Erich Fromm on the Problems of the Doctrine of Predestination

I have written a great deal against Reformed/Calvinistic theology, including my lengthy essay:

An Examination and Critique of the Theological Presuppositions Underlying Reformed Theology

There are not just biblical and theological problems with Calvinism, but also psychological and social, too. Writing in 1942, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm noted the following problems with the doctrine of predestination as found in the writings of Luther, Calvin, and other followers:

The psychological significance of the doctrine of predestination is a twofold one. It expresses and enhances the feeling of individual powerlessness and insignificance. No doctrine would express more strongly than this the worthlessness of human will and effort. The decision over man’s fate is taken completely out of his own hands and there is nothing man can do to change that decision. He is a powerless tool in God’s hands. The other meaning of this doctrine, like that of Luther’s, consist in its function so silence the irrational doubt which was the same in Calvin and his followers as in Luther. At first glance, the doctrine of predestination seems to enhance the doubt rather than silent it. Must not the individual be torn by even more torturing doubts than before to learn that he was predestined either to eternal damnation or to salvation before he was born? How can he ever be sure what his lot will be? Although Calvin did not teach that there was any concrete proof of such certainty, he and his followers actually had the conviction that they belonged to the chosen ones. They got this conviction by the same mechanism of self-humiliation which we have analysed with regard to Luther’s doctrine. Having such conviction, the doctrine of predestination implied utmost certainty; one could not do anything which would endanger the state of salvation, since one’s salvation did not depend on one’s actions but was decided upon before one was ever born. Again, as with Luther, the fundamental doubt resulted in the question for absolute certainty; but though the doctrine of predestination gave such certainty, the doubt remained in the background and had to be silenced again and again by an ever-growing fanatic belief that the religious community to which one belonged represented that part of mankind which had been chosen by God.

Calvin’s theory of predestination has one implication which should be explicitly mentioned here, since it has found its most vigorous revival in Nazi ideology: the principle of the basic inequality of men. Or Calvin there are two kinds of people—those who are saved and those who are destined to eternal damnation. Since this fate is determined before they are born and without their being able to change it by anything they do or do not do in their lives, the equality of mankind is denied in principle. Men are created unequal. This principle implies also that there is no solidarity between men, since the one factor which is the strongest basis for human solidarity is denied: the equality of man’s fate. The Calvinists quite naively thought that they were the chosen ones and that all others were those whom God had condemned to damnation. It is obvious that this belief represented psychologically a deep contempt and hated for other human beings—as a matter of fact, the same hated with which they had endowed God. While modern thought has led to an increasing assertion of the equality of men, the Calvinists’ principle has never been completely mute. The doctrine that men are basically unequal according to their racial background is confirmation of the same principle with a different rationalization. The psychological implications are the same. (Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom [Routledge Classics; London: Routledge, 2001], 77-79)