Jung and St. Paul
CHRIST
Jung treats ‘the Self* as a concept which stands above the turmoil of religious controversy, and it would seem that he thinks that what he says of the Self embraces all that is significant in what men say of Tao, Nirvana, Brahman, Christ or any other central religious concept.
One result of the preceding enquiry has been to show that this is not true in relation to Christ, whatever may be said of other religious figures, and that Christ in the Christian scheme of salvation does not exactly correspond to the Self in Jung’s scheme.
The Self is all form without content, and, in its visible manifestations, it takes
protean shapes, whereas Christ is known in the one definite figure of Jesus, as He is presented in the New Testament; The Self is only adumbrated as a man travels on Jung’s way of Salvation, and does not come into full flower until the goal is reached,, whereas Christ in his fulness enters a man’s life before he can begin his journey on the Christian Way.
At the same time, despite these differences, many important parallels have been found between Jung’s way and that of Christianity and among them are parallels between the Self and Christ.
In this chapter the differences between the two ways are put on one side, in order that it may be shown that Christ is like the Self in that He unites the opposites, and in that He is, in Himself, a union of opposites.
The Function of Christ
It Is a theological commonplace that St Paul fastened a legal analogy on his concept of Justification by Faith, and that those who give an account of it in terms which are exclusively legal can cite very good authority for using those terms although they are hardly true to St Paul in that they reject other models which are just as prominent in his writings.
It has been pointed out, for example, by Vincent Taylor that the legal language is not pressed by St Paul ; and that though he uses his forensic terminology, as it were in passing, he does not use it more, or even as much, as he uses quite different terms to express the same truth.
It would seem that of all his models the legal is the most easily grasped, and that this accounts for the excessive weight which has been given to it in later theology.
In chapter 3 we have already noticed that if we must use a legal model, then the least objectionable is that which takes the legal concept of ‘status as the central concept in the analogy with Justification by Faith, but that although this model
is less objectionable than the model of reward and punishment, it is still liable to lead to a formalistic account, and the best recent example of this is Nygren’s commentary on Romans.
Nygren could hardly use stronger language in his insistence upon the change of status which is involved in becoming a Christian; he shows how it affects man in his
relationships to God, to Wrath, to Sin, to Law, and to Death: and as one reads, one does feel the authentic Pauline note of wonder at the great change which has taken place.
If one asks, however, ‘And what is the visible result of this change of status?* the answer which Nygren gives is ‘nothing* not even at the Last Judgement, for *by
justification by faith God has not abolished the judgement of the works of men* (Nygren, 127)*
The tendency to reduce all St Paul’s models to the legal model of a change of status is well illustrated by an essay of G. W. H. Lampe.
Lampe rightly states a large number of Pauline models when he says,
*In Christ the believer receives in his own measure, like Christ at His
Baptism, the indwelling of the Spirit, for being in Christ he is in the
Spirit, or the Spirit dwells in him, or Christ dwells in him, for from
the point of view of the Christian life all these expressions signify
the same thing” (J Lampe9 $6), but in order to explain the meaning
of these models he continues:
*Spirit-possession is, of course, synonymous with the assurance of sonship towards God* (ibid., loc. cit), and on a later page he relates this assurance to a change of status, saying
*Christ’s righteousness is imputed to the sinner who is devoid of any inherent righteousness, because he is in Christ He has put on Christ, and so has confidence before God because by free grace he has received a new status in Christ, for no merit of his own* (ibid., 59),
This is a reversal of St Paul’s thought, because St Paul fills out the idea of a *new status* by means of other, more dynamic, models, whereas Lampe seems to imply that the other models mean no more than that the change of status has taken place, ‘Spirit-possession* may bring with it an ‘assurance of sonship* (indeed, it must) but to say that the two expressions art synonymous is to confine the activity of the Spirit to the narrowest of limits, and to replace St Paul’s conception of a new power active in a man’s life by the idea of a changed attitude (the acknowledgement of a new status) on the part of man.
The one-sided emphasis on the legal model is easily understood.
It arises from a real and right fear that men should suppose that they could be justified by works.
The danger which it avoids is that if we rejoice that Justification by Faith makes possible ‘good works* that were not possible before, and if we regard this as an important result of Justification, we may go on to think that we are to have confidence before God by virtue of those works.
This danger is no chimera, as the history of theological controversies shows clearly enough, but it is not an inevitable consequence of the idea that Justification does
bring about a change in the actual life of men, because it is possible to rejoice in ‘good works’ for their own sake, and not for any contribution that they make towards our ‘confidence before God’; and it is not only possible, but also essential to a full Christian outlook.
If, on the one hand, you insist that Justification by Faith must result in good works, because if it did not it could not give us confidence before God; or if, on the other hand, you insist that it must not result in good works, because if it did then something more than Justification is required to give us confidence before God, you fall into the same error, of supposing that the only matter of real significance is the
individual’s confidence before God, and you reduce both ‘Justification* and *works’ to nothing more than means to this end.
In other words, you forget that God has a plaa for the world, as well as for men, and
that He purposes that His plan for the world should be put into effect through man. Man is the ‘steward of nature’, and if *salvation* merely affects our status before God, and does not make us better stewards, then it loses a very great part of its meaning.
It is of interest to notice that the denial that Justification by Faith, ‘receiving the Spirit’, *being in Christ* means being a better* steward*, is curiously paralleled by Jung’s account of religion in Answer to Job.*
In effect this denial means that the work of Jesus, and the whole paraphernalia of Church and Sacraments, is directed to nothing more than to bring about a changed attitude of men and women to God, so that the world which God created and saw to be Very good* is reduced to a stage set on which the drama of man is carried out.
In Answer to Job Jung asserts that ‘religious statements* are important assertions made by the ‘archetype of deity* through the conscious minds of men and women, and he then denies that these statements ever have important reference to physical events, and this, in effect, means that they are always about the archetype of deity, as well as originating in it.
In the theological version it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that God is rather like one of the nouveau riche, perpetually concerned with being treated properly by his servants, and in the psychological version
He is clearly a bore, who can talk about nothing but Himself; neither offers us a god whom we can greatly respect.
In The Doctrine ofJustification by Faith two other essays provide a salutary correction to the emphasis on the legal model with which we have been concerned.
Thus: *[the doctrine stresses] the need of grace, and grace regarded not merely as divine favour, but as the life of Christ and His Spirit working within us* (J Symonds^ 80); and *The result of incorporation into Christ or of being justified by Christ is not to destroy but to perfect nature’ (J Maycock, 94).
In Pauline terms, the Justified sinner is not merely *free from wrath* and it is not
merely that the ‘enmity with God* is destroyed, but the Justified sinner is also *free from Sin* and new possibilities oflife and action are opened to him.
Again, the redemption of men and women is not only effective for themselves, it has its repercussions upon the whole world, for ‘The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now* (that is, the natural Order is also to be redeemed), and its redemption is dependent upon the *redemption of the sons of God’, because it is through man that it will come to pass. Again, Christ is Lord of * both the living and the dead’; His coming to men is a matter of importance for their life here on earth as well as for their status before God, In Johannine terms, Jesus came in order that we might have life, and ‘have it more abundantly*, and such a claim becomes meaningless if Justification by Faith has no visible effects here and now.
The *this-“World’ emphasis of modern times in the West, which is spreading over all the world, is a serious over-emphasis, but it is the emphasis of a truth which Jesus clearly enunciated, and which His Church has too often forgotten in the past, and the Christian does well to take note of it, because it will remind him that God created man to live in the physical world which He had made, that His gifts to man are gifts for life in the world, and that this is as true of the *gift* of the Spirit as it is of anything else.
The Spirit is ‘given’ to work in and through men living in the world, and it is to suggest a serious limitation to imply that the work of the Spirit is only, or even primarily, to ‘put men right’ with God: It would be more correct to say that we
are ‘put right with God* so that we can do God’s will in this world, but it is better still to say that being right with God and being effective in His world are parallel effects of the Spirit, or two aspects of a single effect.
“We are being told more and more frequently that what is
demanded of the Church in the world today is a recovery of the
doctrine of Justification by Faith, and nothing could be more important,
but that doctrine will make no impact on the world of today if it is
not presented in such a way that it gives hope ofnew possibilities of life
and action here and now. R. L. Stevenson laughed at the pretensions
of the ‘formalists’ in his parable of the Yellow Paint. Shaken by the
death of his friend a young man submitted to be coated with the yellow
paint, so highly spoken of by his friends and relations.
As each
catastrophe fell upon him he complained to the physician, to be told
in turn that the paint had no power against physical ills, moral evil, or
the inevitable punishment of the criminal.
The fable ends with the
young man condemned to death, but assured that all is well because
no fleck of the paint is out of place.
The Roman Church followed a sure instinct in condemning the Reformers’ teaching on *sola fide’, in so far as that teaching rejected any idea that Justification brought with it new possibilities for life in this world, but the objection was wrongly
formulated, and so distorted. Justification by Faith is more than an intangible change of ‘status*, but it is not, what seems the inevitable alternative, a transformation of the sinner.
F. H. Maycock sets the Catholic-Protestant controversy as follows:
‘the Catholic view is that Justifying Faith brings about a double change. It does away with sin and it imparts to the person a new status, causing an interior change and conferring new powers’, and in this connection he quotes 5* L. Frank,
*Christ’s sacrifice would be in vain if the human soul did not receive it and were not inspired by it with readiness and the strength to imitate Christ , . .’ : ‘The Protestant view is that Justifying Faith cancels sin; the sinner is accounted righteous before God . . . Man is always undeserving and will remain so* (/ Maycock^ 89).
Here, he adds, is a ‘direct conflict*.
This is not a conflict which depends merely upon the terms used, but one that rests upon the acceptance of a mistaken premise on both sides, and this premise is that what a man does expresses the nature of the individual concerned, and that if he does certain acts it is because he possesses the powers necessary to do those acts.
This Is a very natural pmmlse, but it is not one which St Paul would accept, and if it is not accepted the conflict between * Catholic’ and ‘Protestant’ loses its force.
It is one of the lessons which theology can learn from Jung, that an act may be
a man’s act, and yet not depend upon powers which can properly be called ‘his’. ~David Cox, Jung and St. Paul, Page 314-319
