SOURCE: "Faith and Wrath," in Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1958, pp. 223–50.

In the excerpt below, Erikson examines Lather's writings, provides a psychoanalysis of the reformer, and describes the dynamics of his theology,.

The importance of Luther's early lectures lies in the fact that they bear witness not only to the recovery of his ego, but also to a new theology conceived long before he suddenly became famous as a pamphleteer in the controversy over indulgences. To the Catholic scholar, his theological innovations seem pitiful, mere vulgarized fragments of the order he disavowed; to the Protestant, his theology is powerful and fundamentally new. The historical psychologist, however, can only question how efficacious an ideology is at a given historical moment. Obviously, when this monk spoke up he presented in his words and in his bearing the image of man in...