Punctum Saliens

In The Creation of Consciousness, Edinger talks about the “new myth” initiated by Jung with his book, Answer to Job.

On the basis of our emerging knowledge of the unconscious the traditional image of God has been enlarged. Traditionally God has been pictured as all-powerful and all-knowing. Divine Providence was seen as guiding all things according to the inscrutable but benevolent divine purpose. The extent of divine awareness did not receive much attention. The new myth enlarges the God-image by introducing explicitly the additional feature of the unconsciousness of God. His omnipotence, omniscience and divine purpose are not always known to Him. He needs man’s capacity to know Him in order to know Himself.

And I just realized that the rescuing of Lot from Sodom is an excellent example of this. Lot and his wife and two of his daughters were rescued because they were “righteous” in the eyes of God. But, look at what Lot’s family does immediately after being rescued. Lot’s wife immediately disobeys God’s command and turns to look at the burning cities and is turned into a pillar of salt. Both of Lot’s daughters get their father drunk, sleep with him, and bear sons. Furthermore, Lot’s two grandsons are the fathers of the Moabites and Ammonites. Now, God was not fond of either of these civilizations, to say the least. Neither of them were allowed to enter the assembly of the Lord (Deut 23:3). The Isrealites slaughtered the Moabites: they killed 10,000 “robust and valient men” (Judges 3:25) on one occasion and an untold number on another (2 Kings 3:24). Saul slaughtered the Ammonites and scattered them so that “no two of them were left together” (1 Sam 11:11). Jeremiah makes prophesies against both the Moabites and Ammonites.

So, God considered Lot and his family righteous but immediately after he saves them from destruction, they disobey a direct command and father two civilizations that are Israel’s mortal enemies and the cause of many Israelite deaths. This does not seem very consistent with an omniscient God.

What do you think? Why were Lot’s daughters saved only to sin and father civilizations that God hated?

A quote by Zizioulas at Chrisendom reminded me of a comment I wrote on one of my earlier posts. It is a reply to D.W. Congdon from The Fire and the Rose who was kind enough to briefly engage me. I really like my “fun house mirror” analogy and so I thought I’d use this as an excuse to promote a comment to a post. I am totally unfamiliar with Zizioulas and so I may be misinterpreting him. I’m definitely taking him out of context since I have no context. So, let that be your grain of salt …

“While the view that we are simply created in the image of God and thus bear this image in ourselves is rather common, it is also misguided.”

Then what do the two verses from Genesis [1:27 and 9:6] that I quoted in the post mean? Do they not say that we were created in the image of God? And the second one does not specify that spirit-filled men should not be killed. It refers to the general “man.”

“The NT speaks of Jesus as God’s image in a few different places, and it is also a theological axiom on the basis of the incarnation.”

To what verses are you referring? I’ve never heard it put that Jesus was God’s image. I’ve only heard that Jesus was God.

“Our own identity is marred by the fact of our sinfulness. The image of God is thus properly a christological category, not an anthropological one.”

Exactly! Our own identity as the image of God is marred by our sinfulness and Jesus and the Holy Spirit is what brings us back to our pristine, pre-fall identity. Of course, this body “I” am in possession of at the moment is not the image of God if this is the “anthropological one” you mention. Of course it’s not. But I am not my body. The body dies so it can’t be the image of God. And this is one of the problems — we think of our body as our “I” and it’s not.

“Our identity as the ‘image of God’ is never something we possess, even as believers. Instead, it is always a reality that is outside of us in Christ himself. We bear the image of God only by participating in the reality of Jesus Christ as the true image of God.”

Agreed. It’s not something we can possess. But I don’t agree that it is “outside of us.” “In Christ himself” I agree with but Christ is in us; is part of us (as believers). Plus, I still submit that our original, true, unmarred nature is the image of God.

“The image of God is not something we ‘already are’; it is something, rather, that we ‘will become’ eschatologically, as we are perfected by the Spirit.”

This may be semantics but can you be partly the image of God? Isn’t being the image of God kind of like being unique or perfect — either you are unique or you’re not; either you are perfect or you’re not. “Almost perfect” is not perfect. “Somewhat unique” is not unique. A distorted image of something is still an image of that thing. The distortions do not detract from that. A fun-house mirror still shows you your image. It may have a huge head and a tiny torso and corrugated feet but it’s still an image of you. If you deconvolve that image, you will get a true image of youself. The fun-house mirror does not display an image with four heads, sixteen arms, and fourteen feet. You may not be able to even recognize it but it is still your image. Isn’t that really what sin has done to us? Made us unrecognizable as the image of God? The work of the Holy Spirit is to flatten out the fun house mirror so that we can see what we really are.

So, I don’t agree that we become an “image of God” just because we are a member of the Church. (And I really need a qualification on that phrase. “Church” is capitalized so I’m assuming he’s not talking about First Presbyterian.) We may “realize” our already being an image of God by being a member but I don’t agree that we “become” an image.

We know turn to Jung’s amazing work Answer to Job. At the outset, the reader should be aware that Answer to Job is offensive. Edinger warns:

These are the two most common sources of offense to the readers of Answer to Job. Either one is offended that Jung describes Yahweh so outrageously, in contradiction to the dogmatic God-image in which he believes, or one is offended that Jung takes so seriously the primitive, anthropomorphic image of God that has long since been discredited by the rational intellect. I venture to assert that every person on first encounter with Answer to Job will be offended to some extent in either on or the other, or perhaps both, of these ways.

Whoever is gravely offended will have nothing more to do with Answer to Job, and that is proper since one man’s meat can be another man’s poison.

So, if you’re still with me, lets get to being offended!

Jung wrote Answer to Job during an illness. He said that the book “came to me” and that he felt “its content as the unfolding of the divine consciousness in which I participate.”

Edinger could not have put more emphasis on Answer to Job. He felt that “it has the same psychic depth and import as characterize the major scriptures of the world-religions.” Edinger also considered the book as a new dispensation. (I warned you that this would be offensive!)

Jung identifies the audience for the book:

I am not . . . addressing myself to the happy possessors of faith, but to those many people for whom the light has gone out, the mystery has faded, and God is dead. For most of them there is no going back, and one does not know either whether going back is the better way. To gain and understanding of religious matters, probably all that is left us today is the psychological approach. That is why I take these thought-forms that have become historically fixed, try to melt them down again and pour them into moulds of immediate experience.

The central theme of Answer to Job is “the relationship between man and Yahweh.” Jung’s psychological approach to the issue requires us to understand two things. First, we must understand that Jung recognized “the full reality of all psychic phenomena.” [1]

For Jung the psyche is not less real than the body. Though it cannot be touched, it can be directly and fully experienced and observed. It is a world of its own, governed by laws, structured, and endowed with its own means of expression.

Whatever we know of the world or our own being comes to us through the mediation of the psyche. [2]

Second, we need to understand what Yahweh means psychologically. Edinger summarizes this point thusly:

. . . Yahweh as a psychic reality is a personification of the collective unconscious especially in its aspect of center and totality, the Self. It expresses itself in dreams and fantasies of an archetypal nature; in affects, instincts and intense energy-manifestations of all kinds; in psychic and somatic symptoms; and in its specific quality of “otherness” which goes contrary to the desires and expectations of the ego. Since the phenomena of synchronicity imply a fluid boundary between inner and outer reality, the unconscious can come to us from without as well as from within. Hence Jung can say, “God is reality itself.”

We’ll start looking at the Edinger’s commentary on the book next time.

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[1] Jolande Jocobi, The Psychology of C. G. Jung, 1973, p. 1.
[2] Ibid.