work any of this out: "We are not our own; therefore neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not our own; therefore, lets us not propse it as our end, to seek what may be expedient for us according to the flesh(mind). We are not our own; therefore, let us, as far as possible, forget ourselves and all things that are ours. On the contrary, we are God's, to him, thererfore let us live and die. For, as it is the most devastating pestilence which ruins people if they obey themsevles, it is the only haven of salvation not to know or to want anything oneself but to be guided by God who walks before us." (book 3, chapter 7, 1)

Just as Calvin notes that self-humilation is "the only haven of salvation" he denies that good works can lead man to "salvation". He half solves this contradiction by stating that man should not strive for virtue for its own sake. In other words, trying to be humble would make us vain. I suppose we would end up with the most famous self contradiction on humility, Moses, who, as Thomas Paine noted, was credited with saying that he was the "most humble of all." You can't be humble to win God's salvation - you just have to be humble out of your own patheticism.

Not only can we not hope to save ourselves with good works, such as being really humble, we are completely lacking in the ability anyway: "No work of a pious man ever existed, which, if it were examined before the strictist judgement of God, did not prove to be damnable." (Book 3, chapter 7, 2) Here, perhaps we are privy to Calvin's experiences with his own strict and unapproving father. We are also running into the pathology of depression - where genuine humility becomes self-accusation and even self-loathing.

Freedom of Choice or Freedom From Choice?

If we try to understand the psychological significance of Calvin's system, (the same holds true as has been said about Luther's teachings) we see that Calvin, like Luther, preached to the conservative middle class who was threatened with insignificance and powerlessness by the elites of their culture. Against them, all efforts were futile - fated to failure, one might note. Calvin's theology expressed the feeling of freedom from this new world where man had to compete with such overpowering monopolistic forces, by stressing the insignificance and powerlessness of all individuals. Yes, the middle class was pathetic, but even moreso were the elites, who were both pathetic and damned (which, of course, makes the calvinists the true elites..shhhh!) . If one submitted to God (which is suspiciuosly a whole lot like a good work, isn't it?) , one was free from this cultural competition that one had no hope of winning anyway - and one was saved to boot. Psychologically speaking, the solution that Calvin offered was that through complete submission and self-humiliation a Calvinist could, in Fromm's words, recapture the sense of primary security of the fused state of childhood, or of serfdom. This new "secondary bond" allows for an escape from the growing existential fear that freedom from the life of a serf granted renaissance man. A Calvinist didn't have to worry about choice and risk that the serf never had to face - these were phantoms. He just needed to do what he already did best, what he already was well practiced in - lick boots. Although, this time they were at least celestial boots covered, presumably, in fairy dust.

That this appeals to the downtrodden and ordinary should not surprise us - this is a theology that lifts the ordinary above their superiors, and it does it without any effort at all being required of them. That this theology, so pernicious to logic, reason and human agency would appeal to the inferior ceases to be a surprise and instead appears clearly for what is really is, a balm for the wounded, an excuse for the weak.

Where Luther and Calvin Part Ways

There are several differences in Calvin's works from Luther's. One is Calvin's view of predestination. Unlike predestination's role in the theology of Augustine, Aquinas and even Luther, in Calvin's world, predestination becomes the central doctrine. And in a manner that even the nefarious Augustine never dared - Calvin not only sees people predestined as saved by grace, but the rest of humanity fated for eternal damnation. And if there are people who are eternally damned, how should a good christian, following after a capricious and merciless god, treat them?

Now Look Where We Are

Not only will good works avail us not, not only are we even incapable of them, there is no need to even consider trying at all, for there is no point - most of us are damned from birth. In this view, we quickly approach the reductio ad abusurdum that must occur as religion's two main tenets, free will and an omnipotent/omniscient god, finally crash into each other. With Calvin, we finally come to the logical conclusion that an omnipotent god must logically damn and grace us at the moment of creation, completely at random without any rational justification whatsoever. But if this occurs, then how can will be free? If god sets the boundaries, he necessarily decides all. If we have a choice, god cannot be god. And if god is god, then we are to blame for nothing, and god is merely an irrational tormenter.

The Problem With Morality in Calvin's System - Or God as the Biggest Bully on the Block

Why does God choose one and condemn the other? Of course, as I have allued to above, there can be no answer, for there can be no moral or valuative difference between any person in such a system. Any moral or evaluative nature of man is removed when we place all power in God's hands. In this system, even God cannot be moral. We run right into the Euthyphro problem - wherein whatever an unlimited god does, must be moral, for no other reason than the right of power. Choices between one man and another must logically be nothing but arbitrary can be nothing but arbitrary, for God can make any one person saved or damned, and man plays no part. Calvin of course cannot justify this lunacy with either logic or fact. Tellingly, Calvin dodges the problem completely and falls into the logical fallacy of circular logic when he defends his system thusly: "He (God) chose to do so because it pleased him." (And it pleases him because he chose it, right John?!) and the logical fallacy of special pleading when he further states about the conundrum: "It is not for us to delve into these matters." I am astounded by what is occuring here: We are expected to accept the idea that some of us are damned from birth, that all human effort is pointless, and that taking pride in what we are is a sin, based on a philosophical justification that could be provided to us by a six year old. Fromm notes that Calvin has endowed God with the characteristics of his own father: God in Calvin's hands is an unjust, unloving tyrant, who Calvin cannot figure out. But just stop and think of what damage is being done here. Man is useless, and god is a tyrant. We have already witnessed his theological argument, for whatever it is worth. Seeing it as nothing to be moved by, we need not be too concered. After all, his is a theology of scripture. We should now ask Calvin to live up to his words and justify this unjust and uncharitable view of god through scripture.

Calvin supports this view by stating: "For what the Schoolmen (Aquinas, etc.) advance concerning the priority of charity, to faith and hope, is a mere reverie of the distempered imagination." (IRC, Book 3, chapter 2, 41).

Rather than receive the promised scriptural support, that is the main part of his outwardly professed creed, we are now treated to the logical fallacies of naked assertion and ad hominim circumstantial. And talk about a classic Freudian projection! Imagination?! The classic scholastics such as Aquinas supported their contentions through direct citations of the new testament! - the very technique that Calvin lambasts his opponents for NOT using. And yet Calvin resorts to no scripture at all! Worse, Calvin's claim is in direct contradiction to the word of the new testament! Yet, he has the temerity to compound this insult with the claim that others rely on "distempered imagination" when it is nothing more than distempered imagination that motivates his claims! A textbook projection.

Predestination's True Roots

According to Fromm, the psychological significance of the doctrine of predestination is twofold. One, it expresses the feeling of individual powerlessness and insignificance. I ask, how does this equate to the humanism that Calvin is said to represent in the IRC? No doctrine or document could express a more pathetic, powerless or worthless view of man. Human will, human effort are of no value. Man's lot is fated, nothing more can be said of him. It is often said of this view that man is a tool or a puppet. I disagree. He is not a tool, not even a puppet, for this would at least provide man with some lot in life. Tools and puppets can at least have some purpose. A tool exists to extend a being's power. If man were a tool of god, he would have a useful lot in life - extending god's power. A puppet exists to entertain. If man were a puppet, he would at the least provide god with merriment.

A man in Calvin's view has no purpose at all, not even entertainment. In a real sense then, he can be said to be purposeless. This is the true essence of Calvin: that the purpose of man's existence is purposelessness. Talk about a self-contradiction. Man takes on the air of a "purposeful mistake" that god has, through some ineffable sense of humor, decided to pull on the universe.

So why are Calvin's views so popular? For the second significance that Fromm exposes: That Calvin's views silence self-doubt that comes from the aforementioned existential anxiety that plagues modern man. Followers of Calvin, naturally enough, assume that they are of the elect, at least superficially. And they "know" that no matter how worthless they are, they are saved. Even better, they are freed from freedom of choice and freedom of thought, which brings them more pain than hope. The thinking is thus: If I am worthless, then I cannot do anything to aid my salvation, BUT, it is also true that I cannot do anything to harm my salvation - my fear of nonexistence can now crumble away, and fall from my consciousness. I may be pathetic, but I am protected from my patheticism by my patheticism! My inability to do anything means that I cannot harm myself myself. Not only am I saved, but I am saved from having to do anything to be saved.

Of course, as Fromm stresses, this "solution" is pathological, for while existential doubt fades from our consciousness, it remains, just as the snake's venom remains, even as we pull the snake's fangs from us. It's already under our skin, and at work in our bodies. For this reason, the Calvinist must remain ever a fanatic - forever silencing his rising doubts. The best mode for this silencing is projection - or fighting this inner impulse as it "exists" in others. And the existence of an entire class of people to hate, the damned, serves this purpose wonderfully.

Calvin's Unamerican Views - Man's Worthlessness, and the Inequality of Men

Ironically, Calvinism, with its work ethic and stick-to-it-ivness, is seen as very American. That a country that outwardly values independence, freedom of choice, freedom of thought, self-reliance and the equality of man can be seen as built from Calvinism just shows how much can come from so little - for Calvinism proper contains the very negation of all of these views.

Calvin, and the Inequality of Men

If man is either elect and damned from birth, then there exists a basic inequality of the greatest kind. There can be no solidarity of men, when one group differs qualitatively. There can be no solidarity between the saved and the damned. A calvinist may deny this outwardly, but that only causes the truth to run silently and deeply within the unconscious.

This pernicious view represents a deep contempt and hatred other human beings - the same hate the Calvin elevated to his god. The doctrine that men are basically unequal according to their racial background is confirmation of the same principle with a different rationalization. (Actually, since Calvinists imagine that "godless africans" are damned, its the same one.) The psychological implications are identical.

Calvin/Protestant Work Ethic

If anything can be salvaged as useful from Calvin, it would seem to be the work ethic his beliefs inculcated. It is quite true that this work ethic, in part, built our culture as it stands today.

A Calvinist today would feel a strong proof of the refutation of my words could come from the postives within the Calvinist work ethic: if Calvinism is really a religion of patheticism, then why does it so succesfully motivate good work? Yes, we Calvinists humble ourselves before god, as all should, but we glory in his graces.

A good point on the surface. But only on the surface. The fact remains that the main tenet of predestination indicates that man is already fated to his end. So, hard work here takes on a pathological tenor. In the Calvinist work ethic, people do not work for inner motivations of self-satisfaction. It clearly cannot be self-reliance and be Calvinism, without refuting the tenets of the system. Calvinists are left with very little - they must work in a franatic, compulsory manner, not to save themselves, as this is stated as impossible, but to establish the very fact that they are already saved. The logic here is this: If I work hard, I must be saved, for only the saved can work hard. Calvin's twisted logic amounts to this: "I can't work hard to be saved, it would be a waste of time, but if I work hard, I am already saved, so I will make sure to keep working hard!" Calvin emphasized the necessity of unceasing human effort in this regard - note the term "unceasing" and its' compulsatory flavor.

In the Calvinistic work ethic, the circular logic that justifies much of Calvinism is again apparent. Historians will note that the same logic behind the divine rights of kings is being revived, only this time it is warmed over for the masses. The King's success was proof he was favored by god, and he was clearly favored by god - for why else did he enjoy such success?

The same holds true for the adherent of Calvinism. Some might point out that if Calvinists really believed all work were pointless, that they would simply give up all attempts to do good works. The fatalistic giving up of effort, at first, seems the only way to deal with predestination, but this in reality would be unlikely to occur, for in such a system, giving up would only serve to indicate or "prove" that one was damned! If surrender is the sign of being damned, then one dare not surrender. Calvin's work ethic is an unconscious, unhealthy one, even as it it productive - it compels and pushes, rather than motivates and pulls. Choice is impossible, so choice gives way to compulsion. There is no inner strength, no joy, no satisfaction, no self-confidence. There is only a desparate and unceasing escape from anxiety. A strict Calvinist makes a good worker, like any serf would, but he or she makes a poor friend or mate, and the worst sort of philosopher.

The best evidence of this view of the Calvinistic work ethic is the modern Calvinist himself. Observe his compulsory nature, his work for work's sake approach to any task.

Think of times, where you yourself, felt compelled by anxiety, not motivated by inner drives, to do some work. For example, think of yourself in a situation where you must do nothing but wait - say for example, in a hospital waiting room, where a friend is being operated on. While resignation to what happens is the only logical course, you don't simply wait - you pace, frantically, and search for some activity to perform, no matter how useless. You are driven to do SOMETHING even when there is NOTHING to do. You might count the number of cracks on the floor, telling yourself that an even number indicates a good outcome for your friend. You become obsessive compulsive. You might also try an equally useful ritual - prayer. You probably won't recognize the compulsitory drive of anxiety directly. When power is outside of your jurisdiction, you nevertheless do not cease to try to change the situation - even if you are reduced to playing games like "He loves me, he loves me not" while pulling flower petals. The headless chicken continues to run.

How Calvinism Leads to Even More Self Deception

Effort in Calvinist doctrine has another psychological meaning: The fact that one did not tire in unceasing effort means that one must be chosen. So lying about adversity is now mandatory - repressing reality becomes necessary to reduce anxiety. (This of course brings about more anxiety!) The irrationality about this compulsive effort is that the activity is not meant to create a desired end but serves to indicate whether or not something will occur which has already been preordained independent of one's own activity and control! It's "He loves me, he loves me not" pulling of the flower petals again. Yet, this is unconscious to the calvinist. He is caught in the circular mindset of the divine right of kings: success means one is saved, for only the saved are succesful.

How Self Deception Leads to Neurotic Behavior

The influence of such compulsions lead to neurotic, obessional, compulsive behavior. The protypical calvinist worker who works for works-sake, without joy or inner purpose, for there can be no purpose, the worker who neither smiles nor frowns, out of fear of seeing himself damned for vanity or disaproval, is the sad, and pathetic end result of this pernicious creed. The calvinist is a neurotic of the first order. It is necessarily true that effort can only be irrational in this system. Effort is a reassurance against existential angst, it doesn't exist for anything, because all the "fors" the "yeas" to life, as Nietzsche would say, are vanquished in this hateful system of nonthought.

How The Elites Benefited From a Moral System That "Damned" them.

The most delicious and wonderful of all ironies is just how this creed spectactularly failed it's main adherents. It not only destroyed the "yea" to life that might have given them true pleasure, it also turned them into better and more productive tools for their very enemies. The compulsive motivation to work, which reduced the calvinist's anxiety was a great force in creating wealth for elites, for as Fromm notes, people are always ready to question outside compulsions to work, (particularly from the elites.) We are ready to rebel against such a force -we recognize so clearly the faults that exist in others, and see their naked agression and greed for what it is. But there is little reason to rebel against one's own inner motivations. Of course, here, the word "own" is italicized, because it is not truly one's own motivation. We are not freely chosing life, or saying "yea" to life. So this force is no less a tyrant than that of the elites who we refer to as slave drivers. The calvinist duped himself, and became a better pawn.

Hostility and Resentment in Calvin's World

Erich Fromm states: "Anyone who is thwarted in emotional and sensual expression and who is also threatened in his very existence will normally react with hostility." Clearly, this describes the state of affairs for the calvinist.

In Calvin's time, (and perhaps our own), the rising force of capitalism threatened the middle class. It threatened his role in life. It threatened his security. The wealthy enjoyed a qualitatively different life. They could choose where they lived, travel as they pleased, and choose the mate of their liking. This aroused envy in the rest of the society. Most likely, there was some realization of the points I made above - that their work ethic only served to further enhance the lot of the elites. So a further, soothing delusion was required: A philosophy that stated that those who went without these benefits was blessed. And this philosophy is a natural: Most philosophies exist to justify what we already do, not to motivate us above ourselves.

While the middle class was able to repress this envy and hostility in the supposed 'holiness' of pious humility, the anger only went underground. The Calvinist thought it therefore gone. But this is folly. Underground it not only went on existing, it was now completely free to permeate the Calvinist's entire philosophy, because it could not be checked by the conscious mind. Calvin's views won over the middle class, because they were envious, hateful and fearful of the elites. They wanted a religion that did not take away this anger, but instead justified it, even imagined that God himself felt the same way they did. God became unjust, arbitrary, merciless, because otherwise, the elites themselves would be the favored ones. Otherwise the current state of affairs would mean that the Calvinist was to "blame" for his own lot in life, for his own failures, and this could not be! He needed a philosophy that lifted him up over his superiors, just as it also denied such an ability for those to whom he was superior (the damned), and yet hid away the hypocracy. He needed a philosophy that justified his greed and his anger, yet made him appear moral.

Calvin, and Luther as well, give creedence to this consuming anger. Their theology is one of revenge upon, and hostility towards, others. Even their Gods do little more than exist to justify this hostility - they are not gods of grace and love and justice, they are capricious, mysterious gods, masters of "puppets", damning whom they will, because they will it, with no more justification than that it "pleases them", to directly quote Calvin. God weilds power, because he can, just as a four year old might. He is nothing more than the highest elite, who exists to overpower the earthly elite. The bigger Bully, who paradoxically prefers to save the bullied. This despot, weilding arbitrary power over men, frightening men into mindless submission, first granting, then demanding the reliquishment of logic self-efficacy and self-choice in preference to logic bending faith and self-humiliation, is the projection of the middle classes own hostility, anger, greed and envy. Like all religions, it's the projection of the flaws of its believers.

Further evidence exists in the Calvinist's relationship towards earthly others. The relationships are colored by moral indignation towards the elites. This moral indignation of elites, both elites of power and elites of the intellect, is nothing more than envy of what the masses could never enjoy or comprhend. The grapes were rationalized as sour, when they were out of the grasp of the masses. God, the biggest of the elites, would destroy the earthly elites, and favor those who theoretically refused these objects of envy: wealth, power and knowledge, but in reality never had any opportunity to possess any of them.

What Happened to Jesus and His Simple Message of Love Thy Enemy?

Where is the new testament's themes of love and brotherliness? There is humility, but it is a false, pathological humility. Most damning, where is the humility of the calvinist in relation to those to which he is a superior - the poor and the damned? Calvin's system takes on a cruel attitude towards the rest of the world, the poor and the damned are trod upon by the calvinist precisely as the calvinist imagines himself trod upon by the immoral elites. It in no way deviates one molecule of morality from the very same projected attitude of the elites towards the calvinists. In other words, the calvinists, when given an opportunity to act morally in relation to their inferiors, instead act precisely as those whom they see as damned.

Man as a Thoroughly Wicked Creature

These views play a large part in how Calvin and Luther viewed all men. That man would act hypocritically is preordained as well - for man is wicked. He deserves no respect, no succor, not even pity. Here, the hostility of Calvin finally turns in on itself. Luther consciously imagined that humility served to keep many next to god, who alone could save man. But to anyone familiar with the psychological mechanisms of self-accusation and self-humiliation there can be no dout that this kind of "humility" is rooted in a violent self-loathing, which is blocked from expression. Luther and Calvin don't seek to humble man, they seek to humiliate and degrade man. These attitudes against others and agaist oneself, that appear contradictory, actually run parallel. But while the hatred towards others is often conscious and expressed overtly, hostility against the self is unconscious and finds expression in indirect and rationalized forms. One is a person's active emphasis on their own wickedness and insignificance, as found in christianity. The other appears in the guise of conscience or duty. Just as there exists a humility that has nothing to do with self-hatred, so there exists genuine demands of conscience and a sense of duty not rooted in hostility. The genuine form is an affirmation of the self. It's self directed, and it's root strength is derived from a valuation of the self.

But in Calvin, conscience is a slave driver, inserted into the individual and not self-created by the individual. It drives him according to aims that he imagines to be his own, for to deny that they are his own means his damnation. They are really internalizations of external social demands. His whole life, as Fromm says, becomes a compulsive atonement for sins that he has no true understanding of. The humility that the calvinist dons out of fear go along with his contempt for others, and the self-rightousness that replaces his love and mercy. Genuine humility could not lead one to such acts.

The Schoolmen of Antiquity and Their Relation To God

The "Schoolmen" that Calvin lambasts did not rebel against authority, neither did they abase themselves before it. They accepted it's guidance critically. Even as they did, they stressed the postive meaning of freedom, the existential freedom to choose and self-direct life, not the negative freedom from security that Calvin fears. Perhaps the Schoolmen's message was out of touch to the needs of the downtrodden, but being out of touch with the masses is hardly an indication that one is wrong. Protestantism was the answer to the human needs of frightened, uprooted, ignorant and isolated men-children of the renaissance, who desired a system that didn't ask much of them, and instead helped them relate to their new world. They needed, like all of us, delusions from the truth, but lacked the mindset that rejected this pathetic need. The very qualities rooted in the modern calvinist, the compulsion to work, passion for thrift, readiness to sacrifice pleasure, to live as a tool for others, and the irrational and compulsatory sense of duty, are forces that made them good workers, but not the best people they could be.

Final Note:

We tend to think of our forefathers in the way we think of our own parents - as those with greater wisdom (at least in some realms of thought) due to superior experience. Perhaps we should start thinking of our forefathers more as men-children, for the zeigeist of their time clearly was less mature and less self-aware than our own. As much as they deserve credit for making grand discoveries, they deserve pity for not enjoying the state of awareness of what we have in turned learned from them. It is for this reason that we can view the psychological apsects of Calvin so transparently - because our more mature time allows for existence of such paradigmatic assessment tools such as psychoanalys, which can detect the true, inner motivations of what our forfather's thought they were doing- just as we are embarassingly unaware of some of our own motivations. For this reason, I will agree with Nietzsche in that all sets of ancient beliefs offered to us deserve both critical examination and destruction. Not for destruction's sake, but to level and reduce the errors that are contained within them. And as we ourselves carry these errors in our very character, I would suggest that this leveling of the constructs of the past should begin in ourselves. It is with that mindset that I have written this passage.

Postscript

Recently, I've enjoyed reading excerpts from Jeremy Bentham's Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. In this work, Bentham criticizes systems of moral justification that are in fact nothing more than intricate obfuscations of a man's simple desire to put forth his own emotional need as an objective reality. Bentham lists 9 ways of doing this, the ninth being the most pathetic of all:

The most open of all these (attempts to justify one's own emotional need for objective truth) is that sort of man who speaks out and says "I am thof the number of the Elect: now God himself takes care to inform the Elect what is right, so they cannot help not only knowing it but practicing it. If, therefore, a man wants to know what is right and what is wrong, he has nothing to do but to come to me.