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I found this a thought-provoking book. It comprises twelve lectures given by Edinger to the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles in the autumn of 1989. Apart from his first introductory lecture, each one follows through the themes raised in ‘Answer to Job’. Edinger's method is to extract key quotations from each section, to question problematical statements, and amplify the issues raised. His deep knowledge of Jung's work and the Bible, combined with his analytical experience with patients, enable him to open up new aspects to the complex and controversial issues raised by Jung.
I assume readers to be familiar with the extensive ground covered in ‘Answer to Job’. Edinger's discussion of key quotations from the book explores such a wide range of profound questions that it is impossible to make a comprehensive summary. Two crucial issues for Jung were the opposites in man's God-image as it is developed in the Old and New Testament, and the God-image as it is experienced by modern man and woman, and here his own affective responses to ‘divine darkness’ were of vital importance. Edinger amplifies this latter issue by quoting extracts from Jung's letters which give a vivid picture of his experience of God at the time he wrote the book. To quote one example, ‘I am held in thrall, almost crushed and defend myself as best I can.’ These extracts help us to understand the contrast in Jung's style between the times when he is talking relatively objectively of a God-image defined symbolically as the nearest one can get to an ‘unknown essence’ and those times when he is making angry attacks on God as a phenomenon ‘who is less than human’.
In the beginning of his book, Edinger expresses the view that there are two levels of meaning in ‘Answer to Job’: first, Jung's unique understanding that it was Job's recognition of Yahweh's dual nature which challenged Yahweh, and led to the incarnation in Christ; second, on a deeper level which Edinger thinks it may take centuries to assimilate,