Author of quotes: Oscar Pfister

The origins of fear in Freud coincide with the "scientific thesis" in 1 John. However, the diametrical difference is that the author of the message speaks of love in a spiritual sense, and Freud in its elementary, sexual meaning (libido). But is the chasm insurmountable? We do not want to narrow it down, but it is worth considering the following: it is indisputable that even the highest spiritual experiences do not pass in the mental life without bodily sensations, although they do not have to be sexual. Some psychologists, the same William James and Karl Lange, even went so far as to mistakenly believe that feelings are just the result of innervation of muscles and blood vessels ... higher intellectual functions. On the other hand, Freud, studying sex drive, over time expanded the concept of sexuality, admitting into it the Platonic idea of Eros and the German word "Liebe" - love. This terminology has led to endless confusion. But Freud emphasized more than once: by "sexuality" he means everything that includes the word "love" - and if you remember this, the objection that his theory is pansexual loses its validity. This view is supported by other arguments. And I do not know of a single psychologist who can argue against John, who brings fear out of love. Only in the Bible is fear perceived more spiritually and therefore not as widely as in modern psychology.

In the arsenal of theology, I was looking for a weapon for holy war; I was looking for means by which the Gospel idea of ​​salvation could triumph in the souls of those who had lost their strength and succumbed to temptation - and would return the lost, broken, sick to the right path ... Neither historical, nor systematic, nor practical theology, taken separately, did not correspond this much needed requirement. In all ages, the Church was to be illuminated with the spirit of Christian love; she was called to give people this love and make them instruments of divine love - but in fact, in her history, the trace of such efforts is almost negligible, despite the examples of many whom love has transformed, and many who dedicated their lives to deeds in her name. Endless disputes about dogmas - cruel, fanatical, filled with hatred, and the more powerful, the more petty, insignificant and further from the understanding of love was their subject; disputes about the forms of worship, which were given magical power; fear, striking to the shiver of any believer, when he understood that his own conscience tells him to depart from the church charter - and thereby deprive his soul of salvation; a fierce hatred of heretics, who, knowing the Bible and faith, willy-nilly rejected old beliefs and adherence to church dogma, even if they attributed such deviations to satanic tricks; questions of power, money and law, resolved in spite of the gospel - all of this, as I found out, was much more concerned than the task of translating divine and human love into life. In an effort to prove that they better understood and embodied the religion of love, some Christians smashed the heads of other Christians who also served Jesus and wanted to be His disciples; often entire nations were involved. People killed, robbed, raged more mercilessly than beasts of prey - in the name of the One who died on the cross out of love and by death bore witness to the message of love brought by Him. Of course, there are many testimonies of sincere love and true piety in church history. And yet, if the criterion announced by Jesus in the Gospel of John becomes the yardstick, it will be that according to which disciples are recognized by mutual love, and not by subtle differences in dogmas; if it becomes His main commandment about man's love for God, his neighbor and himself; if they are the words of the Apostle Paul, who put love above faith and hope (1 Cor. 13:13), then the history of the Christian religion is more like a monstrous misunderstanding or an abnormal deviation from true Christianity. Dogmatic theology and its history, with their ruthless adherence to irrational dogmas that have nothing to do with love, seemed to me to be a roundabout maneuver undertaken with one goal: to bypass the main point of Jesus' preaching and demands. I saw how the Gospel and the doctrines of the Church horrified people, for any doubt about them threatened to be burned at the stake and in hellish flames; I compared it to the careless contempt with which the love of Christ was trampled upon; and I considered it as straining a mosquito and swallowing a camel.

Theology is powerless to answer the questions that expressed our most passionate desire and our most painful needs - and by the fact that it failed to convey to us how salvation, rebirth and sanctification are accomplished, for it was not engaged in living faith, but with its side theoretical calculations in forms dogmas and religious theory.

The development of the Christian Church has revealed - along with remarkable phenomena that correspond to the views of Jesus Christ - a shameful chain of dogmatic disputes and wild fanaticism that turned into barbaric wars for faith and persecution of heretics, and later into centuries of witch hunts and other distortions of the Good News of Jesus. ... The history of Christians is not only the history of Christianity, but in the same way it is the history of “non-Christianity”, and perhaps even “anti-Christianity”. And there is no need to attribute this terrible reality, from which the heart of any Christian bleeds, to the instigations of the devil. From this, those false paths of development that we have outlined will not become clearer, and we will not be presented with any way to correct them.

Anyone who does not dare to risk, fearing that he will be misunderstood by the inattentive and careless, loses the right to participate in the discussion.