LCG Scribe

The Ark of the Covenant

On this eve of the Day of Atonement, I started thinking along lines that I’ve had to put aside for weeks now – and found myself ending up in a place I did not expect.

Many people find the following description (in the Book of Revelation) of four heavenly beings puzzling:

(Revelation 4:5 ESV) From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and before the throne were burning seven torches of fire, which are the seven spirits of God,
(Revelation 4:6 ESV) and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind:
(Revelation 4:7 ESV) the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight.
(Revelation 4:8 ESV) And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

These Four Living Creatures in turn are connected with the Four Cherubim or Cherubs in Ezekiel 1, who are pictured as upholding the LORD’s throne. The faces of the Four Cherubs are the faces of the Four Living Creatures, so presumably they are one and the same Creatures; yet the Four Cherubic Faces are not listed in the same order as are the Four Living Creatures.

Why are the Four Living Creatures listed in the order that they are?

In the “Eastern Churches” that use some form of Aramaic rather than Greek as their scriptural and liturgical language, there is a tradition that connects the Four Living Creatures of Revelation 4 with the Four Gospels of the Bible. Yet even there, the order of the Four Living Creatures is not the same as that of the Four Gospels. A recording by Esther Lamandier called Romances features an Aramaic hymn that describes the traditional connection. Here the lyrics (given in transliterated Aramaic and French in the liner notes) are translated into English:

The Eternal sits on the throne above four faces and four images:
The aspect of the lion who is Mark;
The face of the bull who is Luke;
The figure of the man who is Matthew;
The image of the eagle: John of Ephesus [the apostle John]. (…)

Whereas the Four Cherubs have their faces arrayed in this manner:

(Eze 1:10 ESV) As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face [in front]. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle [in back].

Interestingly, this order of faces corresponds to how the faces are assigned to the Four Gospels when the latter are taken in order.

There is another peculiarity. In antiquity, the constellations of the Lion, the Ox, the Man and the Eagle (the latter now called Scorpio the Scorpion in the West) were the four “cardinal” constellations of the Zodiac. Roughly between 4000-2000 BC (in biblical terms, the first two millennia of human civilization), the vernal equinox was in the Ox (now called Taurus the Bull). The summer solstice was in the Lion (now Leo the Lion). Moving from east to west in the sky from the position of the summer solstice (at which point the sun is the furthest north in the sky during the year), the order of the cardinal constellations was the Lion (summer solstice), the Ox (spring equinox), the Man (winter solstice), and the Eagle (autumnal equinox).

Something else is peculiar. These Four Living Creatures, taken in this order, correspond exactly to the four basic human temperaments as laid out by ancient and modern analytical psychologists. (The chart is taken from the workbooks published by Dr. Linda Berens of Interstrength Associates.) Start with the box in the lower right corner and go counterclockwise from there, and you will have an exact correspondence. The Lion fits well with the impulsive strength of what Dr. Berens calls the Improviser temperament. The Ox is strong too, but it is steady and supportive in its service; it well befits the Stabilizer temperament. The Man well befits the humanistic drive of the Catalyst temperament, while the Eagle with its transcendent clarity of perception well befits the Theorist temperament.

Just as it’s possible for the novice to confuse human temperaments, social styles and personality types due to similarities between them, so it is possible to mistake which Creature best matches which Gospel. Because the Lion and the Ox share the common element of strength, which Creature corresponds to which Gospel can be easily switched. Really, though, it is a matter of two kinds of strength. Obviously, the Lion and the Ox are both strong creatures, and the ancients recognized them as such and used them as symbols of strength accordingly. Yet the Ox, the Stabilizer temperament, is the one from which first-rate historians such as Luke tend to come; it also befits Jesus’ own keen eye to the past. It is the Lion, the Improviser temperament, which makes for impulsive and dynamic leaders like Peter (and apparently impulsive followers like John Mark, who penned the Gospel of Mark); it also befits the times when Jesus and others took direct action to make an impact then and there, which times are a hallmark of Mark’s account. (Notice how often Mark uses the word “immediately”, for example.) The brevity, action-orientated nature and directness of Mark’s language definitely befits the Lion. The precision and orientation to the past of Luke’s account befits the Ox. Matthew’s multi-faceted focus on Jesus the Son of David and the Teacher (and thus on the Son of Man) befits the Man. John’s focus on Jesus the Son of God and His transcendent vision of the world befits the Eagle. (There are notable exceptions to these focii, such as John’s account of the woman caught in adultery being brought before him. Jesus’ reaction was very much that of a Catalyst or Man rather than that of a Theorist or Eagle, and moreover a Catalyst of a very particular personality type: ENFP.)

It is sometimes said that we have Four Gospels because no one human temperament could describe everything that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, was. This implies that Jesus had the “most balanced” human personality in history: the utopian ideal of the Greek doctor Hippocrates, a “perfect blend” of all four temperaments. But such a perfect blending apparently is not possible for the normal human mind, and for a normal mind to try to force the effects of such a blending seems a certain recipe for total nervous breakdown and subsequent insanity. Perhaps a perfect balance of brain chemicals geared Jesus mentally and physically from childhood for such a temperamental blend. Likewise, His social style and His “cognitive dynamics” (the latter underlying His expressed “personality types”) would have been perfectly balanced, and then His personal spirit (John 19:30) would have been wedded to God’s Spirit as given to Him without measure (John 3:34). If so, then Jesus was truly unique in human history even on the merely physical level (or at least unique on that level since Adam and Eve).

But there may be another possibility. Of all the personality types, ENFP (one of the Catalyst types) is said to be perhaps the most versatile in body, soul and spirit (rivaled only by its Contrast, INFJ). ENFPs are disproportionately represented in psychodrama, precisely because by and large they can so readily take on the thought patterns exemplified by all the other personality types (if only for a limited time). In addition, there seem to be particular cognitive or thought processes that Jesus used in very particular “archetypical” roles (and with greater or lesser frequency and ease of use) that point to His having a very particular human personality type. The way Jesus could “perceive the thoughts” of His foes easily and accurately suggests He was an ENFP (with the combination of thought processes responsible magnified by God’s Spirit without measure). His ability to forsee consequences in accurate but global terms (as in the Olivet Prophecy), less frequently employed than His “mind-reading”, also suggests this. So do His particular inspirational qualities as a teacher, His aptness to use metaphors that spoke to everyone (or else hid His message from everyone, depending on His intent), His insistence on remaining true to Himself and His personal values (which were also His Father’s personal values), His eagerness to spread His Father’s message at all costs, His emotional and physical sensitivity combined with considerable anger-driven emotional and physical energy at need, His particular combination of joy and sense of humor with seriousness and even sorrow at being despised and rejected of men (cf. Isaiah 53:3), the fact that He was not physically impressive overall (cf. Isaiah 53:2), the particular and consistent way He turned the tables on those who laid verbal and legal traps for Him (using a particular cognitive process in a particular archetypical role with a particular moral force, such as ENFPs alone use it) – and on and on.

Now I, as an ENFP, might only be seeing those aspects of Jesus’ expressed personality that “ring true” to me, and as One in perfect temperamental balance, Jesus might have engaged other “paradigms” at other times that “rang true” to other human temperaments, social styles and cognitive dynamics (in sum, personality types) equally well. That possibility is certainly well worth exploring!

Peace in Jesus Christ (שלום בישוע המשיח),
John Wheeler (יוחנן רכב)