Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the Recovery of Religion

217 Pages·2008·1.37 MB·English

by  John P. Dourley

Paul Tillich, Carl Jung, and the
Recovery of Religion
This book compares the theology of Tillich with the psychology of Jung,
arguing that they were both concerned with the recovery of a valid religious
sense for contemporary culture. Paul Tillich, Carl Jung, and the Recovery of
Religion explores in detail the diminution of the human spirit through the
loss of its contact with its native religious depths, a problem on which both
spent much of their working lives and energies.
Both Tillich and Jung work with a naturalism that grounds all religion on
processes native to the human being. Tillich does this in his efforts to recover
that point at which divinity and humanity coincide and from which they
differentiate. Jung does this by identifying the archetypal unconscious as the
source of all religions now working toward a religious sentiment of more
universal sympathy. This book identifies the dependence of both on German
mysticism as a common ancestry and concludes with a reflection on how their
joint perspective might affect religious education and the relation of religion
to science and technology.
Throughout the book, John Dourley looks back to the roots of both men’s
ideas about mediaeval theology and Christian mysticism, making it ideal
reading for analysts and academics in the fields of Jungian and religious
studies.
John P. Dourley is Professor Emeritus, Department of Religion, at Carleton
University, Ottawa, Canada. He graduated as a Jungian analyst from the
Zurich/Kusnacht Institute and has published widely on Jung and religion.

Paul Tillich, Carl Jung and the
Recovery of Religion
John P. Dourley
First published 2008
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex BN3 2FA
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an Informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Copyright © 2008 John P. Dourley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
This publication has been produced with paper manufactured to
strict environmental standards and with pulp derived from
sustainable forests.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dourley, John P.
Paul Tillich, Carl Jung, and the recovery of religion / John P. Dourley.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-415-46023-1 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-415-46024-8 (pbk.)
1. Tillich, Paul 1886-1965. 2. Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav), 1875-1961. 3. Religion. I. Title
BX4827 T53D68 2008
230.092–dc22
2007042007
ISBN 0-203-92905-5 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN: 978-0-415-46023-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-46024-8 (pbk)
Contents
Preface vii
1 Toward a salvageable Tillich: the implications of his late
confession of provincialism 1
2 The problem of essentialism: Tillich’s anthropology
versus his Christology 25
3 Christ as the picture of essential humanity: one of many 46
4 Tillich on Boehme: a restrained embrace 58
5 The Goddess, mother of the Trinity: Tillich’s
late suggestion 75
6 The problem of the three and the four in Paul Tillich and
Carl Jung 92
7 Bringing up Father: Jung on Job and the education of
God in history 111
8 Memory and emergence: Jung and the mystical
anamnesis of the nothing 127
9 Tillich’s theonomous naturalism and its relation to
religious and medical healing 143
10 Jung, Tillich and their challenge to religious education 161
vi Contents
11 Tillich, Jung and the wisdom and morality of doing
science and technology 178
Afterword 192
References 194
Index 201
Preface
What follows is the substance of my sustained reflection on the work of Paul
Tillich and Carl Jung. The thought of the former led me to write a doctoral
thesis on his work (defended in 1971). The power of the latter led me to train
as an analyst in Zurich and to practice since 1980. What is most intriguing in
the thought of both individuals is their identification of the origins of
religious experience and so of the religions in the depth of the human being.
Both hoped that their delineation of the origin of religion within the human
would lead to the restoration of religious credibility both within and beyond
the religious institutions of their society. Both embraced a radical immanence
as the basis of a now emerging religious universalism which would appreciate
the particularity of each religion while making each a relative concretion of
an underlying generative power undermining all claims to a cumulative and
final possession of an absolute truth. In appreciating while making relative
the specific concretions of the religious instinct in the world’s current religions,
Tillich and Jung may well provide a sketch of a now emerging religiosity
which will in fact make the future possible. This implies that the greatest
current threat to the species is religious conviction, faith, in religious or politi-
cal form. The reader is invited to at least consider the following presentation
of their views and their importance to an inescapably religious humanity if
religion is to enhance the present and enable the future.

Chapter 1
Toward a salvageable Tillich
The implications of his late confession
of provincialism*
The texts and the context
Late in Paul Tillich’s life a series of events conspired to effect a perceptible
broadening of his theological perspective. This expanded consciousness was
most evident in late confessions of an earlier and, by implication, somewhat
sustained provincialism running throughout much of his theological endeavor
to that point. Such confessions of provincialism led him, in his more occa-
sional late statements, to positions in considerable tension if not contradic-
tion with his earlier Systematic Theology. Some of these provincialisms are to
be found even in the third volume of his Systematic Theology written at the
same time, in the early 1960s, when he was deploring such provincialism in
statements made elsewhere.
Tillich’s battle against his and others’ provincialism had a history. In an
address as early as 1952 Tillich (1886–1965) identifies a number of provin-
cialisms in the mindset he brought with him from Germany in 1933. (Tillich
1959a) The provincialisms indicted here are basically an amalgam of German
theological, philosophical and cultural provincialisms, provincialisms he
claims to have shed prior to 1952 in the face of various forms of American
pragmatism and pluralism. (Thomas 1995: 19) In a reminiscent mood, in this
address, Tillich is generous in praising the American theological and cultural
environment he entered from Germany for its role in making him aware of his
continental German provincialisms while, in turn, making no demand that
he accept a new American provincialism, sensitive though he remained to the
possibility that such a set-back could occur on American soil. (Tillich 1959a:
176) However, this earlier admission of provincialism pales in comparison to
his later confessions of a further series of provincialisms only then to be fully
exorcised. These later confessions force the question whether or not the defeat
* This chapter derives from a presentation to the North American Paul Tillich Society, meeting
in Toronto, November 2002. A preliminary version of the chapter appeared in The North
American Paul Tillich Society Newsletter, 29, 2, 2003, 10–14, amplified as “Toward a
Salvageable Tillich: The Implications of his Late Confession of Provincialism”, Studies in
Religion, 33, 1, 2004, 3–26.