On
the Trinity
By Bob Bongiovanni, MA
As we discussed last week, Jung believed that the subject of God and religion is no trivial matter for the modern person. It’s certainly not the exclusive domain of theologians and church-folk. In a very real sense, every one of us is called to confront our connection with the Divine. Our willingness and courage in doing so is the essence of individuation, coming to be more and more who we really are. Institutional religion, while still proving a bridge to the Divine for some, is less and less sufficient for others. How, then, do we satisfy this instinctual longing for wholeness, for connection to the ultimate ground of being and source of meaning? Jung tells us that the path is arduous, but necessary. The first step is knowing that we have an image of God within, always there, perhaps just beyond consciousness, but undeniably real and accessible. We call that image of God by the term Self, with a capital “S.” And I don’t mean just intellectually knowing this – I mean a gut level of knowing, an immediate form of knowing, an emotional and physical form of knowing. Then, we must confront, unravel, deconstruct, and integrate whatever is interfering with an ever-deepening connection with the Self, with God. That’s shadow work, and it is often very unpleasant, but, again, necessary.
This week, I would like to talk more about that image of God
within, the Self. For the vast majority
of us, we experience the Self through a symbol. Such symbols of the Self have, as their key qualities, a
numinosity and a sense of mystery. By
numinosity, I mean that such symbols radiate power and inspire awe. They captivate attention and consciousness. They occur and reoccur, in dreams, in art,
in stories, in our own doodling. Whenever
I discuss this topic, I think about the lore of the vampire. As you probably know, one of the few ways to
hold a vampire at bay was to display a symbol – the cross. I loved those movies where the cross glowed
– literally, became numinous – in the presence of the cowering vampire, whose
evil intents were thwarted. A more
modern vampire story, Salem’s Lot, added an interesting twist to this legend. A young atheist held a cross before the vampire, and it did not
glow. The sneering vampire says, “that only
works if you still believe. Otherwise,
it’s just a piece of plaster.” He
crushes the cross to dust, and attacks.
There’s a powerful truth being told here. A symbol is more than just a drawing or a sculpture – it is only
numinous because of the power that it channels and provides connection to. It derives its power from its connection to
the image of God within, the Self.
Coming with that is a sense of mystery.
Symbols that retain their powerful connection to the Self are constantly
new, understood at new levels, inspire new meditations and inspirations. When a symbol becomes ho-hum, every day,
uninspiring, then is ceases to be a symbol in the sense that Jung used the
term.
Jung believed that
the symbols that we experience are highly related to our culture. Moreover, the culturally-distinct image we
hold of God is directly related to the image we hold of ourselves. We are born into the symbol set that we
inherit from our ancestors, whether we like it or not. We can reject these symbols, we can have
life experiences that drain the symbols of their numinosity, we can be drawn to
exotic symbols from other cultures – these are all common experiences of modern
life. But, we must confront the our
cultural and ancestral symbols, and make peace with them somehow, because they
shape us constantly – again, whether we like it or not, it’s a reality. In this context, Jung found it essential to
explore the Christian symbol of the Trinity, a symbol that so pervades the
cultures of Europe and post-colonial America.
Jung found that his family, community, and patients had all been deeply
influenced by this Tri-une image of the godhead in pervasive and sometimes
not-so-healthy ways. If the image we
hold of God, and the image we hold of ourselves, has been shaped by the symbol
of the Trinity, what are the consequences?
Before going into
the problems with this symbol, we should assert its positive aspects, according
to Jung. First, it depicts God as
internally complex and self-related, as compared to a simple monotheistic
unit. This parallels Jung’s ideas of
psyche and the Self, which are similarly seen as complex, inter-related systems
rather than simple unities. There’s God
the Father – analogous to the source of power and energy in the psyche, the
prime mover. There’s God the Son –
analogous to a new, emergent form of conscious that supplants the previous,
self-alienated ego.
And there’s the
Holy Spirit, on which Jung writes extensively, analogous to the function of the
Self that mediates between the Self and the ego. Jung explains that the Holy Spirit might be equated with the life
process itself, which animates matter.
In Volume 11, paragraph 204, Jung describes it as “the third element
that rounds out the three and restores the One.” In the modern era, Jung held hope that the Holy Spirit could come
to represent the principle of psychic wholeness, bridging human experience and
the godhead. This carried some danger,
of course. The unwary ego, without a
sense of its context in the scheme of things, could become horribly inflated
when touched by the Holy Spirit. But,
nonetheless, Jung eagerlt anticipated the age of the Holy Spirit.
And Jung also
valued that the symbol of the Trinity still held intrinsic numinosity and
potential to convey deep truths about individuation and connection to the image
of God within.
However, Jung also
asserts that the Trinity results in three distortions to the nature of God:
over-spiritualization, over-masculinization, and over-simplification. That’s a problem, not just theologically,
but also in terms of our connection with the Self. If the symbol that connects us to the Self lacks wholeness, then
our connection to the image of God within will be distorted. Let’s deal with each of the three flaws
separately.
First, over-spiritualization. What’s missing from the Trinity? First, there is nothing about matter, about
physicality. When your image of God excludes
matter, then your attitude toward materiality will tend to fall into the
shadow. Matter is, at best, an embarrassing
necessity. At worst, it represents what
we fear and despise: vulnerability,
imprisonment, decay, and a hindrance to spiritual nature and perfection. Of course, for individuation to occur, one
must be reconciled with matter, to enjoy, as they say, “the sweetness of
incarnation.” But the image of the
Trinity will be of no assistance on that front.
Second,
over-masculinization. What else is
missing from the Trinity? The
feminine. How could it be that the
image of the ultimate consists only of a father, a son, and a neutered
dove? Again, when your image of God
excludes the feminine, then your attitude toward femininity will tend to fall
into the shadow. The feminine is, at
best, an inferior nature that God tolerates.
At worst, it represents what we fear and despise: weakness, passivity, emotionality, and
seduction aware from spiritual perfection.
Of course, for individuation to occur, one must pursue wholeness, and
that will not occur if half of our individual and collective humanity remains second
class and shunned. But, again, the
image of the Trinity will be of no assistance on that front.
Third,
over-simplification. Another element
missing from the Trinity – the dark side, evil. This is the criticism that got Jung into the most trouble with
the theologians of his time. If God is
the “summum bonum” or “total good,” then human beings, by default, are the main
or only source of evil. This
misconception has been damaging on two fronts.
First, there are people who carry a horrible burden of undeserved guilt,
far beyond their capacity to deal with it.
Second, people are ill-equipped to deal with true evil, as experienced
within themselves and as expressed in the outer world, tending to trivialize it
or channel it. We have a tendency to project
evil on others, with horrifying and bloody results. Or, we psychologize it – evil is merely misunderstanding, the
result of abuse, and so one. Make no
mistake – Jung recognized the reality of evil, separate from good. To grasp this, it’s useful to conceive of
two forms of evil. The first you might
call mythic evil. The image of God
within, the Self, has a light side, a good side that is about harmony, healing,
and pleasant experiences. It must,
then, be balanced by a dark side, that is about chaos, wounding, and
devastating experiences. That’s mythic
evil. There’s a second form of evil
that we might call historic evil. This
is the form of evil that inflicts harm by flowing out of the unconscious and
through human beings into the outer world.
Mythic evil could be dealt with in the interior world, through
consciousness. But, all too often,
mythic evil exploits human vulnerability and becomes historic evil. People become possessed by it, they project
it, and we have historic murder, war, abuse, environmental destruction, greed,
and so on.
Jung’s essay
entitled “Answer to Job” is where all of these themes come together. It’s arguably Jung’s definitive essay on God
and individuation. Essentially, the
premise is this: The God of Job is
primitive and unreflective. He is an
unpredictable mass of opposites, refusing to become conscious (that is, to
acknowledge his shadow or consult his feminine wisdom).
Yahweh reveals a
devotion to perfection. He questions
the perfection of his servant Job, due to a prompting from Satan. This has several effects: