Customer Reviews

Answer to Job (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol.11) (Bollingen Series) (v. 11)

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Doctor Jung expresses concern in his Introduction that readers will misinterpret the ideas contained in this book. Jung presents examples of the unconscious, capricious behavior of Yahweh (GOD) who self-righteously proclaims his moral superiority over humankind and enforces a strict adherence to his sense of justice. This self-delusion reaches culmination in the collusion of Yahweh and his 'shadow son' Satan in the undeserved sadistic persecution of a righteous man, Job, in a cosmic wager. Job's principled response to this persecution demonstrates humankind exhibiting a higher morality than shown by Yahweh. Yahweh, reaching a higher level of consciousness, realizes that he must atone to humankind for the wrong he has done. His attempt to make this atonement through incarnation as Jesus Christ is only partially successful. The later appearance of the Holy Ghost is Yahweh's attempt to perfect himself further through a personal incarnation into humankind in general. Jung moves on to a psychological analysis of the Book of Revelation, where the shadow side of the author, the Apostle John, is evident in the torments predicted to befall humankind.

Jung's theological ideas are radical and open to misinterpretation. His thinking on the 'problem of evil' and the evolving relationship of God to humankind is the attempt of a wise, old man to make sense of the conflicting images present in the mythology of the Bible.

Jung's "Answer to Job" was recommended to me by friends, and after some procrastination, I finally decided to give it a read. My only regret is that I waited so long to get around to it. I was surprised by both the candor and the comprehensive sweep of the book.

It should be understood that this book is not a book on pure theology, though theological issues inevitably arise. Jung himself emphasises that he is a "layman" in this area. He also makes plain that the book is a subjective response to Job. Jung also works from an orthodox premise, taking as given that the Father of Jesus Christ and Yahweh are the same being. With these born in mind, Jung's book is informative, interesting and very thought-provoking.

Jung's book has three main sections to it, as far as I could tell. First, he discusses the Book of Job, and the situation surround Job's life, trials and the drama played out with Satan. This section is darkly humorous, often eliciting a chuckle at Jung's descriptions of Yahweh. This aspect truly surprised me immensely, though pleasantly so. Jung treats Yahweh honestly, and is not shy of pointing out Yahweh's faults, which are many and abundant. Yahweh's apparent willingness and readiness to take Satan's bait, Yahweh's readiness to violate his own laws and so on are all mentioned and raised.

As the book progresses, Jung starts to address the pyschological processes within Yahweh, as he sees them. The book also gets more serious, losing that dark humour. Some aspects were a bit difficult understand the workings of, like the failure of Yahweh "to consult his omniscience" in dealing with Job. It seemed to me that there was a separation between Yahweh and some part of his being, which I could not grasp very well. That said, this is the first book of psychology that I have read, so those more familiar may have a better understanding of it than I.

Thirdly, Jung enters into a discussion on the psychological processes of people who have become "incarnations of the spirit", (Jung's words, paraphrased a bit). In this section, Jung discusses the Book of Revelation in detail, tackling some of the issues that book raises, especially in the contrast between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of Revelation.

Overall, the entire book is definitely interesting, and gives one a lot of food for thought. Jung takes an honest and very open look at the problems raised by Yahweh's dealings with Job, and uses that as a spring board for a broader discussion on psychology from Jung's perspective.

Despite my own problems of understanding parts in detail, I still enjoyed the book immensely, and have a lot of new ideas to think about. The book was well written, and certainly has a lot crammed into the 108 pages of text, (not including other stuff).

However, nowhere does Jung go so far as the Gnostics to say that Yahweh is an inferior and ignorant demiurge. While criticising Yahweh, Jung offers a pyschological explanation as to why Yahweh seemed to be an absolute cretin to a man who was blameless in his sight; as good an explanation as I have ever read or heard.

For such a topic, it is pretty rare to find a book that gives so much to ruminate on in such a small space. An excellent buy, and certainly one that will occupy your mind for some time after the last page.

...and daring in its conjecture that the God-image (NOT God) could only evolve out of its amoral unconsciousness through an encounter with a man of unbending integrity. Highly recommended, especially for open-minded theologians outgrowing the need to idealize images of the deity.

--and brother, does the Big Guy have problems! Read any biography of Stalin side-by-side with the Old Testament and you don't see much difference between the dictator and the Almighty. Paranoid, jealous, vain, ruthless, and vengeful, they demand unquestioning, unthinking obedience and they will crush you with unlimited violence if they don't get it. Gulag, Hell, it's all the same, except you can't escape Hell even in death.

God, as Jung points out, isn't quite right in the head. As Exhibit A, Jung uses the biblical story of Job--the faithful servant tortured to within an inch of his life by the God he loves--to deal with that age-old question: why do horrendous things happen to good people, or, if God is so powerful, so good, so infallible, why are there concentration camps, cancers, pederastic serial killers, tsunamis, terrorists--so many Evil-doers in the world? And, even worse, why are there so many innocent victims of all this evil? It's a problem inherent in monotheism. If there's only one God, then why shouldn't he be held responsible for all of it...good and bad?

There's got to be a better answer than the one God gives Job in the Bible, which is, basically, "I'm bigger than you, I'm stronger than you, this is my world, I made it, and if you don't shut yer yap I'm gonna rip you a new one, you worm!"

Job gets the point: might makes right--and he does obeisance and keeps quiet as any sensible person would confronted by an armed and pumped up lunatic in full-blown `roid rage. But there's got to be a better answer to Job's very valid question than that, doesn't there?

With wit, passion, and probing analytic insight, Jung finally provides Job with the answer God Himself should have given Job--if only the Almighty could have articulated it. For the truth is, as Jung rather stunningly tells it, God is actually unconscious of a large part of Himself and not unlike a lot of his creatures, He's in the process of "discovering" Himself as an individual. Perhaps even more stunning is Jung's assertion that God has a lot of catching up to do with his creatures since men like Job, who've looked deeply into themselves, actually occupy higher moral ground than He does. That, according to Jung, is the reason that God had to become man, and why he is still trying to become man: to come to awareness about Himself.

God, in other words, would be better if only he realized what a lot of pain and misery He's been causing! It's truly a case of His Right Hand not knowing what His Left Hand was doing.

*Answer to Job* is a simply brilliant interpretation of this classic Biblical story and its subsequent influence on the development of New Testament theology from the point of view of Jungian psychoanalysis. The translation is crystal-clear, largely free of technical or scholarly jargon, and livened by Jung's often irreverent sense of humor. You really do get the sense, as Jung says in his preface, that he's writing as a man for whom Job's pained and passionately urgent questioning of God doubles for his own: Why so much suffering? Why so much evil? How can there possibly be a God?

As Jung makes clear, these are questions that are evolving over time, along with their answers. And while in presuming to answer for God, Jung's may not be the final word, but it's sure a lot more satisfying than the answer God Himself gave.

I write this review as a caution to others who might consider taking up this book as a commentary on the Biblical Book of Job. This text is a fine example of Jungian psychology, from the pen of the man himself, and as such it deserves respect and a proper evaluation on psychological rather than theological grounds. However, this book is not and was never intended to be a work of theology of any sort, much less a piece if Biblical interpretation. Jung uses the contest between God and Satan for the soul of Job as a metaphor for his own theories about the processes of the unconscious and the innate structure of the human psyche. Those theories, in themselves, may be correct, but that is a highly dubious interpretation on the Scriptural work itself. Jung, to his credit, admits up front that he is not engaging in theology per se; alas, many of his readers don't seem to comprehend that. In short, if you are interested in Jungianism, this is a central work, but if you are looking for theology in general or a commentary on Job in particular, you should go elsewhere.

C.G. Jung was literally unique in both knowledge and wisdom. "Answer to Job" is by his own attestation one of his most important books of so many excellent contributions to understanding the human psyche. It is most essential for human survival that people understand how the lack of integrating the self in what Jung calls individuation allows the unconscious to compel us perpetually towards attitudes and actions of mutual destructiveness. (See also his essay "The Development of Personality". ) "Answer to Job" delineates precisely how humans have projected onto their image of god the unresolved conflicts of a deeply conflicted shadow self. It should be read with Edward F. Edinger's "Transformation of the God-Image" and Murray Stein's "Jung's Map of the Soul". Dr. Jung (medical doctor, analyst, scholar and author extraordinary) remains one of the great SEERS of the modern world, and as such offers us a special CURE FOR THE SOUL of humanity in our perilous condition.

For me this book is a wonderful example of how Jung was able to work with archetypes and myths when dealing with his own relationships. One familiar with the letters between Freud and Jung will find in the description of Yahweh and Jung's complaints against this punishing, abandoning, and at times unself-aware image of God the very real feelings he experienced with Freud.
I believe Jung did in this book what he could not do in his real life experience with Freud. That is reconcile parts of the relationship that hurt him deeply while finding a way to understand the limitations of both Freud and the PsychoAnalytic community which he felt abandoned him after the break with Freud.
He did this by attributing to God the containment of all things of the paradoxial nature of being both light and darkness/ evil and good.

Answer to Job is Jung's attempt to make sense of certain Christian teachings in the Bible (and the 1950's Papal dogmatisation of Assumption of the Virgin Mary) that might be inexplicable to a rational mind and traditionally being believed on faith. Jung's method is analytic psychoanalysis with particular focus on God's communication to man through Archetype or Collective Unconscious. In essence it is a psycho-analysis of God, justifiable conceptually by the postulation that the Collective Unconscious is both autonomous and has to be comprehended by human consciousness for its existence as psyche fact. Needless to say, that rested upon Jung having established (else where) that the Collective Unconscious itself is empirical rather metaphysical (i.e. with scholastic respectability).

The first puzzle is God's (Yahweh's) "unfair" treatment of one pious Job. The omniscient God is therefore interpreted as one-sided, unconscious and amoral. Both disturbing to Job (exemplified all pious humans then) and to God - the created had been elevated to a higher moral platform than the creator, since by definition morality presupposes consciousness. The decision of God to become conscious (i.e. become Man) is an understandable development. And according to Jung's analysis, this is the real reason of the Incarnation. To avoid contamination by Satan (God's first son), the help of wisdom/Sophia/Virgin Mary is needed. Thus, Jesus represented the best/positive side of God. Here, Jung differed from Christian dogma that says the sacrifice of God's Son is for the purpose of Man's redemption. Both views however seem (to me) to be on agreement that the Incarnation brought HOPE to Man.

As explained by Jung, Jesus taught us, without Jesus, Man has to use his own consciousness (and wisdom) to differentiate the Holy Ghost from Satan. John's revelation of a more revengeful God-Christ-image certainly signified rougher seas, and a new child image, as interpreted by Jung, signified God's wish to become Man himself, this time to ordinary man, total with God's amoral capacity as demonstrated towards Job. Based on this line of thought, Man certainly needs a helper or mediator on his side. It was therefore, timely, according to Jung for the Pope to introduce the Dogma of Assumption of the Virgin Mary (in addition to the need to address the becoming importance of the female sex in our society).

Despite its complexity, this book is a breathtaking study on religion and humanity that deserves a reader's every effort to comprehend and appreciate. Highly recommended.

The Book of Job has remained a mystery to me regardless having read
the biblical texts several times, studied several sermons and even
gone through a group study with several fellow christians - they all
say more or less the same thing. Repeatedly hearing the same thing
brings about a distinct curiosity for a deeper and broader understanding.

"Answer to Job" is a gift from Jung to christians in such sense.
As enlightening as scientists come to explain the physical
biblical wonders, so is Jung's insights to the psyche's
developement(both God's and human's) since creation and where do
human beings fit in the process, providing a unique perspective
that fits right in. Another reason I like the book is due to
Jung's humble and objective attitude in observing, perceiving
and interpreting, albeit how passionate he felt about the subject,
I could sense his integrity as a scholar. This book is a valuable
personal sharing from a man to his fellow human beings whom he
cared about dearly.

Freud was merely a rational atheist. Jung not only believes in God but in 'Answer to Job' he has the temerity to psychoanalise Him. . .

The reuslts are provocative.

Jung reasons that God was a schmuck towards Job (and by extension to all innocents who suffer from 'acts of God') due to His not being fully conscious. A strange theory since, it would seem that by definiton God is Omniscient.

However God, in Jung's model, contains all opposites and paradoxes--including choosing not to consult Himself. Had He done so, He could have seen that Job would have been faithfull to the end and not needed to take Satan's "bet".
The devil is still able to waltz into heaven in the book of Job and complain about how rotten mankind is.

Unconsciousness accounts why God allows evil, why He breaks His own covenant and commandments, and why throughout The Old Testament accounts in His dealings with Israel He often resembles a petulant child given to fits of rage towards his pet hamster.

In short, why the Jews were right to "fear" Him, big time.

In the end of, God pulls out all the stops and counters Job's anguished pleadings for an answer to his misery with a 'might makes right' speech; while all poor Job can do is declare that he knows that his 'Advocate' lives, and then shut up.

Job is the moral winner while the seed of doubt is implanted in God that He's not exactly playing cricket, and His desire to Know culminates in the 'tour the force' (Jung's words) of The Incarnation.

Jesus (the Advocate) now had to be born so that God could experience how we poor slobs muddle through down here.

Christ's mission therefore is not only to save humanity, but also God from His worse half.

On the cross, when God shouts to God: 'Why have you forsaken me?' He's finally made the grade.
The union of God and Man.

Four stars only due to Jung's heavy prose and his peppering his paragraphs with untranslated Greek--

At first the book seems like a joke (perhaps it is but is it a joke or a Joke?) but going from syllogism to syllogism Jung does builds a powerful if disturbing thesis.

Despite his protestations that this is a work of psychology, inevitably 'Answer to Job' becomes a fascinating and bizarre work of theology.