Page 141 - Eclipse of God

114 Chapter 9

to which God “exists for Himself.” He explains that God does
not exist independent of the human subject. The controversial
question is therefore this: Is God merely a psychic phenome-
non or does He also exist independently of the psyche of men?
Jung answers, God does not exist for Himself. One can also
state the question in this way: Does that which the man of
faith calls the divine action arise merely from his own inner
self or can the action of a super- psychic Being also be included
in it? Jung answers that it arises from one’s own inner self. I
have remarked in this regard that these are not legitimate as-
sertions of a psychologist who as such has no right to declare
what exists beyond the psychic and what does not, or to what
extent there are actions which come from elsewhere. But Jung
now replies: “I have made judgments only about the uncon-
scious!” He further states, “Why, I say explicitly that all, simply
all [italics mine] that which is stated about God, is human
statement, i.e. psychic.” This view, strange to say, he again lim-
its: He is of the opinion, he says, “that all statements about
God proceed first of all [italics mine] from the soul.”
Compare, to begin with, the first of these sentences with the
theses of Jung which I have quoted above. To explain emphat-
ically that the action of one of the powers of the unconscious
arises from one’s own inner self, or that it does not exist inde-
pendent of the human subject, would be a nonsensical tautol-
ogy once the terminology of the “unconscious” is laid down.
It would simply mean that the psychic realm designated as
the unconscious is psychic. The thesis first acquires a mean-
ing through the fact that it reaches out with its No beyond
the sphere of the powers of the unconscious and the psychic
sphere in general. Jung now, to be sure, denies that it has this
meaning. And he refers in this connection to the fact that all
statements about God are “human statements, i.e. psychic.”
This sentence deserves a closer examination.