FATHER AND SON

The time has come to gather together the loose ends of our essay. What purpose is served by the temptation of Jesus by Satan? As in the case which Freud considered, Jesus had little of material value to gain from a pact with the devil. In Part B, Section V, we left the following unanswered: "Was Jesus ever in danger of being wholly overcome by his own evil impulses?" In Part C, Section III, we referred to "a basic and extremely dangerous evil impulse" which all the other evil impulses projected onto Satan and demons could have symbolized. We also spoke of "a much more fundamental and personal conflict," which we were not yet ready to investigate. Shortly after we asked, "Why was Jesus so anxious?" In Section IV we noted that Jesus was profoundly affected by being told he was the "Son of God." And then we left the question: 'Why, more than any other man, did he have to project all his evil onto demons?"

All of these questions fall into place when compared to the case of Christoph Haitzmann. We do not know when the father of Jesus died. We do know this, however: that all four gospels agree upon the first important event in his ministry:

and a voice came from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased."(20)
"And immediately" Jesus went into the wilderness and was tempted by Satan. Jesus, like Christoph Haitzmann and like all men, had repressed as a child murder fantasies toward his father. Around thirty years of age his repression failed and to cope with the conflict he projected it. Whereas Christoph Haitzmann conjured up only one father figure and imbued him with evil, Jesus conjured up two: God and Satan. Jesus was able to deny that he had killed his father in two ways: his father was still alive (God) and he had never wanted to kill him anyway (only Satan could be so evil). For the rest of his ministry, this "evil impulse," this "personal conflict," this source of acute anxiety, was projected by Jesus into a war between Satan and God for control of mankind. And Jesus was a son in whom God, the Father could be "well pleased" since he had fought so well against Satan.

Why did Jesus get himself killed? Did he commit suicide? At any rate he did not attempt to avoid death. We asked what would happen if the defense that one used against a dangerous impulse were to fail. The system of projection of evil which Jesus used was very elaborate, so elaborate in fact, that it leads one to suspect that it may never have been extraordinarily successful. For a year he held out; although once, when the crowd accused him of harboring an unclean spirit, he lost his temper. Then his defense began to fail. He sensed his guilt for the death of the father and felt that he would have to undergo punishment in Jerusalem. At Gethsemane he made his last stand, projecting his evil onto objects closer and closer to himself. Previously he had accused only Satan and hypocritical people of evil, but suddenly he appeared almost paranoiac, attacking Peter and teetering on the brink of doubting God. Only one road was open: he would have to undergo punishment, the punishment of death, the death he would have wished upon his father.

The roles which Jesus played, the suffering servant and the Son of God, were foreshadowed in the Old Testament; but only Jesus, under the pressure of personal conflict, synthesized the two. We can understand, now, why his disciples should have seen in his life a universal significance: we are all sons of God, in a sense, and we are all murderers. Thus we can explain the impression Jesus has made upon religion: he has acted out one of the essential conflicts of man, the guilt of the son who would kill the father.

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20. Mark 1:11.

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