Quaker Theology #14

We Are the Missing Link -- Page 2

Answers to this question will not come easily: Jesus’ numerous references to the "Son of Man" remain enigmatic, opaque to modern understanding. Wink suggests that by exploring the various usages of the term in the gospels, we may perhaps construct a "Christology from below" to replace the divine images of Christ that, for many today, no longer inspire transformative faith. That is, to regain the energy for outward change, we need a new myth, that of the human Jesus.

To begin work on this new Christology, Wink argues that the quest for the historical Jesus over the past two centuries has been largely unconscious. Every new construction of the historical Jesus has obliquely attempted to recover something numinous about ourselves, something redolent of the holy, the divine. For Wink, both the mythological Christ and the historical Jesus are archetypal images, potentially numinous and transformative.

And by the bye, in searching for the archetypal valences of the Son of Man traditions, Wink is less concerned whether the historical Jesus actually said something than whether it is true (‘true’ within a depth-psychological perspective). Yes, attempting to delineate the teachings of the historical Jesus from the testimony of the early Church is still important. But both of these aspects are intimately intertwined. "Truth is," he insists, "had Jesus never lived, we could not have invented him" (p. 16). One of the pleasures of this book is in its occasional paradoxical statements like that one.

Working with these traditions is not easy. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus generally avoids titles such as Messiah and Son of God. He instead prefers the enigmatic Son of Man (or more literally and awkwardly in the Greek, "the son of the man"). In some cases, the title is clearly his self-designation. At other places, it seems to posit an unspecified collective. No one else calls Jesus Son of Man. His usage appears to be unique, but not without precedents. Generally in the Hebrew Scriptures, "son of man" simply designates humans as a general category.

But a more specialized meaning emerges in the prophetic books of Ezekiel and Daniel. In Ezekiel 1, the prophet is given a vision of God in human form. This overtly anthropomorphic God addresses Ezekiel as "son of man" (a total of 93 times throughout the book). Wink suggests that, in turning a human face toward Ezekiel, God has begun drawing us into the task of becoming human. As Wink tartly states it, we are the missing link between the primates and the humans (p. 27). But, he ponders, how can we become human when we hardly know what that means?

We need God’s revelation to discover the divine/human image in which we were created. That process begins coming into focus with Ezekiel’s vision. Wink finds the goal of that process evocatively stated later by the Apostle John: "Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be is not yet revealed. When the Humanchild is revealed we will be like it, for we will see it as it is" (1 John 3:2, Wink’s translation).

By this logic, our goal is not to become what we are not (divine) but rather what we truly are (human). Therefore, we are not on a quest to become perfect but to become ourselves. Wink argues that the synoptic gospels do not portray a perfect Jesus, but a figure who can serve as catalyst to our transformation.

Anthropomorphism

This thesis raises the issue of anthropomorphism. To approach it, Wink is obliged to grapple with the critique of religion by Ludwig Feuerbach (1841), which contends that humanity empties itself into transcendence. In other words, ‘God’ is a projection of human ideals. The more we make of God the more we diminish ourselves.

Wink agrees that much in religion confirms Feuerbach’s critique. Faith can become disempowering and used in abusive ways. But he cautions that humanity cannot be the measure of all things, least of all God. Humanity has not yet arrived. From the standpoint of Ezekiel’s revelation, God is the measure of all things, for God alone is human.

From a Jungian perspective, Feuerbach sought to banish the divine archetypes in us. But Wink contends that our task is instead to withdraw our projections of archetypes outside ourselves and find them within. Jung stressed that we do not create archetypes, and our denial of them will not make them go away (p. 37). By withdrawing our projections and finding the divine/human archetypes at work within, we truly begin to relate to God.

For example, the "wrath of God" as witnessed by Paul in Romans 1-2 is not about an angry parent. It is about facing the consequences of our own actions. When we withdraw our parental projections from God, our faith can begin to mature. Wink summarizes (citing opening lines from Calvin’s Institutes of Religion) that there is no knowledge of God without knowledge of self, and no knowledge of self without knowledge of God.

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