Luther suffered from lifelong constipation and urine retention. Thus, “In this creative moment the tension of nights and days of meditation found release throughout his being – and nobody who has read Luther’s private remarks can doubt that his total being always included his bowels.” Thus, for Erikson, there is something profoundly physiological in Luther’s new understanding of God as one who is “no longer lurking in the periphery of space and time,” but is rather “moving from inside” of us, and is thus, in a very real sense, “what works in us.”
From “The Soul as the ‘Coreness’ of the Self” by Donald Capps.