Martin Luther and the Psyche

The Catholic Church of the 16th century taught that heaven could only be entered by the performance of good deeds, as well as the absolution of sin—which could only be granted by the Church, through confession and paid indulgences.

Martin Luther helped to incite the protestant reformation by publicly arguing that heaven was attained purely by faith in Christ, rather than through the authority of the church, or by means of any action in the world.

The Vatican's philosophy required a credulous and insecure worshiper—a spiritual hypochondriac. The ideal Catholic craved reassurances about the condition of their soul from a large and impressive institution, and was willing to pay money to quell doubts about their life in the hereafter. The salvation of the Catholic was entirely dependent upon the external world.

Conversely, Luther's ideas stripped the power to validate or change the quality of one's soul away from the church, and conferred that power to the individual. Luther meant to remove the middle-man of the Church from the route that ran between God and Self, and leave only faith in its place.

The important difference here is that to Luther, the abstract experience of faith is important, whereas in the Catholic notion of salvation, faith is an assumed prerequisite to performing good deeds, but, in fact, is not entirely necessary.

In other words, Martin Luther was a serious man who held some pretty specific opinions that ended up getting the Catholic Church really upset and changing the world to come for the next four hundred years. The Catholic Church at the time thought—and probably continues to think—that the only way for somebody to get into heaven was by having a relationship with the Church.  Martin Luther thought that the only thing that really mattered when it came to salvation was having faith in Christ.

For me, the interesting difference between these two opinions is that the Church tells people to be a certain way in the world, whereas Martin Luther tells people to be a certain way in one's own mind. That's not to say that the Church didn't have plenty to say about how people should feel, and that Luther didn't have plenty to say about how people should act—but still, it was action versus faith, the external world of property and power relationships versus a psychological condition.