Matter represents the concreteness of God’s thoughts and is the very thing that makes individuation possible

Matter represents the concreteness of God’s thoughts and is the very thing that makes individuation possible

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Psychology and Religion: West and East (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 11)

[…matter represents the concreteness of God’s thoughts and is, therefore, the very thing that makes individuation possible, with all its consequences.]

The Assumptio Mariae paves the way not only for the divinity of the Theotokos (i.e., her ultimate recognition as a goddess), but also for the quaternity.

At the same time, matter is included in the metaphysical realm, together with the corrupting principle of the cosmos, evil.

One can explain that matter was originally pure, or at least capable of purity, but this does not do away with the fact that matter represents the concreteness of God’s thoughts and is, therefore, the very thing that makes individuation possible, with all its consequences.

The adversary is, quite logically, conceived to be the soul of matter, because they both constitute a point of resistance without which the relative autonomy of individual existence would be simply unthinkable.

The will to be different and contrary is characteristic of the devil, just as disobedience was the hallmark of original sin.

These, as we have said, are the necessary conditions for the Creation and ought, therefore, to be included in the divine plan and ultimately in the divine realm.

But the Christian definition of God as the summum bonum excludes the Evil One right from the start, despite the fact that in the Old Testament he was still one of the “sons of God.”

Hence the devil remained outside the Trinity as the “ape of God” and in opposition to it.

Medieval representations of the triune God as having three heads are based on the three-headedness of Satan, as we find it, for instance, in Dante.

This would point to an infernal Antitrinity, a true “umbra trinitatis” analogous to the Antichrist.

The devil is, undoubtedly, an awkward figure: he is the “odd man out” in the Christian cosmos.

That is why people would like to minimize his importance by euphemistic ridicule or by ignoring his existence altogether; or, better still, to lay the blame for him at man’s door.

This is in fact done by the very people who would protest mightily if sinful man should credit himself, equally, with the origin of all good.

A glance at the Scriptures, however, is enough to show us the importance of the devil in the divine drama of redemption.

If the power of the Evil One had been as feeble as certain persons would wish it to appear, either the world would not have needed God himself to come down to it or it would have lain within the power of man to set the world to rights, which has certainly not happened so far. ~Carl Jung, Psychology and Religion, Paragraph 252.