In view of the immense problem which we are about to discuss, this excursus on pleromatic events is not out of place as an introduction.
What, then, is the real reason for the Incarnation historical event?
In order to answer this question we have to go rather far back. As we have seen, Yahweh evidently has a disinclination to take his absolute knowledge into account as a counterbalance to the dynamism of omnipotence. The most instructive example of this is his relation to Satan: it always looks as if Yahweh were completely uninformed about his son's intentions. That is because he never consults his omniscience. We can only explain this on the assumption that Yahweh was so fascinated by his successive acts of creation, so taken up with them, that he forgot about his omniscience altogether. It is quite understandable that the magical bodying forth of the most diverse objects, which had never before existed in such pristine splendour, should have caused God infinite de- light. Sophia's memory is not at fault when she says:
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was by him, like a master workman,
and I was daily his delight.
The Book of Job still rings with the proud joy of creating when Yahweh points to the huge animals he has successfully turned out:
Behold, Behemoth,
which I made as I made you.
He is the first of the works of God,
made to be lord over his companions.
So even in Job's day Yahweh is still intoxicated with the tremendous power and grandeur of his creation. Compared with this, what are Satan's pinpricks and the lamentations of human beings who were created with the behemoth, even if they do bear God's image? Yahweh seems to have forgotten this fact entirely, otherwise he would never have ridden so roughshod over Job's human dignity.
It is only the careful and farsighted preparations for Christ's birth which show us that omniscience has begun to have a noticeable effect on Yahweh's actions. A certain philanthropic and universalistic tendency makes itself felt. The "children of Israel" take something of a second place in comparison with the "children of men." After Job, we hear nothing further about new covenants. Proverbs and gnomic utterances seem to be the order of the day, and a real novum now appears on the scene, namely apocalyptic communications. This points to metaphysical acts of cognition, that is, to "constellated" unconscious contents which are ready to irrupt into consciousness. In all this, as we have said, we discern the helpful hand of Sophia.
If we consider Yahweh's behaviour, up to the reappearance of Sophia, as a whole, one indubitable fact strikes us — the fact that his actions arc accompanied by an inferior consciousness. Time and again we miss reflection and regard for absolute knowledge. His consciousness seems to be not much more than a primitive "awareness" which knows no reflection and no morality. One merely perceives and acts blindly, without conscious inclusion of the subject, whose individual existence raises no problems. Today we would call such a state psychologically "unconscious," and in the eyes of the law it would be described as non compos mentis. The fact that consciousness does not perform acts of thinking does not, however, prove that they do not exist. They merely occur unconsciously and make themselves felt indirectly in dreams, visions, revelations, and "instinctive" changes of consciousness, whose very nature tells us that they derive from an "unconscious" knowledge and are the result of unconscious acts of judgment or unconscious conclusions.
Some such process can be observed in the curious change which comes over Yahweh's behaviour after the Job episode. There can be no doubt that he did not immediately become conscious of the moral defeat he had suffered at Job's hands. In his omniscience, of course, this fact had been known from all eternity, and it is not unthinkable that the knowledge of it unconsciously brought him into the position of dealing so harshly with Job in order that he himself should become conscious of something through this conflict, and thus gain new insight. Satan who, with good reason, later on received the name of "Lucifer," knew how to make more frequent and better use of omniscience than did his father. It seems he was the only one among the sons of God who developed that much initiative. [In Christian tradition, too, there is a belief that God's intention to become man was known to the Devil many centuries before, and that this was why he instilled the Dionysus myth into the Greeks, so that they could say, when the joyful tidings reached them in reality: "So what? We knew all that long ago." When the conquistadores later discovered the crosses of the Mayas in Yucatan, the Spanish bishops used the same argument.] At all events, it was he who placed those unforeseen incidents in Yahweh's way, which omniscience knew to be necessary and indeed indispensable for the unfolding and completion of the divine drama. Among these the case of Job was decisive, and it could only have happened thanks to Satan's initiative.
The victory of the vanquished and oppressed is obvious: Job stands morally higher than Yahweh. In this respect the creature has surpassed the creator. As always when an external event touches on some unconscious knowledge, this knowledge can reach consciousness. The event is recognized as a deja vu y and one remembers a pre-existent knowledge about it. Something of the kind must have happened to Yahweh. Job's superiority cannot be shrugged off. Hence a situation arises in which real reflection is needed. That is why Sophia steps in. She reinforces the much needed self-reflection and thus makes possible Yahweh's decision to become man. It is a decision fraught with consequences: he raises himself above his earlier primitive level of consciousness by indirectly acknowledging that the man Job is morally superior to him and that therefore he has to catch up and become human himself. Had he not taken this decision he would have found himself in flagrant opposition to his omniscience. Yahweh must become man precisely because he has done man a wrong. He, the guardian of justice, knows that every wrong must be expiated, and Wisdom knows that moral law is above even him. Because his creature has surpassed him he must regenerate himself.
As nothing can happen without a pre-existing pattern, not even creation ex nihilo, which must always resort to the treasure-house of eternal images in the fabulous mind of the "master workman," the choice of a model for the son who is now about to be begotten lies between Adam (to a limited extent) and Abel (to a much greater extent). Adam's limitation lies in the fact that, even if he is the Anthropos, he is chiefly a creature and a father. Abel's advantage is that he is the son well pleasing to God, begotten and not directly created. One disadvantage has to be accepted: he met with an early death by violence, too early to leave behind him a widow and children, which ought really to be part of human fate if lived to the full. Abel is not the authentic archetype of the son well pleasing to God; he is a copy, but the first of the kind to be met with in the Scriptures. The young dying god is also well known in the contemporary pagan religions, and so is the fratricide motif. We shall hardly be wrong in assuming that Abel's fate refers back to a metaphysical event which was played out between Satan and another son of God with a "light" nature and more devotion to his father. Egyptian tradition can give us information on this point (Horus and Set). As we have said, the disadvantage prefigured in the Abel type can hardly be avoided, because it is an integral part of the mythical-son drama, as the numerous pagan variants of this motif show. The short, dramatic course of Abel's fate serves as an excellent paradigm for the life and death of a God become man.
To sum up: the immediate cause of the Incarnation lies in Job's elevation, and its purpose is the differentiation of Yahweh's consciousness. For this a situation of extreme gravity was needed, a peripeteia charged with affect, with- out which no higher level of consciousness can be reached.
In addition to Abel, we have to consider, as a model for the impending birth of the son of God, the general pattern of the hero's life which has been established since time immemorial and handed down by tradition. Since this son is not intended merely as a national Messiah, but as the universal saviour of mankind, we have also to consider the pagan myths and revelations concerning the life of one who is singled out by the gods.
The birth of Christ is therefore characterized by all the usual phenomena attendant upon the birth of a hero, such as the annunciation, the divine generation from a virgin, the coincidence of the birth with the thrice-repeated coniunctio maxima ( 91 & b ) in the sign of Pisces, which at that precise moment inaugurated the new era, the recognition of the birth of a king, the persecution of the newborn, his flight and concealment, his lowly birth, etc. The motif of the growing up of the hero is discernible in the wisdom of the twelve-year-old child in the temple, and there are several examples in the gospels of the breaking away from the mother.
It goes without saying that a quite special interest attaches to the character and fate of the incarnate son of God. Seen from a distance of nearly two thousand years, it is uncommonly difficult to reconstruct a biographical picture of Christ from the traditions that have been preserved. Not a single text is extant which would fulfill even the minimum modern requirements for writing a history. The historically verifiable facts are extremely scanty, and the little biographically valid material that exists is not of predestination literally, it is difficult to see how it can be fitted into the framework of the Christian message. But taken psychologically, as a means to achieving a definite effect, it can readily be understood that these allusions to predestination give one a feeling of distinction. If one knows that one has been singled out by divine choice and intention from the beginning of the world, then one feels lifted beyond the transitoriness and meaninglessness of ordinary human existence and transported to a new state of dignity and importance, like one who has a part in the divine world drama. In this way man is brought nearer to God, and this is in entire accord with the meaning of the message in the gospels.
Besides his love of mankind a certain irascibility is noticeable in Christ's character, and, as is often the case with people of emotional temperament, a manifest lack of self-reflection. There is no evidence that Christ ever wondered about himself, or that he ever confronted himself. To this rule there is only one significant exception — the despairing cry from the Cross: ' k My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Here his human nature attains divinity; at that moment God experiences what it means to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and, clearly, this supreme moment is as divine as it is human, as "eschatological" as it is "psychological." And at this moment, too, where one can feel the human being so absolutely, the divine myth is present in full force. And both mean one and the same thing. How, then, can one possibly "demythologize" the figure of Christ? A rationalistic attempt of that sort would soak all the mystery out of his personality, and what remained would no longer be the birth and tragic fate of a God in time, but, historically speaking, a badly authenticated religious teacher, a Jewish reformer who was hellenistically interpreted and misunderstood — a kind of Pythagoras, maybe, or, if you like, a Buddha or a Mohammed, but certainly not a son of God or a God incarnate. Nor does anybody seem to have realized what would be the consequences of a Christ disinfected of all trace of esehatology. Today we have an empirical psychology, which continues to exist despite the fact that the theologians have done their best to ignore it, and with its help we can put certain of Christ's statements under the microscope. If these statements are detached from their mythical context, they can only be explained personalistically. But what sort of conclusion are we bound to arrive at if a statement like "1 am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me" is reduced to personal psychology? Obviously, the same conclusion as that reached by Jesus' relatives when, in their ignorance of eschatology, they said, "He is beside himself." What is the use of a religion without a mythos, since religion means, if anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal myth?
In view of these portentous impossibilities, it has been assumed, perhaps as the result of a growing impatience with the difficult factual material, that Christ was nothing but a myth, in this case no more than a fiction. But myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do. The fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth — quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, nonpsychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfills itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. My own conjecture is that Christ was such a personality. The life of Christ is just what it had to be if it is the life of a god and a man at the same time. It is a symbolum, a bringing together of heterogeneous natures, rather as if Job and Yahweh were combined in a single personality. Yahweh's intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and suffering.
When one remembers the earlier acts of creation, one wonders what has happened to Satan and his subversive activities. Everywhere he sows his tares among the wheat. One suspects he had a hand in Herod's massacre of the innocents. What is certain is his attempt to lure Christ into the role of a worldly ruler. Equally obvious is the fact, as is evidenced by the remarks of the man possessed of devils, that he is very well informed about Christ's nature. He also seems to have inspired Judas, without, however, being able to influence or prevent the sacrificial death.
His comparative ineffectiveness can be explained on the one hand by the careful preparations for the divine birth, and on the other hand by a curious metaphysical phenomenon which Christ witnessed: he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 76 In this vision a metaphysical event has become temporal; it indicates the historic and — so far as we know — final separation of Yahweh from his dark son. Satan is banished from heaven and no longer has any opportunity to inveigle his father into dubious undertakings. This event may well explain why he plays such an inferior role wherever he appears in the history of the Incarnation. His role here is in no way comparable to his former confidential relationship to Yahweh. He has obviously forfeited the paternal affection and been exiled. The punishment which we missed in the story of Job has at last caught up with him, though in a strangely limited form. Although he is banished from the heavenly court he has kept his dominion over the sublunary world. He is not cast directly into hell, but upon earth. Only at the end of time shall he be locked up and made permanently ineffective. Christ's death cannot be laid at his door, be- cause, through its prefiguration in Abel and in the young dying gods, the sacrificial, death was a fate chosen by Yahweh as a reparation for the wrong done to Job on the one hand, and on the other hand as a fillip to the spiritual and moral development of man. There can be no doubt that man's importance is enormously enhanced if God himself deigns to become one.
As a result of the partial neutralization of Satan, Yahweh identifies with his light aspect and becomes the good God and loving father. He has not lost his wrath and can still mete out punishment, but he does it with justice. Cases like the Job tragedy are apparently no longer to be expected. He proves himself benevolent and gracious. He shows mercy to the sinful children of men and is defined as Love itself. But although Christ has complete confidence in his father and even feels at one with him, he cannot help inserting the cautious petition — and warning — into the Lord's Prayer: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." God is asked not to entice us outright into doing evil, but rather to deliver us from it. The possibility that Yahweh, in spite of all the precautionary measures and in spite of his express intention to become the Summum Bonum, might yet return to his former ways is not so remote that one need not keep 1 eye open for it. At any rate, Christ considers it appropate to remind his father of his destructive inclinations towards mankind and to beg him to desist from them. Judged by any human standards it is after all unfair, indeed extremely immoral, to entice little children into doing things that might be dangerous for them, simply in order to test their moral stamina! Especially as the difference between a child and a grown-up is immeasurably smaller than that between God and his creatures, whose moral weakness is particularly well known to him. The incongruity of it is so colossal that if this petition were not in the Lord's Prayer one would have to call it sheer blasphemy, because it really will not do to ascribe such contradictory behaviour to the God of Love and Summum Bonum.
The sixth petition indeed allows a deep insight, for in face of this fact Christ's immense certainty with regard to his father's character becomes somewhat questionable. It is, unfortunately, a common experience that particularly positive and categorical assertions are met with wherever there is a slight doubt in the background that has to be stifled. One must admit that it would be contrary to all reasonable expectations to suppose that a God who, for all his lavish generosity, had been subject to intermittent but devastating fits of rage ever since time began could suddenly become the epitome of everything good. Christ's unadmitted but none the less evident doubt in this respect is confirmed in the New Testament, and particularly in the Apocalypse. There Yahweh again delivers himself up to an unheard-of fury of destruction against the human race, of whom a mere hundred and forty-four thousand specimens appear to survive.
One is indeed at a loss how to bring such a reaction into line with the behaviour of a loving father, whom we would expect to glorify his creation with patience and love. It looks as if the attempt to secure an absolute and final victory for good is bound to lead to a dangerous accumulation of evil and hence to catastrophe. Compared with the end of the world, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and even the Deluge are mere child's play; for this time the whole of creation goes to pieces. As Satan was locked up for a time, then conquered and cast into a lake of fire, 78 the destruction of the world can hardly be the work of the devil, but must be an "act of God" not influenced by Satan.
The end of the world is, however, preceded by the circumstance that even Christ's victory over his brother Satan — Abel's counterstroke against Cain — is not really and truly won, because, before this can come to pass, a final and mighty manifestation of Satan is to be expected. One can hardly suppose that God's incarnation in his son Christ would be calmly accepted by Satan. It must certainly have stirred up his jealousy to the highest pitch and evoked in him a desire to imitate Christ, and to become incarnate in his turn as the dark God. (As we know, numerous legends were later woven round this theme.) This plan will be put into operation by the figure of the Antichrist after the preordained thousand years are over, the term allotted by astrology to the reign of Christ. This expectation, which is already to be found in the New Testament, reveals a doubt as to the immediate finality or universal effectiveness of the work of salvation. Unfortunately it must be said that these expectations gave rise to thoughtless revelations which were never even discussed with other aspects of the doctrine of salvation, let alone brought into harmony with them.