Carl Jung: Friend or Foe of Christianity?
Keywords:
Carl Jung, Dogma or Belief, Friend of Foe of Christianity, Descent to the HellAbstract
Carl Jung, through his bold statement, “I don’t believe, I know [God]” was offering a formidable challenge to the conventional religions and their followers. Those reason-based, dogma/belief promoting religions miserably fail to recognize and represent the vast subconscious realms of human psyche and ignore its significance and magnitude. The world of myths and symbols has a lot more to reveal than what creeds and dogmas try to contain. Jungian analytical psychology focused the transcendent and the need for each individual psyche to make friends with the transcendent. His primary concern was healing - not only the healing of the individual psycshe but the healing of the collective psyche. Jung’s purported ‘descent to the Hell’, enabled him to get in touch with facts of human psyche hitherto unknown to him. Though some of his perspectives are unorthodox and unacceptable to the Christian dogma, he should be given credit for shedding light to certain important areas that modern humanity has failed to recognize duly and take care of to its own disadvantage and dismay.
References
Carl Gustav Jung (1932) published originally as Die Beziehungen der Psychotherapie zur Seelsorge, Zurich (Jung CW)
Carl Gustav Jung (1963/1989) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Ed. A. Jaffé. London: Vintage, (Jung MDR)
Carl Gustav Jung (1971/1999) The Collected Works of C.G. Jung. Trans. and Revised by R. Hull and H. Baynes. London: Routledge, (Jung CW)
Carl Gustav Jung (2007) The Jung-White Letters. Ed. A. Conrad Lammers and A. Cunningham. London: Routledge.
Carl Gustav Jung (2009) The Red Book: Liber Novus. Ed. S. Shamdasani. London: Norton & Co. (Jung RB)
Ulanov, A. and Dueck, A. (2008) The Living God and Our Living Psyche: What Christians Can Learn from Carl Jung. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.
