THE MARVELOUS COMBAT Psychiatric Disability, Martin Luther, and Therapeutic Atonement

Abstract

Theology and disability studies regularly engage both physical and cognitive impairments, with Peter Bellini’s recent work broadening the field to include even the psychiatric disability of depression (The Cerulean Soul, 2021). Other psychiatric disabilities also stand to be constructively engaged by theological discourse. This study takes up the subjects of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, especially variants which feature specifically religious anxiety, moral scrupulosity, and pathological guilt, illustrating how transactional understandings of forgiveness and atonement can covary with the symptomatology of such conditions, possibly even exacerbating them. In response, I conscript Martin Luther’s provocative but oft-neglected description of Christ’s “marvelous combat with the Law” in order to stage a uniquely “therapeutic” outlook on atonement in which Christ’s passion is rendered as a struggle with the uniquely psychological contours of moral performance and the felt experience of guilt under divine judgment, offering embodied hope to the anxious and scrupulous conscience.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• atonement
• Martin Luther
• psychiatric disability
• scrupulosity
• therapeutic atonement

Notes

1 Leading up to these studies, disability theology discourse had focused especially on physical and cognitive domains; representatively, see Brock and Swinton (2012).

2 Moreover, emergent research indicates higher cases of these disabilities among adolescents, signaling a future in which mental and emotional health will remain a directive social concern.

3 Stephen Finlan notes how “the psychological effects can be devastating. . . . [This type of] atonement appeals to emotions of fear, guilt, and self-doubt [and] a mentality of shame about the ‘purchased’ release” (2016, p. 171). While Finlan goes too far by categorically associating these negative valences with satisfaction models of atonement in all cases, the point remains that their conceptual grammar can readily incline itself to these psychological effects in certain individuals. On balance, satisfaction models do struggle with the implication that God is not only the agent of the mechanics of salvation, but also the agent of the mechanics of the situation requiring the salvation. This is owed in no small part to the displacement of the devil by God in Anselm’s originary satisfaction schema, as forcefully argued by Kotsko (2010, pp. 133–135).

4 My approach here, alongside that of Bellini, that Christ actually bears in his person some true version of psychological affliction, goes further than Marcia Webb, who posits only that Christ experiences a kind of vulnerable estrangement that reflects the estrangement those with psychological disorders often experience (see 2017, pp. 139–143). See also Tom Reynolds, in his own reflections on disability, “In Christ, nothing human is alien to God” (2008, p. 201).

5 While Erikson (1962) has been readily criticized for its excesses, we do well to remember that its only tool to-hand was Neo-Freudian psychoanalysis. Decades of more detailed clinical and statistical work on religious anxiety has seen mental health literature readily attribute the symptomatology of OCD and scrupulosity to Luther: e.g. Rapaport (1989, p. 263); Van Ornum (1997, pp. 47–48); Osborn (1999, p. 58).

6 Note that LW refers to Luther’s Works (English); WA refers to the Weimarer Ausgabe (German and Latin).

7 Links between OCD variants and pathological guilt are becoming more firmly established: see Shapiro and Stewart (2011).

8 The voice is also likely to arise in a pitched form at our deathbed, at which time we may recall difficult, tormenting scriptural passages, see LW 15.73. Recent studies on God-image, feelings of forgiveness, and death anxiety supply relevant psychiatric corraborations of Luther’s pastoral points here; see Krause (2015) and Krause and Hill (2020).

9 The most striking words here are perhaps “all wrath stops” or, more literally in Latin, “all aspects of wrath perish:” perit universa facies irae (WA 40.1.99).

10 As Luther asks: “In what manner or way has Christ redeemed us?” LW 26.369.

11 Luther sees Christ’s sadness and terror as being somatically manifested in his bloody sweat in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44).

12 It is worth noting that Calvin was willing to go quite far along a similar path, saying that the crucified Christ experienced God “as if he had conspired [Christ’s] destruction” (Institutes, 2.16.11). See further Hill (2022).

13 See also LW 13.26, 88. This atonement’s therapeutic grammar, then focuses on God—the idea or picture of God—becoming dear to the human heart via recognition or revelation, rather than on making the human heart dear to God via some sort of transaction. See David Steinmetz, “Luther against Luther,” in Luther in Context (Bloomington: Indianan University Press, 1986), 8–9; see also Luther and Staupitz (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1980), 133.