ACCEPTANCE OF THE UNACCEPTABLE



In order to grasp the current cultural, social, and individual impotence of man, it is necessary to understand the damaging influence of Justin, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, which was to effectively dictate accepted behavior to the present time.

These men were not, singularly, distinct from the social currents of their time: each "monster," as we might now consider him, was nothing more than his age could accommodate or allow. For such is the nature of enlightenment -- it is never apparent or effected in its own era.

It is only long after the outrage of a particular time that it can be seen as abhorrent, long after such vision might serve to alter the course of that outrage and only when it is culturally "safe" to do so.


At the end of the second century B.C., Justin the Philosopher couldn't bear the idea of angels making love to earth women, as clearly stated in Genesis 6:4. Surely the product of this detestable coupling must have been more hideous than the Giants noted in that passage ... Justin then insisted they had to be demons, and many influential men believed him for a very long time. Rights of the masses, though rarely considered to that time, would steadily decline thereafter.

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Starting with Nero in the year 64, Christians were persecuted for refusing to acknowledge that emperors were gods. This persecution lasted through the reigns of Domitian in 93, Decius in 250, and Diocletian in 303. With Constantine's conversion in 313, Christianity was no longer a punishable offense, and long-accepted Paganism now became the new object of persecution by Theodosius in the year 380.

With the influence of Augustine a few decades earlier, the art of scriptural fantasy was given official sanction. Augustine's personal guilt for his uncontrollable sexual urges became the brush by which he would paint all of mankind. From the fourth century until today, we have all borne the yoke of sexual guilt, as sinners, for the normal and natural impulse that Augustine could not accept.

A thousand years later, Pagan persecution reached a fever pitch as Tomas de Torquemada carried intolerance of nonbelief to its highest level of creative insanity with the Inquisition: You will believe, or die! Less than two hundred years later, Martin Luther and John Calvin would poison minds from the sixteenth century onward. Their legacy reverberates today in man's worst qualities of hatred, intolerance, selfishness and lack of compassion. As Erich Fromm relates, Luther was a man of great conflicts: "He hated others, especially the 'rabble'; he hated himself, he hated life; and out of all this hatred came a passionate and desperate striving to be loved.

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His whole being was pervaded by fear, doubt, and inner isolation .... "
Man was both evil and insignificant, said Luther, and so worthless, added Calvin, that nothing one does in this life will ever be good enough. In this philosophy, man was but a sheep to be herded without protest by any authority, Church or State, no matter how corrupt or tyrannical: "Even if those in authority are evil or without faith," said Luther, "nevertheless the authority is good.... God would prefer to suffer the government to exist no matter how evil, rather than to allow the rabble to riot, no matter how justified they are in doing so ... A prince should remain a prince no matter how tyrannical he may be."

Calvin's concoction of Predestination, that some were saved and some were damned, would serve to advance Augustine's fanciful premise that man was so tainted at birth. It would also foster the conviction that only some were "chosen," which is the basis of inequality: some are "better" than others. Calvin and his adherents quite naturally believed they were "chosen," of course, and that everyone else was "damned."

Unquestioning faith alone was important; reason or doubt, unacceptable. Luther admired art and beauty but preferred for the masses to find it solely in Scripture. Calvin was even more elitist, as noted by Edward Burns: "Everything that appealed to the senses he utterly deplored as godless and immoral .... In view of such attitudes as these, reflecting

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the bigotry and intolerance of the Reformers, it is rather difficult to believe that the movement they led was a milestone of human progress."
Fromm continues: "We have seen how ardently both Luther and Calvin emphasized the wickedness of man and taught self-humiliation and self-abasement as the basis of all virtue. ...there can be no doubt that this kind of 'humility' is rooted in a violent hatred ... against one's own self. ... Thus Luther and Calvin psychologically prepared man for the role which he had to

assume in modern society: of feeling his own self to be insignificant and of being ready to subordinate his life exclusively for purposes which were not his own. Once man was ready to become nothing but the means for the glory of a God who represented neither justice nor love, he was sufficiently prepared to accept the role of a servant to the economic machine -- and eventually a 'Fuhrer.' "

In light of all this, it is glaringly apparent that Augustine and Luther and Calvin, who controlled much of Western thought, custom and culture, and whose bizarre ideas were but illusions based on their own fear, inadequacy and self-contempt, have contributed equally to a current doctrine against the rights and dignity of man ... a "religious" doctrine against humanity. So became the modern religion, with man's current and pervasive sense of abnegation, his hatred and denial of himself and others.

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Quotes taken from Escape From Freedom by Erich Fromm; Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1941; Avon Library Edition, 1967, pages 84, 101, 105, 109, 117, 131;
and Western Civilizations, Sixth Ed., Vol. 1, by Edward McNall Burns; W.W. Norton & Company, 1963, page 474.