The Psychology of Angels

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANGELS

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Posted by - Eternalised

October 25, 2023

Posted in - Analytical psychology, Religion

Angels have fascinated human consciousness since the beginning of time. The angel is a recurring archetype within many civilisations, and is present in religion, literature, philosophy, and esotericism, as well as in art, movies and games. The word angel derives from the Greek angelos, which is the default translation of the Biblical Hebrew term mal’ākh (literally “messenger”). The angel is a messenger between God and mankind.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• Angels in Zoroastrianism
• Ba-soul, Genius, Daimon
• The Transmigration of Souls and Reincarnation
• Djinns, Fairies, Elementals
• The Archetype of The Ethereal Being
• Subtle bodies
• The Role of Angels in the Creation of Evil
• The Purpose and Motivation of Angels
• The Anthropos (Primeval Man)
• The Celestial Hierarchy: First Choir
• The Celestial Hierarchy: Second Choir
• The Celestial Hierarchy: Third Choir
• Swedenborg and Blake
• The Psychology of Angels
• The Angel of Death
• The Angel’s Call
• Angels: Individuation and Theosis
• Angels and The Numinous
• The Invocation of Angels
• Angels and Dreams
• Jacob’s Ladder and Soul Geography
• Wrestling with The Angel
• The Integration of The Angel Archetype
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading
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Introduction

Scene from the Apocalypse – Francis Danby

Angels are often depicted as human beings with wings. In biblical scripture, however, angels do not have wings and appear as ordinary men, sometimes with shining garments. In fact, scripture mentions to be hospitable to strangers, because we could be in the presence of an angel without knowing it. Another class of biblical angels do have wings, but are depicted as inhuman and frightening, striking fear in anyone who witnesses them, and as we will see later, are at the top of the angelic hierarchy.

The idea of representing deities as winged figures dates back many thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians portrayed the sun god Horus as a winged disk, and many other winged beings can be found in ancient Greek and Roman art. The ancient Greek god Hypnos, the god of sleep, and Thanatos, the god of death, have wings.

In ancient Mesopotamia, the anthropomorphic gods exuded a brilliant and visible glamour (melam), the effect of seeing it caused both fascination and terror in humans, they experienced paresthesia, a tingling and pricking sensation on the skin. The sun-God Ra appears with a solar disc above his head. The Zoroastrian deity of light Mithra has a radiant crown resembling sunrays, as well as the Greek sun-God Helios, and Buddha (“the awakened”). This divine radiance displayed in deities across the world anticipates the halo of Christ and his apostles, as well as saints and angels. The halo became the universal religious symbol of divinity.

Before delving into the psychology of angels, and how they shape human behaviour and emotions, we’ll first explore their archetypal images across the world, as well as their role in the creation of evil, their purpose and motivation, and the hierarchy of angels.

Angels in Zoroastrianism

Depiction of Ahura Mazda Wall Art Relief

One of the oldest depictions of angels can be found in Zoroastrianism. This faith portrays a cosmic battle of good and evil, whereby good is predicted to triumph over evil. Ahura Mazda (Lord of Wisdom) is the Creator and Lord of the Light, and Ahriman or Angra Mainyu (Evil Spirit) is the Lord of Destruction, Chaos and Darkness.

Besides the Supreme Being, there are various classes of angels. The amesha spentas (literally, “beneficent immortals”) are the emanations of the uncreated Creator, the six divine sparks that personify the abstract qualities of Ahura Mazda, rather than distinct divine beings. These all have their antitheses, called daevas, gods that are unworthy of worship. Truth stands in opposition to falsehood and deceit.

The other class of angels are the fravashi, which are guardian angels. Each person is accompanied by a personal spirit which is assigned at birth, and watches over each individual. Finally, we have the yazatas (literally, “worthy of worship”), angels that protect us from evil.

Ba-soul, Genius, Daimon

The Ba hovering above the body. This image is based
on  an original found in The Book of the Dead.

The ancient Egyptians believed that man had many souls, both physical and spiritual. They spoke of the Ba-soul, which is represented as a bird with a human head, and symbolises one’s uniqueness or what we call “personality”. This is not merely a part of the person, but the person himself. The idea of a purely immaterial existence was foreign to Egyptian thought. On the other hand, the Ka (vital essence), is what distinguishes the difference between a living and a dead person, with death occurring when the Ka left the body.

Normally one would only meet one’s Ba-soul after death and be completely unaware of its existence before. In the ancient Egyptian papyrus, The debate between a Man and His Soul, a world-weary man who is overcome by the hardship of the world contemplates about death and looks forward to the afterlife. Suddenly, his Ba-soul appears and speaks to him, advising him to continue his religious practices, but not to wish for the end of his life before its time.

In ancient Roman mythology the genius would not only inhabit each person, but also places (genius loci) and things. It was important for the Romans to propitiate the appropriate genii for making the land fertile, protecting the home and family, and any other major event of their lives. The genius also represents a man’s temperament, virility, energy, personal fortune, and destiny. Today we use the word genius to refer to a person endowed with special gifts, talents or knowledge beyond that of ordinary humans.

The ancient Greeks spoke of the daimon (not to be confused with demon). It was believed that when one’s inner daimon was in a state of good order, one experienced eudaimonia, a state of good spirit and fulfilment. The daimon can be good (agathodaimōn), evil(kakodaimōn), or even morally ambiguous, that is, beyond good and evil, a force of nature.

In Plato’s Symposium, the priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that daimons interpret and transport human things to the gods and divine things to men. Socrates is well-known for his relationship with his daimon, and claimed to hear, since childhood, a daimonic sign, an inner voice that warned him against mistakes, but never told him what to do. During the trial that would condemn Socrates to death, his daimon made no sign of opposition, unlike most of the times when it would inform him if he was doing the wrong thing. Socrates trusted his lifelong invisible companion and concluded that his death was not something to be feared, but rather something good, for death is merely a transition into another form of existence.

The Transmigration of Souls and Reincarnation

Plato’s Academy mosaic from the Villa of T. Siminius Stephanus in Pompeii

In The Republic, Plato describes the myth of Er, the story of a man who died in battle and came back to life, describing his journey in the afterlife. Just like energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only change from one form to another, so too the soul is immortal. The choices we make and the character we develop will have consequences after death. The man describes how the good souls went into the sky and experienced bliss, while the immoral souls were directed underground and cried in despair recounting their awful experiences in life, as each were required to pay a tenfold penalty for all the wicked deeds committed when alive. The most wicked, however, were doomed to remain underground, unable to escape.

Afterwards, the souls reached The Spindle of Necessity which regulates the whole cosmos and governs the lives of all of us. Each soul chose a new life, human or animal, and was assigned a daimon to fulfill what one had chosen. The souls were required to drink water from the River of Forgetfulness, so that they would forget everything, and shot away like a star into their birth.

In his book, The Soul’s Code, American psychologist James Hillman talks about the acorn theory. Just as the oak’s destiny is contained in the tiny acorn, so does each person bear a uniqueness that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived. In other words, essence precedes existence. Thus, the daimon was sent to help us humans to fulfill our destiny and to remind us of our true purpose as spiritual beings having human experiences.

Djinns, Fairies, Elementals

Fairy Rings and Toadstools – Richard Doyle

Whereas the Judaeo-Christian tradition generally divides angels into good and evil, Islam makes a further distinction with djinns, beings who may be either good or harmful, and can take the form of animals. Just as human beings, they are also subject to God’s judgment.

In Celtic faith, there are fairies. One theory surrounding their origin is that they were the neutral angels who did not partake in the war in heaven, and thus neither remained in heaven, nor were sent to hell, but rather caught in-between, left to roam the earth. Fairies can be good or evil, and sometimes the term is used to describe any magical creature, such as goblins, leprechauns, imps, elves, etc. The Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus wrote about four nature spirits or elementals: gnomes, undines, slyphs, and salamanders, which correspond to the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire, respectively.

The Archetype of The Ethereal Being

A Birth (1961) – Peter Birkhäuser

Whether we talk about angels, daimons, djinns, fairies, or any other of such beings, they all hold something in common, despite their difference in appearance, namely, they are all archetypal images of the same fundamental pattern, the archetype of the ethereal being. These spirits coexist with us; they just exist at another level of reality. The archetype in itself cannot be seen, only when it has been brought into consciousness through ritual, myth, and the culture of each country, does the ethereal being take on a particular personified form, and gains a specific purpose.

Subtle bodies

Epifania Del Candore – Alessandro Sicioldr

Ethereal beings are also referred to as subtle bodies, that is, as existing in-between the corporeal and the incorporeal realms. We too have subtle bodies, as we exist both on the material and spiritual levels. The difference is that ethereal beings experience reality primarily on a spiritual level, while we experience it on a material level, but that does not exclude the possibility of them interacting in our realm, nor us interacting in their realm.

The Role of Angels in the Creation of Evil

Torah 1. The Almighty. Genesis 1.16 – Phillip Medhurst

In his book, The City of God, Saint Augustine describes the creation of angels at the moment God said, “Let there be light; and there was light.” On the first day, God also divided the light from the darkness, which is symbolic of the fallen angels. Before the creation of mankind, angels underwent a trial in which all had the opportunity (by their free will) to remain in their original state of holiness. Those who failed became fallen angels. This is portrayed in the Book of Revelation. Lucifer, the bearer of light, desired in his pride to be God, and convinced one third of the angels to rebel against God, starting the war in heaven. They are defeated by the archangel Michael and the rest of the angels, and are thrown out of heaven. Lucifer becomes the Devil, and the rebel angels become demons. Thus, the universe becomes divided into three parts: heaven, earth, and hell.

Satan, who refuses to bow down to the inferior man, appears as the ancient serpent in the Garden of Eden, in order to trick Adam and Eve to disobedience by the promise of increased conscious knowledge, in order to “become as gods” When they eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they experience guilt and anxiety and hide themselves. God directs them out of paradise into the wilderness, and places cherubim and a flawing sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life, lest man reach out his hand and eat also of its fruit, and live forever. Thus, the first sin which leads to the fall of mankind from paradise is pride, to become like God.

God’s light permeates all of existence, and heaven is the enjoyment of divine light, which even reaches down to hell. But whereas the angels rejoice in its holiness, the demons cannot stand the light, it burns them and torments them, for it is an eternal reminder of their choice to rebel against God. Hell is separation from love. Angels only had to commit one sin to be eternally damned, because once they choose, they have to go all in and there’s no going back. They experience no salvation. Due to their nature, however, angels possess far greater knowledge about reality than human beings, and can easily discern between good and evil.

The Purpose and Motivation of Angels

The Fall of the Rebel Angels – Gustave Doré

Whereas we have free will, angels are created for a specific purpose, but had a chance to go against their assigned role in creation. They basically have no essence, but they have a purpose, which is always inseparable from God. The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart writes:

“[T]he soul at its highest is formed like God, but an angel gives a closer idea of Him. That is all an angel is: an idea of God.”

- Meister Eckhart, Sermon 9

Angels are created to serve God’s purposes, which includes delivering messages, waging spiritual battle, executing judgment, etc., angels are “ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation”. There is also the angel of hope, the angel of faith, the angel of humility, etc., as well as angels created for a specific task, such as joining the triumphant place of God at The Day of Judgment. Therefore, when the angels rebelled, their purpose became the opposite of what God created them as. This is the perfect act of self-hatred and desire to hurt oneself, a characteristic of the demonic. Each demon has his own Achilles’ heel, which is the reminder of the original purpose of his creation.

The battle between good and evil continues to this day, and will remain so, until the angels blow the trumpets announcing the kingdom of heaven on earth and The Day of Judgment, when all people, living or dead, will be judged by God.

Regarding angelic motivation to engage in encounters with mankind, one reason may be that angels interact with man because they are merely obeying the will of God. Another reason may be that angels are emotional creatures who experience joy during these interactions with people because such interactions manifest the glory of God, and that is their primary motivation.

The Anthropos (Primeval Man)

The Orphan Stone Telesphorus Carving – Carl Jung

Though angels may have been created before man, God created them because of man. Even though man may not have been present at the moment of creation in actuality, he existed as potentiality, as a pattern to be unfolded (the Anthropos or Primeval Man). Adam was created out of the earth, the name derives from adamah, which is Hebrew for earth. God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. The heavenly realm descends into the earthly realm, and man becomes part of both. As above, so below. Man, the microcosm, is part of the universe as a whole, the macrocosm. Thus, truths about the nature of the cosmos may be inferred from truths about human nature, and vice versa.

The Celestial Hierarchy: First Choir

Icon of Nine orders of angels (Greece, 18 c.?) depicted with
an illuminated triangle, a symbol of the Trinity – Unknown

In the Christian celestial hierarchy put forward by Pseudo-Dionysius in the 5th or 6th century, angels are divided into three hierarchies each of which contains three orders, based on their proximity to God, corresponding to the nine choirs of angels.

The first group angels serve God directly; they are God’s servants. These biblically accurate angels give us a glimpse into a realm where human eyes rarely access. They appear in a frightening and inhuman form, which may be why their very first words are: “Do not be afraid.” In the Book of Isaiah, the Seraphim are six-winged fiery beings; two wings cover their faces, two cover their feet, and with the final two they fly. They are described as being forever in God’s presence praising him day and night, crying “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty.” In Ezekiel’s vision, he describes seeing the Cherubim, winged chimeras that have four faces: that of a lion, an ox, a human, and an eagle. They are beneath the Throne of God, and are the moving forces of the Ophanim (or Thrones), which appear as four wheels within wheels in constant motion, and covered with eyes – they are the wheels of God’s fiery chariot.

In the apocrypha, the highest rank of the Seraphim is Seraphiel, the protector of Metatron. The latter is a figure mentioned in the Book of Enoch, in the mystical Kabbalistic texts, and the Talmud of Rabbinic Judaism. He is known as God’s first angel, and is the only figure allowed to stand alongside God. It is said that his glow is so strong that it seems that there are two authorities in heaven, God and Metatron. He is also called “the little Yahweh”, and is believed to have once been the human Enoch, one of the two only men chosen by God to escape death.

The Celestial Hierarchy: Second Choir

Detail. Powers. Mosaic ceiling of the Florence Baptistery

The second group of angels are those that make God’s will happen, they are the heavenly rulers. The Dominions keep the world in proper order, regulating the duties of the angels, and making known the commands of God. The Virtues assist with miracles and encourage humans to strengthen their faith in God, they are also known as the spirits of motions, governing all nature, including the seasons, stars, and planets. And finally, the Powers are the warrior angels that fight against evil forces.

The Celestial Hierarchy: Third Choir

Archangel Michael defeats Satan, by Guido Reni (1636), held
in the Capuchin church of Santa Maria della Concezione, Rome

In the final choir are the angels that are closest to humans, and carry out the orders from above. They are the earthly messengers. The Principalities are those who protect and guide nations, groups of people, and institutions such as the Church. The Archangels, have a role as God’s messengers to people at critical times in history, and are unique as they are identified by name.

Biblical canon only mentions the archangel Michael (which translates to: “who is like God?”). Michael is the chief ruler and leader of the angels. In the Book of Enoch, however, the archangel Gabriel is mentioned alongside Michael, suggesting that they stand on an equal footing. Gabriel translates to “God is my strength”. All archangels have theophoric names, that is, they contain the name of God, El. There are seven archangels mentioned in total.

In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Raphael (meaning “God has healed”) reveals himself as one of the seven angels who stand in the glorious presence of the Lord, and interestingly, in the Book of Revelation, there are seven unnamed angels who stand before God, and have seven trumpets. These and other mentions in non-canonical works, have given rise to the popular conception of the seven archangels.

Finally, at the bottom of the hierarchy, we have the common angels, who deliver messages from the two realms. In this group we also have the guardian angels. In the Book of Matthew, we find direct reference from Jesus of Nazareth that everyone who comes into the world has a guardian angel. Scripture always depicts angels as if they were male. As spirits, angels were created to live for eternity, and do not experience death. This suggests that the angelic population far exceeds that of human beings, and are too numerous to count.

Saint Teresa of Ávila once saw an angel who was most beautiful and seemed to be burning in fire, she wrote:

“Their names they never tell me; but I see very well that there is in heaven so great a difference between one angel and another, and between these and the others, that I cannot explain it.”

- Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus

Angels do not just exist in a detached realm or another dimension, on the contrary, though they remain unseen, they have a direct influence on us. Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung writes:

“It is remarkable that the angels are always in the plural, a choir of angels. With the exception of Lucifer, and the archangels Gabriel and Michael, the angels are not individuals, they appear in choirs and multitudes. They are essentially collective beings.”

- Carl Jung, ETH Lecture (9 February 1940), Swedenborg and Blake

Emanuel Swedenborg (left), William Blake (right)

The Swedish scientist and Christian mystic Emanuel Swedenborg experienced a spiritual awakening in his 50s. In a dream, the Lord revealed to him the spiritual meaning of the Bible, and he began to experience strange dreams and visions, and could freely visit heaven and hell to converse with angels and demons. Some of these are documented in his Journal of Dreams. Contrary to Christian belief, he states that every angel and demon are from the human race. They too have the same activities as we do, their only difference to us is that they are not clothed with a material body.

Those who allowed themselves to be filled with divine love became angels, while those who immersed themselves in physical pleasures or refused to let go of their egos, chose to go to hell because they are attracted to it; hell is the place where they can indulge in everything that gives them pleasure. When we turn away from our self-centred ego, it is like a weight is off our shoulders, as if we could fly. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The visionary artist William Blake was an acute reader of Swedenborg, and had visions of angels since childhood. On his deathbed, he gloriously sang of the sights of angels in heaven. Blake became critical of Swedenborg’s view of heaven and hell as separate, and proposed the marriage of heaven and hell. Both are necessary for human experience, for without contraries is no progression.

The Psychology of Angels

Elijah Nourished by an Angel – Gustave Doré

 

Jung writes:

“The angels are a strange genus: they are precisely what they are and cannot be anything else. They are in themselves soulless beings who represent nothing but the thoughts and intuitions of their Lord. Angels who fall, then, are exclusively “bad” angels.”

- Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Jung describes the fall of angels as a premature invasion of the human world by unconscious contents. The book of Enoch depicts the interaction of the fallen angels (called “the watchers”) with mankind. They transgress the boundary between heaven and earth after begetting children with women, giving birth to the Nephilim, mysterious great giants briefly mentioned in Genesis. They threaten to devour mankind, and God sends a great flood to rid the earth of these giants, warning Noah to build an ark, so as not to eradicate the human race. Jung compares the fallen angel motif to the effect of “inflation”, which can be observed, for example, in the megalomania of dictators.

As an archetype, the angel emerges from the deep timeless portion of the psyche, the collective unconscious. The idea of archetypes is an ancient one. It is related to Plato’s concept of ideal forms or patterns already existing in the divine mind that determine in what form the material world will come into being. However, we owe to Jung the concept of the psychological archetypes – the characteristic patterns that pre-exist in the collective psyche of the human race, that repeat themselves eternally in the psyches of each individual, and determine the basic ways that we perceive and function as human beings.

When an angel “appears” to a human being, it is a liminal event occurring at the threshold between the known and the unknown, the conscious, and the unconscious. It is the constellation of what Jung calls the transcendent function, which relieves the tension of opposites and unites them as the third element. As such, the angel is a reconciling symbol. The angel unites the ego with the Self, the individual with the cosmos, the soul with God.

Apart from a religious or metaphysical sense, angels can be seen as archetypal symbols of guidance, instruction, hope, and protection. The encounter with angels or demons can represent projections of one’s psyche. We must be wary, however, of calling all such experiences transpersonal, they may also be of a psychopathogical or delusional nature – which largely depends on one’s mental health. Generally speaking, the former has a positive effect, while the latter has a negative effect.

Angels and demons, positive and negative emotions, are in constant battle within us, and some emotions are more powerful than others, just as there are more powerful demons and angels in the hierarchy. Sometimes despair triumphs over hope, other times chastity prevails over lust, etc. We cannot fake genuine emotions; they come to us. Telling a person who is sad to “be happy” proves to be ineffective, as such a person has become enveloped by that which contains the entire pattern of that emotion, which can be low or high in intensity. To experience the entire spectrum of an emotion in the fullest sense is rare and overwhelming, it can only be experienced temporarily, for it is akin to being fully possessed by an archetype, and thus one is no longer human. Whether this is experienced naturally or artificially, we ultimately have to come back to what is humanly possible, and it can be difficult to readapt to our daily duties after witnessing “the other side”.

We all have a positive “right” conscience depicted in our daimon, guardian angel, heart, inner voice, etc., and a negative “false” conscience called the devil, seducer, tempter, evil spirit, etc. Everyone who examines his conscience is confronted with this fact, and he must admit that the good exceeds the bad only by a very little, if at all. Jung writes:

“We ought to avoid sin and occasionally we can; but, as experience shows, we fall into sin again at the very next step. Only unconscious and wholly uncritical people can imagine it possible to abide in a permanent state of moral goodness. But because most people are devoid of self-criticism, permanent self-deception is the rule. A more developed consciousness brings the latent moral conflict to light, or else sharpens those oppositions which are already conscious. Reason enough to eschew self-knowledge and psychology altogether and to treat the psyche with contempt!”

- Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 10: Civilisation in Transition

The quest for self-knowledge is a task for the few, for the path that leads to salvation is like that of a sharp razor, it is hard to tread and difficult to cross. The way to destruction, however, is easy to cross and broad, and many enter through it.

The Angel of Death

Love’s Passing, Angel of Death – Evelyn de Morgan

There are multiple cases of people having a close encounter with the angel of death, but survived or “cheated death”, so to speak. You may have a hunch that gives you a bad feeling, which motivates you to walk on another path, only to find out later that a deadly accident had occurred in the exact same place. Or you may be driving on the road and feel an urge to stop, when suddenly a child runs across the street. Angels can protect us from attacks, or assist us when we are in need.

The Angel’s Call

The Angel appearing to Elijah – English School

The idea of angels generally comes from miraculous experiences where one feels that some intelligent agency beyond us has helped us. One feels a presence. It is as if something more intelligent and greater than your ego is alive in you and makes you do things or arranges your fate against your own will, and against your own planning.

The angel guides a human being in life, and sometimes breaks through with a message that has the power to transform one deeply, usually at crucial points in one’s life. Our lives continually pass through periods of crisis and stages of transition, in which we become more susceptible to the angel’s call. Therefore, during the dark night of the soul, the angel may be encountered, if God “opens our eyes” to them. Whenever a man consciously encounters a divine agency, which assists, commands, or directs, we can understand it as an encounter of the ego with the Self.

In Dante’s Divine Comedy, Dante the protagonist experiences a midlife crisis and finds himself in a dark wood, threatened by wild beasts. Suddenly, the Roman poet Virgil appears as the angel archetype or psychopomp, guiding Dante through a journey of hell, and purgatory. Later, Beatrice (an anima figure) ascends with Dante to the nine spheres of paradise, reaching the Empyrean, the highest point in heaven.

Each of us has an invisible guide to accompany us on our journey through life. Whether it manifests itself in a dream, vivid intuition, an inner voice, or an actual entity, we all have a telos (end or purpose), which is unique to our own soul’s journey. Angels are often invisible, yet their presence is felt, and their voice is heard.

Those who ignore their inner voice can feel a sense of emptiness or uneasiness, and be unable to understand why they are in such a bad mood, because outwardly everything may appear to be going well. It is as if one is going against one’s nature, giving rise to a feeling of inherent wrongness. It is important for a person to meditate and contemplate on these feelings, then, perhaps, the inner voice will clarify one’s problems. The unconscious, after all, is the master-pattern of one’s life.

Angels: Individuation and Theosis

God rests with his creation (1860) – Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld

Angels can help us to experience moments of clarity when conditions suddenly appear just right for the accomplishment of one’s action. This is known as kairos, an opportune and decisive moment in one’s life. The angel can also cause one to experience a sense of intense excitement, or inspiration, an urgency that one should do whatever it is has inspired one, and that it is personally very important for one to do so.

The angel’s call can also appear through synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence that cannot be causally linked, which occurs when an image of one’s inner life is seen to have correspondence in external reality. As the archetypal image of the call, the angel initiates individuation, the journey towards wholeness of personality (the Self). Angels not only help bring the often-neglected world of the unconscious into consciousness, but also guide us on our journey towards theosis (union with God). Therefore, angels can help us both psychologically and spiritually.

The person embarking on self-realisation, although he might not subscribe to any recognised creed, is nonetheless pursuing a religious quest, following the footsteps of a higher power than himself. On the one hand we have the soul, our innermost self or our true essence; and on the other hand, we have the spirit, our relationship with God. These are necessarily linked together. He who knows himself knows God. We reach God through the Self, but God is not the Self, for he transcends it. This is part of the old adage, “know thyself”, for the ultimate tragedy is ignorance or “the neglect of oneself”, that is, to not find out about the nature of the soul and of our true purpose in life. Our guardian angel awaits with divine patience until we choose, by our own accord, to begin our process of soul-work, to fulfill our destiny. Know thyself, heal thyself.

This is a difficult endeavour as it may require one to step outside one’s comfort zone into unknown territory. However, there comes a time in everyone’s life, when one must question if they are being true to their own nature, which is expressed by the inner voice, the voice of a fuller life, and of a wider and more comprehensive consciousness. The voice awakens us from our deep slumber, and beckons our soul upwards to our true home.

The angel is sometimes shown waking a sleeper with a trumpet. The unawakened state is unconsciousness and the awakened state is wholeness. To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose oneself.

Angels and The Numinous

Angels Announcing the Birth of Christ to the Shepherds – Govert Flinck

“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so, because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

The Austrian poet Rilke states that, “Every Angel because of its beauty is terrible.” Angels are of a numinous nature which totally fascinate and overwhelm an individual. The angel moves, compels, awes, overpowers, and constellates urgency. Angels are terrible because one has to go through a painful transformation, and beautiful because they transform one’s entire existence, like the phoenix who rises from the ashes. The devils are as necessary as the angels, as Rilke stated, “Don’t take my devils away, because my angels may flee too.” When we turn contradiction and opposition into paradox and unity, we turn inner conflict into inner peace, understanding the duality of our nature.

The Invocation of Angels

Why Seek Ye the Living Among the Dead (1905) – Howard Pyle

The ancient instructive words to invoke the angel was “enflame thyself with prayer.” The Neo-Platonist philosopher Iamblichus was one of the first to formally ritualise the invocation of the angel. By invoking and consuming (integrating) the angel, one could achieve the status of a spiritual being, and finally achieve the knowledge of the gods. Purity is the defining factor for success or failure in the operation for conversing with one’s holy guardian angel. The more pure the soul, the greater the affinity to the angel. In the Lexicon of Alchemy, Martin Rulandus describes meditatio as an internal talk of one person with another who is invisible, as in the invocation of the Deity, or communion with one’s self, or with one’s good angel.

Fasting is also an important ritual, because it brings one further away from the material, and closer to the spiritual. In the Book of Matthew, after Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert and the Devil failing to tempt Him, angels came and ministered to him. This is often interpreted as the angels feeding Jesus.

There is, however, also a dark side, as is seen in the practices of necromancy and the study of demonology in the Middle Ages. Similarly, there are modern occult practices in which people seek to capture spirits and ask for favours, or use them to act upon the world. As the Faustian myth teaches us, the attainment of knowledge that far exceeds the humanly possible, can come at a high price, at the cost of one’s soul.

Demons can disguise themselves as angels of light. In his solitude, Saint Anthony sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. The only way he could tell the difference was by the way which he felt after the being had left his company.

Angels and Dreams

The Dream of Saint Joseph (1602-1674) – Philippe de Champaigne

Angels are sometimes depicted as messengers of dreams. They show the dreamer, and then the angel bringing down the dream from heaven. The angel was understood as being the personified essence of a dream. There are dreams that sometimes warns us and can even save our lives. If we attend to them, we can avoid all sorts of disasters. If the unconscious takes the trouble to give us a warning dream, one should attend to it.

Though it remains unexplainable, it is a fact that the unconscious knows more than we know. It is as if the unconscious of the human being is expanded into outer nature, and has information which we cannot have, and therefore in dreams you sometimes get warnings or information about things you cannot possibly know.

The appearance of an angel in dreams announces a healing possibility, a link to the Self that would ease neurotic dysfunctions.

The Bible references hundreds of dreams or visions. The dream of Jacob’s ladder is one of the better-known dreams, which depicts angels uniting heaven and earth.

Jacob’s Ladder and Soul Geography

Jacob’s Ladder – Wenceslas Hollar

Jacob dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth and the top of it reached to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. This is known as a god-sent dream, or an archetypal dream with theophany (an encounter with a deity). Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz states:

“[T]he ladder symbolised a continuous, constant connection with the divine powers of the unconscious. We could say the dream itself was such a ladder. It connects us with the unknown depth of our psyche. Every dream is a rung on a ladder, so to speak.”

- M.L. von Franz, The Way of the Dream

Jacob did not know that the place he slept in was a holy place, he concluded it from his dream. One of the oldest beliefs of mankind was that in the landscape there are certain places where one has either communication with the good deities or evil deities, such as a crevice being the entrance to the underworld, or mountaintops being areas of special communication with the gods above as is seen in many myths across the world (Moses on Mount Sinai, Zeus on Mount Olympus, Shiva on Mount Kailash, etc.). There seems to be a whole soul geography in the world where man projected his soul into. We naturally feel that there are places we go to where we feel at peace, and others that are somehow unnerving and we prefer not to stay in.

Wrestling with The Angel

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel – Gustave Doré

Without wishing it, we are placed in situations which entangle us in something, and we usually don’t know how we ended up there. A thousand twists of fate all of a sudden land us in such a situation. When we are faced against a wall, and all seems lost, it is not unusual to have an encounter with the Self. This is symbolically represented in the biblical motif of Jacob wrestling with the “dark” angel, and while he dislocated his hip, his struggle prevented a murder. That is how one grows: by being defeated decisively by greater beings. In a sense, Jacob wrestles with himself, and afterwards becomes reborn, receiving the new name, Israel, he who wrestles with God. Jacob finds his identity by wrestling with his dark side, and discovers the light. There are four features of this story, an encounter with a superior being, wounding, perseverance, and divine revelation, that together form the theme of “the encounter with the Self.”

Jung writes:

“[The God] appears at first in hostile form, as an assailant with whom the hero has to wrestle. This is in keeping with the violence of all unconscious dynamism. In this manner the god manifests himself and in this form he must be overcome… The onslaught of instinct then becomes an experience of divinity, provided that man does not succumb to it and follow it blindly, but defends his humanity against the animal nature of the divine power. It is “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God”, and “whoso is near unto me, is near unto the fire, and whoso is far from me, is far from the kingdom”; for “the Lord is a consuming fire.””

- Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 5: Symbols of Transformation

Jung knew that God’s messenger is the stronger force, therefore he never turned away from the struggle. When he was once asked how he could live with the knowledge he had recorded in his controversial book, Answer to Job, he replied ”I live in my deepest hell, and from there I cannot fall any further.”

The Integration of The Angel Archetype

The Angel Appearing To Joshua – Gustave Doré

The integration of the angel archetype allows us to examine the nature of our essence or soul, the uniqueness that asks to be lived in each of us, and that unfolds itself during our lifetime. Thus, angels carry our true vocation, which is a calling, towards the meaning of our life. If we pay attention to our inner voice through dreams, contemplation, prayer, etc., the angel’s call towards fulfilling our purpose on earth becomes clearer. This is not just the call of our personal destinies; it is a cosmic call that aligns us to the Anima Mundi or World Soul, which all living beings form a part of. Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” The word animal derives from anima, which is breath or spirit. Humans are the highest of animals, as we are made in God’s image.

Man is made a little lower than the angels; yet God crowned him with glory and honour, and put everything under his command. Jung writes:

“A life without inner contradiction is either only half a life or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels. But God loves human beings more than the angels.”

- Carl Jung, Letters, Vol. I

Though hierarchically we remain lower than the angels, we are loved more by God. It is out of love that God made our bodies in the image of Himself, and why he became Christ, who was crucified and died for our sins. Christianity is a unique religion as it is God that comes directly to man, and not vice versa.

Conclusion

The Spirits in Jupiter – Gustave Doré

While angels are created in heaven and stay there, or were thrown out of heaven when they rebelled, we human beings are created on Earth and are capable of moving upwards to heaven or downwards to hell. Only that which can fall is capable of salvation, this is the felix culpa (happy fault or fortunate fall). We have the freedom to choose between good or evil, something that even angels cannot interfere in. This is our blessing and our curse. We are the protagonists in this world of spiritual warfare, and no matter how many difficulties and trials we must overcome, we are all equally capable of uniting our will with that power that is higher than ourselves, and to rejoice in our journey along the way.

“A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth — that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love… For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.” ”

- Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Podcast: Thriving with Stone Age Minds

 

Amazon Link

Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing

A BioLogos Book Series on Science and Christianity

by Justin L. Barrett (Author), Pamela Ebstyne King

What does God's creation of humanity through the process of evolution mean for human flourishing? The emerging field of evolutionary psychology remains controversial, perhaps especially among Christians. Yet according to Justin Barrett and Pamela Ebstyne King it can be a powerful tool for understanding human nature and our distinctively human purpose. Thriving with Stone Age Minds provides an introduction to evolutionary psychology, explaining key concepts like hyper-sociality, information gathering, and self-control. Combining insights from evolutionary psychology with resources from the Bible and Christian theology, Barrett and King focus fresh attention on the question, What is human flourishing? When we understand how humans still bear the marks of our evolutionary past, new light shines on some of the most puzzling features of our minds, relationships, and behaviors. One key insight of evolutionary psychology is how humans both adapt to and then alter our environments, or "niches." In fact, we change our world faster than our minds can adapt―and then gaps in our "fitness" emerge. In effect, humans are now attempting to thrive in modern contexts with Stone Age minds. By integrating scientific evidence with wisdom from theological anthropology, we can learn to close up nature-niche gaps and thrive, becoming more what God has created us to be.

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Thriving with Stone Age Minds

A Homebrewed Podcast

August 26, 2021

*Notes and Reflections by R.E. Slater

Imago Dei = Man's Created Nature

Sin Nature = Man's Challenge of Agency

Homebrewed Christianity is happy to host a celebratory book launch for "Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing" by Justin Barrett & Pam King. Not only will we hear from the co-authors, but we will be joined by two stellar scholars, Joanna Collicutt & Jonathan Jong.

PANELISTS

• Tripp Fuller (TF)
• Joanna Collicutt (JC) - Oxford prof
• Jonathan Jong (JJ)
• Pamela King (PK) - https://biologos.org/resources?query=pamela+king
• Justin Barrett (JB) - www.blueprint1543.org; biologos articles

TF - Theology and Science are speaking together with more of a unified voice than ever before as Christian barriers are broken down in reflection and examination.

JB - "How Does Your Faith Fuel Scientific Discovery?" 

Our book project began 8 years ago at Fuller as we thought through evolutionary science and how to bring it into Christianity. Applied for a Biologos grant to write about evolutionary psychology. What does it mean to thrive as a human? From that we brought in a host of acamedicians, scholars, and theologs.

PK - I'm interested in what it means to thrive re development psychology? What it means to be a human species. Evolution, adaptation, and change from God's perspective. How are we distinct from other species? How can this knowledge and dialogue unify people, help us live fuller lives, etc? How does one live out a life lived well?

JC - How do we lean into the image of Christ and how do we resist all those elements which would take away this image and from finding shalom?

JJ - I'm interested in metaphysics and evolutionary psychology cross-sects.

JB - Brings us Imago Dei v Sin Nature. (I found this very helpful)

End

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Making Sense of Evolutionary Psychology

https://biologos.org/articles/making-sense-of-evolutionary-psychology

by Justin Barrett

August 03, 2021

Being Human

Evolution

Image of God

The latest book to come out on the series, BioLogos Books on Science and Christianity is Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing, by Justin L. Barrett (with Pamela Ebstyne King). We asked Justin to write about the book, responding particularly to the reaction some people have to evolutionary psychology. We hope this inspires you to buy the book and give it a read!

I recently had an email exchange with an accomplished astrophysicist, who is also deeply engaged with integrating scientific findings with theological positions from his faith tradition. He had listened to my interview on the Language of God podcast concerning my book (with Pamela King) Thriving with Stone Age Minds (2021, InterVarsity Academic) and said he was ordering it immediately, but also admitted that he tends “to be very skeptical of evolutionary ‘explanations’” of human behaviors. My book prominently features evolutionary psychology as a helpful vantage point for re-considering Christian perspectives on human thriving, but I don’t fault my colleague for his skepticism. Perhaps you have also felt this skepticism.

It took me a lot of reading past the more popular treatments, and seeing evolutionary psychological research up close before I warmed to this approach. I am sure that some of my squeamishness was the initial impression that evolutionary psychologists interpret too many behaviors as ultimately about sex. Even setting this appearance aside, most newish scientific claims should be approached with at least some tentativeness and held provisionally. Evolutionary psychology has featured some excesses that have earned it a fairly short leash. As my colleague commented, sometimes it does seem like you can ask about almost any human behavior and you get a very glib evolutionary explanation. Why do men cheat on their spouses? Evolution! Why do women wear make up? Evolution! Why do we love cheesecake? Evolution! Nonetheless, a theoretical perspective or subfield should not be judged by its popular treatments or its missteps but by its total body of work. I can’t summarize all of evolutionary psychology here, but hopefully I can give a better sense of its foundations.

The term “evolutionary psychology” can mean several related things. It can mean studying the evolution of human psychology, often in contrast to the psychology of chimpanzees and other great apes. Why, from an evolutionary perspective, did we come to have the kinds of brains, minds, and behavioral tendencies that we have, instead of some other bag of tricks? We could call this evolution of psychology.

A different “evolutionary psychology” is the study of the thought and behaviors of contemporary humans using insights and assumptions from evolutionary theory.1 This approach may be applied to cognitive, developmental, social, or any other subfield of psychology. Evolutionary psychology of this sort wonders whether particular ways of thinking or behaving may be partially explicable by considering the long-term selection pressures on our species or other features of our species’ history. To illustrate, why do young females typically find themselves attracted to potential spouses from their age and older but males typically look for spouses about their age and younger? An evolutionary perspective would consider the asymmetrical demands that reproduction has on the sexes and the longer fertility that males experience. It may be that each sex has a different mating “strategy” unconsciously working on their mating preferences because such strategies may have been more adaptive than others. An evolutionary psychologist would then look for evidence that these asymmetries placed selection pressure on the psychology of human sexual attraction. They would consider whether alternative explanations capture the available data more completely. This evolutionary psychology is informed by evolution of psychology.

Within evolutionary psychology there are several schools of thought or emphases. One that is sometimes called the “Santa Barbara School” (due to its popularization by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby at the University of California at Santa Barbara2) adds to evolutionary psychology an emphasis on the idea that human minds can be characterized as having lots of specialized subsystems, mental instincts, or “modules.” The idea that humans have some specialized information processing systems (as do other animals) is not a controversial claim, but the number, degree of specialization, and just how (un)receptive such subsystems are to cultural tuning are far from settled questions. Cosmides and Tooby have been such outspoken advocates of evolutionary psychology, that often their approach is thought to characterize all of evolutionary psychology with the result being that those who, for instance, are skeptical about human minds being composed of massive numbers of specialized subsystems, will reject evolutionary psychology in its entirety. Or they will take evidence of the human minds as being importantly tuned up by cultural context as evidence against evolutionary psychology as a whole, but such wholesale rejections are unwarranted.

The logic of evolutionary psychology is fairly straightforward. If we accept the premise that humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of years from some ancestral species that we have in common with all great apes, and accept the claim that evolution works to shape bodies (including brains) and behaviors, then evolution has shaped human brains and behaviors. Because brains facilitate thought, feelings, and behaviors, this shaping of brains by evolution, has also shaped how we think, feel, and behave. Psychological science is the scientific study of thought and behavior, and so a psychological science that ignores evolution, is missing important intellectual resources in doing its job. That is, if we can accept that humans evolved – perhaps this is the mechanism God used to create humans from ancestral species—then, doing evolutionary psychology is part of doing thorough psychological science.

But does an evolutionary perspective add any explanatory power? Even if one is prepared to accept the basic argument for an evolutionary psychology, it may be that humans have been gifted with minds that are so good at learning new things about new environments that there is no reason to bring our species’ prehistory into the discussion. Instead of lots of mental instincts (modules, subsystems, etc.), we have a super-powerful, super-flexible, all-purpose learning system. And so, anything interesting to say about human psychology is a product of experiences in this lifetime, not the accumulated baggage of ancestral experiences. Perhaps. But notice that this sort of position should be the conclusion of psychological science, not the default stance. What such a position seems to be claiming is that humans are the only known animal on earth to not have brains, minds, and behaviors that have been tuned to specific fitness demands through evolution. Such a prima facie improbable claim requires considerable evidence.

And the evidence just isn’t there. It is easy to generate examples of domains in which humans show fitness-relevant information-processing predilections. We don’t process any and all information in our environments, and we don’t process that information in some kind of neutral manner. Rather, we selectively attend to and process information in ways important for our type of animal. To take two examples that I mention in the book: (1) infants readily form fear associations with snakes, not snails or sneakers; and (2) essentially from birth they selectively attend to human faces among all of the visual stimuli around them. These information processing “biases” (as we call them in psychological science) are the default tendencies of our psychology. I mention many others in the book.

It is common for evolutionary psychologists to draw upon evidence from infant/child developmental, neuroscientific, cross-cultural, experimental, cross-species, and computer modeling studies. Evidence from studies of these sorts point to many ways in which humans—just like any other animal that has been studied—have specialized ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in response to different sorts of things in their environment, many of which appear to be ancient adaptations.

Many very good recent books, such as those by Kevin Laland and Joseph Henrich3, seem to argue that human specialness is not found in our mental instincts but in our ability to learn from each other, teach each other, and otherwise adapt to our environments. I agree that human cultural learning is remarkable and unparalleled on earth. Perhaps these capacities are what sets humans apart. It does not follow, however, that human minds are best characterized as bland sponges that passively soak up whatever is around them. Indeed, Laland and Henrich both identify some of the very unusual psychological abilities that enable cultural learning—most of which are either only present in humans or greatly enhanced in humans. We have to do things like selectively attend to others (especially eye gaze), figure out what others are attending to, speculate about what it is they want to communicate to us, and so on. These are precisely those evolved capacities that evolutionary psychologists are interested in understanding better.4

Just because humans are usual in their abilities to learn and adapt, it does not follow that somehow our basic psychological endowment isn’t importantly constrained by ancestral fitness demands, much like other animals. That we carry in our psychology the imprints of evolution working on our ancestors is what is meant by saying humans have “stone-aged minds.” Evolution works slowly on the basic biological endowment, and genetic evidence suggests we have not changed much genetically in some 200,000 years. Hence, our species has spent at least twenty-times as long living in stone-aged environments (i.e., living with only the ability to make stone, wooden, and fiber technologies, and not bronze or iron, etc.). Furthermore, the Stone Age only ended for a small minority of humans about 4500 years ago—not enough time for massive changes in our natural endowment. Indeed, depending upon one’s criteria for what counts as a full transition out of a “stone-aged” culture, there are still stone-aged societies today. And so, humans really can be said to be trying to thrive in a contemporary world with stone-aged minds. This mismatch between our nature and our environmental niche—a gap rapidly enlarged by the industrial and high-tech revolutions—is one of the great obstacles we face when trying to live the abundant lives God wants us to enjoy.

I understand being suspicious of evolutionary psychology. Sometimes its practitioners seem to over-interpret their studies and find adaptations where there might be evolutionary byproducts, drift, or deliberate innovation. But if you think it is possible that God used an evolutionary process to bring about humans, I encourage you to give evolutionary psychology a fair chance. In addition to reading my book, check out some of the books and articles that I have noted here, keeping in mind that these books are summaries and interpretations of the available evidence and do not detail all of the relevant studies for the claims made. To get a better feel for the kind of evidence that backs the claims, check out some of the research reports and review papers cited in the books. Michael Tomasello’s website is a rich resource for basic research articles and a number of videos from his studies with chimpanzees and children. Spending some time there is a great way to get a sense for the depth and variety of research that just one evolutionary psychology lab group has produced.5 For videos, podcasts, and readings that my team and I have designed especially for theologically-minded people, check out the TheoPsych Academy.6 Applications from evolutionary psychology are sprinkled throughout but especially in the “On Human Nature”course.

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Evolution and Image Bearers

https://biologos.org/articles/evolution-and-image-bearers

by Tyler Greenway and Pamela Ebstyne King

On April 15, 2015

Being Human

Evolution

Image of God

One of the challenging issues raised for Christians by the science of evolution is understanding what it means for an evolved human to be made in the image of God (imago Dei). Evolutionary theory implies that species are not neatly distinguished from one another in discrete categories. Instead, it posits that the ancestry of life on earth is better understood as a slow, continuous development with ever-changing lines differentiating species from one another. Species, including humans, have changed over time and continue to change. If, according to evolutionary theory, the human species has evolved from non-human ancestors over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, how might we understand humans as uniquely bearing the image of God?

In a previous BioLogos blog post, Dennis Venema suggests that modern homo sapiens have evolved along “different evolutionary trajectories.” While all modern homo sapiens share common ancestors from Africa, some homo sapiens also have Neanderthal and Denisovan ancestors. Who, then, were divine image-bearers–the common ancestors from Africa, Neanderthals, Denisovans, their mixed species children, or all of the above? In other words, if the lines differentiating species from one another are less clear and the development of a species is seen as an extended, continuous process involving the mixing of different related species, how are we to understand modern humans as divine image-bearers in comparison to the direct ancestors of humans who presumably were not? One way of addressing this question is to consider the role divine image-bearers are given and the capacities required for that role. If bearing God’s image requires a particular role with particular capacities, those species that lack those capacities and therefore cannot act in that role are not image bearers of God. Those species that possess those capacities may then be considered potential image bearers, in the sense that these species have the necessary capacities for this role. In this way, a line may be drawn between direct ancestors of humans that most likely did not bear the image of God and those that may have. We believe this approach is compatible with existing interpretations of the imago—whether Christological, relational (i.e., being in relationship with God), functional (i.e. fulfilling God’s role or commission to humankind)—and also compatible with understanding how God could have used natural processes to enable humans to become unique image bearers. (Part 2 will address a different approach to understanding the image of God in the context of evolution as well.) This method is, of course, somewhat complicated by disagreements concerning what it means to be made in the image of God. These disagreements, while certainly interesting, will not be resolved here. For the sake of this post, one well-established feature of the imago Dei will be focused on: the role of dominion or stewardship over creation. We will then consider which capacities are required for this role to be performed in a meaningful way. Two broad examples are the ability to learn about creation and flexibly care for different species with different needs and the ability to plan for the benefit of these species. The ability to learn about creation is important for dominion because different species require different care. Here we may discuss various psychological capacities that enable this ability. Theory of mind—the ability to consider the intentions, desires, and beliefs of other minds—is greatly useful. In order for a divine image-bearer to exercise dominion, he or she must understand that gazelles prefer to eat grass and lions prefer to eat gazelles. Various aspects of intuitive biology may also be useful as they allow humans to understand the basic needs of species in general (e.g., food, water, shelter, etc.) and to differentiate between species and attribute specific needs to them. These abilities, in turn, allow humans to flexibly care for different species with different needs. The sheep can be led to pasture and the fish left in its pond where they may both respectively thrive, rather than applying one method of care to both. In order to helpfully rule over creation, image bearers also need to plan ahead for the benefit of these species. Sheep taken to the same pasture too often may create an environment that can no longer sustain the life of the sheep or the life of other co-existing species. Here we may also speak of particular psychological capacities, such as a certain amount of self-control and the ability to delay gratification. Without these abilities, humanity may wreak havoc on ecosystems in order to pursue their own gain or obtain immediate rewards. Further, image bearers may need to examine potential futures, set goals, and implement these goals. In this way image bearers may foresee problems and helpfully avoid them.To a degree, these capacities exist in other species as well, but the extent to which they exist in the human species is unique. Additionally, this method does raise further questions about humans or groups of humans with limited capacities in these areas, and for this reason, it may be better applied to species as a whole, rather than to individuals. For example, we may be able to say that those groups of humans that possessed these capacities, such as theory of mind and self-regulation, were potentially image bearers, but those groups of direct human ancestors that lacked these capacities were likely not image bearers. For example, if Neanderthals lacked a number of necessary capacities for dominion, it may be accurate to say that they were likely not image bearers. But, if Neanderthals, like modern humans, possessed these capacities and were capable of exercising a meaningful amount of dominion over creation, it may be accurate to say they were potential image bearers.Further consideration of evolutionary theory and the imago Dei, however, raises another interesting question. If we consider the entirety of human history, dating back to our first human ancestors until today, we may wonder about the image bearing actions, behaviors, or qualities of humans throughout history. We may ask, how have humans borne the image of God across time and in different cultural contexts? For example, the businesswoman in New York City grabbing a cup of coffee before hopping on the subway is presumably an image bearer of God, but so is the hunter-gatherer spending his time fashioning stone tools. An interesting question rises out of this comparison: Do humans today bear God’s image differently than those humans living 1000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, or even further back?These considerations may be helped by a dynamic conception of the image of God as considered by developmental psychology. We recognize both the continuous work and movement of the Holy Spirit in the lives of humans and also the malleability of the human species providing the capacity to readily adjust to a variety of cultural contexts. Building on these notions, we suggest that a dynamic approach, one that recognizes the human propensity to change and grow, to understanding the image of God allows for a theologically and scientifically coherent conceptualization of what it means for humans to bear God’s image. Given the plasticity inherent in human development and the ongoing sustaining and perfecting work of the Spirit, we make two propositions regarding a dynamic perspective of the image of God. The first is that the actions or behaviors by which individual or communal entities relate to God and image him are not fixed throughout time and place; they are dynamic. Secondly, that the imago is less about a static or fixed image and more about an active or dynamic imaging as humans relate to God and God’s creation.The first point suggests that the imago Dei may not be evident in the same way across different historical or cultural contexts. For example, during the Enlightenment, the use of reason may have gained importance and helped illuminate an individual’s relationship with God. In more recent times relational qualities, such as having a coherent identity or expressing empathy, may better enable individuals to participate more fully in Christian fellowship and in the life of the triune God. This is not a relativistic claim about the imago, but rather a supposition about how cultural and historical context shapes different opportunities for imaging God that may then inform the intellectual history of the doctrine of the imago Dei. This notion differs from the historical tendency to attempt to locate the image of God in a particular quality that a human possesses and allows for the image of God in humankind to deepen and expand throughout history.

Second, this perspective emphasizes that bearing the image of God involves the whole person and the imago becomes more apparent through relating to God and others. Human nature has a plastic and undetermined element that enables humans to be shaped and formed into a better likeness of the image of God. Although psychological capacities may be relevant to the imago, this does not mean such capacities are fixed or set throughout one’s life. John Webster powerfully made this point by saying that human nature is not “immobile.” From this perspective, perhaps arguing about what the image is (such as the human will or reason) is less the point than how one bears the image of God by participating in fellowship with God. In Webster’s words, being human involves fellowship with God that “becomes through participation in the drama of creation, salvation and consummation.”

Thus the imago is “dynamic” in that it stems from ongoing human engagement with God’s work of creation, redemption, and perfection. Such an approach affirms the importance of human reason, will, love, and relationship (capacities that are identified by different static understandings of the imago), but emphasizes the process by which these capacities enable an individual to engage in the on-going activity of God. Given that the Spirit is the sustainer and perfecter in the process of sanctification, then we should not be surprised that the there could be change over time (in someone’s life or throughout history) in the expression of the imago. Consequently, when the evidence of multiple human ancestors raises the question of how the imago may have emerged within the natural order, a dynamic perspective suggests that the capacity to be an image bearer could have arisen regardless of context or even ancestors—as long as the sufficient constellation of capacities necessary to relate to God, other, and creation were present (for a discussion of some of these capacities, see previous post).

From this perspective, humans are image bearers, and similar to a photo that changes in quality or resolution as it comes into focus, so the image we bear becomes more apparent the closer our relation to God. Perhaps it is through the process of “becoming” more fully who we were created to be, through relating to God, his people, and his creation, that the image becomes more evident. Said differently, the substance is present in a picture, although we may not see it clearly. If we increase the resolution of the picture, we increase the clarity of the image. Consequently, the imago is not limited to a singular quality that mirrors the image of God, but rather we argue for a malleable understanding of bearing the image of God that becomes more apparent in relating to God.

To summarize, given the ongoing work of the Spirit and the constant change brought about within humans as they interact with God, others, and creation, perhaps speaking of “bearing the image of God” is more helpful than a more static concept of “an image.” Such an approach is consistent with existing interpretations of the imago (e.g., Christological, relational, functional) and also compatible with understanding how God could have used natural processes to enable humans to become unique image bearers. Through the processes of evolution, humans eventually had the capacity to bear the image of God in a way that was distinct from their predecessors. This is not at all to suggest that the imago itself evolves over time; but rather that how humans bear the image of God may have different nuances at different times within individual lives and also as a species throughout history.

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Jonathan Jong on Fraser Watts and Léon Turner (eds.),

Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science: Critical & Constructive Essays

How Not to Criticize the

(Evolutionary) Cognitive Science of Religion

https://marginalia.lareviewofbooks.org/criticize-evolutionary-cognitive-science-religion/

by Jonathan Jong

November 11, 2014

Fraser Watts and Léon P. Turner (eds.), Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science:

Critical and Constructive Essays, Oxford University Press, 2014, 272pp

That human beings are incorrigibly religious is an anthropological truism if ever there was one. Always and everywhere, most people participate in what we — lay people and academic specialists alike — would recognize as religious activities, even if there is some uncertainty over how to define “religion” and its cognates. Whatever else the evolutionary cognitive science of religion (ECSR) might be, it is at least an attempt to explain why religion is so cross-culturally and historically ubiquitous. To be sure, this is hardly a novel enterprise; ECSR is but the latest in a long series of efforts to explain religion, beginning at least as far back as Xenophanes of Colophon in the 5th century BCE, and featuring such luminaries as Lucretius Carus, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, and more recently, Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud. For the past 25 years or so, scholars and scientists from diverse fields — including religious studies, history, anthropology, political science, sociology, psychology, and biology — have come together to ask old questions afresh, armed with shiny new theoretical assumptions and research methodologies. Marx’s historical materialism and Freud’s id-ego-superego are out; Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the cognitive turn in psychological science are in. Supplementing traditional participant observation and the close-reading of texts are laboratory- and field-based experiments, neuroimaging studies, “Big Data” analyses, and computerized semantic text analysis. The fruits of this labour have been aptly — if a tad sensationalistically — summarized in a litany of books with titles like “Why Would Anyone Believe in God?”, Religion Explained, and The Belief Instinct.

Now, Watts and Turner have seen it fit to add to the verbiage of ECSR texts by producing Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science: Critical & Constructive Essays, a sort of commentary featuring sage advice for researchers and perhaps readers. This sort of inter-disciplinary scrutiny is generally a healthy thing, and this nascent field could certainly do with more thoughtful interrogation. After all, there have been and still are many approaches to understanding religion, and ECSR scholars ignore this wealth of extant knowledge at their epistemic peril. Nevertheless, this particular effort to critically analyze ECSR falls short of the mark, not least because of its inconsistency in grasping its subject matter.

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As Léon Turner’s excellent introduction to the volume clearly recognizes, some of the difficulty faced by Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science comes from the ambiguity over what its target — the evolutionary cognitive science of religion — is. Is it, as some of the contributions in this volume imply when they discuss “the standard model” in ECSR, a single, generally accepted theory about the evolutionary and psychological origins of religion? Or is it, as others suggest, a set of methodologically related approaches to the study of religion that, while implying certain basic theoretical assumptions, are nevertheless theoretically diverse? Or is it, as I am more inclined to assert, a social phenomenon within which there is at best only tenuous agreement over either method or theory? Admittedly, it is hardly the fault of the would-be critics of ECSR that their target is so amorphous. However, many of the contributors to Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science nevertheless seem tempted to impose on ECSR some semblance of coherence, if only for the sake of having a fixed target to criticize. This penchant for systemization is unfortunately misled, and the resulting attempts to produce taxonomies of theoretical approaches within ECSR are predictably unilluminating. The reason for this is that if there is any core — any fundamental theoretical assumption or central methodological principle — to ECSR, it is that religion is a socially (and scholarly) constructed category. There is no definition of religion that can successfully specify necessary and sufficient conditions that make some phenomenon religious; as it were, there is no such thing as religion per se, only recurring non-essential constituents thereof. The methodological upshot of this theoretical assertion is the fractionation of religion into various empirically tractable or theoretically meaningful elements: costly commitment to supernatural agents, widespread intuitions about the ontology of persons and the afterlife, individual and/or collective rituals, the social dynamics within and between religious groups, etc. It seems oddly remiss that an allegedly critical volume on ECSR would have neglected to identify this piecemeal approach as a significant characteristic of ECSR.

If “religion” is a polysemic term in ECSR, then “evolution” may be even more so. Some contributors to this volume seem to be preoccupied with a narrow conception of evolutionary approaches to human behavior that was more in vogue in the 1980s and 1990s than it is now among ECSR researchers. On this view, the job of an evolutionary science is to identify evolutionary adaptations: traits that were genetically hard-wired as they were selected for in our phylogenetic past for conferring on our ancestors some reproductive advantage. The contributors to Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science therefore devote an undue amount of space to the question of whether religion is a trait that evolved as an adaptation or one that emerged as a by-product of other adaptations. This is a silly question, or at least a question that ECSR researchers do not seriously ask; as we have seen, religion is not a trait or even a fixed cluster of traits. The question of whether or not religion is an adaptation is thus poorly posed. To complicate matters further, ECSR researchers take a variety of viewpoints on what counts as an evolutionary adaptation. These days — as Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson’s chapter on Darwinian cultural adaptation demonstrates — one cannot even take for granted that evolutionary scientists are primarily interested in biological evolution. Even among researchers who are primarily interested in biological evolution, many — myself included — have rejected traditional, gene-centric views; indeed, Purzycki, Haque, and Sosis’s chapter in the present volume takes a dynamic systems approach that all but rejects the distinction between genetic and environmental factors. The inclusion of Richerson’s and Sosis’s work — which has already been influential in ECSR for a few years now — in this volume makes others’ outdated critiques more disappointing than they otherwise would be. For example, co-editor Fraser Watts’s chapter, which seems to take Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s 2009 summary of Pascal Boyer’s 2001 popular paperback Explaining Religion as an adequate current account of the cognitive science of religion, accuses ECSR of being committed to and confined by the view that naturally-selected automatized computational modules “bear the whole burden of explanation”. If this view has ever been held by anyone, it was long gone from serious scholarship by the time I entered the scene as a graduate student in 2008.

While no one can expect a single volume to provide an exhaustive evaluation of the field in all its glorious diversity, the recurring tendency — particularly by the philosophers and theologians in this volume — to caricature ECSR by focusing on one particular (and, perhaps, particularly absurd) theoretical perspective — is too cheap a trick to justify the price of the book. Philosophers and theologians are apt to be annoyed when scientists make silly generalizations about religion; I hope they are not too hurt when I say that evaluations of ECSR should be based on its more rigorous research output, rather than paperback popularizations thereof.

Another abiding theme in Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science is that of the compatibility of ECSR, either with religious faith and practice or with other scholarly approaches to the study of religion. On the first point, the contributors seem anxious to assert that ECSR entails no direct and strong implications for philosophy and theology, though not entirely without reservation. Aku Visala and Michael Ruse both raise potential challenges for religious believers, not from ECSR itself, but from wider issues within naturalistic Darwinism. While I am somewhat disappointed that the editors did not feel moved to include a dissenting voice amongst this placid consensus, I am more bothered by the limp defenses of the view that the alleged naturalness of religious belief may count in favor of theism. Whatever the merits of this view, it seems strange that it could possibly enjoy the endorsement of any theologically orthodox Christian (or Jew or Muslim), for at least two related reasons. First, even if we grant that religious beliefs come naturally in human cognitive development, this fact is obviously consistent with both an atheistic and a theistic view; to think otherwise is to commit the genetic fallacy. Second, it is unclear if the claim that theism is natural is a defensible one. After all, the kinds of gods that people ostensibly naturally believe in seem to be, if not strictly anthropomorphic, then at least super-human. Furthermore, the claim that God is a possible object of cognition and perception — such that the psychological faculties posited by some ECSR theories can accurately “detect” God in the environment — is, according to the classical theism of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, simply idolatrous. The idea that human beings evolved the capacity to pick out God in much the same way that we evolved the capacity to pick out prey and predators is therefore anathema to Abrahamic theists, as it reduces God to the level of creaturely things: God is, in this view, like a delicious deer (or a hungry tiger) that triggers our attention from peripheral vision. There is a very large gap between the implicit theology of ECSR and the traditional view of God as ipsum esse subsistens. Would-be defenders of the faith from the acid of naturalistic Darwinism may well find themselves as unwitting heretics.

Besides the (potentially idolatrous) hand-wringing over philosophical and theological implications, this book also attempts to address the relationship between ECSR and other efforts to study and understand religious phenomena. Here too, there seems to be some motivated eagerness to reduce any visible conflict between ECSR and other approaches; typically, the prescription is for the new, young upstart field to back down on some of its claims. This seems odd, not least because scientists ought not be interested in reducing theoretical conflict with other approaches, so much as in clarifying where different theories disagree and in figuring out how to adjudicate empirically between mutually contradictory theories. If, as Léon Turner suggests in his chapter on this issue, ECSR and humanistic theorists disagree about the explanatory power of evolved cognitive systems relative to historical and cultural contingencies, then surely the solution is not for one or both camps to back away from their claims lest they step on one another’s toes, but for both parties to specify the testable hypotheses that follow from their competing theoretical perspectives. Scientific disagreements are not to be resolved by appeal to diplomacy but to data. This suggestion that ECSR should “leave space” for humanistic approaches and vice versa seems to misunderstand how science works. In contrast, Timothy Jenkins’s suggestion that ECSR and more traditional forms of social and cultural anthropology can be reconciled by re-thinking how each relates to different time scales is somewhat more promising, albeit rather vague and difficult to follow, at least as presented in his chapter.

Inca Goddess Tiwanacu, Bolivia. Image via Wikimedia Commons

So far, we have seen how this volume’s contributors’ caricatured or outdated views on ECSR have led them to make errant accusations. The other consequence of this ignorance is that, for the most part, Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science fails to provide the constructive feedback that a better-informed critic would make. For instance, very little mention is made about the evidential paucity for the alleged central tenets of ECSR’s standard model. The role of evolved agency detection mechanisms and the mnemonic advantage of “minimally counterintuitive” concepts, to cite two prominent examples, are notoriously under-determined by data, as anyone intimately familiar with the primary research literature knows. There are also theoretical problems that the present critics have neglected to identify. Multiple contributors to the volume — Ilkka Pyysiäinen and Fraser Watts in particular — allude to the distinction between two cognitive systems: variously, the intuitive v. reflective, the implicit v. explicit, the unconscious v. conscious, etc. This is a distinction that has been made in ECSR since in early 1990s, but ECSR researchers have almost always largely run roughshod over the diversity of dual-process and dual-systems theories in cognitive psychology, unjustifiably treating the various competing cognitive theories as more or less fungible. They are not fungible, nor is the distinction between a dual-process and dual-systems cognitive theory one to ignore. Nor, for that matter, should ECSR theorists ignore the many thoughtful criticisms that have been deployed against dual-systems theories in the past decade. All of which is to say that, while the contributors to the present volume are preoccupied with making outdated criticisms of ECSR’s dalliance with certain forms of evolutionary psychology — all criticisms that have been made before — they fail to provide any useful insight on ECSR’s actual problems.

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Having enumerated what I consider to be this collection’s major flaws, I shall end by highlighting the more positive aspects of the book, many of which have already been alluded to. Léon Turner’s introductory chapter captures the diversity of ECSR well, though this insight is not consistently applied in subsequent chapters. Three other chapters stand out, from the background of more or less sophisticated caricatures of ECSR. These three describe approaches that are increasingly influential, but sadly still neglected in most popular summaries, here and elsewhere. Benjamin Purzycki and colleagues take the view that religions are adaptive dynamic systems, getting away from a simplistic gene-centric view of evolution. Similarly, Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson examine the cultural evolution of religion in a thoroughly Darwinian fashion. William Bainbridge argues for the value of computer modelling in the scientific study of religion. Having stated my approval of these chapters, in each case, the views presented there can be found elsewhere, sometimes more lucidly; as they are, these chapters are more valuable as counterpoints to some of the other chapters than they are in their own right.

In short, then, Evolution, Religion, & Cognitive Science suffers from a crisis of identity. If ECSR researchers like myself are the target audience, then the book is a failure: there is nothing new here, and some of the older points are now outdated or simply predicated on mischaracterizations. If, instead, the book aims to educate outsiders and novices about the field, its inaccuracies are enough to mislead, and there are certainly better books (and, indeed, shorter articles) that fulfil this goal.

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Global trauma: Made perfect in weakness

https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2020/3-april/features/features/global-trauma-made-perfect-in-weakness

by Joanna Collicutt

April 3, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic is deeply traumatic, writes Joanna Collicutt,

but also deeply transformative

REUTERS Ambulance workers arrive with a patient at the Severo Ochoa Hospital in Leganes, Spain, on Thursday of last week.

WE ARE living through a national and global trauma. The American Psychiatric Association defines psychological trauma as actual, or threatened, death or injury to self or a loved one. This can be through witnessing such things directly, or hearing them reported.

The way in which this works on our psychology is twofold. First, our physical anxiety levels rise. We go into fight-flight mode, and we are forced to confront the threat full-on. This means that our habitual tendency to avoid or deny unpalatable truths is not an option.

Second, the threat is not only to our physical integrity, but to our basic assumptions about the world and our place within it. Thus, psychological trauma combines a highly embodied process with deeply existential content.

Twenty years ago, the trauma psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman published Shattered Assumptions (Simon & Schuster), in which she presented what was then a novel analysis of trauma. She defined it as something that does violence to core beliefs, most notably that the world is safe; that I (or we) can cope with what life throws at us; and that this life has meaning and purpose.

We nurture such assumptions of safety by not attending fully to evidence that contradicts them, and by crafting narratives that shore them up.

Another psychologist, Dan McAdams, has noted how often these created narratives are redemptive in form, bringing good out of bad, and meaning out of chaos.

In “developed” cultures at least, there is a yet deeper assumption buried beneath these core beliefs: the sense that I exist and shall continue to exist. Witnessing the death of “people like me” violently challenges this sense, confronting us with the possibility of existential annihilation. The feeling is well captured in Damien Hirst’s installation The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.

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ONE means of defending ourselves against this sort of “death terror” is to “other” the individuals whose death we witness, or hear about, by emphasising their cultural or geographical distance (“the Chinese virus”), their age, or their state of health (“the elderly with underlying medical conditions”).

Another approach — the subject of much research — is self-esteem. Indeed, a dominant theory in psychology is that self-esteem arose in our evolutionary history primarily as a way of managing our awareness of, and terror at, our own mortality.

This can be an aspect of individual psychology. For example, at the time when the Government was advising all older people to self-isolate, Christian Wolmar wrote on Twitter: “I am 70 and have just played 4 sets of tennis, cycled 6 miles and yesterday ran a tough Parkrun in under 29 minutes. . . I work full time and go to meetings most days. Is the govt seriously suggesting ppl like me sit at home for 4 months?” (my italics).

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THIS use of self-esteem as a buffer against mortality is not confined to individuals: it is also a characteristic of communities. The high esteem in which we hold our culture is a defence against the prospect of its annihilation.

The Covid-19 pandemic is traumatic not only because it threatens our existence and that of our loved ones, but because it also threatens the cultural norms, frameworks, and habits that we take for granted — and assume will continue to operate after we have gone.

These are creaking and cracking under its assault, leaving us socially isolated and existentially disorientated. It is no longer easy for us to say “. . . but life goes on.”

Janoff-Bulman’s research highlights something that we already know: when trauma strikes, people experience the need to attach themselves to institutions of society which offer stability and to gather together with others.

In the present instance, however, this need is being thwarted by the nature of the threat: people are isolated, and churches are closed. Thank God for online communities and live-streaming, but there is no substitute for gentle, healing touch and physical solidarity.

Trauma is utterly grim and has the capacity to wreak destruction. As mental-health practitioners know only too well, it can result in depression, PTSD, and psychosis. But we also know from the ever-growing research literature on the phenomenon of “post-traumatic growth” that it can be productive, and even transformative, in the lives of individuals.

This is not about Nietzsche’s oft-quoted maxim that: “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Nor is it about crafting a narrative that looks on the bright side. It is about the revelatory way in which trauma forces us to see the world in a new light, re-examine radically our assumptions and priorities, discover new things about ourselves and others, and offer a different and more solid form of hope.

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Much of this can be summed up in the word “wisdom”. Reviewing the psychological literature on post-traumatic wisdom, P. Alex Linley notes, wisdom is needed to engage well with trauma, but is also a quality that emerges from it. It is part of the process and one of the outcomes.

He identifies three characteristics of this wisdom: the integration of feeling and thinking; the recognition and acceptance of human limitation (including one’s own); and the recognition and management of uncertainty in life.

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THE strong connections with the Christian faith hardly need to be drawn out here. Christianity is all about post-traumatic growth: the transformation of the utterly grim and the wreckage of disappointment into something that gives life and hope. Not “What does not kill me makes me stronger,” but the absurdly subversive notion that “what kills us makes us stronger.”

This is built into the way in which we observe Holy Week, where our remembrance of Christ’s Passion moves between affect-laden lament and theological reflection, integrating them so that the participants are not engulfed by grief and terror at the events, but are neither overly cerebral and detached from them.

When done well, the timing and pace of our observance of the Triduum do not allow wallowing in misery, or a premature rush to resurrection joy; our liturgies pause, and take account of the emptiness and disorientation of Holy Saturday.

This has the capacity to build a spiritual resilience and wisdom that should be at the heart of the life of faith and the witness of a life well-lived which are offered by the Church to the world.

Linley’s “recognition and acceptance of human limitation” has its counterpart in the Christian vocation to set aside the ego, and to understand fully that the esteem of an individual is not located in external achievements, or inherent qualities, but in Christ.

The gift of self-esteem, then, becomes a source of connection with the other rather than a mark of superiority; nor is self-esteem necessary as a defence against mortality, because its sting has been drawn out by Christ.

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ACCEPTING human limitations need not tip us into a spiral of low self-esteem and despair. Instead, we are offered paradox as a means of grasping that another story is to be had: “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

“Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12.9-10).

This strength shows itself in being willing to do what we can, not held back by thoughts that it is not good enough, but inspired by the insight that we have our small but unique part to play in a bigger story. We can be liberated from the need to be masters of our fate, into servanthood in a higher enterprise.

We have seen thousands of people inside and outside the Church show this sort of deeply Christian “rising to the occasion”, resisting the destruction of community life in an insistence on enacting Kingdom values.

This living out of the Kingdom will eventually be seen as that other story: the breaking in of an alternative reality through the gap opened up by trauma.

Finally, the recognition and management of uncertainty is made possible because of the deepest conviction offered by Christianity, that we are not alone in this life: “I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4.12-13).

We are not alone. The present provisional reality is being transformed into a state in which all shall be well. There is an ultimate context within which our trauma is placed.

This makes it no less grim, but it offers both a wider vision and a stronger anchor. We should not forget that it was in the context of the Black Death, which had killed as much of one third of the population of Norwich, and perhaps even while she was in quarantine, that Julian recorded those famous words: “I may make all things well, and I can make all things well, and I shall make all things well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of things shall be well.”

 

*Canon Joanna Collicutt is Karl Jaspers Lecturer in Psychology and Spirituality at Ripon College, Cuddesdon. She is a clinical psychologist and psychologist of religion whose research interests include trauma-processing and the part that it plays in faith