One of the ways we function in reality is through appropriating archetypes. This is the claim of men like C.G. Jung and Jordan Peterson. According to them, we need to read literature seeking moral improvement through understanding and possibly imitating the archetypes that are presented. Jordan Peterson sees Jesus as the archetypical perfect man. I should mention that I definitely don’t agree with everything he says here. The Logos seems to be something that human consciousness has somehow materialized in the story of scripture. I fully disagree with Jordan Peterson’s origin story, but psychologically he is right on.
This is something the church forgets. Preaching should centre around the application of our true archetype, the true logos Jesus Christ to our lives. This is why the church calendar is so important. We live the life of Jesus every year. The Christian year begins with advent: a waiting for Christ’s birth. We remember his death and resurrection. We remember the promise of ascension and the promise of our own resurrection. For exactly the same reason, the New Testament focusses on Unity with Christ. We share in his body and Blood. Paul tells us that everything we do is “In Christ.” The church forgets that the person of Christ is before all things and by him, all things hold together.
Instead, the church often reduces preaching to either doctrine or morals. Preaching should have those two elements. We have to know what Christ did and who he was. That is how we receive certainty and comfort. We have to know what to do. But if we desire transformation, we need to be called to live out the wellspring of the logos, take up our cross, and imitate Christ.
Of course, the Bible tells us about many more characters than Christ. The New Testament teaches us that we are to read these stories in light of Jesus Christ. The church loses her past when she fails to read the Old Testament in light of Christ when she fails to see the types that are fulfilled in Christ. She fails to understand how Christ becomes the archetype whom, we can apply to ourselves. Even more, how Christ is the illumination that shows how the Father and Spirit give us more archetypes.
Jesus is the fulfilment of almost every archetype of the Old Testament. He is the archetypical priest, prophet, king, son, and groom. Christ, the archetypical son, shows the way to the archetypical father, God. He sends out the spirit, who preserves, defends, clothes, and indwells the archetypical mother and bride, which is the church.
The fact of the matter is that we cannot live in the abstract. The abstract must take form in a story, in the concrete history of Christ and his bride, the church. Only then can we begin to understand how we are to embody the teaching of God.