Re: Answer to Job, by C.G. Jung
Posted: Fri Nov 13, 2015 3:27 am
VII
In addition to Abel, we have to consider, as a model for the impending birth of the son of God, the general pattern of the hero's life which has been established since time immemorial and handed down by tradition. Since this son is not intended merely as a national Messiah, but as the universal saviour of mankind, we have also to consider the pagan myths and revelations concerning the life of one who is singled out by the gods.
The birth of Christ is therefore characterized by all the usual phenomena attendant upon the birth of a hero, such as the annunciation, the divine generation from a virgin, the coincidence of the birth with the thrice-repeated coniunctio maxima () in the sign of Pisces, which at that precise moment inaugurated the new era, the recognition of the birth of a king, the persecution of the newborn, his flight and concealment, his lowly birth, etc. The motif of the growing up of the hero is discernible in the wisdom of the twelve-year-old child in the temple, and there are several examples in the gospels of the· breaking away from the mother.
It goes without saying that a quite special interest attaches to the character and fate of the incarnate son of God. Seen from a distance of nearly two thousand years, it is uncommonly difficult to reconstruct a biographical picture of Christ from the traditions that have been preserved. Not a single text is extant which would fulfil even the minimum modern requirements for writing a history. The historically verifiable facts are extremely scanty, and the little biographically valid material that exists is not sufficient for us to create out of it a consistent career or an even remotely probable character. Certain theologians have discovered the main reason for this in the fact that Christ's biography and psychology cannot be separated from eschatology. Eschatology means in effect that Christ is God and man at the same time and that he therefore suffers a divine as well as a human fate. The two natures interpenetrate so thoroughly that any attempt to separate them mutilates both. The divine overshadows the human, and the human being is scarcely graspable as an empirical personality. Even the critical procedures of modern psychology do not suffice to throw light on all the obscurities. Every attempt to single out one particular feature for clarity's sake does violence to another which is just as essential either with respect to his divinity or with respect to his humanity. The commonplace is so interwoven with the miraculous and the mythical that we can never be sure of our facts. Perhaps the most disturbing and confusing thing of all is that the oldest writings, those of St. Paul, do not seem to have the slightest interest in Christ's existence as a concrete human being. The synoptic gospels are equally unsatisfactory as they have more the character of propaganda than of biography.
With regard to the human side of Christ, if we can speak of a "purely human" aspect at all, what stands out particularly clearly is his love of mankind. This feature is already implied in the relationship of Mary to Sophia, and especially in his genesis by the Holy Ghost, whose feminine nature is personified by Sophia, since she is the preliminary historical form of the , who is symbolized by the dove, the bird belonging to the love-goddess. Furthermore, the love-goddess is in most cases the mother of the young dying god. Christ's love of mankind is, however, limited to a not inconsiderable degree by a certain predestinarian tendency which sometimes causes him to withhold his salutary message from those who do not belong to the elect. If one takes the doctrine of predestination literally, it is difficult to see how it can be fitted into the framework of the Christian message. But taken psychologically, as a means to achieving a definite effect, it can readily be understood that these allusions to predestination give one a feeling of distinction. If one knows that one has been singled out by divine choice and intention from the beginning of the world, then one feels lifted beyond the transitoriness and meaninglessness of ordinary human existence and transported to a new state of dignity and importance, like one who has a part in the divine world drama. In this way man is brought nearer to God, and this is in entire accord with the meaning of the message in the gospels.
Besides his love of mankind a certain irascibility is noticeable in Christ's character, and, as is often the case with people of emotional temperament, a manifest lack of self-reflection.· There is no evidence that Christ ever wondered about himself, or that he ever confronted himself. To this rule there is only one significant exception -- the despairing cry from the Cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Here his human nature attains divinity; at that moment God experiences what it means to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and, clearly, this supreme moment is as divine as it is human, as "eschatological" as it is "psychological." And at this moment, too, where one can feel the human being so absolutely, the divine myth is present in full force. And both mean one and the same thing. How, then, can one possibly "demythologize" the figure of Christ? A rationalistic attempt of that sort would soak all the mystery out of his personality, and what remained would no longer be the birth and tragic fate of a God in time, but, historically speaking, a badly authenticated religious teacher, a Jewish reformer who was hellenistically interpreted and misunderstood -- a kind of Pythagoras, maybe, or, if you like, a Buddha or a Mohammed, but certainly not a son of God or a God incarnate. Nor does anybody seem to have realized what would be the consequences of a Christ disinfected of all trace of eschatology. Today we have an empirical psychology, which continues to exist despite the fact that the theologians have done their best to ignore it, and with its help we can put certain of Christ's statements under the microscope. If these statements are detached from their mythical context, they can only be explained personalistically. But what sort of conclusion are we bound to arrive at if a statement like "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me" [70] is reduced to personal psychology? Obviously the same conclusion as that reached by Jesus' relatives when, in their ignorance of eschatology, they said, "He is beside himself," [71] What is the use of a religion without a mythos, since religion means, if anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal myth?
In view of these portentous impossibilities, it has been assumed, perhaps as the result of a growing impatience with the difficult factual material, that Christ was nothing but a myth, in this case no more than a fiction. But myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do. The fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth -- quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, nonpsychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfils itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. My own conjecture is that Christ was such a personality. The life of Christ is just what it had to be if it is the life of a god and a man at the same time. It is a symbolum, a bringing together of heterogeneous natures, rather as if Job and Yahweh were combined in a single personality. Yahweh's intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and suffering.
In addition to Abel, we have to consider, as a model for the impending birth of the son of God, the general pattern of the hero's life which has been established since time immemorial and handed down by tradition. Since this son is not intended merely as a national Messiah, but as the universal saviour of mankind, we have also to consider the pagan myths and revelations concerning the life of one who is singled out by the gods.
The birth of Christ is therefore characterized by all the usual phenomena attendant upon the birth of a hero, such as the annunciation, the divine generation from a virgin, the coincidence of the birth with the thrice-repeated coniunctio maxima () in the sign of Pisces, which at that precise moment inaugurated the new era, the recognition of the birth of a king, the persecution of the newborn, his flight and concealment, his lowly birth, etc. The motif of the growing up of the hero is discernible in the wisdom of the twelve-year-old child in the temple, and there are several examples in the gospels of the· breaking away from the mother.
It goes without saying that a quite special interest attaches to the character and fate of the incarnate son of God. Seen from a distance of nearly two thousand years, it is uncommonly difficult to reconstruct a biographical picture of Christ from the traditions that have been preserved. Not a single text is extant which would fulfil even the minimum modern requirements for writing a history. The historically verifiable facts are extremely scanty, and the little biographically valid material that exists is not sufficient for us to create out of it a consistent career or an even remotely probable character. Certain theologians have discovered the main reason for this in the fact that Christ's biography and psychology cannot be separated from eschatology. Eschatology means in effect that Christ is God and man at the same time and that he therefore suffers a divine as well as a human fate. The two natures interpenetrate so thoroughly that any attempt to separate them mutilates both. The divine overshadows the human, and the human being is scarcely graspable as an empirical personality. Even the critical procedures of modern psychology do not suffice to throw light on all the obscurities. Every attempt to single out one particular feature for clarity's sake does violence to another which is just as essential either with respect to his divinity or with respect to his humanity. The commonplace is so interwoven with the miraculous and the mythical that we can never be sure of our facts. Perhaps the most disturbing and confusing thing of all is that the oldest writings, those of St. Paul, do not seem to have the slightest interest in Christ's existence as a concrete human being. The synoptic gospels are equally unsatisfactory as they have more the character of propaganda than of biography.
With regard to the human side of Christ, if we can speak of a "purely human" aspect at all, what stands out particularly clearly is his love of mankind. This feature is already implied in the relationship of Mary to Sophia, and especially in his genesis by the Holy Ghost, whose feminine nature is personified by Sophia, since she is the preliminary historical form of the , who is symbolized by the dove, the bird belonging to the love-goddess. Furthermore, the love-goddess is in most cases the mother of the young dying god. Christ's love of mankind is, however, limited to a not inconsiderable degree by a certain predestinarian tendency which sometimes causes him to withhold his salutary message from those who do not belong to the elect. If one takes the doctrine of predestination literally, it is difficult to see how it can be fitted into the framework of the Christian message. But taken psychologically, as a means to achieving a definite effect, it can readily be understood that these allusions to predestination give one a feeling of distinction. If one knows that one has been singled out by divine choice and intention from the beginning of the world, then one feels lifted beyond the transitoriness and meaninglessness of ordinary human existence and transported to a new state of dignity and importance, like one who has a part in the divine world drama. In this way man is brought nearer to God, and this is in entire accord with the meaning of the message in the gospels.
Besides his love of mankind a certain irascibility is noticeable in Christ's character, and, as is often the case with people of emotional temperament, a manifest lack of self-reflection.· There is no evidence that Christ ever wondered about himself, or that he ever confronted himself. To this rule there is only one significant exception -- the despairing cry from the Cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Here his human nature attains divinity; at that moment God experiences what it means to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and, clearly, this supreme moment is as divine as it is human, as "eschatological" as it is "psychological." And at this moment, too, where one can feel the human being so absolutely, the divine myth is present in full force. And both mean one and the same thing. How, then, can one possibly "demythologize" the figure of Christ? A rationalistic attempt of that sort would soak all the mystery out of his personality, and what remained would no longer be the birth and tragic fate of a God in time, but, historically speaking, a badly authenticated religious teacher, a Jewish reformer who was hellenistically interpreted and misunderstood -- a kind of Pythagoras, maybe, or, if you like, a Buddha or a Mohammed, but certainly not a son of God or a God incarnate. Nor does anybody seem to have realized what would be the consequences of a Christ disinfected of all trace of eschatology. Today we have an empirical psychology, which continues to exist despite the fact that the theologians have done their best to ignore it, and with its help we can put certain of Christ's statements under the microscope. If these statements are detached from their mythical context, they can only be explained personalistically. But what sort of conclusion are we bound to arrive at if a statement like "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me" [70] is reduced to personal psychology? Obviously the same conclusion as that reached by Jesus' relatives when, in their ignorance of eschatology, they said, "He is beside himself," [71] What is the use of a religion without a mythos, since religion means, if anything at all, precisely that function which links us back to the eternal myth?
In view of these portentous impossibilities, it has been assumed, perhaps as the result of a growing impatience with the difficult factual material, that Christ was nothing but a myth, in this case no more than a fiction. But myth is not fiction: it consists of facts that are continually repeated and can be observed over and over again. It is something that happens to man, and men have mythical fates just as much as the Greek heroes do. The fact that the life of Christ is largely myth does absolutely nothing to disprove its factual truth -- quite the contrary. I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, nonpsychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfils itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual. My own conjecture is that Christ was such a personality. The life of Christ is just what it had to be if it is the life of a god and a man at the same time. It is a symbolum, a bringing together of heterogeneous natures, rather as if Job and Yahweh were combined in a single personality. Yahweh's intention to become man, which resulted from his collision with Job, is fulfilled in Christ's life and suffering.