Jungs Hermeneutics of Scripture

Jung's Hermeneutics of Scripture
StevenKings / Bristol,England
The purpose of this article is to examine Carl Jung's approach to the

interpretation of the Christian scriptures-to consider what principles he
applied, what methods he employed, and what results he obtained. What
is the point of such an inquiry? What could be the relevance of a Jungian
hermeneutic for those of us who read, study, and interpret the Bible?
The first and most obvious answer is to invoke the challenge of moder-
nity-the impact of scientific thinking (since the Renaissance) on our un-
derstanding of scripture. The physical, chemical, and biological sciences
have all made their mark on the range of possibilities for biblical interpre-
tation. Historical science has given birth to the historical-critical method,
and a corresponding psychological-criticalmethod inevitably follows from
the rise of scientific psychology.
A second consideration is that the very notion of "interpretation," the
very attempt to make an ancient text meaningful for those of us who read
it today, can be seen to imply some idea of the "unconscious," either in
the author or in the reader. It implies that the reader remains unaware
of certain layers of meaning that nevertheless can be drawn from the text
within the reader's own context. Equally, interpretation implies that the
author of the text was not aware of all the implications of what they wrote,
even though many of these implications were available from the moment
the text was written. Thus, for example, Rudolf Bultmann's interpreta-
tion of mythological imagery is an attempt to uncover its latent intention,
which in his view is to express the existential self-understanding of the
New Testament writers. This presupposes that such a self-understanding,
though present, was unconscious, finding conscious expression only
through the conceptuality of the dominant, mythical worldview.'
Such a theory of unconscious authorial intention certainly becomes
problematic in the context of poststructuralism; this may not mean that
the concept of the unconscious is totally liquidated, but might perhaps
require its redefinition as a background of latent linguistic possibilities.
' Compare M. J. De Nys, "Myth and Interpretation: Bultmann Revisited," International

Journalfor the Philosophyof Religion 12 (1980): 27-41, p. 34, 34n.
? 1997 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/97/7702-0003$02.00
233
The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

Downloaded from www.journals.uchicago.edu by University of Exeter on 06/29/20. For personal use only.
The Journal of Religion
OccasionallyJung himself resembles a prototype poststructuralist,of a
sort, and there is certainly scope for postmodern readings ofJung, which
would in turn have implicationsfor a Jungian hermeneutic.2It remains
true, however, that Jung was basically a modernist in his culture and
training, not to mention his epistemology, which was unashamedly Kan-
tian. Even if his models of psychic agents and processes are not essentialist,
they retain a strong element of psychological realismthat seems to iden-
tify them as modern rather than postmodern. He claims that we cannot
deny the reality of the archetypes and therefore insists that we must find
a new interpretation of the archetypal images, one which is appropriate
to the level of consciousness that our civilization has attained. This is nec-
essary in order to establish a connection between our instinctual origins,
which still live in the unconscious, and our present world to which con-
sciousness is oriented. Without such a connection "a rootless conscious-
ness comes into being" that "succumbs helplessly to all manner of sugges-
tions and ... is susceptibleto psychic epidemics"(CWvol. 9, pt. 1, par.
267). Hence, "the importance of hermeneutics should not be underesti-
mated." The vitality of Christianity can only be preserved, Jung argues,
"if each age translates the myth into its own language and makes it an
essential content of its view of the world" (CW vol. 14, par. 474). Jungian
hermeneutics thus exhibits the same dialogical relation to the past as has
often been claimed for biblical interpretation: one listens to the message
2 Consider his theory of archetypes, which he regards as unconscious

dispositions or psy-
chic structures that are utterly unknowable in themselves and thus can only be known in
the form of their conscious expression, i.e., through the images with which contemporary
culture clothes them. This implies that the unconscious is in fact not a psychic substance but
rather a heuristic device for explaining conscious phenomena. This leads Jung to warn
against "the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of," since even
the best explanations are "only more or less successful translations into another metaphori-
cal language." The ideas of psychology itself, he claims, "are derived from archetypal struc-
tures," and thus psychology "translates the archaic speech of myth into a modern mytholo-
gem ... which constitutes one element of the myth 'science' " (Carl Jung, CollectedWorks
[London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953-79], vol. 9, pt. 1, pars. 271, 302). CollectedWorks
cited hereafter as CW Thus, one never arrives at a language of univocal signification in
which linguistic units can be matched up with their psychic referents. Both language and
psyche occupy the reality which Jung calls image. See also E. Casey, 'Jung and the Postmod-
ern Condition," Spring (1987): 100-105. Casey insists that Jung's equation of image with
psycheis not an essentialist model of psyche but rather a reversal of the modernist view that
images are "bare copies or signs of that which they represent;" thus Jung's is a nonessentia-
list phenomenology of image. Drawing parallels between the collectivity ofJung's archetypal
images and Ferdinand de Saussure's theory that individual speech is determined by collec-
tive speaking, Casey suggests that the Jungian subject can be seen as a prestructured prod-
uct of the linguistic network of collective archetypal imagery. For further postmodern read-
ings of Jung, see, e.g., D. L. Miller, "The 'Stone' Which Is Not a Stone: C. G. Jung and the
Postmodern Meaning of 'Meaning'," Spring 49 (1989): 110-22; and R. Schenk, "Myths of
Meaning," Spring 56 (1994): 19-39.
234

Jung's Hermeneutics
of the past, and at the same time one translates the past into the language
of one's present.
THE PLACE OF SCRIPTURE IN JUNG'S WORK
As a matter of fact, Jung's primary interest in the Judeo-Christian tradi-

tion is focused not on its scriptures but on the psychological significance
and benefits of its doctrinesand practicesas they emerge from their origins
in primitive religion and evolve through the centuries under all kinds of
influence. He deals at various times with theodicy, the Trinity, Christol-
ogy, the confessional, the Mass and other rituals, and even the Assump-
tion of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which Jung regards as an important
development in the collective psychology of Western culture. This preoc-
cupation with Christian dogma is reflected in the secondary literature
among psychologists as well as theologians.3 Where Jung does refer to
biblical material, his commentators are happy to follow him, but little
interest has been shown in the actual methodologyof his scriptural inter-
pretations or in the view of scriptureimplied by the way in which he uses it.4
The Jewish and Christian scriptures are undoubtedly of great impor-
tance in Jung's work, as one might expect given that his father and several
uncles were pastors in the Swiss Reformed Church whose other great son,
Karl Barth, was just nine years younger than Carl Jung. However, as a
psychologist he could not ascribe any unique or exclusive significance to
the Bible, because he found that the realities of the human psyche were
3 See, e.g., C. Bryant, Jung and the ChristianWay (London: Darton, Longman, & Todd,
1983); E. Edinger, "Trinity and Quaternity,"Journalof AnalyticalPsychology9 (1964): 103-14;
J. A. Hall, The UnconsciousChristian(Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist, 1993); J. Hillman, "Psychology:
Monotheistic or Polytheistic?" Spring (1971), pp. 193-208; R. Hostie, Religionand thePsychol-
ogy of ung (London: Sheed & Ward, 1957); A. Moreno,Jung, Gods,and ModernMan (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970); H. L. Philp,Jung and theProblemof Evil
(London: Rockliff, 1958); and V. White, Godand the Unconscious(London: Fontana, 1960).
Even David Cox'sJung and St. Paul: A Studyof theDoctrineofJustificationbyFaithand Its Relation
to the Conceptof Individuation (London: Longmans, Green, 1959) does not examine Jung's
own treatment of scripture.
4 One early, brief exception is K. Lambert's "Critical Notice on Jung's Answer
toJob,"Jour-
nal of AnalyticalPsychology1 (1955): 100-108. Lambert notes that Jung's approach to the
Bible mediates between Catholic exegesis and Protestant hermeneutics. On the Catholic
side, Jung acknowledges the importance of interpretation by the Church, i.e., within the
developing community and culture of faith. On the Protestant side, Jung accepts the results
of biblical criticism with regard to the dating of documents, psychological explanations, etc.
(106-107). A number of commentators have drawn upon the insights of depth psychology
(both Freudian and Jungian) in conducting their own exegesis, but without explicitly in-
vestigating the exegetical procedures ofJung himself. See, e.g., Eugen Drewermann, Tiefen-
psychologieund Exegese,2 vols. (Olten: Walter-Verlag, 1984, 1985); Gerd Theissen, Psychologi-
cal Aspectsof Pauline Theology(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987); and Walter Wink, Naming the
Powers:the Language of Powerin the New Testament(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pt. 3.
235

symbolically expressed in all religious literature. Consequently, he had no

canon as such, and passages from the Old and New Testaments are often
juxtaposed with apocryphal, Gnostic, rabbinical, patristic, mystical, or
hermetic parallels and interpretations. He made use of the research into
the history of religions by Wilhelm Bousset and Richard Reizenstein so
that his writings frequently examine the ancient Near Eastern back-
ground to biblical materials, especially in Babylonian, Egyptian, and
Mithraic religion.5 And from about 1930 onward, he began to discover
what was to become the single most important source for his work on
religious psychology-the writings of medieval alchemists, to which three
volumes of his CollectedWorksare exclusively devoted, and whose inter-
pretations of the Christian scriptures offered him unprecedented insights
into the psychological truth of religious symbolism.6 Despite all this, the
Bible remained important for Jung precisely because of its relation to
other literature rather than its exclusive isolation. Its concepts and its
imagery could be understood by comparison with the most diverse
sources from all parts of the world and in all periods of history, and to
Jung this demonstrated the universal significance of biblical revelation.
HERMENEUTICAL METHOD
The comparative aspect of Jung's approach to scripture can be seen at

work in what he calls the method of amplification.He compares this with
the tactics of the philologist, confronted with an unfamiliar word, who
looks for parallel texts and applications of the word in other contexts in
order to shed light on its meaning. As we learn to read hieroglyphics and
cuneiform inscriptions, so we learn to read dreams and other symbolic
experiences that (taken individually) are usually too vague or insubstan-
tial to provide their own interpretation. To become intelligible, the sym-
bol needs to be amplified through association and analogy, and this can
be done both at the personal level, through the associations produced by
the patient in therapy, and at the collectivelevel, through the analogies
discovered by the analyst in his or her study of religious symbolism.7
At the personal level, such amplification needs to take account of the
patient's individual circumstances (CW vol. 5, par. 681). Dream symbols
must be considered in relation to the dreamer's immediate state of con-
I
See in particular Symbolsof Transformation(CW vol. 5), the 1952 revision of his earlier
book, ThePsychologyof the Unconscious:A Studyof the Transformations and Symbolisms of theLibido
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1912).
6Jung's own account of his gradual discovery of alchemy is given in his autobiography,
Memories,Dreams,Reflections(London: Fontana, 1993), pp. 230 ff. His alchemical writings
appear in CW vols. 12, 13, and 14.
7 On these ideas, see CW vol. 7, pars. 495, 497; vol. 12, par. 403; vol. 18, par. 173.
236

Jung's Hermeneutics
sciousness, and interpretation must follow the clues provided by devel-
oping fantasies and associations (CW vol. 8, par. 400; vol. 16, par. 339).
For example, "water" means something particular to each person: to one
it is "green," to another "H20," to another "suicide," and so on (CW vol.
18, par. 174). The significance of a particular image is discovered only
through its meaning for a particular patient.8 Nevertheless, in the course
of his work Jung noticed "certain well-defined themes and formal ele-
ments, which repeated themselves in identical or analogous form with
the most varied individuals." For example, the oppositionsbetween light
and dark, upper and lower, left and right; or the union of oppositesin some
third thing; or the quaternity(that is, a square, a cross, or a circle in four
quadrants) (CW vol. 8, par. 401). For Jung, this showed that our symbolic
life is governed not only by personal factors but also by collective uncon-
scious patterns, the archetypes,that stimulate symbolic images "by availing
themselves of the existing conscious material" (CW vol. 8, par. 403). In a
sense, it is the personal level that providesthe key to the collective level.
Because interpretation at the personal level must respect the particular
meaning-possibilities of the individual, interpretation at the collective
level (e.g., biblical interpretation) will be qualified by personal meanings.
In other words, a biblical passage conveys a formal generality of meaning
but only attains concretesignificance in relation to the individual who
reads and interprets it.
Nevertheless, the mythological products of the collective unconscious
are not individual acquisitions but reflect "the inborn language of the
psyche and its structure," and they have to be examined in a global sym-
bological context (CW vol. 10, par. 646). Jung conducted his own detailed
and wide-ranging research into the history of symbolism and found that
his method of amplification could be applied to historical as well as con-
temporary material (CW vol. 10, par. 771). In dealing with an ancient
text, of course, one does not have access to the personal associations and
fantasies of the author, but where the imagery of the text is collectiveone
can fortunately rely on comparative religious symbolism to provide the
necessary amplification. According to Jung, religions "consist of universal
myth motifs whose origin and content are collective and not personal,"
reflecting a fundamental psychic structure that, like the physical body, is
common to all (CW vol. 13, par. 478).
Jung's use of biblical material usually involves its amplification through
8
See M. L. Pauson,Jung thePhilosopher(New York: Peter Lang, 1988). Pauson insists that
images should not be "reduced" and limited by the context of "present categories of
thought and analogues of feeling" but recalls Jung's admonition to examine every dream
as unique (p. 62). Thus "the referents of the image along with the meaning possibilities
vary from one context to the next" (p. 193).
237

the symbolism and mythology of other religions. As an example of the
quaternity symbolizing psychic totality or wholeness, he is fond of com-
paring Ezekiel's vision of the four living creatures (Ezekiel 1) with an
Egyptian legend concerning the four sons of Horus. Ezekiel's creatures
each have four faces (one a human, one a lion, one an ox, and one an
eagle), while the sons of Horus have the heads of a man, an ape, a jackal,
and a hawk, respectively; in each case one-quarter is human and three-
quarters animal. Jung takes this as an expression of the four psychic
functions (thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation), of which one is
dominant and fully conscious, while the other three are more or less un-
conscious.9 The vision and the legend shed light on each other by exhib-
iting certain common features that stand out from the background of
disparate material.
Another example of amplification is his discussion of the Old Testa-
ment references to Yahweh's battle with the sea dragon known as Rahab
or Leviathan.' 0Jung follows Hermann Gunkel in relating this to the Bab-
ylonian creation epic in which Marduk, the god of spring, defeats Tiamat,
the mother of the gods, and thus creates the world. Both narratives are
viewed as expressions of the struggle by consciousness to assert its inde-
pendence against the maternal sea of the unconscious (CW vol. 5, pars.
375-83). The same struggle is reflected in the motif of the hero, a clear
example of which is the story of Jesus; common features of the hero's
life include his lowly origins, divine father, miraculous birth, rescue from
murderous enemies, precocious development, youthful demise, a symbol-
ically significant manner of death, and the eventual conquest of death
(CW vol. 9, pt. 1, pars. 281-82; vol. 11, par. 229). "The hero's main feat,"
writes Jung, "is to overcome the monster of darkness: it is the long hoped-
for and expected triumph of consciousness over the unconscious" (CW
vol. 9, pt. 1, par. 284).
PRINCIPLES OF INTERPRETATION
The principles underlying Jung's method of interpretation generally re-

flect the nonreductivetendencies of his psychology. Here Jung's view of the
contrast between himself and Sigmund Freud is illuminating and high-
lights his nonreductive approach in three ways." First, for Freud, the
9
See CW vol. 9, pt. 2, par. 188; vol. 13, pars. 360-62; vol. 14, pars. 269, 272.
0oOn Rahab, see Job 26:12, Ps. 89:10, and Isa. 51:9. On Leviathan, see Job 41:1 ff., Ps.
74:13-14, and Isa. 27:1.
" See E.
Edinger, "Symbols: The Meaning of Life," Spring (1962), pp. 45-66. Edinger
outlines three possibilities for the relationship between the ego and the unconscious symbol;
they are identification, alienation, and participation (pp. 48-49). Freudian psychology ex-
plains symbols reductively in terms of the id and its instincts and thus exhibits the reductive
fallacy that characterizes alienation of ego from unconscious (pp. 51-52).
238

Jung's Hermeneutics
driving force behind psychic phenomena, the libido, was fundamentally
sexual, and thus Freudian interpretation was ultimately a reduction to
psychosexual dynamics. When Jung speaks of libido, on the other hand,
he means psychicenergyin general, of which sexual desire is only one com-
ponent; thus there will be no such reduction, and indeed in Jung's view
the sexual symbols, such as the phallus, can themselves represent some-
thing other and much broader than sexuality as such.12
Second, Jung takes full account of the psychic impulse toward whole-
ness and integration, and Jungian interpretation thus has a teleological
orientation. Freud analyzes psychic phenomena from the strictly causal
standpoint, viewing dreams and neuroses as the results of an infantile
regression of libidoor its repression by censorious moral factors, but Jung
wants to consider the purposive nature of the psyche, the goals toward
which it is striving."3For example, Paul's vision of Christ on the road to
Damascus (Acts 9) should not be reduced to his repressed envy of the
role Christ played among his compatriots that prompted Paul to identify
himself with Christ (CW vol. 6, par. 717). Rather, the vision should be
seen "from the angle of his future mission," from which Jung concludes
"that Paul, though consciously a persecutor of Christians, had uncon-
sciously adopted the Christian standpoint, and that he was first brought
to avow it by an irruption of the unconscious, because his unconscious
personality was constantly striving towards this goal" (par. 719). Similarly,
Peter's vision of the sheet covered with clean and unclean animals (Acts
10) cannot be explained by reducing it to the fact that, being "very hun-
gry," he was incited by his unconscious to eat anything that came to hand,
whether or not it was ritually pure or that "the eating of unclean beasts
merely signified the fulfillment of a forbidden wish," presumably sexual.
Rather, one should take note of the explanation offered in Acts 10:28,
where Peter says, "God has shown me that I should not call anyone com-
mon or unclean," which in psychological terms means that the uncon-
scious expresses the reconciling and integrating impulse of libido in the
form of a vision (CW vol. 6, pars. 716-17, 719).
Third, Jung distinguishes the symbolas he understands it from Freud's
semioticuse of the term. According to Jung, what Freud incorrectly calls
symbols are in fact merely signs or symptomsof particular instinctual pro-
cesses and unconscious contents, having a fixed meaning and a one-to-
one relation with their psychic referent that simply requires decoding. By
12
See, e.g., CW vol. 6, par. 778. See also J. W. Heisig, Imago Dei: A Study of C. G. Jung's
Psychologyof Religion (Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1979), pp. 24-25.
~3 See, e.g., CWvol. 6, par. 718; vol. 16, par. 9. As Heisig notes, Jung's psychology required
both causal and final approaches, "although there was never any doubt that he preferred
the latter" (p. 115).
239

contrast, Jung insists that symbols are not signs or allegories for some-
thing already known, but rather they express a content that has not yet
been consciously recognized or conceptually determined, or that cannot
be formulated in any better way. To the extent that such symbols are
collective and archetypal, and thus originate in the unconscious, they
are in the last resort never quite determinate, since unconscious contents
are not subject to the process of differentiation between opposites, which,
for Jung, characterizes consciousness (CW vol. 15, par. 105; vol. 16, pars.
339-40). Such symbols are therefore paradoxical or dialectical in charac-
ter-they can carry different meanings and contain apparent contradic-
tions; any symbol, taken by itself, is overdetermined,having several aspects
of meaning, and can be interpreted in different ways (CW vol. 11, par.
723). Conversely, the same psychic reality can be expressed by any num-
ber of different symbols whose meaning is only accessible through ampli-
fication. Thus the phallus, as we have seen, denotes not the penis but the
libido in general, the creative psychic energy, the power of healing and
fertility whose mythological symbols also include the bull, the pomegran-
ate, lightning, and the dance (CW vol. 5, par. 329; vol. 16, par. 340).
Alchemical symbolism, which expressed psychic integration in terms of
the union of opposing material substances, used vast numbers of syno-
nyms to represent the opposites, such as man-woman, god-goddess, son-
mother, red-white, active-passive, body-spirit, and so on (CWvol. 14, par.
655). These symbols are grounded in unconscious archetypes whose psy-
chic energy is released by attracting those conscious images most appro-
priate for their expression, but the full reality of the archetypes tran-
scends what is conceptually accessible (CW vol. 5, par. 344). Christopher
Bryant, in his book Jung and the ChristianWay,believes that our study of
the Bible would be transformed "if we could understand the biblical im-
ages, not as poetical ways of stating what could with greater precision be
stated in exact prose, but rather as powerful symbols able to release a
flow of spiritual life in us." 14
In fact, Jung finds the figurative imagery of mythical symbolism far
more suited to the description of psychic processes than any intellectual
formulation or rational conceptuality. Thus his psychological commen-
taries on religious and alchemical texts often make little attempt to trans-
late the symbolism into scientific terminology. He begins one essay, Psy-
chologyand Alchemy,with an apology that his exposition "sounds like a
Gnostic myth" (CW vol. 12, par. 28). His book on Job often reads like a
strange narrative in which psychological agents are personified as gods
"4Bryant (n. 3 above), p. 124.
240

Jung's Hermeneutics
and demons. The reason is clear: symbolic language is the truest reflec-
tion of the paradoxicaland indeterminaterealities to which it points. This is
how Jung sums it up in 1940: "Contents of an archetypal character are
manifestations of processes in the collective unconscious. Hence they do
not refer to anything that is or has been conscious, but to something es-
sentially unconscious. In the last analysis, therefore, it is impossible to say
what they refer to. Every interpretation necessarily remains an 'as-if'. The
ultimate core of meaning may be circumscribed, but not described" (CW
vol. 9, pt. 1, par. 265).
In order to grasp more systematically the way in which Jung's psychol-
ogy structures his interpretation of scripture, it is necessary to character-
ize the psychic realities that are being expressed in symbols generally and
biblical symbols in particular. Although the symbol points to a total situa-
tion which cannot be conceptually formulated, Jung does describe the
progress of the soul toward wholeness. A condensed account might out-
line this process in three phases-discrimination of opposites, confrontation
of opposites, and integrationof opposites. The phase of discriminationin-
volves the emergence of consciousness and its gradual alienation from
the unconscious; the crystallization of the Ego in the form of the socially
acceptable Persona, and the consequent devaluation of the non-Ego; the
repression and devaluation of unconscious contents generally; and the
development of the unconscious, unconventional, and thus undesirable
Shadow. The phase of confrontationbegins with symptoms of unconscious
compensation for the unbalanced one-sidedness of the conscious attitude,
symptoms such as dreams and neuroses. Integrationis achieved with the
appearance of mediating symbols, through which Ego-consciousness and
Shadow-Unconscious are reconciled, so that Ego-consciousness is broad-
ened and relativized in relation to the Self, which is both the ground and
the goal of integration. All three phases are represented among the bibli-
cal passages which Jung interprets, and I will now offer some concrete
examples of this process. To understand what Jung is doing, we need to
remember that for him the figure of God in religious imagination, which
he calls the God-image, is a symbol of the Self and cannot empirically be
distinguished from it. The Self is by no means what we sometimes think of
as self-consciousness but, rather, the psychic totality encompassing both
conscious and unconscious life, which can therefore legitimately be called
a transcendent reality, inaccessible to empirical conceptuality, and autono-
mous in relation to our conscious will.'15This must constantly be borne in
mind for what follows.
15On this, see, e.g., CW vol. 5, pars. 95, 129-30; vol. 6, pars. 789-90; vol. 11, par. 757.
241

THE GROWTH TOWARD WHOLENESS IN BIBLICAL IMAGERY
"The coming of consciousness," according to Jung, "was probably the

most tremendous experience of primeval times, for with it the world
came into being whose existence no one had suspected before" (CW vol.
9, pt. 1, par. 284). Certainly such a world was "physically there,"but it was
"a nameless happening, not a definite actuality," until the moment when
consciousness could say, "That is the world, and this is I!" The experience
of the separation of consciousness from the unconscious is captured in
the Creation story of Genesis chapter 1; we read first that "darkness was
on the face of the deep," and then that God said "Let there be light!" and
finally that "God separated the light from the darkness." Jung writes:
"That was the first morning of the world, the first sunrise after the primal
darkness, when that inchoately conscious complex, the ego, the son of
darkness, knowingly sundered subject and object, and thus precipitated
the world and itself into definite existence" (CW vol. 14, pars. 129, 476).16
Consciousness emerges or increases whenever a change in circum-
stances calls for adaption and awareness, but the discrimination of oppo-
sites that is essential for consciousness goes against the nature of the un-
conscious instinct for balance and unity (CW vol. 12, par. 30; vol. 13,
par. 12). This poses a threat to psychic stability, and thus the coming of
consciousness is not simply good but ambiguous; the bifurcation of one
into two is not only the opportunity for integration on a higher level of
consciousness but also the source of tension, alienation, and conflict. This
is reflected in a curious feature of the Creation story, which was brought
to Jung's attention through the writings of the medieval alchemist Ger-
hard Dorn and has also been noted by Jung's pupil Jolande Jacobi.'7 The
second day of Creation, on which God separates the waters above the
firmament from those below it, is the only day of which we do not read
"God saw that it was good" (see Gen. 1:6-8). The Septuagint adds the
phrase, but English translations are unanimous in following the Hebrew
and omitting it. God's work on the second day is not called "good," be-
cause the waters are divided by a firmament, and the significance of this
becomes clearer once we remember that wateris for Jung a symbol of the
unconscious; thus we see that the separation of consciousness from the
16
See Pauson (pp. 145-84) for an interpretation of the seven days of Creation in terms of
creativedevelopmentor individuation,with days 1-3 as the "first half of life" (corresponding to
my discrimination)and days 4-6 as the "second half" (corresponding to my confrontation
and integration).
in the Psychologyof C. G. Jung (London: Routledge &
'7 J. Jacobi, Complex/Archetype/Symbol
Kegan Paul, 1959), p. 143. Jung often discusses this aspect of the Creation, e.g., in CW vol.
11, pars. 104n., 180, 256.
242

Jung's Hermeneutics
unconscious has produced an inner antagonism which is itself, at this
stage, unconscious.'8
The immediate consequence is that Creation and Fall are intercon-
nected. An increase in consciousness means a tendency toward autonomy
and, thus, a rebellion against the unreflecting subservience to instinct,
against God as the primal unity of the self (CW vol. 13, par. 12). The
extension of consciousness, through which opposites are differentiated,
is represented as eating from the tree which gives knowledge of good and
evil, and in Genesis chapter 3 this is felt to be a deadly sin-with some
justification according to Jung, because the ego can only establish itself
through a self-assertion that is out of proportion to its partiality and in-
completeness. The conscious personality is only "an arbitrary segment of
the collective psyche," and yet it must set itself up as the norm of decision
and action; hence it feels its guilt and its alienation from the source of
life (CW vol. 7, par. 243).
The second stage of psychic development, confrontationof the opposites,
receives a lengthy and detailed exegetical treatment in Jung's Answerto
Job, written in 1952.' Job suffers unaccountably at the hands of Yahweh,
and yet he turns to Yahweh for help; he doubts the justice of Yahweh,
and yet he looks to Yahweh for justice; in other words, 'Job ... expected
help from God against God" (CW vol. 11, par. 358). He remains con-
vinced of the unity of God and thus "clearly sees that God is at odds with
Himself"; Job becomes aware that God is "a totality of inner opposites,"
both good and evil (CW vol. 11, par. 567). Yahweh, meanwhile, remains
in a state of unconsciousness. He is unaware that Satan is actually a
doubtingthoughtwithin himself;thus it does not occur to him to reassure
himself about Job's faithfulness by consulting his own omniscience, nor
18
For a different interpretation, see G. J. Wenham, Genesis1-15 (Dallas: Word Bible Com-
mentary, 1987). Wenham comments that the Septuagint's insertion of the phrase "And God
saw that it was good" into verse 8 is "an inept attempt at standardization ... because a) the
heavens were not complete till day 4, and b) the addition mars the sevenfold use of the
formula in the MT" (p. 4). The first reason is unconvincing, since the formula is also applied
to days 3 and 5, while the earth is still incomplete. Later he suggests that the formula was
omitted "because the separation of the waters was not completed till the following day" (p.
19), but the separation of dry land from water (which occurs on day 3) cannot be conflated
with the separation of watersfrom waters(day 2). Regarding the sevenfold formula, Wenham
notes that the approval formula appears twice on days 3 and 6 (p. 6), but he offers no com-
pelling reason for this emphasis and certainly no satisfactory explanation of why it is made
at the expense of day 2 in particular.
'9Answer toJob appears in CW vol. 11. See J. Ryce-Menuhin, '"Jung'sAnswertoJob in the
Light of the Monotheisms," in Jung and the Monotheisms,ed. J. Ryce-Menuhin (London:
Routledge, 1994), chap. 9, for a clear exposition of the book, which is then applied to the
psychotherapeutic relationship (pp. 114-17), and finally examined in relation to Islamic
theodicy (pp. 121-24).
243

does he think to punish Satan for the cruel injustice ofJob's fate. On the
contrary, once his dirty work is done Satan completely disappears from
view, he is relegated to the unconscious, and Yahweh projects his own
unfaithfulness onto Job by accusing Job of harboring subversive opinions.
It is plain that Job knows more about God than God knows about himself,
and Job is thus intellectually and morally superior. Yahweh must learn to
differentiate the opposites within himself; he must become this and not
that. He must become a concrete and particular individual; that is, he
must become human. In terms of Jung's psychological commentary, the
incarnation is a result of Yahweh's encounter with Job.
In Luke 10:18 Jesus tells his disciples that he "saw Satan fall like light-
ning from heaven"; here Satan's intimacy with Yahweh is forfeited and he
is expelled. Through his incarnation, Yahweh has differentiated between
the sinless light of Christ and the evil darkness of Satan and has wholly
identified with Christ. God thus consciously becomes a good God, a lov-
ing father, a just judge. According to Jung, this is the predominant image
of God in the New Testament, and it represents a necessary but one-sided
development, the epitome of which is found in the letters of John, where
we read that "God is light and in Him is no darkness at all" (1 John 1:5),
that "no one born of God commits sin" (1 John 3:9), that "God is love,"
and that "there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear" (1 John
4:16, 18): a God of light, a fearless love, and a sinless life. For Jung it
is inevitable that such a one-sided attitude will be compensated in the
unconscious, and there is every likelihood that an antithetical picture of
God will erupt in one way or another. This, he claims, is what happens in
the book of Revelation; here the Lamb is no longer an innocent victim
but a wrathful monster, the majority of the human race is annihilated in
an unparalleled bloodbath, and the "eternal" Gospel is now summed up
in the words "Fear God!" (Rev. 14:6-7). There is, notes Jung, "no more
talk of God's love" (CW vol. 11, par. 719).
For psychological reasons, Jung concurs with the traditional but con-
troversial view that the Johannine Epistles and the Book of Revelation
were written by the same person. Indeed, he writes that "one could
hardly imagine a more suitable personality for the John of the Apocalypse
than the author of the Epistles of John" (CW vol. 11, par. 698). The ex-
treme polarity between them reflects the confrontation of opposites
which Jung sees as an inevitable outcome of the one-sided perfectionism
of John's conscious Christian life. His repression of all negative feelings
and images of God allowed his unconscious free reign in spinning "an
elaborate web of resentments and vengeful thoughts," and this negativity
eventually breaks out in "a veritable orgy of hatred, wrath, vindictiveness,
and blind destructive fury" that "blatantly contradicts all ideas of Chris-
tian humility, tolerance, love of one's neighbor and one's enemies, and
244

Jung's Hermeneutics
makes nonsense of a loving Father in heaven and rescuer of mankind"
(CW vol. 11, par. 708).20
AnswertoJob ends by considering the possibility of some kind of integra-
tion between these opposite poles. Jung suggests that John's vision of the
new Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, "has the meaning of a 'uniting sym-
bol'" (CW vol. 11, par. 727). The four walls of the city, like the four rivers
flowing out of Eden, and the four living creatures of Ezekiel, are a quater-
nity symbolizing wholeness. The marriage between the Lamb and the
Holy City is a union of opposites in which the wrathful monster of the
unconscious and the perfected saint of conscious life are integrated.
This union of opposites is also signified by the birth of the Savior, and
in PsychologicalTypes,Jung interprets the messianic prophecies of Isaiah
in this manner. With the coming of the Messiah, according to Isa. 11:6-8,
the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and
the child will play by the den of the adder (CW vol. 6, par. 441). Such
opposites cannot be united by conscious reason, and the symbolic solu-
tion is irrational, hence the coming of the Savior is associated with mirac-
ulous circumstances, such as a virgin birth (par. 438). Furthermore, in
Isaiah, the day of the Lord is described in two contrasting ways, on the
one hand as a day of vengeance and destruction, on the other as a time
when the desert flows with water and the wilderness blossoms with new
life (e.g., Isaiah 34 and 35). Jung interprets this by explaining that "the
appearance of the redeeming symbol is closely connected with destruc-
tion and devastation. If the old were not ripe for death," he says, "nothing
new would appear; and if the old were not injuriously blocking the way
for the new, it would not need to be rooted out." He continues: "The
birth of the savior is equivalent to a great catastrophe, because a new
and powerful life ... comes streaming out of the unconscious," from the
"discredited and rejected region" that "consists of all those psychic con-
tents that were repressed because of their incompatibility with conscious
values-everything hateful, immoral, wrong, unsuitable, or useless,
which means everything that at one time or another appeared so to the
individual concerned." All these unconscious contents that "have lain fal-
low and unfertile, and were unused, repressed, undervalued, and de-
spised, suddenly burst forth and begin to live. It is precisely the least
valued function that enables life to continue," and this life erupts '"just
20
In K. Lambert's article, "Agape as a Therapeutic Factor in Analysis" (JournalofAnalytical
Psychology18, no. 1 [1973]: 25-46), he asserts that Saint Paul uses agape in 1 Cor. 13:4-8 "in
an idealized way involving denial of the shadow rather than integration of it" and suggests
that "the word agape could be stretched to include experiencing and overcoming primitive
or infantile impulses of hatred, anger, murderousness, etc." (p. 36). He warns that the ana-
lyst needs "an attitude that is benign enough because the malignant elements have been
made conscious and partly overcome" (p. 37).
245

where there had seemed to be no life and no power and no possibility
of further development" (CW vol. 6, pars. 444-46, 449). When rational
thinking proves to be a dead end, the uniting symbol comes from the
place where it was least expected. As Nathanael says to Philip in John
1:46, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (CW vol. 6, par. 438.)
What, then, can be said of the central redeemer figure of the Christian
Bible, Jesus Christ? In Jung's view, the Jesus of the Gospels is character-
ized by the same one-sidedness as the New Testament in general, because
he is the incarnation of the good God, the sinless antithesis of Satan, and
thus lacks the nocturnal or evil aspects of the psychic totality (CW vol. 11,
par. 232). Yet at the same time Jung describes Christ as a "Symbol of the
Self" (CW vol. 9, pt. 2, chap. 5), whose dual nature as God and human is
a powerful expression of the integration between the conscious and the
unconscious. I am not sure whether Jung shows how these two aspects of
the Christ figure can be related adequately, but I think his own writings
provide a starting point, although he does not follow it up.21 The death
of Jesus represents his defeat at the hands of the devil, a confrontation
with his opposite in which his one-sided perfection is apparently de-
stroyed. But the manner of his death shows that this one-sidedness is in
fact being transformed. Christ hangs on a cross, which is a quaternity
symbolizing wholeness; he is suspended between two thieves, one of
whom rejects him while the other accepts him. In other words, the sinless
Christ is reconciled with his shadow, the quaternity is established midway
between heaven and hell, and the death of Christ thus represents his
completion.22
21
Heisig notes that for Jung Christ "both is and is not a symbol of the Self" (p. 65). He
suggests that Christ "represents the suffering that the ego must endure at the expense of
the unconscious on its way to individuation" (p. 66).
22 See CW vol. 9,
pt. 2, pars. 79, 123-24, 402; vol. 11, pars. 250, 659, 739. Compare
Edinger, "Christ as Paradigm of the Individuating Ego," Spring (1966): 5-23. Edinger sug-
gests that "in the course of being crucified, Jesus as ego and Christ as self merge." Both ego
(man) and self (God) are crucified in Christ; the self suffers "a kind of dismemberment,"
leaving "its eternal, unmanifest condition" in order to achieve "particularization or incarna-
tion in the finite," while the ego suffers "a paralyzing suspension between opposites" that is
necessary for "a full awareness of the paradoxical nature of the psyche" (pp. 18-19). Cox
([n. 3 above], pp. 328-29) offers a fascinating interpretation of Gethsemane in terms of the
mandala as an enclosed garden, inside which are "four figures round a central representa-
tion of the deity." Jesus (the self) is accompanied by three disciples whose "faithfulness"
proves ambiguous (cf. the three "differentiated functions"); Judas is the devil whose be-
trayal turns out to be part of God's plan (cf. the "inferior function"). Cox suggests that when
Jesus passes over to the evil side with Judas, he wishes the other three to follow him, and
that the scene represents an attempt to unite the opposites. Perhaps more precisely, I would
say that the scene portrays a necessary encounter with the shadow, which the self (as ego)
undergoes as a step towardunification of opposites via integration of the shadow. Thus Jesus
had to die, and his death was not a failure in the attempt to unite opposites but a necessary
stage in the process. Is Judas in heaven?
246

Jung's Hermeneutics
The Gospels, of course, were written in the light of the resurrection,and
this is what Jung does not seem to notice. The resurrection is the event
through which the death of Jesus, an equally one-sided triumph of the
Shadow, is transcended and relativized by the all-encompassing reality of
God. Through the resurrection, Jesus' death is disclosed and confirmed
as a transformation, as completion rather than destruction. Thus Peter
preaches the resurrection by proclaiming that "God has made him both
Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified" (Acts 2:36), and Paul
writes that Jesus Christ was "designated Son of God ... by his resurrec-
tion from the dead" (Rom. 1:4). Jesus, therefore, attains the fullness of
divinity through his death and resurrection; the psyche attains wholeness
when the one-sidedness of the Ego is abolished through the confronta-
tion with its opposite, and when the Ego is completed and transformed
through its integration into the totality of the Self. At the same time, how-
ever, the Evangelists, writing in the aftermath of the resurrection, are
able to read the reality of Christ back into the life of Jesus, to interpret
his earthly life in anticipation of its final consummation. They know that
it is Christwho dies and is transformed. In psychological terms, the Self
(as both the ground and the goal of integration) is actualized through a
process that the Self itself initiates, although this full reality of the Self
cannot be known in advance but only revealed, as it were, in retrospect.23
Christ incarnate, crucified, and risen symbolizes the Self. Transforma-
tion must take place in the life of each individual. Hence each believer
must take up their cross and follow Jesus, must die with him and be raised
with him (cf. Mark 8:34; Rom. 6:4-8).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Jung's hermeneutics of scripture raises a number of important issues, and

I will end by commenting on some of them. First, we have seen that for
psychological reasons Jung identifies the author of Revelation with the
writer of the Johannine Epistles. To some extent, therefore, he disarms
the modern arguments against common authorship based on differences
23
See, e.g., CW vol. 9, pt. 1, pars. 278 (the entelechyof the self as "the a priori existence of
potential wholeness"), 541 (the self "always present, but sleeping"), and 634 (the energy of
the self "manifested in the almost irresistible compulsion and urge to becomewhatone is"). On
the self as both process and goal of individuation, cf. R. F C. Hull, "Translator'sPreface," in
H. Schaer, Religion and the Cure of Souls in Jung's Psychology(London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1951), p. 3n. On the unpredictable outcome of individuation, see CW vol. 6, par. 759;
CW vol. 9, pt. 1, par. 524; Carl Jung, Letters (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973),
1:133, letter of 1933; see also M. Fordham, The ObjectivePsyche (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 57.
247

of style and content, though this is bound to remain contentious.24 Inter-
estingly enough, a more recent figure who comes in for similar treatment
is Friedrich Nietzsche, whose unconscious erupts, according to Jung, in
the person of Zarathustra. Here, too, a difference in style is evident if one
compares the aphoristic intellectualism of the early Nietzsche with the
Dionysian fervor of his writing after Zarathustra had appeared.25 It seems
to me that such psychological considerations provide a useful criterion
for our judgments about the authorship of biblical literature in general.
If, in the case of the Johannine writings, the psychological criteria are
outweighed by other factors, we can nevertheless see how the collective
psyche of the early church might have operated to compensate for the
gentle perfectionism ofJohannine piety with the apocalyptic amorality of
the seer of Patmos and his school.
Second, the comparative approach entailed by the method of amplifi-
cation means, as I indicated, that Jung has no canon-or at least, that his
"canon" embraces a global range of religious and secular texts, which are
not selected on the basis of their agreement with any particular Christian
doctrines. We have here a basis for dialogue between a Jungian psychol-
24
Avis Dry, in ThePsychologyofJung: A CriticalInterpretation(London: Methuen, 1961), pp.
207-8, notes that Jung's identification of the author of Revelation with the writer of the
Johannine epistles is questionable in the light of New Testament scholarship. The modern
consensus against common authorship is succinctly argued (on grounds of language, escha-
tology, and the author's self-identification) by Werner Kiimmel in his Introductionto the New
Testament(London: SCM, 1966), p. 331. See also R. Alan Culpepper, TheJohannine School
(Missoula: University of Montana Scholars Press, 1975), pp. 35, 263. Some scholars argue
persuasively that the author of the Apocalypse, although he cannot be identified with the
Fourth Evangelist, belonged to the Johannine School and shared many concepts and con-
cerns with the Gospel ofJohn. See, e.g., Oscar Cullman, TheJohannineCircle(London: SCM,
1976), pp. 54, 114 nn. 54-58; Martin Hengel, TheJohannineQuestion(London: SCM, 1989),
pp. 80-81, 188, n. 61, 189, n. 68, 198, n. 26. Hengel (pp. 126-27) does not rule out the
possibility that John "the elder" wrote the Apocalypse in about 70 C.E.,beforehe wrote the
Gospel, and that the intervening twenty or thirty years could account for the improvement
in his Greek, the development of his eschatological ideas, and the move from "progressive"
to "conservative." This would entail a very different psychological analysis from the one
offered by Jung. For a more straightforward argument in favor of common authorship, see,
e.g., P. E. Hughes, The Book of the Revelation (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990), p. 10.
Accounts of the patristic and modern scholarly debates concerning authorship are given by
Culpepper (pp. 1-34), Hengel (chap. 1), and Kfimmel (pp. 329-31). See also Werner Kiim-
mel, The New Testament:The Historyof the Investigationof Its Problems(London: SCM, 1973),
pp. 15-18, 67, 173, 349-50, 377-80.
25 See,
e.g., CW vol. 6, pars. 242, 540; vol. 11, par. 142; vol. 18, par. 61. Thus SpokeZara-
thustrawas written between 1883 and 1885. It is noteworthy that the second edition of The
GayScience(Nietzsche 1887) adds to the first (Nietzsche 1882) not only book 5, but also the
"Prelude in German Rhymes" and the "Appendix: Songs of Prince Vogelfrei," whose poetic
format and imagery could easily suggest a different author. See Nietzsche, The Gay Science,
trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974). A provocative comparison
might be made with the opening and closing chapters of the Book of Job, in view of their
stylistic contrast with the main central section, although I am fully aware that there are
many other considerations involved in assessing the authorship of such a work.
248

Jung's Hermeneutics
ogy of religion and the noncanonical approach to scripture developed

by such scholars as Heikki Riisdinen.26 Raisinen argues that no sharp
distinction should be drawn between those texts which were eventually
admitted to the New Testament corpus and those which were excluded.
The value and authority of an ancient text should be assessed on its own
merits and not on the basis of its inclusion in the canon. We learn from
Jung that the psychological value of any given text should become a crite-
rion of merit. What is more, in the context of ideas about the collective
unconscious, Jung's comparative method for the amplification of symbols
and his recognition of their dialectic or paradoxical nature means that
his hermeneutics also has pluralistic implications for theological meta-
physics. His psychology contributes to the case against the absolutism or
exclusivity of the Christian revelation and might well lend weight to the
approach of John Hick, for example.27 At the very least it establishes a
complex, elusive, and equivocal relation between religious imagery and
the God whose reality it expresses.
Finally, it remains to be considered what kind of authority can be attrib-
uted to the biblical writings as Jung interprets them. I suggested earlier
that a biblical text gains its concrete meaning and force in relation to the
associations of the reader, that is, relative to the reader's own possibilities
for understanding. This implies that there is no such thing as the meaning
of a text waiting to be discovered by the correct interpretation. A text has
no meaning which exists in itself apart from the particular individual,
communal, or cultural context in which it is read and understood. How-
ever, this negative consequence is not destructive of hermeneutics, be-
cause it clears the way for a more positive, pragmatic approach in which
interpretation is assessed according to its therapeutic effects and the
questions of meaning and authority coincide.
This is illustrated by Jung's own remarks on the interpretation of
dreams.28 If interpretation goes astray, he says, "doctor and patient alike
will be suffocated either by boredom or by doubt" as the therapeutic pro-
26
See H. Riisinen, Beyond New TestamentTheology (London: SCM, 1990), esp. pt. 3,
chap. 1.
27 See John Hick, God and the Universeof Faiths (London: Macmillan, 1973),
esp. chaps.
7-10. See also his Problemsof Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 42-43,
where the different human conceptions of the divine are said to be related to divine reality
as such in the same way that (for Kant) the phenomenaof experience are related to the un-
knowable noumenonor "thing-in-itself." This runs parallel to Jung's Kantian distinction be-
tween the manifest archetypal image and the unknowable archetype "in itself [an-sich]."
28 On the extent to which the practical, self-involving, therapeutic aspects of Jung's psy-
chology (rather than its controversial theoretical and epistemological claims) were decisive
for its validity, see Heisig (n. 12 above), pp. 140-41. See also D. B. Burrell, Exercisesin Reli-
gious Understanding(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), pp. 86-87,
197, 216-17.
249

cess degenerates into inconclusiveness, deadlock, and sterility. By con-

trast, a correct interpretation is rewarded with "a sudden uprush of life"
(CW vol. 7, par. 189). This positive corollary is summed up in Jung's aph-
orism: "Something is real (wirklich)if it works(eswirkt)."'29
It should be clear
that Jung has a high regard for the effectiveness of religious symbolism,
and he describes religions as "the great psychic systems of healing" (CW
vol. 13, par. 478). Thus the authority of the scriptures might be seen
in the life-enhancing symbolism of biblical narrative, myth, doctrine, or
poetic imagery.
This is certainly how he views the figure of Christ, whose central sym-
bolic significance rests on the fact that, as divine and human, Christ
expresses and stimulates the universal psychological impulse toward
integration between consciousness and the Unconscious. The arche-
typal character of Christ is evident to Jung by comparison with numerous
"world-wide myth-motifs" and "parallels from the history of religion."
Jung accepts that the Gospels tell us little or nothing about the real histor-
ical human being Jesus of Nazareth, though he imagines that there must
have been something unique and striking about the Rabbi from Galilee,
"otherwise the darkness would never have noticed that a light was shin-
ing" (CW vol. 11, pars. 146, 228). He even acknowledges that it is possible
"for an archetype to take complete possession of a person and to deter-
mine his fate down to the smallest detail" (CW vol. 11, par. 648). Jung
claims that Jesus Christ "is a symbol by his very nature." Christ, he writes,
"would never have made the impression he did on his followers if he had
not expressed something that was alive and at work in their unconscious.
Christianity itself would never have spread through the pagan world with
such astonishing rapidity had its ideas not found an analogous psychic
readiness to receive them" (CW vol. 11, par. 713).30
According to Jung, it was "the archetype of the self in the soul of every-
one that responded to the Christian message," and so "the concrete Rabbi
Jesus was rapidly assimilated" by this activated archetype, until he be-
came "the collective figure whom the unconscious of his contemporaries,"
and indeed his own unconscious, "expected to appear." Whoever the real
Jesus was, therefore, in the Gospels he is "completely overlaid ... with
metaphysical conceptions and projections" of the archetypal God-man,
29 See, e.g.,
CW vol. 5, par. 344, and also Jung, Letters,2:54, letter of 1952. Compare Hick,
Problemsof ReligiousPluralism, who suggests that theistic and nontheistic perceptions of di-
vine reality "can only establish themselves as authentic by their soteriological efficacy" (p.
44).
30 See Walter Wink, TheBible in Human Transformation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), for a
comparison of text interpretation with the analysis of dreams. Wink writes that "even if,
unlike a dream, I did not produce the story in the text, its capacity for evocation depends on
its resonance with psychic and sociological realities within or impinging upon me" (p. 55).
250

Jung's Hermeneutics
the Son of Man, and the Messiah. This archetype reveals what Jung calls
"the hidden, unconscious ground-life of every individual" (CW vol. 11,
pars. 146, 228, 231).31 Thus, as Jung (in 1932) wrote concerning the life
of Jesus, "This apparently unique life became a sacred symbol because it
is the psychological prototype of the only meaningful life, that is, of a life
that strives for the individual realisation-absolute and unconditional-
of its own particular law. Well may we exclaim with Tertullian: animanatu-
raliterchristiana!"(CW vol. 17, par. 310).
~' See also Jung, Letters,2:204-5, letter of 1955, and Jung, Memories,Dreams,Reflections,p.
238. Edinger ("Christ as Paradigm," p. 8) describes the cross as "Christ'sdestiny, his unique
life pattern;" thus to "take up one's own cross" means "to accept and consciously realise
one's own particular pattern of being." By contrast, "the attempt to imitate Christ literally
and specifically is a concretistic mistake in the understanding of the symbol," i.e., an under-
standing in which the ego identifieswith the unconscious symbol (cf. Edinger, "Symbols" [n.
11 above], pp. 48, 51). This agrees with Jung's own remarks on the imitatioChristi.See CW
vol. 13, pars. 80-81, and Letters,2:76-77, letter of 1952.
251


Jungs Hermeneutics of Scripture

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jungs Hermeneutics of Scripture

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jung's Hermeneutics of Scripture

The purpose of this article is to examine Carl Jung's approach to the

' Compare M. J. De Nys, "Myth and Interpretation: Bultmann Revisited," International

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

2 Consider his theory of archetypes, which he regards as unconscious

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

THE PLACE OF SCRIPTURE IN JUNG'S WORK

As a matter of fact, Jung's primary interest in the Judeo-Christian tradi-

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

symbolically expressed in all religious literature. Consequently, he had no

The comparative aspect of Jung's approach to scripture can be seen at

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The principles underlying Jung's method of interpretation generally re-

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

"4Bryant (n. 3 above), p. 124.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

THE GROWTH TOWARD WHOLENESS IN BIBLICAL IMAGERY

"The coming of consciousness," according to Jung, "was probably the

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.

The Journal of Religion 1997.77:233-251.