Summary: In “The Many Faces of God,” Kerry Walters explores how core Christian archetypes like Forgiveness and Compassion persist in people’s lives, even in cultures that may reject Christianity. Through Shusaku Endo’s novel “Deep River,” characters grapple with their spiritual yearnings and relationships, illustrating the enduring power of these themes. Ultimately, the story suggests that God’s presence can be felt in many forms, much like the ripples in a deep river.
the central archetypes of the Christian story—Conversion, Forgiveness, Sacrifice, Resurrection, and Compassion—had such deep metaphysical and psychological roots that they emerge, again and again, even in persons and cultures indifferent to or outright hostile to Christianity. (View Highlight)
The five characters are expressions of Shusaku’s conviction that the pull of Christian archetypes is felt even by nonreligious persons. In Isobe’s case, it’s Resurrection; in Numada’s, Sacrifice; in Kiguchi’s, Forgiveness; in Mitsuko’s, Conversion; and in Otsu’s, Compassion. (View Highlight)
The ritual of freeing the myna is a gesture of thanks for being snatched from death by the sacrifice of a loving companion. The moment the bird flies away, Numada’s soul thrills to an overwhelming sense of the rich thickness of life, a life salvaged for him by the myna. (View Highlight)
When Tsukada died, peacefully, his wife believed it was because “Gaston had soaked up all the anguish” (p. 103) in her husband’s heart by assuring him of forgiveness (View Highlight)
her experiences in the intervening years have drawn her ever closer to a lived awareness that “she no longer wanted imitations of love. She wanted real love and nothing else,” (p. 136) the love that both inspires and is fed by service to others. (View Highlight)
For his part, he was content to bow to the incomprehensibility of God, acknowledging the multiple ways in which the Divine Mystery reveals itself. (View Highlight)
has many different faces. I don’t think God exists exclusively in the churches and chapels of Europe. I think he is also among the Jews and the Buddhists and the Hindus.” (View Highlight)
And just as with Jesus, the particular manifestation of God to whom he is devoted, Otsu’s compassion eventually costs his life. He’s beaten to death, like a sacrificial “bleating lamb” (p. 212) by a riotous crowd as he tries to save the life of another man from its fury. Like the Lord he serves, Otsu dies a Suffering, because Compassionate, Servant. (View Highlight)
Like the Ganges, God is dynamic, ever flowing, receptive to all creation, embracing within its bosom the endless cycle of life and death. There are as many manifestations of God as there are ripples in the water, and all of them sparkle with vitality. (View Highlight)
This is another way of expressing the inexhaustible and infinite depth of God. God cannot be easily defined because God isn’t just another object. God is no-thing, but instead is a force—the force of love, says Otsu—that penetrates all of reality. (View Highlight)