C.G. JUNG FACE TO FACE WITH CHRISTIANITY

Subtitled 'dreaming the myth onwards', this volume consists of a series of in-depth conversations with leading Jungian analysts and scholars exploring Jung's lifelong wrestling with Christianity at psychological, theological, symbolic and Gnostic levels. As he recalls in his autobiography, his father was a disillusioned priest, and at the age of eleven he had had an extraordinary and disturbing vision of a giant turd emanating from God landing on Basel Cathedral. This was one source of his ambiguous feelings, further developed by his view that Christianity excluded the feminine and evil, resulting in a one-sided God/Christ image demanding perfection rather than wholeness and integration.

The editor is also the initiator of the podcast Psychology and the Cross, which forms the basis of many of these contributions. Besides Jungian analysts and psychologists, some contributors are philosophers and theologians, bringing a correspondingly different framing, especially to the interface between psychology and religion. We learn that Jung carried a Bible in his pocket all his life, and would on occasion pull it out and read a passage. It was crucial for Jung that individuals are anchored in God, with direct access to 'evidence of inner, transcendent experience which alone can protect him from the otherwise inevitable submersion in the mass.' (p. xxv) Moreover, for him the process of individuation involved making one's conscience conscious, and therefore heeding its inner guidance, especially in the face of social pressure - so evident with the weaponisation of empathy during Covid. Jung's engagement with Christianity is also manifest in his lectures on the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, and his lifelong friendship with theologian Adolf Keller – I have reviewed his corresponding ETH lectures in these pages.

Jung brought his own interpretation to the Imitation of Christ, and in this respect it is important to distinguish between his orthodox image as incarnated saviour to follow, and the Gnostic gospel image of Christ as a wisdom teacher, a model, an exemplar. This tension comes across in a number of the conversations that make the point that redeeming is more than integration. In this context, Jung's imitation of Christ consists in being true to the Self and forging one's unique path as an individual. Our task is to 'make real our own deepest meaning… with the same courage in self-sacrifice as Jesus did… each person should live life to the full, in their own way, until the bitter end.' (p. xxiii) Elsewhere, he is quoted as saying that 'If I thus truly imitate Christ, I do not imitate anyone, I emulate no one, but go my own way, and I will also no longer call myself a Christian.' (p. 232) This position is very resonant with existentialism, and indeed Jung was greatly influenced by Nietzsche while also contradicting him by asserting that God is very much alive (and there is one conversation on Kierkegaard).

Jung famously told John Freeman in 1958 that he knew God, he did not have to believe. In this sense, he is aligned with gnosis and Gnostics, which he studied closely, often in the original. Theologians such as Clement of Alexandria drew an important distinction between the levels of pistis (faith) and direct inner knowing as gnosis. He was also influenced by the dualism with respect to the status of evil, most explicitly discussed in his late and radical work Answer to Job, and in his extensive conversations with Catholic theologian Father Victor White. This theme comes up in a number of conversations that include theodicy – the justification of evil. Satan is depicted as the instrument of Yahweh in testing Job to excruciating limits - with his permission. To Jung, this is immoral and unjust, and reflects poorly on Yahweh. The debate revolves around whether evil is a force in itself or simply absence of good in the same way that darkness is absence of light. There is in fact no conclusive resolution to this mystery of life, although I do regard the inscrutability argument as a cop-out.

The final conversation about Jung's wrestling with Christ with Murray Stein, Ann Conrad Lammers and Paul Bishop recaps many of the central themes, noting that even in his student days Jung maintained that a religion without mysticism is dead, and highlighted the sense of the sacred. He had a strong sense of the need for Christianity to renew itself from within, which I think was also shared by William James with his emphasis on mystical and religious experience rather than rational theology. At the same time, many contributors warn against the psychologisation of Christianity and over-emphasis on the subjective. Meister Eckhart was one of his inspirations, and I think that Jung's life and work prefigure a more general revival of interest in gnosis and Gnosticism – spirituality without religion. Jung made the profound observation that 'Where there's power, there's no love.' (p. 229)

Jung's approach is profoundly individual, while Christianity is also about community building. Both Jung and Christ were rebels, asserting the spirit of freedom over the letter and the law, but his approach, according to the editor, is inadequate in terms of Christianity's revolutionary universalism, with its message of faith, hope, love, and forgiveness. I think Lusensky is right in asserting that Jung missed 'Christianity's collective vision of a transform social order through love' (p. 233) represented by the Kingdom of God, although Christ himself asserted that the kingdom was within, and not of this world. These deeply informed conversations speak to the spiritual condition of our time, and should be widely read.