A Reflection on God, Man, and Life

We say, “both / and”—not “either / or”. And we do not confuse the two. We cannot know how it is that God manifests Himself this way. We only know that He does. We know that the Holy Theotokos gave birth to God without seed, being both Virgin and Mother. We know that Christ is both God and man. We know that God is transcendent, absolutely beyond all that we can see or imagine—and yet He is in all things. All is true. God is both beyond us and very much with us. He is both in us and outside of us.

He is “both / and”.

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But what about hell? Is this just a “psychological” or a subjective reality? Or is this another “both / and”? Hell exists, but God did not create it. We create our own hells, and it is now for many. But do the fires of hell burn eternally? We don’t know the answer to this question, and we cannot know. We are wise to leave this to the One who is eternal. It is God’s prerogative to decide such things.

“Bloody hell!”, British actors used to exclaim in old war movies—Michael Caine and others. It always brought to my mind the contraction “S’Blood”—God’s Blood. This was a common Elizabethan expression, uttered as a curse or a vow. We joyously proclaim on Pascha, “Christ is Risen from the dead / Trampling down death by death / And upon those in the tombs bestowing life”. It is God’s vow, His promise fulfilled. And so I have often wondered, Is this why the fires of hell burn red? Is this the Blood of the Lamb—God’s love—burning in hell? Is it God’s love that makes hell bloody?

And what about heaven? The Fathers anticipate heaven as a state of “ever-moving rest”. In heaven, they say, the blessed will constantly aspire in eternal rest toward the fullness of divine glory.

Is this yet another “both / and”?

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The famous psychologist and thinker C. G. Jung talked about God as a “both / and”, but he confused the two. He saw God as a “coincidentia oppositorum”—”a totality of inner opposites”. Jung’s god is an irrational god, a god who runs both hot and cold, an unstable god, a schizophrenic god, a god who can be kind but who most often wreaks havoc upon the earth—a very angry god. But Jung gets it wrong. For this is not God. It would seem to be more like man, if it were not for one, signal omission.

What is man?

Man is “a poor, bare, forked animal” (King Lear, 3.4.110) –poor and bare because, being mortal, he possesses nothing in and of himself; forked, in that he points in two directions, being that singular animal imbued with a sense of the divine. Bound to the earth, man longs for that “future life” of which St. Gregory Nazianzus speaks:

The Word, having taken a clod of the newly-made earth, with immortal hands formed my image and imparted to it His life, because He sent into it His Spirit, which is the effluence of the unknown Divinity. Thus out of dust and breath was man made in the image of the immortal one…Accordingly, in my quality of earth, I am attached to life here below, but being also a divine particle, I bear in my breast the desire for a future life.

Jung probed our humanity, the psyche. He thought he would find God there. But he does not speak of our desire for a future life, our “eternal longing”—which is an expression of the divine image. He leaves out that which makes us human—the divine image. Jung’s understanding of the psyche is confused, because his understanding of God is confused. He does not know what man is, because he does not know God.

Man is indeed confused, irrational, unstable, and broken–“a totality of inner opposites”, as Jung says incorrectly of God—and yet both darkness and light are in us. We are all “both / and”, but in a different way than Jung propounds—and in a different way than the God-man Christ reveals Himself to be. But it is a way that makes possible our coming back together with God, if we respond to His call.

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God is a “both / and”. We are a “both / and”. Life is a “both / and”. Look within. Look out and see. Beautiful and splendid paradoxes abound. They are everywhere, at the heart of all things. This is what we know, and it is all that we need to know, as we live and breathe—as we seek God down here on this rich and fruitful earth God has gifted to us.

Thank God! Praise God! Love God!

Fr. Paul Martin
Annunciation & St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church
New Buffalo, MI