Post by Admin on Aug 6, 2022 18:23:40 GMT
“… in the darkest Middle Ages…. they spoke of the devil, today we call it a neurosis.”
Jung (1933)
.
The Reality of Evil and the Devil -
article by Sue Mehrtens
One of Jung’s major complaints about Christianity was its incomplete image of the Divine as all-good. Ever true to his concept of an archetype as embodying both positive and negative poles, Jung understood God as containing both goodness and evil, light and darkness. He took exception to the Christian definition of evil as merely the absence of good. Jung understood how this truncated image of the Divine came about, as well as its implications for humanity:
“ [in]… the Christian reformation of the Jewish concept of the Deity: the morally ambiguous Yahweh became an exclusively good God, while everything evil was united in the devil…. Thanks to the development of feeling-values, the splendor of the ‘light’ god has been enhanced beyond measure, but the darkness supposedly represented by the devil has localized itself in man.
This strange development was precipitated chiefly by the fact that Christianity, terrified of Manichaean dualism, strove to preserve its monotheism by main force. But since the reality of darkness and evil could not be denied, there was no alternative but to make man responsible for it. Even the devil was largely, if not entirely abolished, … We think that the world of darkness has thus been abolished for good and all, and nobody realizes what a poisoning this is of man’s soul….
At the time Christian doctrine was being developed, the culture of the Hellenistic world was very syncretic, open to all sorts of ideas, including Gnosticism and Manichaenism, both of which posited gods of good/light and gods of evil/darkness. Early church theologians reacted against these influences, declaring all such dualistic teachings to be heresies, and then they went overboard in seeing the source of evil in the world not in God, but in man. Hence we find these days multiple books responding to the question “If God is good, how come this … [some tragedy, sickness, catastrophe] happened?”
Jung would reply that God is not only good, and man is not the only source of evil. Bad things happen in the world and human beings are not the sole source for them. Jung was blunt about this:
Who says that the evil in the world we live in, that is right in front of us, is not real! Evil is terribly real, for each and every individual. If you regard the principle of evil as a reality you can just as well call it the devil. I personally find it hard to believe that the idea of the absence of good still holds water.”
Jung had many discussions with Christian theologians on this point, most notably with the English Dominican priest Victor White. Like many religious committed to orthodox dogma, White could not accept Jung’s argument. Of course there is evil in the world! In Jung’s day he saw evil in the world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War with its omnipresent threat of nuclear destruction. For us, the depredations by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in the Middle East, the chaos of the drug wars in Latin America, and the destruction of our global ecosystem by climate change are all forms of collective evil, while the various neuroses and psychoses are forms of evil on the personal level: “… in the darkest Middle Ages… they spoke of the devil, today we call it a neurosis.”
Jung (1933)
.
The Reality of Evil and the Devil -
article by Sue Mehrtens
One of Jung’s major complaints about Christianity was its incomplete image of the Divine as all-good. Ever true to his concept of an archetype as embodying both positive and negative poles, Jung understood God as containing both goodness and evil, light and darkness. He took exception to the Christian definition of evil as merely the absence of good. Jung understood how this truncated image of the Divine came about, as well as its implications for humanity:
“ [in]… the Christian reformation of the Jewish concept of the Deity: the morally ambiguous Yahweh became an exclusively good God, while everything evil was united in the devil…. Thanks to the development of feeling-values, the splendor of the ‘light’ god has been enhanced beyond measure, but the darkness supposedly represented by the devil has localized itself in man.
This strange development was precipitated chiefly by the fact that Christianity, terrified of Manichaean dualism, strove to preserve its monotheism by main force. But since the reality of darkness and evil could not be denied, there was no alternative but to make man responsible for it. Even the devil was largely, if not entirely abolished, … We think that the world of darkness has thus been abolished for good and all, and nobody realizes what a poisoning this is of man’s soul….
At the time Christian doctrine was being developed, the culture of the Hellenistic world was very syncretic, open to all sorts of ideas, including Gnosticism and Manichaenism, both of which posited gods of good/light and gods of evil/darkness. Early church theologians reacted against these influences, declaring all such dualistic teachings to be heresies, and then they went overboard in seeing the source of evil in the world not in God, but in man. Hence we find these days multiple books responding to the question “If God is good, how come this … [some tragedy, sickness, catastrophe] happened?”
Jung would reply that God is not only good, and man is not the only source of evil. Bad things happen in the world and human beings are not the sole source for them. Jung was blunt about this:
Who says that the evil in the world we live in, that is right in front of us, is not real! Evil is terribly real, for each and every individual. If you regard the principle of evil as a reality you can just as well call it the devil. I personally find it hard to believe that the idea of the absence of good still holds water.”
Jung had many discussions with Christian theologians on this point, most notably with the English Dominican priest Victor White. Like many religious committed to orthodox dogma, White could not accept Jung’s argument. Of course there is evil in the world! In Jung’s day he saw evil in the world wars, the Holocaust, and the Cold War with its omnipresent threat of nuclear destruction. For us, the depredations by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh in the Middle East, the chaos of the drug wars in Latin America, and the destruction of our global ecosystem by climate change are all forms of collective evil, while the various neuroses and psychoses are forms of evil on the personal level: “… in the darkest Middle Ages… they spoke of the devil, today we call it a neurosis.”