THE PRIEST, THE PSYCHIATRIST AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL PUNITA MIRANDA PHANÊS • VOLUME 2 • 2019 • PP. 104–143 https://doi.org/10.32724/phanes.2019.Miranda THE PRIEST, THE PSYCHIATRIST, AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 105 ABSTRACT This paper clusters around the problem of evil within the framework of depth psychology. The first part briefly introduces the narrative of the Book of Job as an example to contextualise how the ultimate question of God’s relation to evil remained unanswered and was left open-ended in Christian theology. The second part offers a historical reconstruction of the unresolved polemic over the nature of evil between Carl Jung and the English Dominican scholar and theologian Victor White (1902-1960). It explores their different speculations and formulations concerning evil and its psychological implications, until their final fall-out following White’s harshly critical review of Jung’s most controversial work on religion, Answer to Job. The final section of this paper introduces further reflections on a challenging theme that is no less resonant and relevant in today’s world of terrorism in the name of religion than it was in a post-war Europe struggling to recover from totalitarianism and genocide. KEYWORDS Carl Jung, Victor White, Book of Job, Answer to Job, evil. PHANÊS Vol 2 • 2019 PUNITA MIRANDA 106 God has turned me over to the ungodly and thrown me into the clutches of the wicked. All was well with me, but he shattered me; he seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has made me his target; his archers surround me. Without pity, he pierces my kidneys and spills my gall on the ground. Again and again he bursts upon me; he rushes at me like a warrior. I have sewed sackcloth over my skin and buried my brow in the dust. My face is red with weeping, dark shadows ring my eyes; yet my hands have been free of violence and my prayer is pure. (Job 16:11-17). he Book of Job (600-300 B.C.) is part of the ‘Wisdom’ books in the Judeo-Christian Bible and has been universally admired as a ‘literary masterpiece’ of ‘the highest magnitude’ of poetic dialogues and narrative prose (BishopT 2002:3, Parsons 1981:213). Its composition most likely took place in the 5th century between the Babylonian holocaust and through the period of exile (587-538 BCE). The book is divided in five parts: a) the prologue on earth and in heaven; b) the symposium-dialogues between Job and his three friends; c) three monologues: poem to wisdom, Job’s PHANÊS Vol 2 • 2019 THE PRIEST, THE PSYCHIATRIST, AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 107 closing monologue, the speeches of Elihu; d) dialog with God; e) epilogue (Chase 2013:5). The figure of Job, in Jewish and non-Jewish contexts, has inspired many philosophers, religious thinkers, and intellectuals, as well as capturing the imagination of painters and musicians.1 Job’s exemplary virtue, with its ongoing variations in interpretation, from around the 6th century, has become a timeless model for contemplating the inscrutability of Divine Providence. The Book of Job is a tragic story of suffering, misfortune and endurance. The righteous and faithful Job becomes a victim of a wager made between Yahweh and Satan (Job 1:6-12). During this trial Satan challenges Job’s piety and God allows Satan to afflict Job with severe physical pain, emotional loss and grief (Job 1:13-20; 2:7). Job sees no justice in his sufferings and yet tries to understand why he is being punished, since he has not sinned. Three friends, Elipahz, Bildad and Zophar, first come to comfort Job (Job 2: 11) but then they argue that Yahweh is beyond human understanding (Job 22) and perhaps Job is suffering from a ‘hidden sin’ (Job 4:7-21; 11:7; 15; 18) (Parsons 1981:144). Once again Job protests his guiltlessness (Job 6:24-30; 7:11; 10:2). In the face of God’s silence and absence (Job 23) Job is aroused by anger and through his bitter complaints and endless torment (Job 16, 19), he disputes his innocence (Job 31), arguing his case ‘before God against a God’ (Job 13:3) who is indifferent to his plight (Job 27). In his revolt against God, Job hopes for vindication (Job 13:18; 31; 35) and demands to know where wisdom is to be found (Job 28). God ignores his plea (Job 30:20; 31:35). The only answer that Job receives is through the angry remarks of another friend, Elihu (Job 32- 37), and through God’s appearance out of a whirlwind, showing aspects of His creation from stars to animals, including monsters like Behemoth and Leviathan (Job 38-41). After contemplating the cosmos Job repents and surrenders to the supremacy of God (Job 42:1-6). Yahweh then rewards him for his faithfulness and endurance; Job’s suffering is removed and his restoration includes health, twice as much property as before, new children, and an extremely long life (Job 42:7-17). The Book of Job still provides a lifetime reflection on how a good God could produce evil deeds; furthermore, it portrays in a very individual way the nature of human suffering and addresses profound questions 1 For a comprehensive list of commentaries on the Book of Job, see Bishop (2002:4-14). For visual and musical examples see especially the nineteen watercolours illustrations and the twenty-two engravings of William Blake (1757-1827) of the Book of Job; Marc Chagall’s (1887-1985) two lithographs ‘Job Praying’ and ‘Job in Despair’, a tapestry called ‘Job’ dedicated to all the disabled in the world; and Vaughan Williams’ (1872- 1958) piece, Job: A Masque for Dancing. PHANÊS Vol 2 • 2019 PUNITA MIRANDA 108 concerning rewards and punishments, the relationship between suffering and sin, faith and hope. Job as the innocent sufferer, on the one hand had to submissively endure a test of his sincerity, but on the other hand, as a rebel, he directly addressed God, questioning His unjust punishments. In this manner Job’s plight epitomised the undeserved suffering of mankind; his echoing cry challenging the divine-human relationship has never lost its vitality. It is this aspect of Job’s audacity that Jung further elaborated in his book Answer to Job.2 Jung believed that Job’s story and his questioning of God foreshadowed modern existential questions about a highly debatable all-good God who never gave an adequate answer to either the problem of evil, or His complicity in its origin and presence in the world. The opposites of good and evil, psychologically speaking, correspond to positive and negative aspects of human nature. The question of destructive forces manifesting within individuals and as a group phenomenon has recently been discussed in two collections of essays: Ethics of Evil: Psychoanalytic Investigations and Humanizing Evil: Psychoanalytic, Philosophical and Clinical Perspectives, both edited by the psychoanalysts Ronald C. Naso and Jon Mills in 2016. They explore the controversies surrounding definitions of evil, the plurality of its manifestation in the world and the intrinsic link between human freedom and the potential for evil. In sharp contrast to the integrative depth-psychological approach of evil discussed in these collections, this paper reconsiders the compelling narrative of Yahweh-Job in which Jung moves from metaphorical considerations of God and evil to questions of collective responsibility. Jung declares that we are all not only capable of committing individual crimes, but are also collectively responsible for the destructive actions of mankind. A case in point, that will be discussed later, is his perspective on ‘the dark God [who] has slipped the atom bomb and chemical weapons into [man’s] hands and given him the power to empty out the apocalyptic vials of wrath on his fellow creatures’ (Jung 1952, ATJ, CW11:§747). For Jung, the possibility of universal destruction through the atomic bomb had granted man an ‘almost godlike power’, 2 Antwort auf Hiob was first published in 1952 in Zürich. Then it was privately translated to English as Answer to Job by the Jewish analyst Dr. James Kirsch for a seminar held in Los Angeles in 1952-53 to a limited number of training analysts. In 1953 for the second edition of Answer to Job, Jung incorporated the corrections suggested by Kirsh. The current translation done by R.F.C. Hull was first published in London in 1954 and reprinted in 1956 by the Pastoral Psychology Book Club in New York. The book is now part of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung: Psychology and Religion West and East volume 11 printed in 1958. For more see Jung Letters, vol. 2:104; Jung, CW11:vii; Lammers (2007a:254, n5). PHANÊS Vol 2 • 2019 THE PRIEST, THE PSYCHIATRIST, AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL 109 but the question arises, do we have the moral maturity to handle such responsibility? ANSWER TO EVIL Naturally we can believe that God is different from the image of him that we possess, but it must be admitted on the other side that the Lord himself, while insisting on the Father’s perfect goodness, has given a picture of him which fits in badly with the idea of a perfectly moral being. (A father who temps his children, who did not prevent the error of the immediate parousia, who is so full wrath that the blood of his only son is necessary to appease him, who left the crucified one to despair, who proposes to devastate his own creation and slay the millions of mankind to save very few of them, and who before the end of the world is going to replace his Son’s covenant by another gospel and complement the love by the fear of God.) It is interesting, or rather tragic, that God undergoes a complete relapse in the last book of the New Testament (Jung to Père Lachat, 27 March 1954, CW18:§1556).