If trauma is sufficiently intense, and if it cannot be dealt with adequately in any other way, then the inevitable human response is hysteria. These powerful divine figures could also be placated, bargained with, flattered, or appeased. Truth in its objective form can compete and win in debate in the public arena. Religious truth and theistic understandings were shielded from that debate. Only when we recognize this defense mechanism in religion can we grasp the meaning of the constant presence in primitive religion, and certainly still present in Western religion, of an intense, even a killing, anger.
Irrational hostility is a symptom of hysteria.
Spong believes that the path away from the anger and fear is the path the mystic takes. The mystical portrait of God was first imaginative, and then it became quickly ineffable. It involved an interior journey, not an exterior one. This inward probe ultimately resulted in a transfigured humanity. It thus enabled the mystic to escape human limits without violating human integrity.