BOOKS
David Persinger
One of the encouraging signs of our day is the increasing interest in Job. Recently I read in quick sequence The Book of Job, Archibald MacLeish’s play, J. B., and An Answer to Job by Dr. C. G. Jung. I must admit to a sense of disappointment with all three answers: that of God for the reasons given by Dr. Jung; that of J. B. because it seemed an anti-climax; that of Dr. Jung because it is an answer for gods, not for one small man.
The story of job is too well known to stand more repetition than the broadest outline: Job had faith, but no knowledge or personal experience of his God so long as his worldly situation was satisfying. When a series of tragedies struck him he demanded to know; belief was no longer enough. He received his answer in a “face to face” confrontation of God. It was an answer in terms of power. J. B. is a modern Job, a religious man who has had implicit faith in God all his life, and he has been eminently successful in his home, his family and his career. But, like his predecessor, he is devastated by a series of tragedies that leaves him no choice but to demand to understand more clearly the nature of God and Man. He asks essentially the same questions as Job but he finds a very different answer.
Job was answered out of a whirlwind, and the answer was an enumeration of the powers and achievements of God, plus a stormy chastisement of Job for having dared question anything that God had seen fit to do. J. B., on the other hand, does not meet with God. He receives his answer through the mediation of his wife, who had earlier left him because she loved him but could no longer help him. “You wanted justice and there was none—only love.” J. B. said, “He does not love. He is.” His wife Sarah said, “But we do. That’s the wonder.” “The wit won't burn and the wet soul smoulders. Blow on the coal of the heart and we’ll know…We’ll know…”
Dr. Jung supplies the connecting link. His detailed and fascinating analysis of the Book of Job leads him to the conclusion that the fact of Job’s daring to demand of God a standard of justice at least as high as Job’s human standard, paved the way for the humanizing of God in the incarnation of the Christ; that Job’s violent insistence on an answer (which got an equally Violent reply) constellated in God a new development that in time became manifest in the world of men. It did not stop with the justice that Job demanded but went further, it became Love, incarnate through the medium of the Virgin. In J. B. it is love, not of God but of man, that is the answer and it is the woman as anima who voices it.
But there are other answers to Job. For example, there is one implicit in all three works that warrants being made explicit. It is to be found in, among other places, the myth of the Scabrous God which played a prominent part in the Nahuatl religion of ancient Mexico, as set out in Burning Water, by Laurette Sejourne. According to the myth, two gods were chosen for the difficult task of lighting the world. First they offered sacrifices, then they fasted and “made penance,” then they faced the ordeal of the fire. One god was wealthy and his sacrifices were of precious things; the other was Nanautzin, the Scabby One, a god of little wealth and poor health. But when the time came for the two gods to leap into the fire as the final creative sacrifice, the god who was comfortable in his skin could not nerve himself to enter the fire, whereas the Scabby One did not hesitate.
The skin is the basic persona, the medium between the individual and his environment, symbol of one’s relationship with the external world. The relationship of Job and Nanautzin to the world around them was so painful, so much a torment, that the prospect of a further burning was tolerable, whereas for those who were comfortable in their skins the pain of the sacrificial fire was intolerable to contemplate. The comfortable ones lacked the motivation to undertake the final creative act.
Mahayana Buddhism, as taught in the West under the name Occultism, expresses the same idea less dramatically in terms of a series of lives. A man at some stage in his cycle of reincarnations is said to live one life wherein he reaches the pinnacle of worldly success, which he savors to the full. This is followed by his incarnation into circumstances that make worldly success impossible and his relationship to the world a constant frustration. In that life he begins to enquire into his own nature; he is driven by his discomfort to begin the search for the Self. Belief is no longer enough; he must know.
In our contemporary society the one who corresponds, each in his measure, to Job and Nanautzin is the neurotic. A neurosis is a situation wherein one’s lack of capacity for self-expression, one’s inadequate persona, one’s painfully inadequate adjustment to reality, one’s tormentingly insufficient response to others are too much to bear. The person so afflicted is willing to face the still more painful fire of flaying, of stripping off the persona in the analytic situation, whereas an untormented person, the well adjusted, will not give a second thought to facing such a process.
In the Nahuatl religion there is a god called Xipe Totec, the Flayed One. He is lord of smallpox, boils and scabs, and is thus close kin to Nanautzin. He is depicted in sculpture as having the skin of his hands and face flayed and hanging loose or tied back. He is Lord of Liberation, one who has gone through the fire of pain, and no doubt the regenerated form of Nanautzin. And of this sacrifice was born the Fifth Sun who reconciles the opposites, Fire and Water—hence the supreme symbol of the Nahuatl religion, Burning Water, the Serpent Plumed with Fire, Quetzalcoatl.
So too with Job. When the burning pain of his boils, the fire of Satan, dark side of God (or dark Son of God), met the whirlwind of the bright side, Job’s torment ended and a new life began for him, the opposites reconciled. Thus another answer to Job is that the pain of a burning skin and a burning conscience is a necessary prelude to the finding of the One Who reconciles all torments.
“And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.”
Buddhist And Quaker Experiments With Truth, by Teresina R. Havens. Published by the Religious Education Committee of Friends General Conference, 1515 Cherry Street, Philadelphia 2, Pennsylvania. 1958. Supplied by the publishers in one package with The Teachings Of The Compassionate Buddha, edited with commentary by E. A. Burtt. $1 for the two.
This booklet has been prepared by a teacher of comparative religions, who knew Japan and Buddhism before she had become a Friend. The selections it contains are mainly Buddhist and Quaker, but are supplemented by brief quotations in certain chapters from Hindu, Chinese, and Japanese sources. Questions at the end of each chapter are thought-provoking and intended for use in study groups. If for no other reason the book warrants looking into for the fine bibliography it contains. Listed here are some of the best books representing all the world religions.
To illustrate the similarities which Teresina Havens sees between Buddhism and Quakerism, we find that Silence is recognized as indispensable for inner realization. Both forms of religion made of corporate Silence the primary and almost only required group exercise. The other was Meeting for Discipline (Buddhist) or for Business (Quakers.) The silence in both movements was frequently broken by edifying messages.
Another similarity is the way in which both transmit to successive generations not so much the conclusions of their founders as the experimental spirit of discovering truth for themselves. In each the technique is a special set of questions, though very different ones. The answer is the important thing, though it is not the kind based on tradition so that all the student need do is memorize and repeat verbally what was prepared by someone else. Rather in the Zen Koan and in the Quaker Query the answer is our life that is being tested. The answer is out of one’s own experience and insight. The Query does differ inasmuch as it is addressed to a group rather than an individual.
Other interesting parallels between Quakerism and Zen follow from the basic tendency of each to judge by life rather than by words or doctrines:
1) Journals and letters (rather than theologies)
2) Anecdotes (rather than sermons)—usually with a humorous twist
3) Encouragement of manual labor.
A question is raised at the end of Chapter Eleven which I personally feel to be most important in Quakerism today: “Quakerism has tended to fall into two wings (historically and in recent discussions of the basis of membership):
a. A universal, “liberal” movement centered in the “Inner Light” interpreted as conscience, a “natural” endowment of all men;
b. A Christian sect centered in a unique and exclusive Christ.
“Does our study suggest a third alternative, more profound and mystical than (a), but less exclusive than (b)? How would you characterize Quakerism according to this third view?”
Buddhist and Quaker Experiments with Truth shows us that Buddhism is a bridge to the understanding of all Oriental religions, and one must read the whole book to savor the richness of the Eastern scriptures as well as understand the basic similarities with Quakerism.
Virginia Glenn
Quaker Religious Thought, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring, 1959.
The background of this venture is described on the title page as follows: “Arising out of a concern of several Friends two years ago to make possible continuing discussion of religious issues of interest to Quakers, the Quaker Theological Discussion Group came into existence. In a letter sent to a large number of Friends, the general purpose of this new organization was stated as follows:
“The objective is not to formulate a Quaker creed but to explore more fully the meaning and implications of our Quaker faith and experience. This should include both an historical and contemporary approach, and should be concerned with both the content and application of our faith.”
This pioneer number is edited by J. Calvin Keene. It contains an article by Howard Brinton on The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, followed by comments and criticism by Lewis Benson, Thomas S. Brown, and Charles F. Thomas, with a final response by Howard Brinton.
Copies of this 16-page mimeographed number may be obtained by sending 35 cents for each to Edward A. Manice, 384 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn.
The Seeker, April, 1959.
In Great Britain, The Seekers Association is fulfilling a longstanding ambition by printing The Seeker, a 20-page journal, price 1/6, obtainable from John Yarwood, 13 Holmdene Ave., London, N.W. 7. The editor is Katharine M. Wilson, whose article Light from Whatever Quarter appeared in our special issue on Quakerism, Inward Light, No. 55. The articles in this initial number of The Seeker are on: The Intellect and the Religious Quest, by Leslie Wain; The Meaning of Religious Experience, by Fred J. Tritton; and Truth in Poetry and Religion, by Katharine M. Wilson.
E. P. K.
Experiment In Understanding. Prepared by Paul Lacey and others. Young Friends Committee of North America, 1959. 20 pp. 25c.
Experiment in Understanding is an account by five Young Friends of a tour which they conducted last August for three visiting young Russians in order to acquaint them with the United States and to explore with them, in a spirit of friendship and understanding, some of the conflicts which divide East and West. This project grew out of the 1955 conference of North American Young Friends which sought a way to express “Christian love…to the youth of Russia…where the need for understanding is greatest.” In 30 crowded days, the five American hosts managed to show their guests many aspects of American public and private life.
More important than the external details of their trip seemed to be the way the Young Friends sought to develop “a fine instinct” for their Russian guests, “a communication deeper than friendship or understanding alone.” They frankly reported their failure to agree on basic issues but they “learned to disagree with respect and to look honestly at the great barriers between (their) two nations.” They found it was possible to achieve a unity that grew “not from agreement, but from the ability to see the other’s point of view while maintaining (their) own integrity.”
M. Lacklen