Customer Reviews

The Kingdom Within: The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Sayings

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This book reconnected me with the bible and the teachings of Jesus. Too often throughout history the bible has been given a literal interpretation and this largely moralistic view and concern with outward behaviour does not sit well with many people today. A lot of younger people are attracted to Buddism, Hinduism and "new age" religions because of the focus on the spririt within and the individual personal journey. Traditional christian churches could attract many of these people back if they had a more mystical approach such as the one taken by this excellent book. Jesus speaks to me through these pages and I re-read it many times.

I have read Sanford's book at least three times over the past ten years. In the cycles of spiritual dryness that come to all of us, the book is like a Spring shower. It becomes a gentle reminder of the reality of the Kingdom and of where we need to direct our search. Sanford's book presents Jesus' wholeness as a state of being that can be ours too. I go to this book frequently not for intellectual stimulation, although it has plenty of that, but with a thirsty heart. I'm not sure that Sanford set out to write a "inspirational" book. But I'm sure he would not object if for some of us, it has become just that.

Not a believer of the literal interpretation of the bible, I had a hard time putting religion into my life. This book gave me a new way of looking at Jesus' contribution to this world that made sense. It gave me something to aspire to in a concrete sense.

This is the most difinitive work on the saying of Jesus that I have found. Sanford is an Episcipal Priest and Psychoanalyist who is trying to explain that the Kingdom of God is actually within each of us. It is not a geographical location. He takes many of the sayings of Jesus and shows the inner meaning of these parables for today's world. This book really made a lot of sense and has reconnected me with the Bible. I would consider this book an absolute must for people who tend to have a literal translation of the Bible. It definitely sheds light into the mysticism of Christ.

Originally published in 1970, John A. Sanford's THE KINGDOM WITHIN: THE INNER MEANING OF JESUS' SAYINGS remains an outstanding example of how Jungian psychological theory and concepts can illuminate the paradoxical and oftentimes enigmatic teachings of Jesus. In spite of the popularity of the Jungian psychological perspective among many Christian circles (particularly in the Episcopal Church in which Sanford serves as an ordained priest), I wish to highlight several problematic dimensions of the Jungian perspective as employed by Sanford. (Please note: page references in this review come from the 1970 edition published by Paulist Press.)

Before highlighting problems, it is only fair to note that several strengths contribute to the book's abiding appeal. Sanford focuses on the kingdom of God as "an inner, spiritual reality" - a creative process of growth into wholeness rather than a static thing, place, or afterlife - that persons can begin to experience here and now (pp. 42, 46). In combination with insightful and sometimes novel interpretations of Jesus' parables, this focus on a here-and-now kingdom makes Jesus' teachings relevant for daily life. The hermeneutic possibilities opened up by Sanford's Jungian perspective challenge the narrow-mindedness of biblical literalism and the religious reductionism of scientific materialism. Sanford's Jungian approach also entails pastoral implications. It provides a religious framework for understanding how depression, spiritual stagnation, and neurosis may actually be signs of God at work in a person's life.

In spite of its many strengths, Sanford's Jungian perspective suffers from a number of weaknesses that undermine the primary intention of the book: the revitalization of authentic Christian life in contemporary society. These weaknesses take four forms: performative contradiction, latent anti-Semitism, individualism, and religious reductionism. Before concluding, I will briefly touch on each of these points.

Sanford repeatedly criticizes what he regards as the dualisms of "traditional" Christian faith. In particular, he attacks the normative status of body/spirit or body/mind dualism in which the body is given a negative status and the spirit or mind is understood in positive terms. While there is much truth to this critique of "traditional" Christian thought's evaluation of the body and the passions, it suffers from a performative contradiction. In the very act of rejecting the binary oppositions of dualistic thinking for the sake of wholeness and integration, Sanford replaces traditional dualism with Jungian dualism. So, for example, Sanford's argument relies upon the normative status of an ethical dualism: the ethic of obedience in Judaism and "traditional" Christianity versus the ethic of creativity called for by the Jungian perspective. Sanford associates the ethic of obedience with the infantile and unenlightened properties of tribal consciousness, a consciousness supremely exemplified in the Ten Commandments and in the practices of the orthodox Jew or Pharisee (cf. p. 150). Echoing the language of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Sanford diagnoses this condition as a "herd morality" that dooms persons to domination by "an inner darkness" (p. 149). The ethic of creativity, by contrast, represents spiritual growth, maturation, and individuation among persons who recognize the need to "go beyond following rules to the stage of consciousness where we become aware of our inner opposition and can thus hope to begin to live in light" (p. 150). Instead of tribal consciousness and herd morality, the ethic of creativity fosters individual awareness and personal morality.

By making this dualistic contrast, Sanford hopes to overcome tendencies towards legalism and Pelagianism in religious faith and practice. Sanford approximates this goal, however, by vastly oversimplifying the complex relations between law, grace, obedience, and creativity in biblical religion. Even more unfortunate, the close correlation established by Sanford's Jungianism between the infantile, the herd instinct, unenlightened consciousness, and inner darkness with a religion grounded in obedience to law injects a strain of anti-Semitism as a subtle but recurring motif throughout the book.

Closely related to Sanford's Jungian dualism is the book's uninhibited celebration of religious and moral individualism. "Christianity," Sanford writes, "is the religion of individuality" (p. 90). While this statement accords well with the rampant individualism of American consumer culture, it fails to do justice to the deeply social and communitarian character of biblical thought and Christian tradition. Sanford does not adequately take into account the fact that Jesus' kingdom language is inherently the language of community. In the process, Sanford renders conceptions of the kingdom as the Beloved Community of all persons in relation to God and the church as the body of Christ epiphenomenal to Christian faith.

This leads directly to the moral and religious reductionism of Sanford's Jungian perspective. Sanford reduces the social cause of Jesus - his loyalty to the kingdom of God to the point of willingness to die on the cross - to an individualistic ideal of self-actualization. As important as spiritual growth is for the Christian life, reducing the core of Christian discipleship to an individualistic drive for self-actualization trivializes Jesus' suffering and death. After all, the cross is the supreme symbol of the loss of self. The cross points to an absolute letting go of all aspirations for self-actualization for the sake of fulfilling God's will. Sanford's Jungianism renders the cross unnecessary.

THE KINGDOM WITHIN raises the following question for readers: does Sanford use the Jungian perspective to demonstrate the truth of Jesus' teachings, or does he use Jesus' teachings to demonstrate the truth of Jungianism? I maintain that the insightful character of Sanford's reading of Jesus' teachings depends upon the subjugation of the gospels to a psychological theory. In the Introduction, Sanford claims that "the teachings of Jesus do not depend upon any system of thought" (p. 21). Ironically, by the time the book reaches its concluding chapter, Jesus' teachings are inseparable from the system of Jungian psychology.

I have read, and re-read this book countless times. Each time, I walk away with a clearer understanding of the nature of my inner consciousness, my soul... and then I find myself wandering back months, in the most recent case, several years later to revisit what Sanford has suggested. Each time I do, I gain a more certain awareness of the part of me that seeks to connect with the Son of God. There are times when I can almost "sense" Him...

This book, as a companion to my Bible studies, and along with Larry Crabb's "Shattered Dreams" has done more for my understanding of my relationship with God than 40 years of mindless obedience to accepted Christian platitudes ever did for me.

If you read it carefully, it will challenge you and perhaps reward you as it has for me.

The book was very interesting and helpful for those who are genuinely curious to explore the psychological - spiritual dimension of our Lord's life and teaching. The ideas were stimulating. One was left with the feeling though that there was not sufficient scholarship behind the book to make each individual, biblical interpretation solid. Over all he showed me his case (that there is an internal, depth dimension to many of Jesus' stories and sayings - a dimension that has been largely ignored by the historical-critical method - a dimension which can also be investigated within a Jungian framework) was there even if he didin't really make the case himself.

It seems these reviewers do not know thy self because if did they would understand Sanford's book and it's meaning. But to a point it is understandable why these reviewer's miss the point. Like most of the people they never reached their inner core or the Christ with in and know very little about the Unconscious. I 've spent going on 20 years working with myself in therapy and reading books including the Bible, and it takes work to fully understand yourself and alot of pain which most people run from to see the light or know what John Sanford really is talking about. Trust me Sanford is closer to the truth than most authors I read, I have mostly all his books. He is not perfect but he's close. Be still and know I am God!, try it.

Jung suggests that each of us has a "mask" and a "shadow"; the mask being the conscious ego that we present to the world and the Shadow self being our unconscious, where we repress all of our secret and socially-unacceptable desires. We identify so tightly with our ego that we don't even realize that it's not our true self, and we are are oblivious to our shadow self and the inner-conflict between the two that adversely influences our behavior and our psychological and spiritual health. Psychological and spiritual wholeness then comes from integrating these two disparate parts of our psyches.

In this book, Sanford reads Jungian meaning into the Biblical message, essentially asserting that the salvation Jesus was talking about was actually the same process of reconciling the unconscious and conscious that Jung hit upon 1900 years later.

To support this arguement he explains how Jesus' parables and other Bible stories (Prodigal son, etc) can be seen as Jungian metaphors. For example, the well-known story of the Prodigal son can symbolically be seen as telling us that in order to be a completed work the good son in us must acknowledge and accept back the prodigal...

Sanford is essentially telling us that our modern understanding of Jesus' message is mostly wrong and that the "narrow" path that Jesus' spoke of is actually the path of reintegrating the unconscious in order to achieve psychological wholeness. Of course the trick with that is that, because it is our unconscious, we are naturally "unconscious" of it - i.e. how can we go about reintegrating the unconscious without being aware of it?!?!?!?

That question begs for an answer, but to my utter dismay Sanford never bothers to address that question, - which more or less rendered the whole book a tribute to his own intellect rather than something with any practical use.

Overall I liked his ideas, but without recommendations for how to apply this information to our own spiritual quest Sanford has essentially written only half a book (and it's the most important half that is left out).

Note: If you're interested in Jungian psychological wholeness as a path to spiritual enlightenment, and you're open-minded enough to accept radical rethinking of Jesus' message then I suggest "Putting on the Mind of Christ" by Jim Marion.

I have read this book over and over again; beautiful writing and always an inspiration to me when each time I read it. I've enjoyed several of Sanford's books but this continues to be my favorite.