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God and the Problem of Evil

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God and the Problem of Evil Part 8. Self and Opposites: God and the Problem of Evil If wholeness or integration consists in the union ofopposites, symbolized by the emergence of quaternities and mandalas, itfollows that the most obvious pair ofopposites, good and evil, are to be found in the self Yet the self, as we have seen, "is9 a God-image,42) or at least cannot be distinguished from one." (CW ii, par. The conventional Christian view of God is dualistic, in that God is entirely good (the doctrine of the Summum Bonum), while evil is contained in Satan. Jung points out that an earlier Christian belief was monotheistic. "Clement ofRome taught that God rules the world with a11, right and357-8, a left hand, the right to beingAnswer Christ, to Job) the left Satan."* (CW pp. prefatory note All his life ,Jung wrestled with the problem ofthe origin of evil. In his discussion of Christ as a manifestation of the self, Jung writes: From "Christ, a Symbol of the Self' , CW 9 ii, pars. 79-98 A ion Just as we have to remember the gods of antiquity in order to appreciate the psychological value of the animalanimusarchetype, so Christ is our nearest analogy of the self and its meaning. It is naturally not a question of a collective value artificially manu­ factured or arbitrarily awarded, but of one that is effective and present and that makes its effectiveness felt whether the subject isper conscious-of se, it or not. Yet, although the attributes of *Naturallyprivatio enough, boni, theologians could not accept this view of the Deity. For discussion ofthe seeJung's correspondence with Fr Victor White, a DominicanC. G. priest whoLetters, was a professor2, 58of theology71. at Blackfrjars, Oxford. See especially Jung, vol. pp. and TheirGod disagreementand the Unconscious, led to an estrangement between the two men. See also Victor White's pp. 754J, n. 1. 300 SELF AND OPPOSITES Christ (consubstantiality with the Father, co-eternity, filiation, parthenogenesis, crucifixion, Lamb sacrificed between opposites, One divided into Many, etc.) undoubtedly mark him out as an embodiment of the self, looked at from the psychological angle he corresponds to only one half of the archetype. The other half appears in the Antichrist. The latter is just as much a manifestation of the self, except that he consists of its dark aspect. Both are Christian symbols, and they have the same meaning as the image of the Saviour crucified between two thieves. This great symbol tells us that the progressive development and differentiation of consciousness leads to an ever more menacing awareness of the conflict and involves nothing less than a crucifIXion of the ego, its agonizing suspension between irreconcilable opposites. * Naturally there can be no question on a total extinction of the ego, for then the focus of consciousness would be destroyed, and the result would be complete unconsciousness. The relative abolition *"Oportuit autem ut alter illorum extremorum isque optimus appellaretur Dei filius propter suam excellentiam; alter vero ipsi mali daemonis, OPPOSilUS Satanae diabolique filius diceretur" (But it is fittingex diametro that one of these two extremes, and that the best, should be called the Son of God because of his excellence, and the other, to him, the son of the evil demon, of Satan and the devil) (Origen,diametrically opposed VI, 45; trans. by Chadwick). The opposites even condition one another:Contra Celsum,"Ubi quid malum est ... ibi necessario bonum esse malo contrarium ... Alterum ex altero sequitur: proinde aut utrumque tollendum est negandumque bona et mala esse; aut admisso altero maximeque malo, bonum quoque admissum oportet." (Where there is evil ... there must needs be good contrary to the evil ... The one follows from the other; hence we must either do away with both, and deny that good and evil exist, or if we admit the one, and particularly evil, we must also admit the good.) II, 51; trans. by Chadwick.) In contrast to this clear, logical statement(Contra Origen Celsum, cannot help asserting elsewhere that the "Powers, Thrones, and Principalities" down to the evil spirits and impure demons "do not have it - the contrary virtue - substantially" ("non substantialiter id habeant scI. virtus adversaria"), and that they were not created evil but chose the condition of wickedness ("malitiae grad us") of their own free will. I, VIII, 4.) Origen is already committed, at least by implication, to (Dethe definitionprincipiis, of God as the Summum Bonum, and hence betrays the inclination to deprive evil of substance. He comes very close to the Augustinian conception of the when he says: "Certum namque est malum esse bono carere" (For it privaciois certain boni that to be evil means to be deprived of good). But this sentence is immediately preceded by the following: "Recedere autem a bono, non aliud est quam effici in malo" (To turn aside from good is nothing other than to be perfected in evil) II, IX, 2). This shows clearly thatan increase in the one means a diminution(De principiis, of the other, so that good and evil represent equivalent halves of an opposition. CHRIST, A SYMBOL OF THE SELF 301 of the ego affects only those supreme and ultimate decisions which confront us in situations where there are insoluble conflicts of duty. This means, in other words, that in such cases the ego is a suffering bystander who decides nothing but must submit to a decision and surrender unconditionally. The "genius" of man, the higher and more spacious part of him whose extent no one knows, has the final word. It is therefore well to examine carefully the psychological aspects of the individuation process in the light of Christian tradition, which can describe it for us with an exactness and impressiveness far surpassing our feeble attempts, even though the Christian image of the self - Christ - lacks the shadow that properly belongs to it. The reason for this, as already indicated, is the doctrine of the Summum Bonum. Irenaeus says very rightly, in refuting the Gnostics, that exception must be taken to the "light of their Father," because it "could not illuminate and fill even those things which were within it," namely the shadow and the void. It seemed to him scandalous and reprehensible to suppose that within the pleroma of light there could be a "dark and formless void." For the Christian neither God nor Christ could be a paradox; they had to have a single meaning, and this holds true to the present day. No one knew, and apparently (with a few commendable excep­ tions) no one knows even now, that the hybris of the speculative intellect had already emboldened the ancients to propound a philosophical definition of God that more or less obliged him to be the Summum Bonum. A Protestant theologian has even had the temerity to assert that "God only be good." Yahweh could certainly have taught him a thingcan or two in this respect, if he himself is unable to see his intellectual trespass against God's freedom and omnipotence. This forcible usurpation of the Summum Bonum naturally has its reasons, the origins of which lie far back in the past (though I cannot enter into this here). Nevertheless, it is the effective source of the concept oftheprivatio which nullifies the reality of evil and can be found as early asboni, Basil the Great (330-79) and Dionysius the Areopagite (2nd half of the 4th century), and is fully developed in Augustine. The earliest authority of all for the later axiom "Omne bonum a Deo, omne malum ab homine" is Tatian (2nd century), who says: "Nothing evil was created by God; we ourselves have produced all 302 SELF AND OPPOSITES wickedness." This view is also adopted by Theophilus of Antioch (2nd century) in his treatise Ad Autolycum. Basil says: You must not look upon God as the author of the existence of evil, not consider that evil has any subsistence in itself [l8{av vxoaraUiv TOU xaxou EivaI]. For evil does not subsist as a living being does, nor can we set before our eyes any substantial essence [ovo{av evvxoaraTov] thereof. For evil is the privation [ arE(!1}Ou;] of good ... And thus evil does not inhere in its own substance [ev v1lCi(!~Et ], but arises from the mutilation 18tq. [x1}(!wjlaotv] of the soul.* Neither is it uncreated, as the wicked say who set up evil for the equal of good ... nor is it created. For if all things are of God, how can evil arise from good? Another passage sheds light on the logic of this statement. In the second homily of the Basil says: Hexaemeron It is equally impious to say that evil has its origin from God, because the contrary cannot proceed from the contrary. Life does not engender death, darkness is not the origin of light, sickness is not the maker of health ... Now if evil is neither uncreated nor created by God, whence comes its nature? That evil exists no one living in the world will deny. What shall we say, then? That evil is not a living and animated entity, but a condition [8tci8eat,] of the soul opposed to virtue, proceeding from light-minded [rla8Vjlot,] persons on account of their falling away from good ... Each of us should acknowledge that he is the first author of the wickedness in him. The perfectly natural fact that when you say "high" you immediately postulate "low" is here twisted into a causal relation­ ship and reduced to absurdity, since it is sufficiently obvious that darkness produces no light and light produces no darkness. The idea of good and evil, however, is the premise for any moral judgment.
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