Towards the start of this series, we looked at Carl Jung’s simultaneous critique of Christian doctrine and abiding appreciation for the figure of Christ himself. There we saw how the traditional, biblical Christian understanding of faith existed in a place of healthy creative tension between the two opposites Jung proposed, imitation (which he didn’t like) and individuation (which he did). Paradoxically, the more we follow the path of Christ, the more we will find our true self; and the more we grow into our truest, most mature self, the more our life, ways, and concerns will look like Christ’s. Today I’d like to touch on two other pieces relating to Jesus, and specifically to the doctrine of the Incarnation through the series’ lens of how our theology and practices interact with the Jungian idea of the shadow.
The Heavenly Child
There is something powerful and universal about the birth of a child as a symbol of hope. On the historical level, Isaiah’s prophecy of the royal child named Immanuel is a perfect example of this: In a time of national crisis, when Judah was surrounded by enemies (including her Ephraimite brothers!) and facing ruin, the birth of this child was a symbol of resistance and God’s care for the people of Judah. Jungian thinkers have noted a similar effect in our psyches, where, as Murray Stein put it, “In dreams, the birth of a child, particularly of a magical child, augers an appearance of the self. The child represents a new future, based upon a new archetypal possibility” (The Bible as Dream 66).* The Scriptures likewise see the incarnation as the key to a ‘new self’ (”So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5.17). Just as how, in our psychologies, in times of despair, listlessness, and ‘stuckness’, a baby can appear as a symbol of new hope, new creativity, and new energy, so too theologically, does the appearance of the heavenly child rewrite the scripts of our lives from the ‘dead’ ways of this world to the new life of God’s kingdom. A baby, to put it crassly, is an investment in the future. And in the doctrine of the Incarnation, this investment comes from God. It is God’s labour to usher in a better future. It is God’s commitment to see humanity through.
I think this doctrine can help with healthy shadow integration, as a baby isn’t just a symbol but also a call to action. The baby needs to be cared for and protected. If we see a baby in a vision or dream, it is up to us to nurture it and see it through to healthy adulthood where our true, healthier, and more integrated Self can take over. (From personal experience as someone who often struggles to see possibilities and good options, there are few things I take more seriously than tending to the spark of a new idea or energy!) Along this line, the Christian tradition is full of prayers, hymns, and practices that use the language of welcoming the infant Christ into our hearts and caring for him. This is to say the symbol of hope contains within it a responsibility that can be very helpful psychologically.
The Incarnation and God
One of the most marked aspects of Jung’s talk about Christianity was his suggestion that God was originally ignorant of humanity’s plight, and that, while the story of Job was God’s first major lesson in understanding humanity, the Incarnation changed God’s perspective entirely in this regard. As Anthony Stevens writes on this, “This lack of self-awareness on the part of the Almighty, Jung argued, can only be corrected by human consciousness, and it explains why God found it necessary to incarnate Himself in man. ‘That is … the service that man can render to God, that light may emerge from the darkness, that the Creator may become conscious of His creation and man conscious of himself’ (Jung: A Very Short Introduction, quoting Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections 312).
As strange as this may sound to Christian ears, it isn’t that far off from how the New Testament itself speaks about the Incarnation. The book of Hebrews, for example, stresses the fact that because of the Incarnation, our new heavenly ‘high priest’ (i.e., the resurrected Jesus) can fully understand us and our plight:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4.15-16)
In this extensive liturgical metaphor, this text tells us that, while the presence of God was previously carefully guarded from us, now, because of our new high priest who understands us fully, we are free to approach God without anxiety. While this is not the same as Jung’s argument, it amounts to much the same thing without going to his theological extremes.
How might this interact with the shadow? I’m reminded of the idea in positive psychology that virtues can become problematic in three different ways: in their absence, in their opposite, and (most relevant here) in their excess. While we need a healthy humility and awareness of our weaknesses and sins to safely approach the things of God, many people of faith develop a kind of timidity and self-deprecating hyper-awareness of their faults and failures. This does not lead to a healthy engagement with God, but to a shrinking back, a refusal to enter God’s presence. For these people, the idea that God is gracious and loving and understands them is utterly inaccessible, pushed into the dark recesses of the shadow, and so their persona — especially as it relates to God — is fearful, sniveling and obsequious. All this is far from the true and balanced perspective, and far from the vision of our tradition, which tells us, in St. Irenaeus’s words, “The glory of God is the human person standing tall.”
This perspective on the Incarnation also suggests that, if we ourselves are to become ‘incarnational’, it is about humility and service yes (as Philippians 2 teaches us), but also about curiosity. We go into the world, and especially the parts of it we don’t understand, in order to learn about them, to understand ‘the other’ better so that we might better understand them and love and serve them. I would argue that this is far from a minor detail. For without this real understanding, our attempts at service will more often than not be condescending, laced with our own judgments and presuppositions, and not really helpful at all. This would go a long way in mitigating one of the loudest complaints about Christians today: that they assume that their faith means that they know what other people need more than the people themselves and thereby leave a lot of damage in their wake.
These are but two of the many ways the story of the Incarnation can inform our faith. But I trust the discussion has been helpful and illustrative of the power of our doctrines, even if it hasn’t been exhaustive.
Matthew Root 