Carl Jung on the continued and progressive divine incarnation.

Carl Jung on the continued and progressive divine incarnation.

Psychology and Religion

[Carl Jung on the “continued and progressive divine incarnation.]

The continuing, direct operation of the Holy Ghost on those who are called to be God’s children implies, in fact, a broadening process of incarnation. Christ, the son begotten by God, is the first-born who is succeeded by an ever-increasing number of younger brothers and sisters.

These are, however, neither begotten by the Holy Ghost nor born of a virgin. . .. Their lowly origin (possibly from the mammals) does not prevent them from entering into a close kinship with God as their father and Christ as their brother. ~Carl Jung, “Answer to Job,” Psychology and Religion, CW 11, par. 658.

[There is a] . . . continued and progressive divine incarnation. Thus man is received and integrated into the divine drama. He seems destined to play a decisive part in it; that is why he must receive the Holy Spirit.

I look upon the receiving of the Holy Spirit as a highly revolutionary fact which cannot take place until the ambivalent nature of the Father is recognized. If God is the summum bonum, the incarnation makes no sense, for a good god could never produce such hate and anger that his only son had to be sacrificed to appease it.

A Midrash says that the Shofar is still sounded on the Day of Atonement to remind YHWH of his act of injustice towards Abraham (by compelling him to slay Isaac) and to prevent him from repeating it.

A conscientious clarification of the idea of God would have consequences as upsetting as they are necessary. They would be indispensable for an interior development of the trinitarian drama and of the role of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is destined to be incarnate in man or to choose him as a transitory dwelling-place. “Non habet nomen proprium,” says St. Thomas; because he will receive the name of man.

That is why he must not be identified with Christ. We cannot receive the Holy Spirit unless we have accepted our own individual life as Christ accepted his.

Thus we become the “sons of god” fated to experience the conflict of the divine opposites, represented by the crucifixion. ~Carl Jung, “Letter to Pèe Lachat,” The Symbolic Life, CW 18, par. 1551.