So what I did was begin again on this path toward comprehension - I might add - which is a goal in the ancient sense of phusis [becoming] what one is destined to become. So I found a translation of Psalm 102: 13 in Ericksons Young Man Luther as follows: Thou shalt arise, and have mercy upon Zion Luther: This arising, this standing up, means the sweetest and most gracious becoming human on the part of God, for here He has come to us so that He may lift us up to Himself. L.W.W.A, V, 85 Erickson writes: Luthers strong emphasis on the here and now of the spiritual advent, and on the beginning of always standing at the beginning, (forever incipient) is not a platform of faith, it is akin to a time space quality dominating the inner state which psychoanalysts call ego-strength. To the ego the past is not an inexorable process, experienced only as perception for an impending doom; rather, the past is part of a present mastery which employs a convenient mixture of forgetting, falsifying, and idealizing to fit the past to the present, but usually to an extent which is neither unknowingly delusional nor knowingly dishonest. The ego can resign itself to past losses and forfeitings and learn not to demand the impossible of the future. It enjoys the illusion of the present, and defends this most precarious of all assumptions against doubts and apprehensions by remembering most easily chains of experiences which were alike in their unblemished presentness. To the healthy ego, the flux of time sponsors the process of identity. It thus is not afraid of death (as Freud pointed out vigorously); it has no concept of death. But it *is* afraid of losing mastery over the negative conscience, over the drives, and over reality. To lose any of these battles, is for the ego, living death; to win them again and again means to the ego something akin to an assumption that it is causing its own life. In theological terms, creaturae procedunt ex deo libere et voluntarie et non naturaliter , what lives, proceeds from God freely and voluntarily, not naturally, that is, not by way of what can be explained biologically. Erickson writes about Luthers restatements about total sinfulness and total salvation in Man [Dasein] as construing albeit with some ill will his very salvation. Having this sense of total abandonment and surrender to the flesh, to mood, gravis, he is able to be held together. It appears that the psychological consequences have their outcome in fury. He says that Martin reformulated his theological interpretations by dealing directly with his own contradictory lusts for power and revenge, women, food, and beer. His worldliness and spiritual detachment were upswings of spiritual elations and cursing gloominess so much so that ...the ego gains strength in practice, and in affectu to the degree to which it can accept at the same time the total power of the drives and the total power of conscience - provided that it can nourish what Luther called opera manum dei [Gods handy work], that particular combination of work and love which alone verifies our identity and confirms it. Under these conditions, apparent submission becomes mastery, apparent passivity the release of new energy for active pursuits. We can make negative conscience work for the aims of the ego only by facing it without evasion; and we are able to manage and creatively utilize our drives only to the extent to which we can acknowledge their power by enjoyment, by awareness, and through the activity of work. If the ego is not able to accomplish these reconciliations, we may fall prey to that third inner space-time characterized by the dominance of what Freud call the id. The danger of this state comes from what Freud considered biological instincts [bundles of primitive emotions] which the ego experiences beneath and outside itself while at the same time it is intoxicated by them. Dominance by the id means that time and space are arranged in one way - toward wish fufillment. We know only that our tension rises when time and circumstances delay release and satisfaction, and that our driveness is accelerated when opportunities arise. The self-propelled will tends to ignore all that has been learned in the past and is perceived in the present, except to the extent to which the past and present add fuel to the goal-directedness of the wish. This id-intoxication, as Luther formulated so knowingly, can become total[ly] poisoning especially when it is haughtily denied. Luther appears to be saying something about work from a position that regards something positive about the passivity of the negative conscience. The negative conscience acts in a manner which, by direct encounter, the conscience is clarified. This encounter is initiated by seeing clearly [luz interior] with an interior light what is undivided intention. This self reflection consists in observing oneself variously consenting and participating in habitual behaviors as instances of willessness. There is a sense that many of these behaviors - and thinking habits - are forms of recovery to a earlier state of youth in the older person. Time is not inexorable for the ego. Luther acknowledges the value of work only as a constitutive exercise of the ego which reformulates what were overstatements and clarifies by repetition so that the original statements are transfigured. For instance the importance of work as a means to salvation for Luther had to be restated and reformulated as overstatement by repetition and practice. So the result of overstatement and repetition would be different than simply an apprehension of a moral precept as non-trivial difficulty simply in obeying only the letter of the word. It appears too that this personal transfiguration of making perfect ones humility is a form of oscultation or osculatory practice in that what must be heard and heeded must be said over and over again as a matter of truth, inner simple, and real truth. Luther must have seen what became a challenge deriving from his encounter with his inner light of conscience. Erickson writes that Luther faced a tools inferiority for the work he values. Thus his tools are language, the language of the Catholic church, latin, Greek perhaps, but most importantly the German language, and the natural language of the body. These languages are tools of conveyance that spell out a living metonym of fresh interpretation and meaning of the incorporeal code that has become a calcified emblem of authority in the world of ecclesiastical authority. There is one kind of work that works miracles, this is instructional inspiration which becomes overstatement and even profanity. Erickson makes the suggestion that Luther overcomes his own self hatred which begets his own wrath by changing Gods attributes: instead of being like an earthly father whose mood-swings are incomprehensible to his small son, God is given the attribute of ira misericordiae - a wrath which is really compassion. With this concept, Luther was at last able to forgive God for being a Father, and grant Him justification.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 07:40:39 +0000
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