Septem Sermones ad Mortuos: Jung's Challenge to Christianity

Michael J. Brabazon

Due to the lack of any real progress of finding common cause between religionists generally and Classical Jungians the mundane school of psychology/psychiatry is pulling Jung's legacy down an evermore materialistic path. Concepts which can be taken as statements of Jung's own spirituality are being diminished in favour of a rapprochement with Freudians. It is true that in Jung's schema of man’s psyche, God could exist but it is not necessarily so; the spirit could exist, but that is also not necessarily so. However, by using religious perceptions and insights Jung has managed to bring a potential harmony between modern and ancient thought; his ideas can be used by psychiatrists and mystics alike.

The Freudian response to the claims of homo religiosus is one of confrontation, viz. that religious belief is an identifiable neurosis. Human nature is driven by animal sexuality which the ego and superego struggle to contain, and it is this battleground from which repression and guilt arise. This Freudian existentiality allows for no spiritual man with attendant holiness. In fact the oppressive religious structures which teach holiness only serve to induce unnecessary guilt, the feeling of having sinned. Juxtaposed is Jung. Here we have a psychological schema which apprehends religion as proto-psychology, with Jung as the modern day prophet expressing the numen in twentieth century language. It is this Jungian perspective of constructive criticism of the old by the new, rather than that of sterile confrontation, which sets the scene for a revolution in religious thought. But herein is the Jungian paradox; being new for Jung means an updating of ancient spirituality and using that as a standpoint for a new critique.

He believed himself to be in the line of the ancient Gnostics and alchemists, with a mission to bring to Christianity certain 'missing' elements. When he was asked by John Freeman in a TV interview shortly before his death whether or not he believed in God, Jung replied that he knew God exists. This 'knowledge' is the gnosis of the ancient heretical tradition within early Christianity, the secret understanding of man and his salvation. This central element in Jung's understanding of the importance of his mission and psychological theories must be fully realised before one can comprehend his overall approach to theological anthropology. Jung did not see the new as a schism with the past but believed it was the same life-force - the self at the heart of the collective unconscious - which was constantly being reinterpreted and expressed. To that end one has always to refer to the past in order to correctly orientate oneself: he thought of his own work as a completion of that of his cleric father, his personal incarnation of the incompleteness of Christian doctrine, in particular in relation to the psychological aspects of the Trinity and the nature of evil. By evaluating Christian doctrine in psychological terms and measuring that evaluation against the Jungian schema it was possible to locate its inherent deficiencies. Religion is valuable in a therapeutic sense of offering meaning to the individual, in much the same way that Gnostic teaching stressed the internal goal of the person as against the ecclesiological position of orthodoxy. Holiness is the uniting of the higher spirit with the unknowable deity, not via a corporate body or a set of laws.

Septem Sermones ad Mortuos: Jung's Challenge to Christianity