PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
resistance protects us from realizations that would take us too far; hence one can often content onseIf with a moderate increase of consciousness. This is particularly so in the case of simple, uncomplicated neuroses, or rather, with people who are simple and uncomplicated (a neurosis is never more complicated than the person who has it). Those, on the other hand, with more refined natures suffer mostly from a passion for consciousness far exceeding their instinctive resistance. They want to see, know, and understand. For these people the answer given by the Freudian art of interpretation is unsatisfying. Here the Church's means of grace, especially as entrusted to the Catholic priest, are likely to come to the aid of understanding, for their form and meaning are suited at the outset to the nature of unconscious contents. That is why the priest not only hears the confession, but also asks questions-indeed, it is incumbent on him to ask them. \Vhat is more, he can ask about things which would otherwise only come to the ears of the doctor. In view of the means of grace at his disposal, the priest's intervention cannot be regarded as exceeding his competence, seeing that he is also empowered to lay the storm which he has provoked. 
	543 	For the Protestant minister the problem is not so simple. 
Apart from common prayer and Holy Communion, he has no ritual ceremonies at his disposal, no spiritual exercises, rosaries, pilgrimages, ete., with their expressive symbolism. He is therefore compelled to take his stand on moral ground, which puts the instinctual forces coming up from the unconscious in danger of a new repression. Any sacral action, in whatever form, works like a vessel for receiving the contents of the unconscious. Puritan simplification has deprived Protestantism of just this means of acting on the unconscious; at any rate it has dispossessed the clergyman of his quality as a priestly mediator, which is so very necessary to the soul. Instead, it has given the individual responsibility for himself and left him alone with his God. Herein lies the advantage and also the danger of Protestantism. From this, too, comes its inner unrest, which in the course of a few centuries has begotten more than four hundred Protestant denominations-an indubitable symptom of individualism run riot. 
	544 	There can be no doubt that the psychoanalytical unveiling 
of the unconscious has a great effect. Equally, there can be no 
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PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE CURE OF SOULS 
doubt of the tremendous effect of Catholic confession, especially when it is not just a passive hearing, but an active intervention. In view of this, it is truly astonishing. that the Protestant Churches have not long since made an effort to revive the institution of confession as the epitome of the pastoral bond between the shepherd and his flock. For the Protestant, however, there is-and rightly so-no going back to this primitive Catholic form; it is too sharply opposed to the nature of Protestantism. The Protestant minister, rightly seeing in the cure of souls the real purpose of his existence, naturally looks round for a new way that will lead to the souls, and not merely to the ears, of his parishioners. Analytical psychology seems to him to provide the key, for the meaning and purpose of his ministry are not fulfilled with the Sunday sermon, which, though it reaches the ears, seldom penetrates to the heart, much less to the soul, the most hidden of all things hidden in man. The cure of souls can only be practised in the stillness of a colloquy, carried on in the healthful atmosphere of unreserved confidence. Soul must work on soul, and many doors be unlocked that bar the way to the innermost sanctuary. Psychoanalysis possesses the means of opening doors otherwise tightly closed. 
	545 	The opening of these doors, however, is often very like a 
surgical operation, where the doctor, with knife poised, must be prepared for anything the moment the cut is made. The psychoanalyst, likewise, can discover unforeseen things that are very unpleasant indeed, such as latent psychoses and the like. Although these things, given time, often come to the surface entirely of their own accord, the blame nevertheless falls on the analyst, who, by his intervention, releases the disturbance prematurely. Only a thorough knowledge of psychiatry and its specialized techniques can protect the doctor from such blunders. A lay analyst should therefore always work in collaboration with a doctor. 
	546 	Fortunately, the unlucky accidents I have just mentioned 
occur relatively seldom. But what psychoanalysis brings to light is, in itself, difficult enough to cope with. It brings the patient face to face with his life problem, and hence with some of the ultimate, serious questions which he has hitherto evaded. As human nature is very far from innocent, the facts that come up are usually quite sufficient to explain why the patient avoided 
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them: he felt instinctively that he did not know a satisfactory answer to these questions. Accordingly he expects it from the analyst. The analyst can now safely leave certain critical questions open-and to the patient's own advantage; for no sensible patient will expect from him anything more than medical help. More is expected from the clergyman, namely the solution of religious questions. 
	547 	As already said, the Catholic Church has at her disposal ways 
and means which have served since olden times to gather the lower, instinctual forces of the psyche into symbols and in this way integrate them into the hierarchy of the spirit. The Protestant minister lacks these means, and consequently often stands perplexed before certain facts of human nature which no amount of admonition, or insight, or goodwill, or heroic selfcastigation can subdue. In Protestantism good and evil are flatly and irreconcilably opposed to one another. There is no visible forgiveness; the human being is left alone with his sin. And God, as we know, only forgives the sins we have conquered ourselves. For the Protestant clergy it is a momentous psychological difficulty that they possess no forms which would serve to catch the lower instincts of psychic life. It is precisely the problem of the unconscious conflict brought to light by psychoanalysis that requires solving. The doctor can-on the basis of scientific materialism-treat the problem with medical discretion, that is to say he can regard the ethical problems of his patient as lying outside his competence as a doctor. He can safely retire behind a regretful "There you must make out as best you can." But the Protestant clergyman cannot, in my opinion, wash his hands in innocence; he must accompany the soul of the person who confides in him on its dark journey. The reductive standpoint of psychoanalysis is of little use to him here, for any development is a building up and not a breaking down. Good advice and moral exhortation are little if any help in serious cases because, if followed, they dispel that intense darkness which precedes the coming of the light. As a wise saying of the East puts it: It is better to do good than to eschew evil. He who is wise, therefore, will play the part of beggar, king, or criminal, and be mindful of the gods. 
	548 	It is easier for the Catholic clergy to employ the elements 
of psychological analysis than it is for the Protestant. The latter 
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PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE CURE OF SOULS 
are faced with the harder task. !\' ot Cyll y do the Catholics possess a ready-made pastoral technique in the !lisrorically sanctioned form of confession, penance, and a bsolll tion, but they also have at their command a rich and palpably ritualistic symbolism which fully satisfies the demands as well as the obscure passions of simpler minds. The Protestants need a psychological technique to an even greater degree since they lack all essential forms of ritual. I therefore hold that psychological interest on the part of the Protestant clergy is entirely legitimate and even necessary. Their possible encroachment upon medical territory is more than balanced by medical incursions into religion and philosophy, to which doctors naively believe themselves entitled (witness the explanation of religious processes in terms of sexual symptoms or infantile wish-fantasies). The doctor and the clergyman undoubtedly clash head-on in analytical psychology. This collision should lead to co-operation and not to enmity. 
	549 	Owing to the absence of ritual forms, the Protestant (as op- 
posed to the Catholic) cure of souls develops into a personal discussion in the sense of an "I-Thou" relationship. It cannot translate the fundamental problem of the transference into something impersonal, as the Catholic can, but must handle it with confidence as a personal experience. Any contact with the unconscious that goes at all deep leads to transference phenomena. Whenever, therefore, the clergyman penetrates any distance into the psychic background, he ,,,ill provoke a transference (with men as well as with women). This involves him personally, and on top of that he has no form which he could substitute for his own person, as the Catholic priest can, or rather must do. In this way he finds himself drawn into the most personal participation for the sake of his parishioner's spiritual welfare, more so even than the analyst, for whom the specific salvation of the patient's soul is not necessarily a matter of burning importance. At all events he can resort to plausible excuses which the clergyman, somewhat nervously, must repudiate for higher reasons. Hence he stands, and must stand, in constant danger of involving himself in serious psychic conflicts which, to put it mildly, are not conducive to the parochial peace of mind. This danger is no trifling one, but it has the great advantage of drawing the responsible pastor back into real life and, at the same time, of exposing him to the tribulations of the 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
early Church (cf. the gossip against which Paul had to defend himself). 
	550 	The pastor must make up his mind how far his public posi- 
tion, his stipend, and considerations for his family keep him from setting forth on the perilous mission of curing souls. I would not think ill of him if he decided not to follow the advice that Tertullian gave his catechumens, namely, that they should deliberately visit the arena. Real pastoral work that is based on modern psychology can easily expose the clergyman to the martyrdom of public misinterpretation. Public position and regard for the family, though worldly considerations, counsel a wise reserve (for the children of this world are, as we know, wiser than the children of light). Nevertheless, the eyes of the soul turn longingly to those who, regardless of their worldly welfare, can throw everything into the scales for the sake of something better. Nothing, certainly, is ever won by childish enthusiasm; yet only with daring-a daring which never leaves the firm ground of the real and the possible, and which shrinks from no suffering-can anything of greater worth be achieved. 
	551 	Thus it is the Protestant minister's lack of ritual equipment 
which holds him back from closer contact with the world, and at the same time drives him towards a greater adventure-because it moves him right into the firing line. I hope that the Protestant will not be found wanting in courage for this task. 
	552 	All intelligent psychotherapists would be glad if their en- 
deavours were supported and supplemented by the work of the clergy. Certainly the problems of the human soul, approached from opposite ends by cleric and doctor, will cause considerable difficulties for both, not least on account of the difference in standpoint. But it is just from this encounter that we may expect the most fruitful stimulation for both sides .. 
354 

VI 
ANSWER TO JOB 
[First published as a book, Antwort aut Hiob (Zurich, 1952). The present translation was first published, in book form. in London, 1954; for it, Professor Jung made some half-dozen small alterations to the original text and added or authorized an occasional footnote. In 1956, it was reprinted and published by Pastoral Psychology Book Club, Great Neck, New York. Only minor stylistic alterations have been made in the version here published.-EDITORS.] 

	
	
PREFATORY NOTE 1 
The suggestion that I should tell you how Answer to Iou came to be written sets me a difficult task, because the history of this book can hardly be told in a few words. I have been occupied with its central problem for years. Many different sources nourished the stream of its thoughts, until one day-and after long reflection-the time was ripe to put them into words. 
The most immediate cause of my writing the book is perhaps to be found in certain problems discussed in my book Aion, especially the problems of Christ as a symbolic figure and of the antagonism Christ-Antichrist, represented in the traditional zodiacal symbolism of the two fishes. 
In connection with the discussion of these problems and of the doctrine of Redemption, I criticized the idea of the jnivatio boni as not agreeing with the psychological findings. Psychological experience shows that whatever we call "good" is balanced by an equally substantial "bad" or "evil." If "evil" is non-existent, then whatever there is must needs be "good." Dogmatically, neither "good" nor "evil" can be derived from l'vIan, since the "Evil One" existed before l\fan as one of the "Sons of God." The idea of the privatio uoni began to play a role in the Church only after Mani. Before this heresy, Clement of Rome taught 1 [Written for Pastoral Psychology (Great Neck, ~. Y.). VI: 60 (January. '956).EDITORS.] 
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	PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 	WEST 
that God rules the world with a right and a left hand, the right being Christ, the left Satan. Clement's view is clearly monotheistic, as it unites the opposites in one God. 
Later Christianity, however, is dualistic, inasmuch as it splits off one half of the opposites, personified in Satan, and he is eternal in his state of damnation. This crucial question of 7ToBev TO KUKOV (whence evil?) forms the point of departure for the Christian theory of Redemption. It is therefore of prime importance. If Christianity claims to be a monotheism, it becomes unavoidable to assume the opposites as being contained in God. But then we are confronted with a major religious problem: the problem of Job. It is the aim of my book to point out its historical evolution since the time of Job down through the centuries to the most recent symbolic phenomena, such as the Assumptio Mariae, ete. 
Moreover, the study of medieval natural philosophy-of the greatest importance to psychology-made me try to find an ans"'er to the question: what image of God did these old philosophers have? Or rather: how should the symbols which supplement their image of God be understood? All this pointed to a complexio oppositorum and thus recalled again the story of .Tab to my mind: Job who expected help from God against God. This most peculiar fact presupposes a similar conception of the opposites in God. 
On the other hand, numerous questions, not only from my patients, but from all over the world, brought up the problem of giving a more complete and explicit answer than I had given in Aion. For many years I hesitated to do this because I was quite conscious of the probable consequences, and knew what a storm ,\'ould be raised. But I was gripped by the urgency and difficulty of the problem and was unable to throw it off. Therefore I found myself obliged to deal with the whole problem, and I did so in the form of describing a personal experience, carried by subjective emotions. I deliberately chose this form because I wanted to avoid the impression that I had any idea of announcing an "eternal truth." The book does not pretend to be anythin,C; but the voice or question of a single individual ",ho hopes or expects to meet ",ith thoughtfulness in the public. 
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LECTORI BENEVOLO 
I am distressed tor thee, my brother ... 
II Samuel 1: 26 (AV) 
	553 	On account of its somewhat unusual content, my little book 
requires a short preface. I beg of you, dear reader, not to overlook it. For, in what follows, I shall speak of the venerable objects of religious belief. "Whoever talks of such matters inevitably runs the risk of being torn to pieces by the two parties who are in mortal conflict about those very things. This conflict is due to the strange supposition that a thing is true only if it presents itself as a Physical fact .. Thus some people believe it to be physically true that Christ was born as the son of a virgin, while others deny this as a physical impossibility. Everyone can see that there is no logical solution to this conflict and that one would do better not to get involved in such sterile disputes, Both are right and both are wrong. Yet they could easily reach agreement if only they dropped the word "physical." "Physical" is not the only criterion of truth: there are also psychic truths which can neither be explained nor proved nor contested in any physical way. If, for instance, a general belief existed that the river Rhine had at one time flowed backwards from its mouth to its source, then this belief would in itself be a fact even though such an assertion, physically understood, would be 
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deemed utterly incredible. Beliefs of this kind are psychic facts which cannot be contested and need no proof. 
	554 	Religious statements are of this type. They refer without ex- 
ception to things that cannot be established as physical facts. H they did not do this, they would inevitably fall into the category of the natural sciences. Taken as referring to anything physical, they make no sense whatever, and science would dismiss them as non-experienceable. They would be mere miracles, which are sufficiently exposed to doubt as it is, and yet they could not demonstrate the reality of the spirit or meaning that underlies them, because meaning is something that always demonstrates itself and is experienced on its own merits. The spirit and meaning of Christ are present and perceptible to us even without the aid of miracles. Miracles appeal only to the understanding of those who cannot perceive the meaning. They are mere substitutes for the not understood reality of the spirit. This is not to say that the living presence of the spirit is not occasionally accompanied by marvellous physical happenings. I only wish to emphasize that these happenings can neither replace nor bring about an understanding of the spirit, which is the one essential thing.
        The fact that religious statements frequently conflict with the observed physical phenomena proves that in contrast to physical perception the spirit is autonomous, and that psychic experience is to a certain extent independent of physical data. The psyche is an autonomous factor, and religious statements are psychic confessions which in the last resort are based on unconscious, i.e., on transcendental, processes. These processes are not accessible to physical perception but demonstrate their existence through the confessions of the psyche. The resultant statements are filtered through the medium of human consciousness: that is to say, they are given visible forms which in their turn are subject to manifold influences from within and without. That is why whenever we speak of religious contents we move in a world of images that point to something ineffable. We do not know how clear or unclear these images, metaphors, and concepts are in respect of their transcendental object. H, for instance, we say "God," we give expression to an image or verbal concept which has undergone many changes in the course of time. We are, however, unable to say with any degree of cer- 
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A!,;SWER TO JOB 
tainty-unless it be by faith-whether these changes affect only the images and concepts, or the Unspeakable itself. After all, we can imagine God as an eternally flowing current of vital energy that endlessly changes shape just as easily as we can imagine him as an eternally unmoved, unchangeable essence. Our reason is sure only of one thing: that it manipulates images and ideas which are dependent on human imagination and its temporal and local conditions, and which have therefore changed innumerable times in the course of their long history. There is no doubt that there is something behind these images that transcends consciousness and operates in such a way that the statements do not vary limitlessly and chaotically, but clearly all .relate to a few basic principles or archetypes. These, like the psyche itself, or like matter, are unknowable as such. All "'e can do is to construct models of them which we know to be inadequate, a fact which is confirmed again and again by religious statements. 
	556 	If, therefore, in what follows I concern myself with these 
"metaphysical" objects, I am quite conscious that I am moving in a world of images and that none of my reflections touches the essence of the Unknowable. I am also too well aware of how limited are our powers of conception-to say nothing of the feebleness and poverty of language-to imagine that my remarks mean anything more in principle than what a primitive man means when he conceives of his god as a hare or a snake. But, although our whole world of religious ideas consists of anthropomorphic images that could never stand up to rational criticism, we should never forget that they are based on numinous archetypes, i.e., on an emotional foundation which is unassailable by reason. We are dealing with psychic facts which logic can overlook but not eliminate. In this connection Tertullian has already appealed, quite rightly, to the testimony of the soul. In his De testimonio animae) he says: 
These testimonies of the soul are as simple as they are tnie, as ob. vious as they are simple, as common as they are obvious, as natural as they are common, as divine as they are natural. I think that they cannot appear to anyone to be trifling and ridiculous if he considers the majesty of Nature, whence the authority of the soul is derived. What you allow to the mistress you will assign to the disciple. Nature is the mistress, the soul is the disciple; what the one has taught, or 
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the other has learned, has been delivered to them by God, who is, in truth, the Master even of the mistress herself. What notion the soul is able to conceive of her first teacher is in your power to judge, from that soul which is in you. Feel that which causes you to feel; think upon that which is in forebodings your prophet; in omens, your augur; in the events which befall you, your foreseer. Strange if, being given by God, she knows how to act the diviner for men! Equally strange if she knows Him by whom she has been given! 1 
	557 	I would go a step further and say that the statements made 
in the Holy Scriptures are also utterances of the soul-even at the risk of being suspected of psychologism. The statements of. the conscious mind may easily be snares and delusions, lies, or arbitrary opinions, but this is certainly not true of the statements of the soul: to begin with they always go over our heads because they point to realities that transcend consciousness. These entia are the archetypes of the collective unconscious, and they precipitate complexes of ideas in the form of mythological motifs. Ideas of this kind are never invented, but enter the field of inner perception as finished products, for instance in dreams. They are spontaneous phenomena which are not subject to our will, and we are therefore justified in ascribing to them a certain autoilOmy. They are to be regarded not only as objects but as subjects with laws of their own. From the point of view of consciousness, we can, of course, describe them as objects, and even explain them up to a point, in the same measure as we can describe and explain a living human being. But then we have to disregard their autonomy. If that is considered, we are compelled to treat them as subjects; in other words, we have to admit that they possess spontaneity and purposiveness, or a kind of consciousness and free will. We observe their behaviour and consider their statements. This dual standpoint, which we are forced to adopt towards every relatively independent organism, naturally has a dual result. On the one hand it tells me what I do to the object, and on the other hand what it does (possibly to me). It is obvious that this unavoidable dualism will create a certain amount of confusion in the minds of my readers, particularly as in what follows we shall have to do with the archetype of Deity. 
1 Cap. V, in Migne, P.L., vol. I, cols. 615£' (trans. by C. Dodgson, I, pp. IS8f., slightly modified. 
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ANSWER TO JOB 
	558 	Should any of my readers feel tempted to add an apologetic 
"only" to the God-images as we perceive them, he would immediately fall foul of experience, which demonstrates beyond any shadow of doubt the extraordinary numinosity of these images. The tremendous effectiveness (mana) of these images is such that they not only give one the feeling of pointing to the Ens realissimum) but make one convinced that they actually express it and establish it as a fact. This makes discussion uncommonly difficult, if not impossible. It is, in fact, impossible to demonstrate God's reality to oneself except by using images which have arisen spontaneously or are sanctified by tradition, and whose psychic nature and effects the naIve-minded person has never separated from their unknowable metaphysical background. He instantly equates the effective image with the transcendental x to which it points. The seeming justification for this procedure appears self-evident and is not considered a problem so long as the statements of religion are not seriously questioned. But if there is occasion for criticism, then it must be remembered that the image and the statement are psychic processes which are different from their transcendental object; they do not posit it, they merely point to it. In therealm of psychic processes criticism and discussion are not only permissible but are unavoidable. 
	559 	In what follows I shall attempt just such a discussion, such a 
"coming to terms" with certain religious traditions and ideas. Since I shall be dealing with numinous factors, my feeling is challenged quite as much as my intellect. I cannot, therefore, write in a coolly objective manner, but must allow my emotional subjectivity to speak if I want to describe what I feel when I read certain books of the Bible, or when I remember the impressions I have received from the doctrines of our faith. I do not write as a biblical scholar (which I am not), but as a layman and physician who has been privileged to see deeply into the psychic life of many people. 'What I am expressing is first of all my ovvn personal view, but I know that I also speak in the name of many who have had similar experiences. 
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ANSWER TO JOB 
	560 	The Book of Job is a landmark in the long historical de- 
velopment of a divine drama. At the time the book was written, there were already many testimonies which had given a contradictory picture of Yahweh-the picture of a God who knew no moderation in his emotions and suffered precisely from this lack of moderation. He himself admitted that he was eaten up with rage and jealousy and that this knowledge was painful to him. Insight existed along with obtuseness, loving-kindness along with cruelty, creative power along with destructiveness. Everything was there, and none of these qualities was an obstacle to the other. Such a condition is only conceivable either when no reflecting consciousness is present at all, or when the capacity for reflection is very feeble and a more or less adventitious phenomenon. A condition of this sort can only be described as amoral. 
	561 	How the people of the Old Testament felt about their God 
we know from the testimony of the Bible. That is not what I am concerned with here, but rather with the way in which a modern man with a Christian education and background comes to terms with the divine darkness which is unveiled in the Book of Job, and what effect it has on him. I shall not give a cool and carefully considered exegesis that tries to be fair to every detail, but a purely subjective reaction. In this way I hope to act as a 
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voice for many who feel the same way as I do, and to give expression to the shattering emotion which the unvarnished spectacle of divine savagery and ruthlessness produces in us. Even if we know by hearsay about the suffering and discord in the Deity, they are so unconscious, and hence so ineffectual morally, that they arouse no human sympathy or understanding. Instead, they give rise to an equally ill-considered outburst of affect, and a smouldering resentment that may be compared to a slowly healing wound. And just as there is a secret tie between the wound and the weapon, so the affect corresponds to the violence of the deed that caused it. 
	562 	The Book of Job serves as a paradigm for a certain experi- 
ence of God which has a special significance for us today. These experiences come upon man from inside as well as from outside, and it is useless to interpret them rationalistically and thus weaken them by apotropaic means. It is far better to admit the affect and submit to its violence than to try to escape it by all sorts of intellectual tricks or by emotional value-judgments. Although, by giving way to the affect, one imitates all the bad qualities of the outrageous act that provoked it and thus makes oneself guilty of the same fault, that is precisely the point of the whole proceeding: the violence is meant to penetrate to a man's vitals, and he to succumb to its action. He must be affected by it, otherwise its full effect will not reach him. But he should know, or learn to know, what has affected him, for in this way he transforms the blindness of the violence on the one hand and of the affect on the other into knowledge. 
563 For this reason I shall express my affect fearlessly and ruthlessly in what follows, and I shall answer injustice with injustice, that I may learn to know why and to what purpose Job was wounded, and what consequences have grown out of this for Yahweh as well as for man. 
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564 
565 
566 

I 
Job answers Yahweh thus: 
Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer thee? 
I lay my hand on my mouth. 
I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.1 
And indeed, in the immediate presence of the infinite power of creation, this is the only possible answer for a witness who is still trembling in every limb with the terror of almost total annihilation. ''\That else could a half-crushed human worm, grovelling in the dust, reasonably answer in the circumstances? In spite of his pitiable littleness and feebleness, this man knows that he is confronted with a superhuman being who is personally most easily provoked. He also knows that it is far better to withhold all moral reflections, to say nothing of certain moral requirements which might be expected to apply to a god. 
Yahweh's "justice" is praised, so presumably Job could bring his complaint and the protestation of his innocence before him as 
1 Job 40: 4-5. [Quotations throughout are from the Revised Standard Version (RSV), except where the Authorized Version (A V) is closer to the text of the Zlircher Bibel (ZB) used by the author in conjunction with the original Hebrew and Greek sources. Where neither RSV nor AV fits, I have translated direct fwm ZB. The poetic line-arrangement of RSV is followed in so far as possible.- TRANS.] 
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the just judge. But he doubts this possibility. "How can a man be just before God?" 2 "If 1 summoned him and he answered me, 1 would not believe that he was listening to my voice." 3 "If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?" 4 He "multiplies my wounds without cause." 5 "He destroys both the blameless and the wicked." 6 "If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent." 7 "1 know," Job says to Yahweh, "thou wilt not hold me innocent. I shall be condemned." 8 "If I wash myself ... never so clean, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch." 9 "For he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come together in judgment." 10 Job wants to explain his point of view to Yahweh, to state his complaint, and tells him: "Thou knowest that I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver out of thy hand." 11 "I desire to argue my case with God." 12 "I will defend my ways to his face," 13 "I know that I shall be vindicated." 14 Yahweh should summon him and render him an account or at least allow him to plead his cause. Properly estimating the disproportion between man and God, he asks: "Wilt thou break a leaf driven to and fro? and wilt thou pursue the dry stubble?" 15 God has put him in the wrong, but there is no justice.16 He has "taken away my right." 17 "Till I die I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast to my righteousness, and will not let it go." 18 His friend Elihu the Buzite does not believe the injustice of Yahweh: "Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice." 19 lllogically enough, he bases his opinion on God's power: "Is it fit to say to a king, Thou art wicked? and to princes, Ye are ungodly?" 20 One must "respect the persons of princes and esteem the high more than the low." 21 But Job is not shaken in his faith, and had already uttered an important truth when he said: "Behold, my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high ... my eye pours out tears to God, that he would maintain the right of a man with God, like that of a man with his neighbour." 22 And 
2Job9:2• 79: 23 (AV). 1110:7· 1619:6-7. 
21 34: 19 (ZB). 

39: 16. 
89: 2S, 29. 1213: 3. 1727:2. 2216: 19-21. 

	49:19. 	59:17. 
99:30-31 (AV). 
	13 13: 15. 	14 13: IS. 
	1827: 5-6. 	1934; 12. 
368 

69: 22. 
10 9: 32 (AV). 1513: 25 (AV). 2034: IS (AV). 

567 
56S 

ANSWER TO JOB 
later: "For I know that my Vindicator lives, and at last he will stand upon the earth." 23 
These words clearly show that Job, in spite of his doubt as to whether man can be just before God, still finds it difficult to relinquish the idea of meeting God on the basis of justice and therefore of morality. Because, in spite of everything, he cannot give up his faith in divine justice, it is not easy for him to accept the knowledge that divine arbitrariness breaks the law. On the other hand, he has to admit that no one except Yahweh himself is doing him injustice and violence. He cannot deny that he is up against a God who does not care a rap for any moral opinion and does not recognize any form of ethics as binding. This is perhaps the greatest thing about Job, that, faced with this difficulty, he does not doubt the unity of God. He clearly sees that God is at odds with himself-so totally at odds that he, Job, is quite certain of finding in God a helper and an "advocate" against God. As certain as he is of the evil in Yahweh, he is equally certain of the good. In a human being who renders us evil we cannot expect at the same time to find a helper. But Yahweh is not a human being: he is both a persecutor and a helper in one, and the one aspect is as real as the other. Yahweh is not split but is an antinomy-a totality of inner oppositesand this is the indispensable condition for his tremendous dynamism, his omniscience and omnipotence. Because of this knowledge Job holds on to his intention of "defending his ways to his face," i.e., of making his point of view clear to him, since notwithstanding his wrath, Yahweh is also man's advocate against himself when man puts forth his complaint. 
One would be even more astonished at Job's knowledge of God if this were the first time one were hearing of Yahweh's amorality. His incalculable moods and devastating attacks of wrath had, however, been known from time immemorial. He had proved himself to be a jealous defender of morality and was specially sensitive in regard to justice. Hence he had always to be praised as "just," which, it seemed, was very important to him. Thanks to this circumstance or peculiarity of his, he had a distinct personality, which differed from that of a more or less archaic king only in scope. His jealous and irritable nature, 
23 -9: 25. ['Vindicator' is RSV alternative reading for 'Redeemer: and comes very close to the zn Anwalt, ·advocate.'- TRANS.] 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
prying mistrustfully into the faithless hearts of men and exploring their secret thoughts, compelled a personal relationship between himself and man, who could not help but feel personally called by him. That was the essential difference between Yahweh and the all-ruling Father leus, who in a benevolent and somewhat detached manner allowed the economy of the universe to roll along on its accustomed courses and punished only those who were disorderly. He did not moralize but ruled purely instinctively. He did not demand anything more from human beings than the sacrifices due to him; he did not want to do anything with human beings because he had no plans for them. Father leus is certainly a figure but not a personality. Yahweh, on the other hand, was interested in man. Human beings were a matter of first-rate importance to him. He needed them as they needed him, urgently and personally. leus too could throw thunderbolts about, but only at hopelessly disorderly individuals. Against mankind as a whole he had no objections-but then they did not interest him all that much. Yahweh, however, could get inordinately excited about man as a species and men as individuals if they did not behave as he desired or expected, without ever considering that in his omnipotence he could easily have created something better than these "bad earthenware pots." 
	569 	In view of this intense personal relatedness to his chosen 
people, it was only to be expected that a regular covenant would develop which also extended to certain individuals, for instance to David. As we learn from the Eighty-ninth Psalm, Yahweh told him: 
My steadfast love I will keep for him for ever, and my covenant will stand firm for him. 
I will not violate my covenant, 
or alter the word that went forth from my lips. 
Once for all I have sworn by my holiness; I will not lie to David.24 
	5iO 	And yet it happened that he, who watched so jealously over 
the fulfilment of laws and contracts, broke his own oath. Modern man, with his sensitive conscience, would have felt the black 24 Verses 28, 34. 35. 
37° 
ANSWER TO JOll 
	-------------------- 	m 	• - 	.m 	_ 
abyss opening and the ground gi\ing \\'ay under his feet, for the least he expects of his God is lh:J.t he should be superior to mortal man in the sense of oeing better, higher, nobler-but not 
his superior in the kind of moral flexibility and unreliability that do not jib even at perjury. 
Of course one must not tax an archaic god with the require- 
ments of modern ethics. For the people of early antiquity things were rather different. In their gods there was absolutely everything: they teemed with virtues and vices. Hence they could be punished, put in chains, deceived, stirred up against one another without losing face, or at least not for long. The man of that epoch was so inured to divine inconsistencies that he was not unduly perturbed when they happened. \Vith Yahweh the case was different because, from qui te early on, the personal and moral tie began to play an important part in the religious relationship. In these circumstances a breach of contract was bound to have the effect not only of a personal but of a moral injury. One can see this from the way David answers Yahweh: 

571 
How long, Lord? wilt thou hide thyself for ever? shall thy wrath bum like fire? 
Remember how short my time is: 
wherefore hast thou made all men in vain? 
. ··~b· 
Lord, where are thy former lovingkindnesses, 
which by thy faithfulness thou didst swear to David? 2S 
572 
Had this been addressed to a human being it would have run something like this: "For heaven's sake, man, pull yourself together and stop being such a senseless savage! It is really too grotesque to get into such a rage when it's partly your own fault that the plants won't flourish. You used to be quite reasonable and took good care of the garden you planted, instead of trampling it to pieces." 
Certainly our interlocutor would never dare to remonstrate with his almighty partner about this breach of contract. He knows only too well what a row he would get into if he were the wretched breaker of the law. Because anything else would put him in peril of his life, he must retire to the more exalted plane 26 Psalm 89: 46.47.49 (A V; last line from RSV). 
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	PSYCllOLOGY A:'\D RELIGION 	WEST 
of reason. In this way, without knowing it or wanting it, he shml"s himself superior to his divine partner both intellectually and morally. Yahweh fails to notice that he is being humoured, just as little as he understands why he has continually to be praised as just. He makes pressing demands on his people to be praised 26 and propitiated in every possible way, for the obvious purpose of keeping him in a good temper at any price. 
	57! 	The character thus revealed fits a personality ,\'110 can only 
convince himself that he exists through his relation to an object. Such dependence on the object is absolute when the subject is totally lacking in SElf-reflection and therefore has no insight into himself. It is as if he existed only by reason of the fact that he has an object which assures him that he is really there. If Yahweh, as We would expect of a sensible human being, ,vere really conscious of himself, he would, in view of the true facts of the case, at least have put an end to the panegyrics on his justice. But he is too unconscious to be moral. Morality presupposes consciousness. By this I do not mean to say that Yahweh is imperfect or evil, like a gnostic demiurge. He is everything in its totality; therefore, among other things, he is total justice, and also its total opposite. At least this is the way he must be conceived if one is to form a unified picture of his character. \Ve must only remember that what we have sketched is no more than an anthropomorphic picture which is not even particularly easy to visualize. From the way the divine nature expresses itself we can see that the individual qualities are not adequately related to one another, with the result that they fall apart into mutually contradictory acts. For instance, Yahweh regrets having created human beings, although in his omniscience he must have known all along what would happen to them. 
II 
	575 	Since the Omniscient looks into all hearts, and Yahweh's 
eyes "run to and fro through the whole earth," 1 it were better for the interlocutor of the Eighty-ninth Psalm not to wax 
26 Or to be "blessed," which is even more captious of him. 
1 Zechariah 4: 10 (AV). Cf. also the Wisdom of Solomon 1: 10 (A V): "For the ear of jealousy heareth all things: and the noise of murmurings is not hid," 
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ANSWER TO JOB 
too conscious of his slight moral superiority over the more unconscious God. Better to keep it dark, for Yahweh is no friend of critical thoughts which in any way diminish the tribute of recognition he demands. Loudly as his power resounds through the universe, the basis of its existence is correspondingly slender, for it needs conscious reflection in order to exist in reality. Existence is only real when it is conscious to somebody. That is why the Creator needs conscious man even though, from sheer unconsciousness, he would like to prevent him from becoming conscious. And that is also why Yahweh needs the acclamation of a small group of people. One can imagine what would happen if this assembly suddenly decided to stop the applause: there would be a state of high excitation, with outbursts of blind destructive rage, then a withdrawal into hellish loneliness and the torture of non-existence, followed by a gradual reawakening of an unutterable longing for something which would make him conscious of himself. It is probably for this reason that all pristine things, even man before he becomes the canaille, have a touching, magical beauty, for in its nascent state "each thing after its kind" is the most precious, the most desirable, the tenderest thing in the world, being a reflection of the infinite love and goodness of the Creator. 
	576 	In view of the undoubted frightfulness of divine wrath, and 
in an age when men still knew what they "'ere talking about when they said "Fear God," it was only to be expected that man's slight superiority should have remained unconscious. The powerful personality of Yahwell, who, in addition to everything else, lacked all biographical antecedents (his original relationship to the Elohim had long since been sunk in oblivion), had raised him above all the numina of the Gentiles and had immunized him against the inlluence that for several centuries had been undermining the authority of the pagan gods. It 'I"as precisely the details of their mythological biography that had become their nemesis, for with his growing capacity for judgment man had found these stories more and more incomprehensihle and indecent. Yahweb. however, had no origin and no past, except his creation of the world, with which all history began, and his relation to that part of mankind "'hose forefather Adam he had fashioned in his own image as the Anthropos, the original man, by what appears to have been a special act of creation. 
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One can only suppose that the other human beings who must also have existed at that time had been formed previously on the divine potter's wheel along with the various kinds of beasts and cattle-those human beings, namely, from whom Cain and Seth chose their wives. If one does not approve of this conjecture, then the only other possibility that remains is the far more scandalous one that they incestuously married their sisters (for whom there is no evidence in the text), as was still surmised by the philosopher Karl Lamprecht at the end of the nineteenth century. 
	577 	The special providence which singled out the Jews from 
among the divinely stamped portion of humanity and made them the "chosen people" had burdened them from the start with a heavy obligation. As usually happens with such mortgages, they quite understandably tried to circumvent it as much as possible. Since the chosen people used every opportunity to break a"'ay from him, and Yahweh felt it of vital importance to tie this indispensable object (which he had made "godlike" for this very purpose) definitely to himself, he proposed to the patriarch Noah a contract between himseH on the one hand, and l\'oah, his children, and all their animals, both tame and wild, on the other-a contract that promised advantages to both parties. In order to strengthen this contract and keep it fresh in the memory, he instituted the rainbow as a token of the covenant. If, in future, he summoned the thunder-clouds which hide within them floods of water and li~htning, then the rainbow would appear, reminding him and his people of the contract. The temptation to use such an accumulation of clouds for an experimental deluge was no small one, and it was therefore a good idea to associate it with a sign that would give timely warning of possible catastrophe. 
	578 	In spite of these precautions the contract had gone to pieces 
with David, an event which left behind it a literary deposit in the Scriptures and which grieved some few of the devout, who upon reading it became reflective. As the Psalms were zealously read, it was inevitable that certain thoughtful people were unable to stomach the Eighty-ninth Psalm. However that may be, the fatal impression made by the breach of contract survived.2 
2 The 89th Psalm is attributed to David and is supposed to have been a cam· munity song written in exile. 
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A;\SWER TO JOB 
-------- 
It is historically possible that these considerations influenced the author of the Book of Job. 
	579 	The Book of Job places this pious and faithful man, so heav- 
ily afflicted by the Lord, on a brightly lit stage where he presents his case to the eyes and ears of the world. It is amazing to see how easily Yahweh, quite without reason, had let himself be influenced by one of his sons, by a doubting thought,3 and made unsure of Job's faithfulness. 'With his touchiness and suspiciousness the mere possibility of doubt was enough to infuriate him and induce that peculiar double-faced behaviour of which he had already given proof in the Garden of Eden, when he pointed out the tree to the First Parents and at the same time forbade them to eat of it. In this way he precipitated the Fall, which he apparently never intended. Similarly, his faithful servant Job is now to be exposed to a rigorous moral test, quite gratuitously and to no purpose, although Yahweh is convinced of Job's faithfulness and constancy, and could moreover ha-le assured himself beyond all doubt on this point had he taken counsel with his own omniscience. \Vhy, then, is the experiment made at all, and a bet with the unscrupulous slanderer settled, without a stake, on the back of a powerless creature? It is indeed no edifying spectacle to see how quickly Yahweh abandons his faithful servant to the evil spirit and lets him fall without compunction or pity into the abyss of physical and moral suffering. From the human point of view Yahweh's behaviour is so revolting that one has to ask oneself whether there is not a deeper motive hidden behind it. Has Yahweh some secret resistance against Job? That would explain his yielding to Satan. But what does man possess that God does not have? Because of his littleness, puniness, and defencelessness against the Almighty, he possesses, as we have already suggested, a somewhat keener consciousness based on self-reflection: he must, in order to survive, always be mindful of his impotence. God has no need of this circumspection, for nowhere does he come up against an insuperable obstacle that would force him to hesitate and hence make him reflect on himself. Could a suspicion have grown up in God that man possesses an infinitely small yet more concentrated 
3 Satan is presumably one of God's eyes which "go to and fro in the earth and walk up and down in it" (Job 1: 7)' In Persian tradition, Ahriman proceeded from one of Ormuzd's doubting thoughts. 
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11 

585 
A:\SWER TO JOB 
out Yahweh's knowledge and contrary to his intentions, the tormented though guiltless Job had secretly been lifted up to a superior knowledge of God which God himself did not possess. Had Yahweh consulted his omniscience, Job would not have had the advantage of him. But then, so many other things would not have happened either. 
	584 	Job realizes God's inner antinomy, and in the light of this 
realization his knowledge attains a divine numinosity. The possibility of this development lies, one must suppose, in man's "godlikeness," which one should certainly not look for in human morphology. Yahweh himself had guarded against this error by expressly forbidding the making of images. Job, by his insistence on bringing his case before God, even without hope of a hearing, had stood his ground and thus created the very obstacle that forced God to reveal his true nature. \Vith this dramatic climax Yahweh abruptly breaks off his cruel game of cat and mouse. But if anyone should expect that his wrath will now be turned against the slanderer, he will be severely disappointed. Yahweh does not think of bringing this mischief-making son of his to account, nor does it ever occur to him to give Job at least the moral satisfaction of explaining his behaviour. Instead, he comes riding along on the tempest of his almightiness and thunders reproaches at the half-crushed human worm: 
'Vho is this that darkens counsel by words without insight? 4 
In view of the subsequent words of Yahweh, one must really 
ask oneself: Who is darkening what counsel? The only dark thing here is how Yalnveh ever came to make a bet 'with Satan. It is certainly not Job who has darkened anything and least of all a counsel, for there was never any talk of this nor will there be in what follows. The bet does not contain any "counsel" so far as one can see-unless, of course, it was Yahweh himself who egged Satan on for the ultimate purpose of exalting Job. Naturally this development was foreseen in omniscience, and it may be that the word "counsel" refers to this eternal and absolute knowledge.lf so, Yahweh's attitude seems the more illogical and incomprehensible, as he could then have enlightened Job on this point-which, in view of the wrong done to him, would 4 Job 38: 2 (ZB). 

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
light than he, Yahweh, possesses? A jealousy of that kind might perhaps explain his behaviour. It would be quite explicable if some such dim, barely understood deviation from the definition of a mere "creature" had aroused his divine suspicions. Too often already these human beings had not behaved in the prescribed manner. Even his trusty servant Job might have something up his sleeve .... Hence Yahweh's surprising readiness 
to listen to Satan's insinuations against his better judgment. 
Without further ado Job is robbed of his herds, his servants are slaughtered, his sons and daughters are killed by a whirlwind, and he himself is smitten with sickness and brought to the brink of the grave. To rob him of peace altogether, his wife and his old friends are let loose against him, all of whom say the wrong things. His justified complaint finds no hearing with the judge who is so much praised for his justice. Job's right is refused in order that Satan be not disturbed in his play . 
One must bear in mind here the dark deeds that follow one 
another in quick succession: robbery, murder, bodily injury with premeditation, and denial of a fair trial. This is further exacerbated by the fact that Yahweh displays no compunction, remorse, or compassion, but only ruthlessness and brutality. The plea of unconsciousness is invalid, seeing that he flagrantly violates at least three of the commandments he himself gave out on Mount Sinai. 
582 Job's friends do everything in their power to contribute to his moral torments, and instead of giving him, whom God has perfidiously abandoned, their warm-hearted support, they moralize in an all too human manner, that is, in the stupidest fashion imaginable, and "fill him with wrinkles." They thus deny him even the last comfort of sympathetic participation and human understanding, so that one cannot altogether suppress the suspicion of connivance in high places. 
	583 	vVhy Job's torments and the divine wager should suddenly 
come to an end is not quite clear. So long as Job does not actually die, the pointless suffering could be continued indefinitely. We must, however, keep an eye on the background of all these events: it is just possible that something in this background will gradually begin to take shape as a compensation for Job's undeserved suffering-something to which Yahweh, even if he had only a faint inkling of it, could hardly remain indifferent. With- 
376 
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377 

	

" I 
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586 
587 

PSYCHOLOGY A:\'D RELIGION : WEST 
have been only fair and equitable. I must therefore regard this possibility as improbable. 
Whose words are without insight? Presumably Yahweh is not referring to the words of Job's friends, but is rebuking Job. But what is Job's guilt? The only thing he can be blamed for is his incurable optimism in believing that he can appeal to divine justice. In this he is mistaken, as Yahweh's subsequent words prove. God does not want to be just; he merely flaunts might over right. Job could not get that into his head, because he looked upon God as a moral being. He had never doubted God's might, but had hoped for right as well. He had, however, already taken back this error when he recognized God's contradictory nature, and by so doing he assigned a place to God's justice and goodness. So one can hardly speak of lack of insight. 
The answer to Yahweh's conundrum is therefore: it is Yahweh himseH who darkens his own counsel and who has no insight. He turns the tables on Job and blames him for what he himself does: man is not permitted to have an opinion about him, and, in particular, is to have no insight which he himself does not possess. For seventy-one verses he proclaims his worldcreating power to his miserable victim, who sits in ashes and scratches his sores with potsherds, and who by now has had more than enough of superhuman violence. Job has absolutely no need of being impressed by further exhibitions of this power. Yahweh, in his omniscience, could have known just how incongruous his attempts at intimidation were in such a situation. He could easily have seen that Job believes in his omnipotence as much as ever and has never doubted it or wavered in his loyalty. Altogether, he pays so little attention to Job's real situation that one suspects him of having an ulterior motive which is more important to him: Job is no more than the outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in God. His thunderings at Job so completely miss the point that one cannot help but see how much he is occupied with himself. The tremendous emphasis he lays on his omnipotence and greatness makes no sense in relation to Job, who certainly needs no more convincing, but only becomes intelligible when aimed at a listener who doubts it. This "doubting thought" is Satan, who after completing his evil handiwork has returned to the paternal bosom in order to continue his subversive activity there. Yahweh must have seen 
378 

588 
589 

ANSWER TO JOB 
that] ob's loyalty was unshakable and that Satan had lost his bet. He must also have realized that, in accepting this bet, he had done everything possible to drive his faithful servant to disloyalty, even to the extent of perpetrating a whole series of crimes. Yet it is not remorse and certainly not moral horror that rises to his consciousness, but an obscure intimation of something that questions his omnipotence. He is particulai'ly sensitive on this point, because "might" is the great argument. But omniscience knows that might excuses nothing. The said intimation refers, of course, to the extremely uncomfortable fact that Yahweh had let himself be bamboozled by Satan. This weakness of his does not reach full consciousness, since Satan is treated with remarkable tolerance and consideration. Evidently Satan's intrigue is deliberately overlooked at Job's expense. 
Luckily enough, Job had noticed during this harangue that everything else had been mentioned except his right. He has understood that it is at present impossible to argue the question of right, as it is only too obvious that Yahweh has no interest whatever in Job's cause but is far more preoccupied with his own affairs. Satan, that is to say, has somehow to disappear, and this can best be done by casting suspicion on Job as a man of subversive opinions. The problem is thus switched on to another track, and the episode with Satan remains unmentioned and unconscious. To the spectator it is not quite clear why Job is treated to this almighty exhibition of thunder and lightning, but the performance as such is sufficiently magnificent and impressive to convince not only a larger audience but above all Yahweh himself of his unassailable power. "Whether Job realizes what violence Yahweh is doing to his own omniscience by behaving like this we do not know, but his silence and submission leave a number of possibilities open. Job has no alternative but formally to revoke his demand for justice, and he therefore answers in the words quoted at the beginning: "I lay my hand on my mouth." 
He betrays not the slightest trace of mental reservation-in fact, his answer leaves us in no doubt that he has succumbed completely and without question to the tremendous force of the divine demonstration. The most exacting tyrant should have been satisfied with this, and could be quite sllre that his servant -from terror alone, to say nothing of his undoubted loyalty- 
379 

Gird up your loins like a man; 
I wiII question you, and you shall declare to me.5 
	594 	Job is challenged as though he himself were a god. But in 

the contemporary metaphysics there was no deuteros theos) no other god except Satan, who owns Yahweh's ear and is able to influence him. He is the only one who can pull the wool over his eyes, beguile him, and put him up to a massive violation of his own penal code. A formidable opponent indeed, and, because of his close kinship, so compromismg that he must be concealed with the utmost discretion-even to the point of God's hiding him from his own consciousness in his own bosom! In his stead God must set up his miserable servant as the bugbear whom he has to fight, in the hope that by banishing the dreaded countenance to "the hidden place" he will be able to maintain himself in a state of unconsciousness. 
	595 	The stage-managing of this imaginary duel, the speechify- 

ing, and the impressive performance given by the prehistoric menagerie would not be sufficiently explained if we tried to reduce them to the purely negative factor of Yahweh's fear of becoming conscious and of the relativization which this entails. The conflict becomes acute for Yahweh as a result of a new factor, which is, however, not hidden from omniscience-though in this case the existing knowledge is not accompanied by any conclusion. The new factor is something that has never occurred before in the history of the world, the unheard-of fact that, without knowing it or wanting it, a mortal man is raised by his moral behaviour above the stars in heaven, from which position of advantage he can behold the back of Yahweh, the abysmal world of "shards." 8 
	
G. 
PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
would not dare to nourish a single improper thought for a very long time to come. 
	590 	Strangely enough, Yahweh does not notice anything of the 

kind. He does not see Job and his situation at all. It is rather as if he had another powerful opponent in the place of Job, one who 'was better worth challenging. This is clear from his twicerepeated taunt: 
ANSWER TO JOB 

Look on everyone that is proud, and bring him Iow; and tread down the wicked where they stand. 
Hide them in the dust together; 
bind their faces in the hidden place. 
Then will I also acknowledge to you 
that your own right hand can give you victory.7 
591 
One would have to choose positively grotesque examples to illustrate the disproportion between the two antagonists. Yahweh sees something in Job which we would not ascribe to him but to God, that is, an equal power which causes him to bring out his whole power apparatus and parade it before his opponent. Yahweh projects on to Job a sceptic's face which is hateful to him because it is his own, and which gazes at him with an uncanny and critical eye. He is afraid of it, for only in face of something frightening does one let off a cannonade of references to one's power, cleverness, courage, invincibility, ete. \Vhat has all that to do with Job? Is it worth the lion's while to terrify a mouse? 
Yahweh cannot rest satisfied with the first victorious round. 

Job has long since been knocked out, but the great antagonist whose phantom is projected on to the pitiable sufferer still stands menacingly upright. Therefore Yahweh raises his arm agam: 
'Will you even put me in the wrong? 
Will you condemn me that you may be justified? 
Have you an arm like God, 
and can you thunder with a voice like his? 6 
592 
593 
Man, abandoned without protection and stripped of his rights, and whose nothingness is thrown in his face at every opportunity, evidently appears to be so dangerolls to Yahwch that he must be battered down with the heaviest artillery. What irritates Yahweh can be seen from his challenge to the ostensible Job: 
380 

740: 12-14 ("in the hidden place" is RSV alternative reading for "in the world below"). 

8 This is an allusion to an idea found in the later cabalistic philosophy. [These "shards," also called "shells" (Heb. keliPot), form ten counterpo]es to the ten sefiroth, which are the ten stages in the revelation of God's creative power. The shards, representing the forces of evil and darkness, were originally mixed with the light of the sefiroth. The Zohar describes evil as the by-product of the life 
381 
5 Job 38: 3 and 40: 7. 
640: 8-9. 

	

	

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597 
598 
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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELlGlO"I : WEST 
Does Job know what he has seen? If he does, he is astute or canny enough not to betray it. But his words speak volumes: 
I know that thou canst do all things, 
and that no purpose of thine can be thwarted.9 
Truly, Yahweh can do all things and permits himself all things without batting an eyelid. With brazen countenance he can project his shadow side and remain unconscious at man's expense. He can boast of his superior power and enact laws which mean less than air to him. Murder and manslaughter are mere bagatelles, and if the mood takes him he can play the feudal grand seigneur and generously recompense his bondslave for the havoc wrought in his wheat-fields. "So you have lost your sons and daughters? No harm done, I will give you new and better ones." 
Job continups (no doubt with downcast eyes and in a low 
voice): 
"Who is this that hides counsel without insight?" Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 
"Hear, and I will speak; 
I will question you, and you declare to me." 
I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee; 
therefore I abhor myself, 
and repent in dust and ashes,1° 
Shrewdly, Job takes up Yahweh's aggressive words and prostrates himself at his feet as if he were indeed the defeated antagonist. Guileless as Job's speech sounds, it could just as we1l be equivoca1. He has learnt his lesson well and experienced "wonderful things" which are none too easily grasped. Before, he had known Yahweh "by the hearing of the ear," but now he has got a taste of his reality, more so even than David-an 
process of the sefiroth. Therefore the sefiroth had to be cleansed of the evil admixture of the shards. This elimination of the shards took place in what is described in the cabalistic writings-particularly of Luria and his school-as the "breaking of the vessels." Through this the powers of evil assumed a separate and real existence. Cf, Scholem, Major Trrnds in Jewish Mysticism, p, 267,- 
	EDITORS.] 	942: 2. 	1042: 3-6 (modified). 
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ANSWER TO JOB 
incisive lesson that had better not be forgotten. Formerly he was naive, dreaming perhaps of a "good" God, or of a benevolent ruler and just judge. He had imagined that a "covenant" was a legal matter and that anyone who was party to a contract could insist on his rights as agreed; that God would be faithful and true or at least just, and, as one could assume from the Ten Commandments, would have some recognition of ethical values or at least feel committed to his own legal standpoint. But, to his horror, he has discovered that Yahweh is not human but, in certain respects, less than human, that he is just what Yahweh himself says of Leviathan (the crocodile): 
He beholds everything that is high: 
He is king over all proud beasts.11 
Unconsciousness has an animal nature. Like all old gods Yahweh has his animal symbolism with its unmistakable borrowings from the much older theriomorphic gods of Egypt, especially Horus and his four sons. Of the four animals of Yahweh only one has a human face. That is probably Satan, the godfather of man as a spiritual being. Ezekiel's vision attributes three-fourths animal nature and only one-fourth human nature to the animal deity, while the upper deity, the one above the "sapphire throne," merely had the "likeness" of a man.12 This symbolism explains Yahweh's behaviour, which, from the human point of view, is so intolerable: it is the behaviour of an unconscious being who cannot be judged morally. Yahweh is a Phenomenon and, as Job says, "not a man." 13 
One could, without too much difficulty, impute such a meaning to Job's speech. Be that as it may, Yahweh calmed down at last. The therapeutic measure of unresisting acceptance had proved its value yet again. Nevertheless, Yahweh is still some- 
	11 Job 41: 25 (ZB); cf, 41: 34 (AV and RSV). 	12 Ezekiell : 26. 
13 The na'ive assllmption that the creator of the world is a consciolls being must be regarded as a disastrous prejudice which later gave rise to the most incredible dislocations of logic. For example, the nonsensical doctrine of the privatio boni would never have been necessary had one not had to assume in advance that it is impossible for the consciousness of a good God to produce evil deeds. Divine unconsciousness and lack of reflection, on the other hand, enable us to form a conception of God which puts his actions beyond moral judgment and allows no conflict to arise between goodness and beastliness. 
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what nervous of Job's friends-they "have not spoken of me what is right." 14 The projection of his doubt-complex extendscomically enough, one must say-to these respectable and slightly pedantic old gentlemen, as though God-knows-what depended on what they thought. But the fact that men should think at all, and especially about him, is maddeningly disquieting and ought somehow to be stopped. It is far too much like the sort of thing his vagrant son is always springing on him, thus hitting him in his weakest spot. How often already has he bitterly regretted his unconsidered outbursts! 
One can hardly avoid the impression that Omniscience is gradually drawing near to a realization, and is threatened with an insight that seems to be hedged about with fears of selfdestruction. Fortunately, Job's final declaration is so formulated that one can assume with some certainty that, for the protagonists, the incident is closed for good and all. 
We, the commenting chorus on this great tragedy, which has never at any time lost its vitality, do not feel quite like that. For our modern sensibili ties it is by no means apparent that with Job's profound obeisance to the majesty of the divine presence, and his prudent silence, a real answer has been given to the question raised by the Satanic prank of a wager with God. Job has not so much answered as reacted in an adjusted way. In so doing he displayed remarkable self-discipline, but an unequivocal answer has still to be given. 
To take the most obvious thing, what about the moral wrong Job has suffered? Is man so worthless in God's eyes that not even a tort moral can be inflicted on him? That contradicts the fact that man is desired by Yahweh and that it obviously matters to him whether men speak "right" of him or not. He needs Job's loyalty, and it means so much to him that he shrinks at nothing in carrying out his test. This attitude attaches an almost divine importance to man, for what else is there in the whole wide world that could mean anything to one who has everything? Yahweh's divided attitude, which on the one hand tramples on human life and happiness without regard, and on the other hand must have man for a partner, puts the latter in an impossible position. At one moment Yahweh behaves as irrationally as a cataclysm; the next moment he wants to be loved, honoured, 
14Job42:7· 
384 

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606 
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ANSWER TO JOB 
------- 
worshipped, and praised as just. He reacts irritably to every word that has the faintest suggestion of criticism, while he himself does not care a straw for his own moral code if his actions happen to run counter to its statutes. 
One can submit to such a God only with fear and trembling, and can try indirectly to propitiate the despot with unctuous praises and ostentatious obedience. But a relationship of trust seems completely out of the question to our modern way of thinking. Nor can moral satisfaction be expected from an unconscious nature god of this kind. Nevertheless, Job got his satisfaction, without Yahweh's intending it and possibly without himself knowing it, as the poet would have it appear. Yahweh's allocutions have the unthinking yet none the less transparent purpose of showing Job the brutal power of the demiurge: "This is I, the creator of all the ungovernable, ruthless forces of Nature, which are not subject to any ethical laws. I, too, am an amoral force of Nature, a purely phenomenal personality that cannot see its own back." 
This is, or at any rate could be, a moral satisfaction of the first order for Job, because through this declaration man, in spite of his impotence, is set up as a judge over God himself. We do not know whether Job realizes this, but we do know from the numerous commentaries on Job that all succeeding ages have overlooked the fact that a kind of Moira or Dike rules over Yahweh, causing him to give himself away so blatantly. Anyone can see how he unwittingly raises Job by humiliating him in the dust. By so doing he pronounces judgment on himself and gives man the moral satisfaction whose absence we found so painful in the Book of Job. 
The poet of this drama showed a masterly discretion in ringing down the curtain at the very moment when his hero gave unqualified recognition to the iL-rr6cf>arH5 peyaATf of the Demiurge by prostrating himself at the feet of His Divine Majesty. No other impression "'as permitted to remain. An unusual scandal was blowing up in the realm of metaphysics, with supposedly devastating consequences, and nobody was ready with a saving formula which would rescue the monotheistic conception of God from disaster. Even in those days the critical intellect of a Greek could easily have seized on this new addition to Yahweh's biography and used it in his disfavour (as indeed happened, 
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though very much later) 15 so as to mete out to him the fate that had already overtaken the Greek gods. But a relativization of God was utterly unthinkable at that time, and remained so for the next two thousand years. 
	608 	The unconscious mind of man sees correctly even when con- 

scious reason is blind and impotent. The drama has been consummated for all eternity: Yahweh's dual nature has been revealed, and somebody or something has seen and registered this fact. Such a revelation, whether it reached man's consciousness or not, could not fail to have far-reaching consequences. 

III 

	609 	Before turning to the question of how the germ of unrest 

developed further, we must turn back to the time when the Book of Job was written. Unfortunately the dating is uncertain. It is generally assumed that it was written between 600 and 300 B.C.-not too far away, therefore, from the time of the Book of Proverbs (4th to 3rd century). Now in Proverbs wc encounter a symptom of Greek influence which, if an earlier date is assigned to it, reached the Jewish sphere of culture through Asia Minor and, if a later date, through Alexandria. This is the idea of Sophia, or the Sapientia Dei, who is a coeternal and more or less hypostatized pneuma of feminine nature that existed before the Creation: 

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. 

I was set up [ram everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. 

When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. 

When he established the heavens, I was there, 

when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was by him, as a master workman, 

15 [CL Gnostic interpretation of Y~h,\"eh as S~turn·laldabaoth in "Transforma· tion Symbolism in the J\fass," par. 350. above; Aioll, par. 128.-EDITORS.] 
386 

A:\SWER TO JOB and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in his habitable earth; 
and my delights were with the sons of men.1 
	610 	This Sophia, who already shares certain essential qualities 

with the Johannine Logos, is on the one hand closely associated with the Hebrew Chochma, but on the other hand goes so far beyond it that one can hardly fail to think of the Indian Shakti. Relations with India certainly existed at that time (the time of the Ptolemys). A further source is the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus, written around 200 B.C. Here Wisdom says of herself: 

I came out of the mouth of the most High, and covered the earth as a cloud. 
I dwelt in high places, 
and my throne is in a cloudy pillar. 
I alone encompassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep. 

I had power over the waves of the sea, and over all the earth, 
and over every people and nation. 

He created me from the beginning before the world, and I shall never fail. 

In the holy tabernacle I served before him; and so was I established in Sion. 

Likewise in the beloved city he gave me rest, and in Jerusalem was my power. 

I was exalted like a cedar in Libanus, 
and as a cypress tree upon the mountains of Hermon. 
I was exalted like a palm tree in En-gaddi, and as a rose plant in Jericho, 
as a fair olive tree in a pleasant field, 
and grew up as a plane tree by the water. 

I gave a sweet smell like cinnamon and aspalathus, and I yielded a pleasant odour like the best myrrh As the turpentine tree I stretched out my branches, 
and my branches are the branches of honour and grace. 1 Proverbs 8: 22-24 (AV). 27. 29-3' (AV mod.). 
387 

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ANSWER TO JOB 
with myrrh" 6 (Adonis, we may remember, was born of the myrrh). Like the Holy Ghost, Wisdom is given as a gift to the elect, an idea that is taken up again in the doctrine of the Paraclete. 
	613 	The pneumatic nature of Sophia as well as her world-build- 
ing Maya character come out still more clearly in the apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon. "For wisdom is a loving spirit," 7 "kind to man." 8 She is "the worker of all things," "in her is an understanding spirit, holy." 9 She is "the breath of the power of God," "a pure effluence flowing from the glory of the Almighty," 10 "the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God," 11 a being "most subtil," who "passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness." 12 She is "conversant with God," and "the Lord of all things himself loved her." 13 "'Vho of all that are is a more cunning workm:m than she?" 14 She is sent from heaven and from the throne of glory as a "Holy Spirit." 15 As a psychopomp she leads the way to God and assures immortality,16 
	614 	The 'Visdom of Solomon is emphatic about God's justice 
and, probably not without pragmatic purpose, ventures to sail very close to the wind: "Righteousness is immortal, but ungodly men with their works and words call death upon themselves." 17 The unrighteous and the ungodly, however, say: 

As the vine brought I forth pleasant sayour, 
and my Dowers are the fruit of honour and riches. 
I am the mother of fair love, 
and fear, and knowledge, and holy hope: 
I therefore, being eternal, am given to all my children which are chosen of him.2 
61 I 
It is worth while to examine this text more closely. Wisdom describes herself, in effect, as the Logos, the 'Vord of God ("I came out of the mouth of the most High"). As Ruach, the spirit of God, she brooded over the waters of the beginning. Like God, she has her throne in heaven. As the cosmogonic Pneuma she pervades heaven and earth and all created things. She corresponds in almost every feature to the Logos of St. John. 'Ye shall see below how far this connection is also important as regards content. 
She is the feminine numen of the "metropolis" par excellence, of Jerusalem the mother-city. She is the mother-beloved, a reflection of Ishtar, the pagan city-goddess. This is confirmed by the detailed comparison of 'Wisdom with trees, such as the cedar, palm, terebinth ("turpentine-tree"), olive, cypress, ete. All these trees have from ancient times been symbols of the Semitic love- and mother-goddess. A holy tree always stood beside her altar on high places. In the Old Testament oaks and terebinths are oracle trees. God or angels are said to appear in or beside trees. David consulted a mulberry-tree oracle.3 The tree in Babylon represented Tammuz, the son-lover, just as it represented Os iris, Adonis, Attis, and Dionysus, the young dying gods of the Near East. All these symbolic attributes also occur in the Song of Songs, as characteristics of the sponsus as well as the sponsa. The vine, the grape, the vine flower, and the vineyard play a significant role here. The Beloved is like an appletree; she shall come down from the mountains (the cult places of the mother-goddess), "from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards"; 4 her womb is "an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits, camphire with spikenard, spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense, myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices." 5 Her hands "dropped 
6 Song of Solomon 5: 5. 
	7 Wisdom of Solomon 1: 6. (</>LAav8pw7rov 7rVfUJ1.a uo</>La.) 	87: 23. 
	97: 22. (7raVTWV TExvLn~./7rVfUJ1.a VOfPOV a)'LOv.) 	107: 25 (A V mod.). (a7roppo'(1.) 
	11 7: 26. 	127: 23. 24· 	138: 3· (uvJJ.BLwu,v ~xovua./7raVTWV afU7rOTry~.) 
	148:6. 	159:10,17. 	1G6:18and8:13' 171:IS-16(mod.). 
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Let us oppress the poor righteous man, let us not spare the widow, 
nor reverence the ancient gray hairs of the aged. 
Let our strength be the law of justice: 
for that which is feeble is found to be nothing worth. 
Therefore let us lie in wait for the righteous; 
because ... he upbraideth us with our offending the law, and objecteth to our infamy .... 
He professeth to have the knowledge of God: and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. 
He was made to reprove our thoughts. 
2 Ecclesi'asticus 24: 3-18 (AV mod.). 
	3 II Samuel 5 : 23f. 	4 Song of Solomon 4: 8 (AV). 
388 
54: 13-15. 

	

	

"I 

615 

616 

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST Let us see if his words be true: 
and let us prove what shall happen in the end of him. 

Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, 
that we may know his meekness, and prove his patience.1S 

Where did we read but a short while before: "And the Lord said to Satan, Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause"? "\Visdom is better than might," saith the Preacher.19 
Not from mere thoughtfulness and unconsciousness, but from a deeper motive, the Wisdom of Solomon here touches on the sore spot. In order to understand this more fully, we would have to find out in what sort of relation the Book of Job stands to the change that occurred in the status of Yahweh at about the same time, i.e., its relation to the appearance of Sophia. It is not a question of literary history, but of Yahweh's fate as it affects man. From the ancient records we know that the divine drama was enacted between God and his people, '\'ho were betrothed to him, the masculine dynamis, like a woman, and over whose faithfulness he watched jealously. A particular instance of this is Job, whose faithfulness is subjected to a savage test. As I have said, the really astonishing thing is how easily Yahweh gives in to the insinuations of Satan. If it were true that he trusted Job perfectly, it would be only logical for Yahweh to defend him, unmask the malicious slanderer, and make him pay for his defamation of God's faithful servant. But Yahweh never thinks of it, not even after Job's innocence has been proved. 'Ve hear nothing of a rebuke or disapproval of Satan. Therefore, one cannot doubt Yahweh's connivance. His readiness to deliver Job into Satan's murderous hands proves that he doubts Job precisely because he projects his own tendency to unfaithfulness upon a scapegoat. There is reason to suspect that he is about to loosen his matrimonial ties with Israel but hides this intention from himself. This vaguely suspected unfaithfulness causes him. with the help of Satan, to seek out the unfaithful one, and he 
	182: 10-19. 	19 Job 2: 3: Ecclesiastes 9: 16. 
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ANSWER TO JOB 

infallibly picks on the most faithful of the lot, who is forthwith subjected to a gruelling test. Yahweh has become unsure of his own faithfulness. 
	617 	At about the same time, or a little later, it is rumoured what 

has happened: he has remembered a feminine being who is no less agreeable to him than to man, a friend and playmate from the beginning of the world, the first-born of all God's creatures, a stainless reflection of his glory and a master workman, nearer and dearer to his heart than the late descendants of the protoplast, the original man, who was but a secondary product stamped in his image. There must be some dire necessity responsible for this anamnesis of Sophia: things simply could not go on as before, the "just;' God could not go on committing injustices, and the "Omniscient" could not behave any longer like a clueless and thoughtless human being. Self-reflection becomes an imperative necessity, and for this Wisdom is needed. Yahweh has to remember his absolute knowledge; for, if Job gains knowledge of God, then God must also learn to know himself. It just could not be that Yahweh's dual nature should become public property and remain hidden from himself alone. Whoever knows God has an effect on him. The failure of the attempt to corrupt Job has changed Yahweh's nature. 
	618 	We shall now proceed to reconstruct, from the hints given 

in the Bible and from history, what happened after this change. For this purpose we must turn back to the time of Genesis, and to the protoplast before the Fall. He, Adam, produced Eve, his feminine counterpart, from his rib with the Creator's help, in the same way as the Creator had produced the hermaphroditic Adam from the tnima matn'ia and, along with him, the divinely stamped portion of humanity, namely the people of Israel and the other descendants of Adam.20 Mysteriously following the same pattern, it was bound to happen that Adam's first son, like Satan, was an evildoer and murderer before the Lord, so that the prologue in heaven was repeated on earth. It can easily be surmised that this was the deeper reason why Yahweh gave special protection to the unsuccessful Cain, for he was a faithful reproduction of Satan in miniature. Nothing is said about a prototype of the early-departed Abcl, who was dearer to God than 

20 [As to that portion of humanity not divinely stamped, and presumably de· scended from the pre-Adamic anthropoids. see par. 576. above.-EDITORS.] 
391 

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619 

PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
Cain, the go-ahead husbandman (who was no doubt instructed in these arts by one of Satan's angels). Perhaps this prototype was another son of God of a more conservative nature than Satan, no rolling stone with a fondness for new and blackhearted thoughts, but one who was bound to the Father in childlike love, who harboured no other thoughts except those that enjoyed paternal approval, and who dwelt in the inner circle of the heavenly economy. That would explain why his earthly counterpart Abel could so soon "hasten away from the evil world," in the words of the Book of Wisdom, and return to the Father, while Cain in his earthly existence had to taste to the full the curse of his progressiveness on the one hand and of his moral inferiority on the other. 
If the original father Adam is a copy of the Creator, his son Cain is certainly a copy of God's son Satan, and this gives us good reason for supposing that God's favourite, Abel, must also have his correspondence in a "supracelestial place." The ominous happenings that occur right at the beginning of a seemingly successful and satisfactory Creation-the Fall and the fratricide-catch our attention, and one is forced to admit that the initial situation, when the spirit of God brooded over the tohubol1U, hardly permits us to expect an absolutely perfect result. Furthermore the Creator, who found every other day of his work "good," failed to give good marks to what happened on Monday. He simply said nothing-a circumstance that favours an argument from silence! What happened on that day was the final separation of the upper from the lower waters by the interposed "plate" of the firmament. It is clear that this unavoidable dualism refused, then as later, to fit smoothly into the concept of monotheism, because it points to a metaphysical disunity. This split, as we know from history, had to be patched up again and again through the centuries, concealed and denied. It had made itself felt from the very beginning in Paradise, through a strange inconsequence which befell the Creator or was put over on him. Instead of following his original programme of letting man appear on the last day as the most intelligent being and lord of all creatures, he created the serpent who proved to be much more intelligent and more conscious than Adam, and, in addition, had been created before him. We can hardly suppose that Yahweh would have played such a trick on himself; it is far more 
392 

ANSWER TO JOB 
likely that his son Satan had a hand in it. He is a trickster and spoilsport who loves nothing better than to cause annoying accidents. Although Yahweh had created the reptiles before Adam, they were common or garden snakes, highly unintelligent, from among whom Satan selected a tree-snake to use as his disguise. From then on the rumour spread that the snake was "the most spiritual animaL" 21 Later the snake became the favourite symbol of the Nous, received high honours and was even permitted to symbolize God's second son, because the latter was interpreted as the world-redeeming Logos, which frequently appears as identical with the Nous. A legend of later origin maintains that the snake in the Garden of Eden was Lilith, Adam's first wife, with whom he begot a horde of demons. This legend likewise su pposes a trick that can hardly have been intended by the Creator. Consequently, the Bible knows only of Eve as Adam's legitimate wife. It nevertheless remains a strange fact that the original man who was created in the image of God had, according to tradition, two wives, just like his heavenly prototype. Just as Yahweh is legitimately united with his wife Israel, but has a feminine pneuma as his intimate playmate from all eternity, so Adam first has Lilith (the daughter or emanation of Satan) to wife, as a Satanic correspondence to Sophia. Eve would then correspond to the people of Israel. We naturally do not know why we should hear at such a late date that the Ruach Elohim, the "spirit of God," is not only feminine but a comparatively independent being who exists side by side with God, and that long before the marriage with Israel Yahweh had had relations with Sophia. Nor do we know why, in the older tradition, the knowledge of this first alliance had been lost. Likewise it was only quite late that one heard of the delicate relationship between Adam and Lilith. Whether Eve was as troublesome a wife for Adam as the children of Israel, who were perpetually flirting with unfaithfulness, were for Yahweh, is equally dark to us. At any rate the family life of our first parents was not all beer and skittles: their first two sons are a typical pair of hostile brothers, for at that time it was apparently still the custom to live out. mythological motifs in reality. (Nowadays this is felt to be objectionable and is denied whenever it happens.) The parents can share the blame for original sin: Adam has only to remember his demon21 TO 7rVEVjJ.dnKWTdTOV tii'ov.-A view that is found in Philo Jlldaclls. 
393 

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PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION : WEST 
princess, and Eve should nev.er forget that she was the first to fall for the wiles of the serpent. Like the Fall, the Cain-Abel intermezzo can hardly be listed as one of Creation's shining successes. One must draw this conclusion because Yahweh himself did not appear to be informed in advance of the abovementioned incidents. Here as later there is reason to suspect that no conclusions were ever drawn from Omniscience: Yahweh did not consult his total knowledge and was accordingly surprised by the result. One can observe the same phenomenon in human beings, wherever in fact people cannot deny themselves the pleasure of their emotions. It must be admitted that a fit of rage or a sulk has its secret attractions. \Vere that not so, most people would long since have acquired a little wisdom. 
	620 	From this point of view we may be in a better position to 
understand what happened to Job. In the pleromatic or (as the Tibetans call it) Bardo state,22 there is a perfect interplay of cosmic forces, but with the Creation-that is, with the division of the world into distinct processes in space and time-events begin to rub and jostle one another. Covered by the hem of the paternal mantle, Satan soon starts putting a right touch here and a wrong touch there, thus giving rise to complications which were apparently not intended in the Creator's plan and which come as surprises. While unconscious creation-animals, plants, and crystals-functions satisfactorily so far as we know, things are constantly going wrong with man. At first his consciousness is only a very little higher than that of the animals, for which reason his freedom of will is also extremely limited. But Satan takes an interest in him and experiments with him in his own way, leading him into all sorts of wickedness while his angels teach him the arts and sciences, which until now had been reserved for the perfection of the pleroma. (Even in those days Satan would have merited the name of "Lucifer"!) The peculiar, unforeseen antics of men arouse Yahweh's wrath and thereby involve him in his own creation. Divine interventions become a compelling necessity. Irritatingly enough, they only meet with temporary success. Even the Draconian punishment of drowning all life with a few choice exceptions (a fate which, according to old Johann Jacob Scheuchzer on the evidence of 22 [Cf. the commentary on the Tibetan Book at the Dead, pars. 831ft'., below.EDITORS.] 
394 

ANSWER TO JOB 
-------- 
the fossils, not even the fishes escaped), had no lasting effect. Creation remained just as tainted as before. The strange thing is that Yahweh invariably seeks the reason for this in man, who apparently refuses to obey, but never in his son, the father of all tricksters. This false orientation cannot fail to exasperate his already touchy nature, so that fear of God is regarded by man in general as the principle and even as the beginning of all wisdom. While mankind tried, under this hard discipline, to broaden their consciousness by acquiring a modicum of wisdom, that is, a little foresight and reflection,23 it is clear from the historical development that Yahweh had lost sight of his pleromatic coexistence with Sophia since the days of the Creation. Her place '\'as taken by the covenant with the chosen people, who were thus forced into the feminine role. At that time the people consisted of a patriarchal society in which "'omen were only of secondary importance. God's marriage with Israel was therefore an essentially masculine affair, something like the founding of the Greek fJolis, which occurred about the same time. The inferiority of women was a settled fact. \Voman was regarded as less perfect than man, as Eve's weakness for the blandishments of the serpent amply proved. Perfection is a masculine desideratum, while woman inclines by nature to comjJleteness. And it is a fact that, even today, a man can stand a relative state of perfection much better and for a longer period than a woman, while as a rule it does not agree with women and may even be dangerous for them. If a woman strives for perfection she forgets the complementary role of completeness, which, though imperfect by itself, forms the necessary counterpart to perfection. For, just as completeness is always imperfect, so perfection is always incomplete, and therefore represents a final state which is hopelessly sterile. "Ex perfecto nihil fit," say the old masters, whereas the im fJerfectun7 carries within it the seeds of its own improvement. Perfectionism always ends in a blind alley, while completeness by itself lacks selective values. 
	621 	At the bottom of Yahweh's marriage with Israel is a perfec- 
tionist intention which excludes that kind of relatedness we know as "Eros." The lack of Eros, of relationship to values, is painfully apparent in the Book of Job: the paragon of all creation is not a man but a monster! Yah \\'eh has no Eros, no 23 Cf. <ppov'!J.W$ in the parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16: 8). 
395 

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relationship to man, but only to a purpose man must help him fulfil. But that does not prevent him from being jealous and mistrustful like any other husband, though even here he has his purpose in mind and not man. 
	622 	The faithfulness of his people becomes the more important 
to him the more he forgets Wisdom. But again and again they slip back into unfaithfulness·despite the many proofs of his favour. This behaviour naturally does nothing to mollify Yahweh's jealousy and suspicions, hence Satan's insinuations fall on fertile ground when he drips his doubt about Job's faithfulness into the paternal ear. Against his own convictions Yahweh agrees without any hesitation to inflict the worst tortures on him. One misses Sophia's "]ove of mankind" more than ever. 
Even Job longs for the "Wisdom which is nowhere to be found.24 
Job marks the climax of this unhappy development. He epitomizes a thought which had been maturing in mankind about that time-a dangerous thought that makes great demands on the wisdom of gods and men. Though conscious of these demands, Job obviously does not know enough about the Sophia who is coeternal with God. Because man feels himself at the 
mercy of Yahweh's capricious ,vill, he is in need of wisdom; not so Yahweh, who up to now has had nothing to contend with except man's nothingness. vVith the Job drama, however, the situation undergoes a radical change. Here Yahweh comes up against a man who stands firm, who c1ini!;s to his rights until he is compelled to give way to brute force. He has seen God's face and the unconscious split in his nature. God "was now knm\'n, and this knowledge went on working not only in Yahweh but in man too. Thus it was the men of the last few centuries before Christ who, at the gentle touch of the pre-existent Sophia, compensate Yahweh and his attitude, and at the same time complete the anamnesis of \Visdom. Taking a highly personified form that is clear proof of her autonomy, vVisdom reveals herself to men as a friendly helper and advocate against Yahweh, and shows them the bright side, the kind, just, and amiable aspect of their God. 
	624 	At the time when Satan's practical joke with the snake com- 
promised the paradise that was planned to be perfect, Yahweh 24 Job 28: 12: "But where shall wisdom be found?" Whether this is a later interpolation or not makes no difference. 
396 
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A~SWER TO JOB 
banished Adam and Eve, whom he had created as images of his masculine essence and its feminine emanation, to the extraparadisal world, the limbo of "shards." It is not clear how much of Eve represents Sophia and how much of her is Lilith. At any rate Adam has priority in every respect. Eve was taken out of his body as an afterthought. I mention these details from Genesis only because the reappearance of Sophia in the heavenly regions points to a coming act of creation. She is indeed the "master workman"; she realizes God's thoughts by clothing them in material form, which is the prerogative of all feminine beings. Her coexistence with Yahweh signifies the perpetual hieros gamos from which worlds are begotten and born. A momentous change is imminent: God desires to rcg"enerate himself in the mystery of the heavenly nuptials-as the chief gods of Egypt had done from time immemorial-and to become man. For this he uses the Egyptian model of the god's incarnation in Pharaoh, which in its turn is but a copy of the etern:l] hinos gamos in the pleroma. It would, however, be wrong to suppose that this archetype is merely repeating itself mechanically. So far as we know, this is never the case, since archetypal situ:ltions only return when specifically called for. The rea] reason for God's becoming man is to be sought in his encounter with Job. Later on we shall deal with this question in more detail. 
625 Just as the decision to become man apparently makes use of the ancient Egyptian mode], so we can expect that the process itself will follow certain prefigurations. The approach of Sophia betokens a new creation. But this time it is not the world that is to be changed; rather it is God who intends to change his own nature. Mankind is not, as before, to be destroyed, but saved. In this decision we can discern the "phi]anthropic" influence of Sophia: no new human beings are to be created, but only one, the God-man. For this purpose a contrary procedure must be employed. The Second Adam shall not, like the first, proceed directly from the hand of the Creator, but shall be born of a human woman. So this time priority falls to the Second Eve, not only in a temporal sense but in a materia] sense as well. On the 
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basis of the so-caJled Proto-Evangelium, the Second Eve corresponds to "the woman and her seed" mentioned in Genesis 3: 15, which shaJl bruise the serpent's head. And just as Adam was believed to be originaJly hermaphroditic, so "the woman and her seed" are thou~ht of as a human pair, as the Queen of Heaven and Mother of God and as the divine son who has no human father. Thus Mary, the virgin, is chosen as the pure vessel for the comin~ birth of God. Her independence of the male is emphasized by her virg-inity as the sine q1la non of the process. She is a "daug-hter of God" who, as a later dogma wil1 establish, is disting-uished at the outset by the privilege of an immaculate conception and is thus free from the taint of original sin. It is therefore evident that she belongs to the state before the Fall. This posits a new beginning. The divine immaculateness of her status makes it immediately clear that she not only bears the ima~e of God in undiminished purity, but, as the bride of God, is also the incarnation of her prototype, namely Sophia. Her love of mankind, widely emphasized in the ancient writings, sug-gests that in this newest creation or his Yahweh has allowed himself to be extensively influenced by Sophia. For I\.lary, the blessed among women, is a friend and intercessor for sinners, which all men are. Like Sophia, she is a medialrix who leads the 'way to God and assures man of immortality. Her Assumption is therefore the prototype or man's bodily resurrection. As the bride of God and Queen of Heaven she holds the place of the Old Testament Sophia. 
Remarkable indeed are the unusual precautions which surround the making- of l\fary: immaculate conception, extirpation of the taint of sin, everlasting virginity. The Mother of God is obviously being protected against Satan's tricks. From this we can conclude that Yalnveh has consulted his o,,-n omniscience, for in his omniscience there is a clear knowledge of the perverse intentions which lurk in the dark son or God. Mary must at all cos~s be protected from these corrupting influences. The inevitable consequence of all these elaborate protective measures is something that has not been sufficiently taken into account in the dogmatic evaluation of the Incarnation: her freedom from original sin sets Mary apart from mankind in general, whose common characteristic is original sin and therefore the need of redemption. The status ante lapsum is tantamount to a para- 
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disal, i.e., pleromatic and divine, existence. By having these special measures applied to her, Mary is elevated to the status of a goddess and consequently loses something of her humanity: she will not conceive her child in sin, like all other mothers, and therefore he also will never be a human being, but a god. To my knowledge at least, no one has ever perceived that this queers the pitch for a genuine Incarnation of God, or rather, that the Incarnation was only partially consummated. Both mother and son are not real human beings at all, but gods. 
This arrangement, though it had the effect of exalting Mary's personality in the masculine sense by bringing it closer to the perfection of Christ, was at the same time injurious to the feminine principle of imperfection or completeness, since this was reduced by the perfectionizing tendency to the little bit of imperfection that still distinguishes Mary from Christ. Phoebo proPior lumina perdit! Thus the more the feminine ideal is bent in the direction of the masculine, the more the woman loses her power to compensate the masculine striving for perfection, and a typically masculine, ideal state arises which, as we shall see, is threatened with an enantiodromia. No path leads beyond perfection into the future-there is only a turning back, a collapse of the ideal, which could easily have been avoided by paying attention to the feminine ideal of completeness. Yahweh's perfectionism is carried over from the Old Testament into the New, and despite all the recognition and glorification of the feminine principle this never prevailed against the patriarchal supremacy. We have not, therefore, by any means heard the last of it. 
v 
The older son of the first parehts was corrupted by Satan and not much of a success. He was an eidolon of Satan, and only the younger son, Abel, was pleasing to God. In Cain the God-image was distorted, but in Abel it was considerably less dimmed. If Adam is thought of as a copy of God, then God's successful son, who served as a model for Abel (and about whom, as we have seen, there are no available documents), is the prefiguration of the God-man. Of the latter we know positively that, as 
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