Letters of C. G. Jung: Volume 2, 1951-1961
To Elisabeth Metzger
Dear Frau Metzger, 7 January 1953
Man is notoriously not God, to whom alone is given the power to preserve and destroy life.
Man has only very limited possibilities amongst which-so far as his consciousness extends-he can choose
with practical freedom.
If causality is axiomatic, i.e., absolute, there can be no freedom.
But if it is only a statistical truth, as is in fact the case, then the possibility of freedom exists.
The paradoxical God-image is not an innovation in the sense that it is a novum in the world’s history.
The God of the Old Testament as well as all non-Christian deities are inwardly contradictory, and the non-Christians must also live and have always lived with the paradox.
It is certainly true that a paradoxical God-image forces man to come to grips with his own paradoxicality.
This is in fact our task which we have hitherto avoided.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Page 102.