we see the historical difference between the classical sinner and the modern neurotic: both of them experience the naturalness of human insufficiency, only today the neurotic is stripped of the symbolic world-view, the God-ideology that would make sense out of his unworthiness and would translate it into heroism. Traditional religion turned the consciousness of sin into a condition for salvation; but the tortured sense of nothingness of the neurotic qualifies him now only for miserable extinction, for merciful release in lonely death. It is all right to be nothing vis-à-vis God, who alone can make it right in His unknown ways; it is another thing to be nothing to oneself, who is nothing.

• god
• religion
• death
• sin
• experience
• consciousness
• salvation
• ideology
• heroism