William Blake (1793) Job s Tormentors. Job, Jung and Theodicy Cathedral of St. Philip 19 June 2011

Transcription

1 Job, Jung and Theodicy Cathedral of St. Philip 19 June 2011 William Blake (1793) Job s Tormentors The Book of Job is one of the books of the Hebrew Bible. It tells the story of Job, a blameless, upright, and righteous man, the son of Uz, who was the son of Nahor, the brother of Abraham. In this rich and provocative story Job s trials and tribulations are related in narrative and prose form. Essential to the story is his theological discussion with his friends on the origins and nature of his suffering, his challenge to God, and finally, God s response. The book is primarily a didactic poem set in prose form, and it has been referred to as the most profound literary work of the Old Testament. This book, and its numerous exegetical companions, are attempts to address the problem of evil, and the core question in this text is Why do the righteous suffer? Such questions are the topic of theodicy. Let s read aloud together the first 3 Chapters of Job. What are your first impressions? What theological questions do you find yourself asking? What images of God does the Book of Job conjure for you?

2 What is Theodicy? Fr theodicee, coined by Leibnitz (1710) Gr, theos, god + dike, justice: the theological discipline that seeks to explain how the existence of evil in the world can be reconciled with the justice and goodness of God. This question is at the heart of the Book of Job. There have been many references to the Book of Job down through the years and in many cultural contexts. William Blake famously illustrated Job, and other references include Rabbi Harold Kushner s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, C.S. Lewis The Problem of Pain, and writers such as Bronte (Jane Eyre), G.K. Chesterton (The Man Who was Thursday), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), and musicians such as Joni Mitchell ( The Sire of Sorrow ), U 2 (Ultraviolet), Godspell (All for the Best), to name a few. Perhaps the most well known and theologically substantive response was Carl Jung s book, Answer to Job.

3 The Narrative Structure of Job Job is an exceptionally pious man, who was very prosperous and had 7 sons and 3 daughters. Satan shows up, and suggests that Job is pious only because God has put a wall around {him} and blessed Job, his favorite servant, with prosperity. Moreover, Satan suggests that if God touches Job s possessions, Job would curse him. God gives Satan permission to test Job s righteousness. All of Job s possessions are destroyed, and a ruach (wind/spirit) causes the house of the firstborn to collapse, killing all of Job s offspring who were gathered for a feast. Job does not curse God, but shaves his head, tears his clothes, and says famously, Naked I came from my mother s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. Job endures all of this without reproaching God. Satan solicits permission to afflict his person as well, and God gives it. Satan smites Job with dreadful boils. Job, seated in ashes, scrapes his skin with broken pottery. His wife prompts him to curse God and die. He answers, You speak as one of the foolish shall we receive the good and not the bad? Three friends of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, (later joined by Elihu) try to console him. They spend seven days sitting on the ground with Job, who finally curses the day he was born. Job s friends do not waver from the belief that he must have done something sinful to incite God s punishment. They berate him for refusing to confess, even as they are at a loss as to which sins he has committed Their working theology is that God always rewards good, and punishes evil. There is no hint of divine discretion and mystery. Meanwhile, in this series of speech cycles, Job maintains that there is no reason for God to punish him.

4 Speeches of Job, his friends, and God * Job seeks an explanation for what has happened to him, though he insists there is no reason for God to punish him. Elihu takes a mediator s role, attempting to maintain the sovereignty and righteousness and gracious mercy of God (Chapters 32-37). Elihu stresses that real repentance involves renouncing moral authority, which is God s alone. He maintains that Job, while righteous, is not perfect. Job does not disagree with this, and God does not rebuke Elihu as he does the other three friends. God appears in the second verse of Chapter 38, saying Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge. Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

5 God Speaks to Job out of the Whirlwind Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? God asks Job. Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Is it by your wisdom the hawk soars, and spreads its wings toward the south? In this evocative and deeply lyrical language, God describes what the experience of being the Creator is like. God emphasizes God s sovereignty in creating and maintaining the world, and in so doing proclaims the absolute freedom of God over God s creation. God condemns Job s friends for their lack of understanding, commends Job for his righteousness, and restores Job to health. Job gains new wealth and children, and lives another 140 years.

6 Behemoth, Leviathon, and the Context of Job In the second divine speech that appears after Job has conceded defeat, Yahweh provides an extensive description of two fascinating creations, Behemoth (Job 40: 15-24) and Leviathon (Job 41: 1-34). Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I have made you; it eats grass like an ox it makes its tail stiff like a cedar its limbs are like bars of iron it is the first of the great acts of God--- only its maker can approach it with a sword. Both Leviathon and Behemoth are depicted as insurmountable foes to mortals. In this evocative line God says, Lay hands on it; think of the battle and you will not do it again! Begging the question, how do we as theologians and we are all theologians respond to such impressive, challenging images?

7 Carl Jung ( ) was a Swiss psychiatrist and the son of a Swiss Reformed pastor. He was an an early disciple of Freud. Carl Jung considered his book Answer to Job, (1952) to be his Moby Dick. He was obsessed with Job as representing the dark or shadow side of God, and it became a lifelong preoccupation. His father was a conservative pastor, and his mother had a strong spiritual/mystical side. His need to understand the dual nature of God was unabated. When he wrote this book, at age 71, Jung was wrestling with the horrors of the holocaust and subsequent world events following WWII. For Jung, God was alive and Christianity real. He passionately wrestles with God, nowhere more intensely than in relation to the Book of Job, which Jung saw as a question about the suffering of the innocent and like many of the psalms a lamentation about helplessness in the face of suffering. Especially unnerving to Jung was that in the case of Job, the devil made God do it. Jung felt that God had been bamboozled by Satan s wager.

8 Jung, Freud, and God; A Fascinating sub text in the Dialogue with Job. Was Carl Jung being blasphemous, or was he asking questions we have all asked, one way or another, one time or another? And, why would an analytical psychologist even care? Remember that Jung broke with traditional psychoanalysis in part on the matter of the place of religion in human emotional and psychological life. For Freud, God really was the father. That is to say, God was a projection onto the tabula rasa of our unconscious needs to be cared for by a benevolent, all knowing father. For Jung, God was alive, real, and part of the deep human need to makemeaning of this life, and to be in relationship. Jung called God into conversation and into questions about life because for Jung, God really existed, and it mattered a great deal to Jung to wrestle with these questions. One of the wonderful aspects of our Episcopal tradition is that we are encouraged to do likewise!

9 Job, Jung, the Collective Unconscious and Archetypes According to Jung, archetypes are universal psychic dispositions that form the basement of the soul, from which the basic symbols of unconscious experience emerge. Examples include birth, death, separation from parents, initiation rituals, and so on, and archetypal figures include mother, father, God, hero, shadow, Anima/Animus (feminine /masculine images), the Shadow, and so on. Archetypes arise out of the collective unconscious, common to all of us, which seeks to organize experience. The most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes, especially religious ideas, and they seek to give meaning to experience. The Timaeus, for example, one of Plato s dialogues, speculates on the nature of the world and the creation of the world soul. Films such as Star Wars and Lord of the Rings are filled with Jungian archetypes and themes. For Jung, such questions were inherent in what it means to be human. Meaning making, in relationship with God, self, and one another, is the deepest form of human activity. Hence, Answer to Job.

10 Jung imagined a different God than that depicted in Job a more feminine God! Jung felt that the image of God portrayed in Job lacked a feminine dimension traditionally viewed as relatedness and as Sophia Eros, or Desire/Wisdom. After confronting what he felt to be God s meanspiritedness in Job, Jung considers Lady Wisdom, who appears in Proverbs, whom he believed to be the prototype of the Virgin Mary, who helps incarnate God s later, more evolved incarnation of God s self, in the form of Jesus. The ultimate example of the feminine aided incarnation is Christ on the cross. Here is given, for Jung, the answer to Job. God as Christ crucified becomes fully human and can see and suffer humanity s pain with compassion (rachamim wombish ). The incarnation, Jung believed, must advance in Jesus followers!

11 Messianic Anticipation in Job, and Jung The Relationality of the Trinity Today is Trinity Sunday! How might this be related to the Book of Job? What elements of Jungian thought may be found in the Trinity? In Chapter 9, Job recognizes the chasm that exists between himself and God. For he is not man, that I am, that I might answer him, that we should come to trial together. Job regrets that he has no arbiter, or advocate to act as go between. He wishes there were an umpire (Hebrew Mokiah). Indeed, in Chapter 19 Job says, For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side. Moreover, for those of us who see this image of the Trinity as a deeply compelling image of relationality, and as another example of the best of masculine and feminine generativity, this speaks to Jung s hopedfor archetypal evolution of God s shadow side to a vision of integrity.

12 Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works Amen Some theologians have read Job as a warning to monotheism that it was heading for trouble with its conception of God s power. If God s bullying harangue was the answer, Catherine Keller writes, what was the question? John Caputo has said that The Book of Job serves to concede, on the one hand, that life contains tragic loss, but we should sustain the faith, on the other hand, that the world is a place of majesty and beauty. All things are knotted together, the good and the bad, and life goes on, so keep hope alive. This is the wisdom at the heart of our Baptismal prayer.

13 Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Not only has our image of God changed over time, with a more relational, available God in the form of the Trinity, but so has psychoanalysis. Over the years, in part because of Jungian influences, relational or intersubjective psychotherapy has emerged out of the shadow of Freud and orthodox psychoanalysis. It is more interactive, available, and responsive. And as one writer has put it, it is less Odyssean less, that is, like Ulysses journey and more Abrahamic. Put another way, psychotherapy is becoming more Biblical, and less Greek. While Ulysses longs for the Ithaca he has left behind, Abraham bravely and resolutely goes into the unknown. Not all who wander are lost, J. R. Tolkein said, and Jung would heartily approve of this archetypal hero s journey! It is at heart a spiritual, religious journey of the psyche, or soul.

14 Mysteries, Yes Mary Oliver (Evidence) Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. Howe rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity. How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken. How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem. Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say Look! and laugh in astonishment, And bow their heads.

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