A Crisis of Doubt
Through an Anthropomorphic Lens, Darkly
In Answer to Job, Jung suggested that the Satan, in the prologue to the Book of Job, symbolizes Yahweh’s doubting thought. At the very least, he appears to be the instigator of God’s doubt (the distinction may be immaterial, this being a symbolic realm of archetypes).
For Yahweh even to be in the presence of His satanic son (and have to ask where he has been—apparently Yahweh’s omniscience is in the same state it was when he lost track of Abel, and Adam before that) is to be reminded that not everything that comes from God is entirely “good.”
This is a lesson Job is about to learn the hard way.
When the Satan says to Yahweh that Job is only a loyal servant because God has “hedged” him in and kept him safe from harm (i.e., has not put him to the test), he is really saying: “Wait until he gets a load of me!”
For Yahweh to respond with “OK, do your worst!” is really to say, “Let us let Job see our other side, and we will see if he remains steadfast in his allegiance then!”
This is exactly Job’s lament, and it is his challenge both for himself and to God: he must reformulate, even reconceive, his entire understanding of God as the summon bonnum out of Whom only goodness, order, wisdom, and justice come.
Job’s main qualification is that he “eschewed evil.” Yet evil is the very thing that the Satan insists Job be not allowed to avoid. All Job’s virtue is hollow, the Satan argues, without a direct experience of the opposition.
It is so much grace, untested by fire.
For a child to come of age means seeing past the idealized image of the parent, to the inconsistencies and caprices beneath and behind that image. It requires emerging from under the parental shadow, into its own light.
If God is (all of) Reality, there can be no “idea” or concept or belief about Him that Job (or his friends) can maintain that does not do a disservice, both to God and to Man. Only direct experience counts; understanding is superfluous, even antithetical.
The Satan’s challenge to Yahweh inspires Yahweh to provide the means for Job to expand the horizons of his theology, so as to accommodate his lived experience.
Job is obliged by the Satan to incorporate ideas opposed to those he formally held: that God is not (only) good, just, and wise—or anything else—when seen from a mortal perspective. God is by definition beyond all definitions.
The means to this reformatting or expansion of Job’s cognitive horizons is suffering; and not just any old suffering, either, but obviously undeserved suffering.
Enter the Satan.