Deacon Tony560:
One of the reasons that Luther came up with his wild ideas was because he was very scrupulous.
Yes. I’ve also heard a comparison to part of the Adam and Eve story. As you all know, God said not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but all the other trees were fine.
Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animals that the LORD God had made. The serpent asked the woman, “Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?”
The serpent is tempting Eve to restate the restriction as greater than it is, and to see wrong in any eating of fruit. Eve resists at first.
Genesis 3:2 The woman answered the serpent: "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
But then Eve herself creates a rule that God didn’t give-- Genesis 3:3 it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’"
I’ve heard this interpreted as adding to the rule and thus making it more likely you will break it.
I think it can also be related to spiritual pride (maybe not the right term). I’ve gone through phases where I did all sorts of devotions and would overreact if I missed one and think it was all messed up–the focus on the perfection being the enemy of what I really should have been focusing on.
(In fact, in Portrait of the Artist…, Stephen Dedalus does that during his regained religious phase before losing faith, and he also can’t believe he is really absolved, since he believes he is such a great sinner that he couldn’t be, and reconfesses the same old sins. Whatever you think of the novel, that part of it is really psychologically accurate.)