More about "ego deflation at depth"

First, a correction: A.A., as an organization/entity, does not, it seems, itself use the phrase "ego deflation at depth" in any of its official literature.   That phrase was apparently used by Bill Wilson in a talk he gave before the New York City Medical Society on Alcoholism in 1958 - and he was referring, specifically, to the initial approach to the still-drinking alcoholic.

Here's the quote itself; Wilson's talking about an alcoholic patient of Carl Jung's - a man who had tried for many years to stop drink but had found it impossible.  (My bolding below.)

In substances, Dr. Jung said, "For some time after you came here, I continued to believe that you might be one of those rare cases who could make a recovery. But, I must now frankly admit that I have never seen a single case recover through the psychiatric art where the neurosis is so severe as yours. Medicine has done all that it can for you, and that’s where you stand.

Mr. R.’s depression deepened. He asked: "is there no exception; is this really the end of the line for me?"

"Well," replied the doctor, "There are some exceptions, a very few. Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences. They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them. In fact, I have been trying to produce some such emotional rearrangement within you. With many types of neurotics, the methods which I employ are successful, but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description."

"But," protested the patient, "I’m a religious man, and I still have faith." To this Dr. Jung replied, "Ordinary religious faith isn’t enough. What I’m talking about is a transforming experience, a conversion experience, if you like. I can only recommend that you place yourself in the religious atmosphere of your own choice, that you recognize your personal hopelessness, and that you cast yourself upon whatever God you think there is. The lightening of the transforming experience may then strike you. This you must try- it is your only way out." So spoke a great and humble physician.

For the AA-to- be, this was a ten-strike. Science had pronounced Mr. R. virtually hopeless. Dr. Jung ‘ s words had struck him at great depth, producing an immense deflation of his ego. Deflation at depth is today a cornerstone principle of AA. There in Dr. Jung’s office it was first employed in our behalf.

(The Jung story is also found in Chapter 2 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous (PDF), AKA "The Big Book," originally published in 1939.  To my way of thinking, it's not really the discussion of a "transforming experience, a conversion experience" that's doing the work here; it's the simple, short statement at the end:  "It is your only way out," that does the job.)

Other sources say that William James is the one who first used the phrase - but I haven't found a citation to that effect.  In any case, the phrase is well-known in A.A. circles; it's very much part of the oral tradition.

And, of course, A.A.'s literature does say, in the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, that:

Step Three calls for affirmative action, for it is only by action that we can cut away the self-will which has always blocked the entry of God into our lives.

 And you'll find this passage (my bolding below) in this PDF copy of Chapter Five of the book Alcoholics Anonymous:

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

a)  That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
b)  That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
c)  That God could and would if He were sought.

Being convinced, we were at Step Three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him. Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do?

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self- sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.

What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. He begins to think life doesn't treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?

Our actor is self-centered — ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?

Selfishness — self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.

So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us! God makes that possible. And there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without His aid. Many of us had moral and philosophical convictions galore, but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to. Neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own power. We had to have God's help.

This is the how and the why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. It didn't work. Next, we decided that hereafter in this drama of life, God was going to be our Director. He is the Principal; we are His agents. He is the Father, and we are His children. Most Good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom. When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our own little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.

We were now at Step Three. Many of us said to our Maker, as we Understood Him: "God, I offer myself to Thee — to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life. May I do Thy will always!" We thought well before taking this step making sure we were ready; that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him.”

 
So "ego deflation" - i.e., "the cutting away of self-will," at least, really is the entire A.A. project - even if the "at depth" part referred originally to the initial effort to break down the alcoholic's resistance utterly. 

Anyway:  I'm finding it very interesting to keep in mind, too, the way James Alison describes "the two approaches to desire" in his "Prayer: a case study in mimetic anthropology"  (again, with my emphases below):

First the folk-psychology approach, which I sometimes characterise as the “blob and arrow” understanding of desire. In this approach, there is a blob located somewhere within each one of us and normally referred to as a “self”. This more or less bloated entity is pretty stable, and there come forth from it arrows which aim at objects. So, “I” desire a car, a mate, a house, a holiday, some particular clothes and so on and so forth. The desire for the object comes from the “I” which originates it, and thus the desire is authentically and truly “mine”. If I desire the same thing as someone else this is either accidental and we must be rational about resolving any conflict which may arise, or it is a result of the other person imitating my desire, which is of course stronger and more authentic than their secondary and less worthy desire. Since my desiring self, my “I”, is basically rational, it follows that my desires are basically rational, and thus that I am unlike those people who I observe to have a clearly pathological pattern of desire – constantly falling for an unsuitable type of potential mate and banging their head against the consequences, or hooked on substances or patterns of behaviour that do them no good. Those people are in some way sick, and their desires escape the possibilities of rational discourse. Unlike me and my desires.

....

The understanding of desire which Girard has been putting forward for almost half a century, and which is often referred to as “mimetic” is about as far removed from this picture as you can get. The key phrase which I never tire of repeating is “We desire according to the desire of the other”. It is the social other, the social world which surrounds us, which moves us to desire, to want, and to act. This doesn’t sound particularly challenging when it is illustrated in the way the entertainment industry creates celebrities, or the advertising profession manages to make particular objects or brands desirable. For few of us are so grandiose as to deny that some of our desires show us as being easily led and susceptible to suggestion. It becomes much more challenging when it is claimed that in fact it is not some of our desires that are being talked about, but the whole way in which we humans are structured by desire.

For what Girard is pointing out is that humans are those animals in which even basic biological instincts (which of course exist, and are not the same thing as desire) are run by the social other within which the instinct-bearing body is born. In fact, our capacity to receive and deal with our instincts is given to us through our being drawn towards the social other which inducts us into living as this sort of animal, by reproducing itself within us. And what makes this draw possible is the hugely developed capacity for imitation which sets our species apart from our nearest simian relatives.

What both A.A. and James Alison/Rene Girard are pointing to is the effort to get the ego - otherwise known, in the Alison/Girard view, as the "the social other" that runs its desires - to let go of its stranglehold on our hearts, minds, and lives.   You can approach the problem from either direction, IOW - and the key to it seems to point to exactly the same idea.

And both, BTW, point to prayer as a vitally important key to and part of the process; at the heart of both approaches is the idea of beginning to listen to, as James Alison puts it, "another Other," and to 'allow the One who knows what is good for us, unlike we ourselves, whose desire is for us and for our fruition, unlike the social other and its violent traps, to gain access to re-creating us from within, to giving us a “self”, an “I of desire” that is in fact a constant flow of treasure.'  (Liturgists like Derek will agree with this, too, I'm sure; I think he'd argue that this is exactly what liturgy does.  It gives the  "other Other" voice, via liturgical poetry, music, texts, scripts, actions, and concepts - and frequent repetition of all of the above.)

And again, I argue:  that's what the church is for.  Because what human being doesn't, in his heart, long to truly live - and while she's at it, to find access to "a constant flow treasure," consolation in distress - and a blessed release from fear and all crippling negativity?

The spiritual life and the problem of the ego

The Red State Mystic has been on a hot streak lately at his blog - and his latest post, "A Responsible Forgiveness," (and also a post on another blog that Derek points to, here) got me thinking again about the question we've been asking around the blogosphere for the last year or so: "What exactly is the church for?"

Many people seem to believe the church exists to do "corporal works of mercy" - or even to "seek to transform unjust structures of society." And mercy, certainly, is an excellent thing; the corporal works of mercy are incredibly important, without doubt. ("Seeking to transform unjust structures of society" is just way too ill-defined for me, and leaves way too much room for political and personal interpretation and mischief. That's another post, I suppose.)

In any case, the truth is that nobody needs the church to do those things. Anybody can decide, on their own, to do charitable works, or to work to change the law to be more just, according to their own lights.

I don't deny, though, that Christianity provides a way of looking at the world that may both encourage and guide people in works of charity and justice. It's just too easy to forget these things, and to curve in ourselves and our own little lives. Religion can be a model, or a guide and inspiration for action; Christianity (via its parent, Judaism) certainly does provide a particular worldview and inspiration for action in the world. And that is important - but it does have a precursor; people don't arrive at this worldview by themselves.  First, we need to learn that it exists, and then what exactly it is and where it comes from; this means a deep grounding in the Bible and in the tradition, since the tradition interprets the Bible.

So, even if you believe that Christianity (or Judaism, or Islam, or whatever religion you're talking about) exists in order to do good works - well, you need some background in order to know what that entails. You need the Bible and you need the tradition in order to judge for yourself whether or not this is a worthwhile understanding of the world - and to guide you.

There is a further problem, too: the belief that the spiritual life is about "doing good works" takes the very tip of the iceberg and makes it the whole. Or - to use an arboreal metaphor - it tears out the roots and expects the tree to continue to grow.

I suppose it could - but from the evidence in front of our eyes: I don't think it will. The twentieth century by itself is enough evidence for me that plans and designs to "do good" can end up doing horrific evil. It is enough evidence, for me, of the problem of the human ego, and (of course) the problem of the human will to power - and of the damage these things can cause. Attempts to re-shape the world according to human desires and plans have failed miserably, most of the time.  More than that:  all such attempts have become extinct - which means they are simply time-bound "solutions" to the human situation.  They don't last; none of them have - except religion.   Religion is the constant; everything else is a variable.  And that says that Religion is seeing from some "higher" vantage point; it's talking about something human beings in particular eras simply can't see, with our limited vision.

It is, of course, true, too, that religion has made its own share of errors - but these, too, almost always seem to come from the assertion and/or elevation of human ego. And, in fact, the only place one finds - occasionally - an attempt to subjugate the human ego is - you guessed it - in religion itself.

The attempt to subjugate the human ego is, in fact, the entire foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous; most of that foundation does come from religion - and A.A. openly acknowledges this fact.

RSM's "Forgiveness" post really helped me think some of these things through; rather than typing it all out again, I'll just cut-and-paste my comment there:

This is a very good post. I especially agree with this part: ‘Just because my sin has been cast “as far as the east is from the west” does not mean that it hasn’t left an indelible mark on my life and, sadly, on the lives of those around me.’ That’s where the “responsibility” you’re talking about here comes in.

But this is not an attempt to “win God’s love”! It’s a recognition and acceptance of the reality that we are sinners – and it’s a way to try to make things right with other people. It’s a debt we owe, just like any other debt we may owe.

It’s true that we can do nothing to merit the Grace of God; it’s true that we don’t deserve it, and that we can’t earn it. And sometimes it appears to me that the Evangelical thing is a worry that somehow we’re going to lose God’s love by “improving”! In other words, unless we acknowledge at all times that we are bad, bad, bad – and that nothing we do can change that fact – God will abandon us. Because that is the basis of the relationship! But of course, that is – as they say in A.A. – “pride in reverse.” It still leaves us at the center of the universe; we’re still focused on ourselves! The point, really, is to let go of all that, and become “channels” or “instruments” of God’s will. The ego has this incredible stranglehold on us, and it just won’t let go! That, to me, is the entire goal of the religious life: to get the ego to relinquish its death grip on our lives and our minds. A.A. says it this way: “We have not once sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.” That’s actually really hard for the ego to accept!

A.A. says that the entire basis of its program is “ego deflation at depth.” It’s to get us out of the center of the universe. If we pray (along with the hymn): “Let holy charity mine outward vesture be, and lowliness become mine inner clothing” – this is a prayer to live in love and humility. (A.A. also says that “Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad time of it in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood; the word itself is often intensely disliked.”) But those things – charity and humility – are by definition focused on God and on other people, not on ourselves.

Fortunately, we really will never get to the point where we’ve “arrived.” We don’t have to worry about becoming angels; it ain’t gonna happen.

“Taking responsibility” is not a “work”! It isn’t an attempt to earn God’s favor. It’s an admission of our own part in the events in the world; it’s an acceptance of reality, and an attempt to make things as right as we can with other people. It’s a way to become simply “one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.” And, we hope, to do God’s will.

Granted: we're going to have to point to the result here, rather than to the process! As A.A. points out, nobody's interested in "humility" for its own sake.

But, I think, many people CAN identify with the problem of the outsize role that the ego plays in all our lives. We ALL know - if only at a subconscious level - that our unchecked egos have played havoc with the facts of our lives, again and again. Is there anybody who doesn't identify at least a little with the opening lines of Matthew Arnold's "Self-Dependence"?

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

And is there anybody in the world who doesn't long for things that Bianco da Siena speaks of in his Discendi Amor Santo (translated "Come Down, O Love Divine" for the hymn of the same name):

Come down, O love divine, seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with Thine own ardor glowing.
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
And kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let Thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,
Shall far out pass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace, till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes His dwelling.

Well, that's what the church is for. When the ego lets go, the world opens up; our self-imposed limitations are removed, by the grace of God.  The result described here is sacred light that "illumines" our lives, and our paths through life.  It's a "holy flame" that burns away our endless passionate grasping after ourselves and our own short-sighted desires.

"Corporal works of mercy" are not equivalent to faith; they're the result of faith, as here. The church says that when the ego finally lets go - even a little, as at first - we can really go someplace interesting at last. As A.A. puts it:

When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being.

He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of strength which he had hitherto denied himself.

Who wouldn't seek after such a thing - if it could, in fact, be sought after?  It can't be, though; it's the serendipitous outcome of the letting go of ego, and of one's own ideas and thoughts about the world; it comes from trusting God - via the indirect means mystics (and A.A. members!) have found and reported back to the world - to open up to us the vast, amazing vista of living that we can only get fleeting glimpses of on our own.




More on this later, I think.  I've been wanting, for a year or so now, to talk about A.A.'s "indirect" means to spiritual awakening (which is, again, IMO, almost identical to what mystics - and from time to time the church - have always taught).  Maybe now's the time to go there.....

“He opened up to them everything in the Scriptures concerning himself”

Attention Bible geeks:  Check out this piece by James Alison if you want to read something amazing!

The subtitle is:  "How can we recover Christological and Ecclesial habits of Catholic Bible Reading?" - and, of course, the title comes from the Road to Emmaus story in Luke 24.   But the topic is, actually, a "close reading" (to say the least) - a liturgical reading, at that! - of the Parable of the Prodigal Son.  Check out Alison's virtuosic exposition of it; it's long, and needs some time to digest, but it's worth it.

First, let’s listen to the parable [1]:

[Jesus] said, "There was a man who had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, `Father, give me the share (μέρος) of property (οὐσίας) that falls to me.' And he divided his living (βίον) between them. Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took his journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in loose living. And when he had spent everything, a great famine arose in that country, and he began to be in want. So he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would gladly have fed (ἐπιθύμει χορτασθηναι) on the pods that the swine ate; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, `How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise (ἀναστὰς) and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him (ἐπέπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸν τράχηλον αὐτου καὶ κατεφίλησεν αὐτόν). And the son said to him, `Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants (δούλους):"Bring quickly the best robe (στολὴν τὴν πρώτην), and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it (θύσατε), and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again (ἀνέζησεν); he was lost, and is found." And they began to make merry. "Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what this meant. And he said to him, `Your brother has come (ὁ ἀδελφός σου ἥκει), and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has received him safe and sound.' But he was angry (ὠργίσθη) and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father, `Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command (οὐδέποτε ἐντολήν σου παρηλθον); yet you never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But when this son of yours (ὁ υἱός σου οὗτος) came, who has devoured your living with harlots (ὁ καταφαγών σου τὸν βίον μετὰ πορνῶν), you killed for him the fatted calf!' And he said to him, `Son (τέκνον), you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother (ὁ ἀδελφός σου οὗτος) was dead, and is alive (ἔζησεν); he was lost, and is found.'"

Now for a little bit of context. Please imagine that you are in a synagogue in first-century Palestine. Or perhaps better, just outside one, since on this occasion Jesus is teaching people who might find it painful to go inside a synagogue. Please also imagine that you are a Scribe or a Pharisee, removing from your imagination all the weight of the modern connotations of those words. That is to say, you don’t consider yourself a hypocrite: rather you are observant, modest and sober, you have a genuine religious enthusiasm, a sure devotion to the way of the Torah, a good knowledge of all the narratives and incidents which are received as Holy Writ, and you are authentically curious about this Jesus who might perhaps be a prophet.

You are used to there being a lectionary reading cycle in the synagogue. For over a century before Christ the books of Moses had been divided into 150 chunks so that the Torah would be read in its entirety over a three-year cycle. They had been divided according to the convenience of the feasts and the passages were known as sedarim. Also, more recently, readings of chunks of the Prophets had been added, and these were known as haftarot. So, there are appointed readings for every Sabbath, and the person who was entrusted with the reading and the commentary didn’t pick a text at random, but expounded the assigned readings. Unfortunately, we don’t have much evidence for the exact distribution of the readings at the time of Jesus, rather in the same way as we don’t have an exact knowledge of all the books which were considered holy by the diverse groups which made up the Hebrew people in the Palestine of the time. In both cases, our more exact knowledge begins somewhat after the period of the apostolic witnesses. Nevertheless, we do know that there was such a lectionary cycle and some elements of it can be glimpsed from the texts of the New Testament.

What would have been normal at the period would have been to take the appointed texts, and used them as a basis for constructing something for the edification of those present. And it is this that we see Jesus doing with the parable of the Prodigal Son. It looks as though we are faced with a teaching which has as its base the texts for the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple, where the appointed passages were Genesis 46, 28 – 47, 31 and Ezekiel 37, 15-28. Both texts refer to the difficult fraternal relationship between two tribes, Judah and Joseph, and to possible measures to overcome their differences and bring them together to form one single flock in celebration of God. At least, those were the texts for the feast in one of the three years of the cycle [2]. There has also been detected beneath the texts of this central part of Luke’s Gospel a commentary on several sections of the book of Deuteronomy [3]. The Torah passage in question on this occasion would have been Deuteronomy 21, 15-23, which instructs as to the distribution of an inheritance between an older and a younger brother, and then as to the appropriate treatment for a rebel son: that is to say, his being stoned to death. It ends with the indication that whoever is hanged from a tree dies under the curse of God. The passage from the Prophets would perhaps have been Malachi, either in its entirety (the book is not very long), or certain passages from it, since it begins with recalling an elder brother, whom God did not love, and a younger brother, whom God loved, and it ends with the promise of the return of the Prophet Elijah who will reconcile parents with their children and children with their parents [4].

The context of the parable is not only given by the texts of the Feast, but also the Feast itself: that of the Dedication of the Temple, now called Hanukah, or the Festival of Lights. This feast points, in the first place, to the re-dedication of the Temple in the mid second-century before Christ, and secondly to the original Dedication of the First Temple carried out by Solomon in what was already at the time of Christ the remote past. Knowing something about this living context will allow us to get a little further “inside” what Jesus is doing in offering us the parable.

I would also like to comment on the fact that we are dealing with a parable. Please forget the familiarity with which we pronounce this word. We have grown used to listening to Jesus’ parables as if they were simple and brilliant teachings which Jesus plucked out of thin air to the delight of the simple faithful, and the confusion of the learned. We are so little familiar with the Hebraic resonances of Jesus’ world that we jump almost immediately to an allegorical reading of the parable, as if the final version of the story were all that there is to be understood, and as if there were a more or less obvious allegorical application of the text. For example, that the Father is God, the Prodigal Son is the Christians, or sinful and repentant Jews; and the Elder Brother is the Pharisees, or perhaps Old Israel, and thus the bad guy in the story.

Well, I’d like to suggest that it wasn’t like that originally. A Parable is a much more interesting teaching technique than this. It is rather like launching a toy into the middle of a group of children who, at first, don’t understand what it is, nor what it does, since it confounds their expectations, and everything seems to be the wrong way round. So, bit by bit they take it apart so as then to be able to put the pieces together again as they begin to understand what it’s about. It is in the act of piecing it together that they begin to “get it” and understand what it’s for. This is what is important: with the parabolic method, if there is not first a moment of confusion, of having to pull the thing apart, then neither is there a process of learning and discovery.

Let me give you an example of this taken from our parable. When the prodigal son is homeward bound, the father espies him from a great distance and running towards him, falls on his neck and kisses him. This has served all of us as a beautiful reminder of how God is a Father who loves us and comes rushing towards us from long before we have reached him. And nothing in what I’m going to tell you should dim this memory. However, if we had heard the story in the context of the synagogue, our first confusion would have arisen because in Genesis, it is Joseph, the son and younger brother, who leaves his palace in Egypt, and goes out to meet his father, Jacob, who is arriving, along with his elder brother Judah, so as to receive him, from a great way off. When they meet, Joseph falls on his father’s neck (Gen 46, 29). Earlier he has fallen on his brothers’ necks and covered them with kisses – the phrase is the same (Gen 45, 14-15). So, the first reference point for the father in the parable is not God, but Joseph, the younger brother, and it is towards the far land that Jacob and the elder brothers are journeying for the festive re-encounter.

It is also possible that there is here a word game from which Jesus might have drawn fruit, for Joseph goes out to Goshen to receive Jacob and Judah, and might not someone have noticed that the name of Moses’ firstborn son was Gershon? There is enough similarity among the consonants for such a word game. Gershon was born while Moses, himself a younger brother, was living exiled from Egypt, in the land of the Midianites, whose flocks he tended. He was married to a daughter of Midian, Zipporah, and their eldest son’s name means “I am a stranger in a foreign land”.

Well, I hope that you are suitably confused, and that a series of confusions is beginning to open up. The father can equally well be Joseph, or God, or even the Pharaoh from the Joseph story, since he gives the younger son a ring and places him over all that is his. So far, the place where they are living might equally be Israel or Egypt. The younger brother might equally well be Joseph, or Moses, or Jacob (the younger brother of Esau) or even Abel (Cain’s younger brother). He might also be the younger son who appears in the passage of Deuteronomy 21 about dividing a father’s inheritance. This younger son receives only a third of the inheritance, since his elder brother receives two-thirds according to the Law. The younger son might also be the rebellious son who is to be taken outside the city to be killed according to the command of Deuteronomy, whether the killing be by stoning or by hanging him from a tree.

In the same vein, the elder brother could be the one from Deuteronomy who receives the two-thirds share of the inheritance; he might also be Aaron, Moses’ elder brother, or Cain, or Ishmael, or Esau or Judah. Which is to say that there is a wide spectrum of possible occupants of each place in the parable, and we shouldn’t dismiss the possibility that they are all there, in a sort of kaleidoscope: now one appears, now another, all in different configurations vis-à-vis each other.

In this kaleidoscopic vision, the elder brother who comes back from the fields and complains that his father hasn’t even given him a kid so as to celebrate with his friends, might be Cain the horticulturalist coming back from the fields where he has just killed Abel the shepherd, so as to meet up with Joseph, who is Abel risen from the dead. He might equally be Esau, whose primogeniture had been stolen from him by Jacob through a piece of trickery involving the hide of a goat; and the father might be Isaac trying to help his elder son overcome his anger and his envy. Or indeed, the elder brother might represent Joseph’s elder brothers who, after having sold Joseph, killed a goat so as to bloody Joseph’s coat of many colours, thus convincing their father, Jacob, that Joseph was dead. And of course the punch line of the Joseph story, as of our parable, is the reversal of this when Jacob is able to say “Joseph my son is still alive” (Gen 45, 28; see also 45, 3).

I hope that you are beginning to suspect that the parable, rather than being a finished story is rather more like a collection of hooks from which hang many references, allusions, and lines of thought which a good storyteller might follow. Only if we grasp something of the richness of those allusions, and of the different ways in which they can be blended, do we have some sense of why they have been so well put together within the schema of the parable which Jesus is casting before his listeners.

Now, let us follow the story, noticing some curiosities as we move forward. First there is the distribution of the property. On asking for his inheritance, the younger brother receives a third part, which is what would correspond to him on the death of his father, since his elder brother, following Deuteronomy 21 would receive two thirds. As it happens, that “third part” turns up again in the Prophet Zechariah, whom the New Testament, and apparently Jesus himself in his own teaching, follows very closely. For that “third part” is the portion of the flock which belongs to the Shepherd who is going to be wounded, and it will be saved, while the two thirds will perish. Might it not be the case that the parable is alerting us as to how strange it is that the Good Shepherd, the one who is to fulfil the Scriptures, is going to be like a younger son, whose own family, following both Deuteronomy and Zechariah [5], treat him as a rebellious son and take him outside the city to kill him?

Interpreting Deuteronomy in the light of Zechariah wouldn’t be at all impossible for a teacher and an audience accustomed to Midrash, the family of Jewish interpretative techniques. And let us remember that it is just at this point of Deuteronomy that there appears the famous phrase “the one who is hanged on a tree is under the curse of God” (Deut 21, 23) from which St Paul will derive such important conclusions (Gal 3, 13). Let us add to this the referential framework of the Joseph story, where it is the younger brother who is cast out and left to die, but who gets to be the one who forgives his brothers and receives them into the land of plenty, recognizing that that was what God had been planning for all of them all along (Gen 45, 7-8; 50, 19-21). It looks indeed as though this referential framework is at work here as a storyline which allows the rather cruel passage from Deuteronomy to be re-read against the human sacrifice which it apparently commands. It makes of it instead a prophecy of a reconciliation which is to be brought about by a sacrificed son, considered to be a rebel, and led to his death apparently under the curse of God. In modern terms, we would say that it is the text of the Joseph story which provides the hermeneutic which allows the texts of Deuteronomy to be read in an apparently inverted way. And we need have no doubt as to the presence in the parable of the capacity to make such an inversion: this is demonstrated by the change of roles which we have already observed between the the one who comes out to receive the other while the other is yet far off, falling on his neck and covering him with kisses.

Let’s get back to the parable. The younger son goes off with his inheritance, and being in a far-off land, he fritters it away. So, he deserves nothing more. When a serious famine hits that country, the son goes to work for one of the locals, as Moses went to work for a Midianite. The son even longs to eat the food which is given to the pigs, a splendid element in the story, for it demonstrates to a Hebrew public the repugnant degree of sordidness to which the son has fallen. It also brings to mind the Maccabees, the heroes of the story of the Dedication of the Temple, who preferred to undergo death rather than eating pork, which is what the Greek king was trying to get them to do. And our younger son certainly feels the pangs of longing to eat the pigs’ food – and the words “ἐπιθύμει χορτασθηναι” “he desired to satisfy himself” may be an echo of the Israelites in the wilderness whose desire to return to Egypt and eat the food from there came to be a symbol of the very nature of distorted desire (1 Cor 10, 6).

However, that younger son “comes to himself”, and here we begin to get some very interesting words. He realises that he might be better off living somewhere else, in the house of his father, even if only as a servant. And he says, literally, “Arising, I will go”, but the Greek word is “ἀναστὰς” and it is also the technical term for what happened to the High Priest when he was ordained and prepared for the Angelic life: he was “raised” or “resurrected” [6]. The idea was that the High Priest already lived a life of angelic “resurrection” while communing with YHWH in the sanctuary, and representing YHWH before the people. So, a priestly element is entering the story. Solomon himself announces, at the beginning of his dedication of the Temple, that he has “arisen” or “ascended” to the dwelling of his father (2 Chronicles 6, 10). Any doubt about this disappears when we hear the younger son preparing himself for his return to his father’s house, for he uses a set phrase which would have been well known: “Father I have sinned against heaven and before you”. This may well have been a liturgical phrase from the Atonement rite on Yom Kippur [7], in rather the same way as we recite in the Mass the penitential formula “I confess before Almighty God and before you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…”. In other words, suddenly the younger son is the High Priest who is going to enter his Father’s dwelling carrying out the rite of Atonement, a rite which was inaugurated by Solomon in his dedication of the Temple (2 Chronicles 6 and 7).

This leads us to some considerations about the presence of Moses in our story. For Moses was a younger brother, he lived in a foreign land, and he began, with the people of Israel, the return to the Promised Land, which was also the land of the Fathers, or Patriarchs. However, after the idolatry of the Israelites, that is, when they allowed themselves to be overcome by their desires, Moses offered to make atonement for his people (Exodus 32, 30-34). Nevertheless, God did not allow him to do this, telling him merely that he (God) would send an angel before him. It would not have been difficult for Jesus to link this angel, a priestly figure, to King Solomon who did manage to achieve an atonement which was accepted by God when the fire consumed his offerings in the Temple, and to the future prophet whom Moses promised the people of Israel in the book of Deuteronomy [8], just before our passage about sons and inheritance. The link is made even stronger if the younger son is not only the shepherd who is to going to be wounded, but the priest-prophet who is going to carry out the definitive Atonement, and on his way to the sacrifice will be considered a rebel son to be killed, and his sacrifice reckoned a curse from God. That is to say, part of what is going on in the parable is the suggestion that “one greater than Moses is here, one greater than Solomon”, and an insinuation as to the manner by which the coming prophet will fulfil what was lived out and promised by Moses himself, and prefigured by Solomon. Thus it will be known that he is a true prophet [9].

So, the son “rises” in a priestly manner towards the sanctuary of his Father. The Father shows himself viscerally moved – ἐσπλαγχνίσθη – which is rather specially the emotion of God, his “chesed”, by running towards him, falling on his neck and kissing him, just as Joseph, another younger brother, had done with his father and brothers. Please notice that the dynamic of the father who forgives is exactly the same dynamic as the brother, expelled and left for dead, who forgives his brothers. Divine paternity is cast in a recognisably fraternal form.

At this point, the High Priest pronounces the penitential formula, but the Father doesn’t even speak to him. In fact, once our younger brother has recited his penitential formula, he totally disappears as a protagonist. He neither says nor does anything else at all. In fact it is as though, once he has become a sacrifice of expiation, he no longer has a separate role to play. The Father speaks instead to the servants, and here we have another piece of word play. Because the priests were also known as “servants” while the High Priest, above all at the time of the Atonement Rite when he acted “in personam” YHWH, was known as “Son”. So the Father tells the servants to put on his son “στολὴν τὴν πρώτην” which might be both “a very fine tunic” or indeed, the priestly robe with which the priests dressed the High Priest when he came out of the sanctuary for the sacrifice. He tells them to put a ring on his finger, in just the same way as Pharaoh had placed his ring on Joseph’s finger, signalling Joseph’s role as Viceroy, that is to say, the one who was to exercise the Pharaoh’s royalty before all (Genesis 41, 42-44). And he tells them to put sandals on his feet, for earlier Moses had had to take off his sandals before the Presence, but now, since the Atonement has been accomplished, the Prophet who fulfils what Moses began, the one who can indeed enter into the Presence, this one can put on sandals. In other words, the Son is being enthroned as Priest, King, and Prophet, all together.

Symbolizing and inaugurating the feast and the rejoicing, the fatted calf is sacrificed (and the word is “θύσατε” – the term for sacrificial slaughter) in the same way that Solomon ordered thousands of bulls to be killed, and the feasting begins. It would not be too much to remember that in the book of Leviticus (Leviticus 8, 12-14) it is the younger brother, Moses, who ordains his elder brother, Aaron, as High Priest. He anoints him with oil, dresses him in a tunic, and girds him around with a girdle. And then he sacrifices the calf as a sin offering, following the same order that we find in Luke. Once again the father figure and that of the younger brother flow into one single role in the rite of ordination. Now the father speaks in the same way as Jacob speaks of Joseph: that his son who he had long thought dead is in fact alive. But here he signals that he is also celebrating the fact that the Son (the High Priest) has “risen”, that is, has made his “ἀνάστὰσις”, and that everything which has been achieved by the rite of Atonement can now be celebrated with noisy jubilation.

Meanwhile the elder brother is in the field, but as he returns and draws near to the house (and “τη οἰκία” may always refer to the Temple also), he hears the sound of singing and dancing, and so calls one of the servants to find out what’s going on. The servant replies with a curious phrase, for he does not say “your brother has returned”. The word “return” would have penitential connotations, since the word “shuv” in Hebrew means “turn” or “repent”. Instead he says “your brother has come” or “is present”, “and your father has sacrificed the fatted calf on getting him back safe and sound”. Which is to say, the servant is giving the reason for the joy, and the festivities, of the Presence, which is what is maximally realised in the rite of Atonement.

At this the elder brother becomes enraged – ὠργίσθη – and refuses to go inside. And indeed, his wrath is not without interest, since at the great feast of the Presence which is fulfilled with the Atonement it was well understood that wrath – ὀργη – was in the air, and was in fact attributed to God. It was understood that in the composite person of the Priest and the Lamb, YHWH was offering himself as an expiation to protect his faithful ones. However, it was reckoned that the Wrath would fall upon those who were not covered over by the blood of the Lamb. The image was of the Wrath emanating from the Holy Place to avenge God’s enemies: from this, people needed protection. Here in the parable however, and in absolute coherence with all his teaching, Jesus inverts the expectation, showing that the only wrath which is present is purely human, purely anthropological. In the feast of the Presence, with Victim, Priest and King enthroned, there is no room for vengeance. The only wrath which is present, and it is very powerful indeed, is the sort of envy which leads one brother to kill another.

Those who know the narrative of the Dedication of the Temple will remember at this moment that when Solomon had carried out the ceremony, the Glory of the Presence came down with such strength that the priests, sons of Aaron, couldn’t enter into the Lord’s House (2 Chronicles 5, 14; 7, 2). You will also remember how Moses was unable to enter into the tent of the Tabernacle when the Glory was dwelling in it (Exodus 40, 34-38). Yet here it is the elder brother himself who is keeping himself outside, out of envy of his brother, just like Cain, and Esau, and the brothers and father of Joseph, all of whom were full of envy. It is envy which makes it impossible to perceive the Presence, far less enter into it.

Now the father comes out in person in order to beseech him, with no hint of violence or vengeance – there is no Wrath coming out of the sanctuary. Rather the father speaks to him as it were from below, acting as the humble spokesman for the plenitude of that forgiving and non-vengeful Presence. Of course, the father has allowed himself to be defined by that Presence. He begs the elder brother to come in to the feast of the celebration of the Presence. The elder brother explains that he has been a servant. And indeed he has, he has been the servant to the priesthood, through the order of Levites. And he has never put aside one of the father’s commandments – for the phrase in Greek hints at the commandments of the Law “οὐδέποτε ἐντολήν σου παρηλθον”. It would seem, in fact that he is representing an obedient order of Levites, whose ordination had occurred when Moses commanded them to kill their brethren among the people of Israel who had participated in the building of the Golden Calf [10]. The elder brother even says that his father never gave him a kid with which to celebrate with his friends. This may be a reference to the prohibition of the Levites from carrying out the tasks of the Priesthood in the matter of sacrificing live animals which appears in the book of Numbers (Numbers 18, 1-23). And naturally it will call to mind, as I have already mentioned, the fact that Cain, whose sacrifice was not acceptable, practiced horticulture, while Abel was a shepherd, and his sacrifice was acceptable. It will also summon up memories of the different pieces of sheep and goat-related skulduggery which pepper the Hebrew Scriptures [11]. We might even imagine in the voice of the elder brother a tone of complaint that, unlike what happened with Abraham and Isaac, God had not provided for sacrifice (Genesis 22, 8. 13) with a substitute lamb which might teach him not to sacrifice his brother. In his envy he is unable to recognise that the brother who is present is exactly that lamb who YHWH has provided, providing himself.

Next the elder brother himself refers to his brother as “this son of yours”, recognising in his envy that the one who he does not even deign to call “my brother” has been elevated to the rank of “Son”. And he criticizes his father, since he claims that this son “has devoured your living with harlots”, and even so, the father has sacrificed the fatted calf for him. The phrase is very interesting indeed. In Greek it reads as follows: “ὁ υἱός σου ουτος ὁ καταφαγών σου τὸν βίον μετὰ πορνων”. Now if we read that sentence in priestly idiom, then this Son has not devoured the living, so much as eaten up the life, of the father. In the same way that the priest eats the body of the lamb which is YHWH once the sacrifice has been offered on the alter. And the High Priest has done this amongst an idolatrous people. In his envy, the Levite doesn’t realise what he himself is saying, for the High Priest is precisely the one who eats and distributes the very life of God, being his Son, as forgiveness in the midst of a people given to fornication, or idolatry – notions which are interchangeable in the prophetic texts. And the fact that the Son is now present, his priestly mission fulfilled, is very justly symbolized by the sacrifice of the fatted calf in the feast of the Presence. Between an accusation of immorality and a recognition of priestly presence, there lies only the blindness which is the fruit of envy, and the irony of the good storyteller.

As if this were not enough, the father who has listened to the bitterness of the elder brother now addresses him as τέκνον – which is to say “child”. It is in fact a tender word, but it is not the same as “son”, which is important since, as we have seen, both the father and the elder brother reserve the word ‘υἱός’, with all of its implications of high priesthood, for the younger brother. “Child” says the father “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours”. And here, just in case further detail were needed, we are once again plunged into a reference to the Levites, and indeed into the same central section of Deuteronomy which has lain beneath the surface of our parable. For there it says (Deuteronomy 18, 1-2; cf. also Numbers 3, 5-13):

The Levitical priests, that is, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel; they shall eat the offerings by fire to the LORD, and his rightful dues. They shall have no inheritance among their brethren; the LORD is their inheritance, as he promised them.

And so we are at the end, as we were at the beginning, faced with words about inheritance. But it now turns out that the elder brother also has as his inheritance the Lord, who is by definition inexhaustible. So the elder brother should have no envy as to how the Lord distributes what is his and brings it to a good ending. The one who is more than Moses, more than Solomon, younger brothers both, has arrived. The Dedication of the new Temple which is himself, more originary than even the temple of Solomon, is being carried out. In the parable we are given all the elements necessary for an extraordinary recapitulation of the entire story of Israel starting with Abel, passing through Moses and Solomon, and pointing towards the definitive sacrifice which will overcome all the ambiguities in the previous sacrificial regime. The insinuation is that this sacrifice is indeed about to take place. The parable leaves open the question, or throws down the challenge: will the elder brother overcome the envy which keeps him out of the house, of the Temple, of Paradise? Will he accept receiving his inheritance at the hands of his risen brother? Will he enter in to take part in the Feast of the Presence?

I'm not clear, yet, on what he's saying in his subtitle; IOW, I don't understand why this is an example of "recovering Christological and Ecclesial habits of Catholic Bible Reading."  It looks like a Midrashic exercise to me - but what an exercise!  How amazing to see all these resonances and inferences brought to the surface!

A fantastic example of "bringing out of the treasure-house things that are old and things that are new," IMO.    Alison's background in Evangelicalism has served him well as he throws the Catholic outer garment over himself.  (Hint:  this should be right in the Anglican wheelhouse, folks.  Note the the part about Jesus "teaching people who might find it painful to go inside a synagogue"; a little bit about "the outsider" here, a central TEC concern - but note how much more there is to it all.....)