Mystical Christianity: A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of John, by John A. Sanford
In this 337 page commentary on the fourth gospel, John A. Sanford paints a fascinating picture of Christianity that is steeped in the mystical, the mysterious, and the psychological. Drawing upon his clinical experience and extensive knowledge of Carl Jung's psychological theories, Sanford explicates a gospel message that connects spiritual and psychological realities, takes them seriously, and relates them to the modern world.
I read this book straight through from cover to cover, which is probably not the best way to read it. It is intended to be used as a commentary and reference guide. Either way, Sanford's work does much to explain both depth psychology and the gospel of John. As I've written elsewhere, I have struggled to understand Jung's writings, and Sanford helped me both comprehend them and see how they relate to Christianity.
"Christianity as a religious movement is in danger of losing its vitality, as it becomes ensnared in the conventional, and as the powerful and numinous impact of the Gospels is emasculated by the rationalistic and materialistic mentality of our times." (p. 310) In many ways the purpose of Sanford's book is to offer a corrective to our overly modern world view, which sees and takes seriously only the material, physical universe. The author of John's gospel calls us to see a hitherto unseen spiritual world, and to recognize that what happens in the spiritual world directs and impacts the material world. Sanford's genius lies in linking the spiritual world with the archetypal world of depth psychology, giving the spiritual new credence for modern people.
One of Sanford's most evocative images is the Son of Man. Often used in John's gospel to describe Jesus, this mysterious term is avoided by the church in favor of the term Son of God as the favorite title for Christ. Sanford sees Jesus the Son of Man as the ideal man, the archetypal man to whom all humanity can look to see its true self. Yet as Christ is believed by the church to be both fully God and fully human, when humanity strives for its true self it accepts both its humanity and its divinity.
Sanford quotes Robert Johnson, stating "the world isn't meant to work; but it does provide an arena for the development of individual consciousness." (p. 301) Christ is the exemplar of both the way to live and the way to die, the way to be fully human and the way to participate fully in the nature of the Divine. Life's purpose is to gain authentic knowledge of oneself, and of God. Christ's Way is the path to consciousness. Christ's cross is a mandala –a sacred image of wholeness and centeredness. As followers of Christ, we are the ground in which the cross is planted –the way of the cross is planted into our lives and consciousness. (p. 317)
PUBLISHER:Crossroad Publishing Company (February 1, 1994); ISBN: 0824514122
Showing posts with label jungian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jungian. Show all posts
Encountering Jung
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3.10.02
Encountering Jung: Jung on Christianity, edited by Murray Stein
Encountering Jung: Jung on Christianity, edited by Murray Stein, is a handy collection of primary sources --Carl Gustav Jung's own writings on Christianity as it relates to his psychoanalytical theories. The main works excerpted here are Aion, Answer to Job, and various pieces of correspondence that deal with Christian subjects in response to current popular and psychological issues of his day. The content is arranged under three categories: Jung's relationship to Christianity, Jung's psychological approach to Christian doctrine, and Jung's interpretation of Christian history and its future.
Jung's relationship to Christianity is an interesting one. Despite his father's occupation as a Reformed minister, Jung was never convinced or compelled by popular or orthodox views of the Christian faith. In one of the early excerpts Jung writes of his frustration with the lack of connection with the Divine at first communion, and his early conviction that his father, and church theology in general didn't answer the questions he was asking about God. Jung sought a more direct union with God than he experienced through church ritual and the sacraments. Simultaneously, he experienced deeply disturbing dreams and other images during childhood and early adulthood that he was certain would be found blasphemous when compared to popular notions of God.
Jung's approach to Christian doctrine was primarily one of seeing the evolution of doctrine as a response to the evolution of the collective unconscious. In this part of his writings, Jung shows us how symbols of the unconscious --the mandala, the shadow, and other archetypes are mirrored in the Bible, Gnostic writings, and other myths. Breathtakingly well read on very diverse religious materials, Jung draws from this wealth to show that the collective unconscious is universal and cross cultural, and that all the major religious traditions draw from this material in their depiction of the Self, the Divine, and the world.
Jung's take on the future of Christianity paints a rather dim view of Protestantism, and a more optimistic view of Catholicism. This surprised me, given Jung's background as a protestant. Jung was impressed by Catholicism's ability to create and perpetuate new dogma (like the Assumption of Mary dogma formulated in the 1950s) as a sign of its continuing relevance to everyday people (and to the continuing evolution of the collective unconscious.) His disgust with Protestantism was perhaps most striking in his criticisms of Rudolff Bultman, whose de-mythologizing of the biblical text Jung saw as excising precisely the most meaningful part of the Scriptures from a psychoanalytical point of view. More broadly, however, Jung felt that Protestantism was too rational and not mystical enough.
My interest in Jung is somewhat related to Bultman. While I find Bultman's (and others') critiques of the mythological aspects of the Bible compelling, I also want a way to make use of the myth in a spiritually edifying way. My hope was that Jung would provide a credible framework on a rational basis to do this. And there are very difficult passages of Scripture that make a lot of sense when read through a Jungian filter, as well as glimmers of Jungian concepts shot through the gospel of John, Job, and the Psalms, just to name a few books.
However, I still feel that I don't have a very good handle on Jung, even after reading him directly. Perhaps Encountering Jung --while very interesting reading-- was too direct for an initial encounter. I walked away from the text impressed by how well-read Jung was in the classics, the early Church Fathers, apocryphal Christian writings, etc, but feeling like I hadn't really comprehended the totality of what he's saying. Even after searching the web for a number of links providing introductory material on Jung, I'm still waiting for the work that brilliantly sums up Jung's contribution to psychology, how its reflected in Christianity, and how it can be useful to Christian spirituality.
PUBLISHER: Princeton Univ Press; ISBN: 0691006970; (September 22, 1999)
Encountering Jung: Jung on Christianity, edited by Murray Stein, is a handy collection of primary sources --Carl Gustav Jung's own writings on Christianity as it relates to his psychoanalytical theories. The main works excerpted here are Aion, Answer to Job, and various pieces of correspondence that deal with Christian subjects in response to current popular and psychological issues of his day. The content is arranged under three categories: Jung's relationship to Christianity, Jung's psychological approach to Christian doctrine, and Jung's interpretation of Christian history and its future.
Jung's relationship to Christianity is an interesting one. Despite his father's occupation as a Reformed minister, Jung was never convinced or compelled by popular or orthodox views of the Christian faith. In one of the early excerpts Jung writes of his frustration with the lack of connection with the Divine at first communion, and his early conviction that his father, and church theology in general didn't answer the questions he was asking about God. Jung sought a more direct union with God than he experienced through church ritual and the sacraments. Simultaneously, he experienced deeply disturbing dreams and other images during childhood and early adulthood that he was certain would be found blasphemous when compared to popular notions of God.
Jung's approach to Christian doctrine was primarily one of seeing the evolution of doctrine as a response to the evolution of the collective unconscious. In this part of his writings, Jung shows us how symbols of the unconscious --the mandala, the shadow, and other archetypes are mirrored in the Bible, Gnostic writings, and other myths. Breathtakingly well read on very diverse religious materials, Jung draws from this wealth to show that the collective unconscious is universal and cross cultural, and that all the major religious traditions draw from this material in their depiction of the Self, the Divine, and the world.
Jung's take on the future of Christianity paints a rather dim view of Protestantism, and a more optimistic view of Catholicism. This surprised me, given Jung's background as a protestant. Jung was impressed by Catholicism's ability to create and perpetuate new dogma (like the Assumption of Mary dogma formulated in the 1950s) as a sign of its continuing relevance to everyday people (and to the continuing evolution of the collective unconscious.) His disgust with Protestantism was perhaps most striking in his criticisms of Rudolff Bultman, whose de-mythologizing of the biblical text Jung saw as excising precisely the most meaningful part of the Scriptures from a psychoanalytical point of view. More broadly, however, Jung felt that Protestantism was too rational and not mystical enough.
My interest in Jung is somewhat related to Bultman. While I find Bultman's (and others') critiques of the mythological aspects of the Bible compelling, I also want a way to make use of the myth in a spiritually edifying way. My hope was that Jung would provide a credible framework on a rational basis to do this. And there are very difficult passages of Scripture that make a lot of sense when read through a Jungian filter, as well as glimmers of Jungian concepts shot through the gospel of John, Job, and the Psalms, just to name a few books.
However, I still feel that I don't have a very good handle on Jung, even after reading him directly. Perhaps Encountering Jung --while very interesting reading-- was too direct for an initial encounter. I walked away from the text impressed by how well-read Jung was in the classics, the early Church Fathers, apocryphal Christian writings, etc, but feeling like I hadn't really comprehended the totality of what he's saying. Even after searching the web for a number of links providing introductory material on Jung, I'm still waiting for the work that brilliantly sums up Jung's contribution to psychology, how its reflected in Christianity, and how it can be useful to Christian spirituality.
PUBLISHER: Princeton Univ Press; ISBN: 0691006970; (September 22, 1999)
The Devil
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28.8.02
The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity, by Jeffery Burton Russell
This volume is merely the first of four works that deal with constructions of the devil through history. I haven't yet read the other three (Satan: The Early Christian Tradition, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, and Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World), but if the subsequent volumes are anywhere near as interesting and insightful as the first, I have much to look forward to in the other volumes as well.
The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity takes a cross cultural look at how evil spirits (termed generically "the devil") have been perceived by various cultures in the ancient world, including early Christianity. Russell's main thesis is that constructions of the devil, like constructions of the god, follow a Jungian pattern of undifferentiated ambivalence, differentiation, unhealthy repression, and healthy suppression.
Simply put, Russell explains Jung's version of the psyche as follows: In children, according to Jung, there is no concept of right and wrong. Good and evil deeds are done with equal abandon. Later, as the child grows to adulthood, concepts of good and evil begin to differentiate themselves. At first the reaction is to repress the evil aspects of the personality (in essence, when tempted to do evil, the response is to say, "I don't do that because I'm not the type of person who would do such a thing.") This is unhealthy because by denying the urge toward evil the pressure just builds up in the individual over time, and can possibly be released dangerously and uncontrollably, to the detriment of both the individual and society. The answer: acknowledgment of the evil nature, and then the conscious suppression of evil inclinations. According to Jung and Russell this is more healthy than Freudian repression because it honestly admits that all people are capable of great good and great evil, but that through a conscious determination evil can be avoided and good chosen.
Russell sees this model in many ancient religions and texts, including early Christianity and the Old Testament. Drawing mostly upon the depiction of God in the books of Job and Exodus, Russell brings the darker side of God to light, arguing that in this early stage Yahweh is morally undifferentiated or "beyond good and evil." Only in the later stages (I suppose in later books in the series dealing with the New Testament) does good and evil --God and the Devil-- separate into two separate entities.
PUBLISHER: Cornell Univ Pr; ISBN: 0801494095; 1977.
This volume is merely the first of four works that deal with constructions of the devil through history. I haven't yet read the other three (Satan: The Early Christian Tradition, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, and Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World), but if the subsequent volumes are anywhere near as interesting and insightful as the first, I have much to look forward to in the other volumes as well.
The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity takes a cross cultural look at how evil spirits (termed generically "the devil") have been perceived by various cultures in the ancient world, including early Christianity. Russell's main thesis is that constructions of the devil, like constructions of the god, follow a Jungian pattern of undifferentiated ambivalence, differentiation, unhealthy repression, and healthy suppression.
Simply put, Russell explains Jung's version of the psyche as follows: In children, according to Jung, there is no concept of right and wrong. Good and evil deeds are done with equal abandon. Later, as the child grows to adulthood, concepts of good and evil begin to differentiate themselves. At first the reaction is to repress the evil aspects of the personality (in essence, when tempted to do evil, the response is to say, "I don't do that because I'm not the type of person who would do such a thing.") This is unhealthy because by denying the urge toward evil the pressure just builds up in the individual over time, and can possibly be released dangerously and uncontrollably, to the detriment of both the individual and society. The answer: acknowledgment of the evil nature, and then the conscious suppression of evil inclinations. According to Jung and Russell this is more healthy than Freudian repression because it honestly admits that all people are capable of great good and great evil, but that through a conscious determination evil can be avoided and good chosen.
Russell sees this model in many ancient religions and texts, including early Christianity and the Old Testament. Drawing mostly upon the depiction of God in the books of Job and Exodus, Russell brings the darker side of God to light, arguing that in this early stage Yahweh is morally undifferentiated or "beyond good and evil." Only in the later stages (I suppose in later books in the series dealing with the New Testament) does good and evil --God and the Devil-- separate into two separate entities.
PUBLISHER: Cornell Univ Pr; ISBN: 0801494095; 1977.
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