The Bible and the Church.

The Bible and the Church.

From Conversations with C. G. Jung

The Church and the Bible:

If the Nazis had invaded Switzerland during the Second World War, I would have become a Catholic out of protest because the Catholic Church would then have represented the only spiritual power.

That is, of course, if I had not been shot first.

The existence of the Church has its own validity.

Anyone who drops out of the Church loses its maternal protection and is a prey to national confessionalisms.

It takes an enormous inner strength to live through severance from the Catholic Church.

It is a tremendous responsibility to endeavor to entice someone else away from the Church.

Many now stand outside.

For those who are engaged in a vital conflict, a one-sided commitment is always presumptuous.

They are reproached by others for not being humble enough to take from the Church.

This is not so: they separated themselves from the Church out of reverence for the Spirit that bloweth where it listeth.

When Christ is most luminous the Church receives the least light.

The light of the Church is therefore greatest when the moon is in opposition to the sun.

Some examples of editorial slips made by the Church in the Bible: “Ye will be as gods!”

“When thou art alone then I am with thee.”

“If thou would ‘st pray enter into thy chamber ..” The parable of the unjust steward.

Many patients must grasp that there is much that lives in their psyche that is not consonant with the Church: it is the Spirit that continues to beget and bloweth where it listeth.

One need not always be in opposition to the Church.

The Church is valid up to the point where life goes on.

There are often elements in the psyche that are absolutely heathen.

They have to be domesticated in some way in Christianity, but there are still certain heathen elements that even the Church has not been able to absorb. ~Carl Jung, Conversations with C.G. Jung, The Church and the Bible, Page 45.