Page 142 - Eclipse of God

Supplement: Reply to C. G. Jung 115

I see no possibility certainly of conducting a discussion oth-
erwise than on the ground of this presupposition. (As a rule,
I do not bring my own beliefs into the discussion but hold
them in check for the sake of human conversation. But it must
be mentioned here for the sake of full clarity that my own
belief in revelation, which is not mixed up with any “ortho-
doxy,” does not mean that I believe that finished statements
about God were handed down from heaven to earth. Rather
it means that the human substance is melted by the spiritual
fire which visits it, and there now breaks forth from it a word,
a statement, which is human in its meaning and form, human
conception and human speech, and yet witnesses to Him who
stimulated it and to His will. We are revealed to ourselves—
and cannot express it otherwise than as something revealed.)
Not only statements about God, but all statements in gen-
eral are “human.” Yet is anything positive or negative thereby
ascertained about their truth? The distinction which is here
in question is thus not that between psychic and non- psychic
statements, but that between psychic statements to which a
super- psychic reality corresponds and psychic statements to
which none corresponds. The science of psychology, how-
ever, is not authorized to make such a distinction; it presumes
too much, it injures itself, if it does so. The only activity that
properly belongs to the science of psychology in this con-
nection is a reasoned restraint. Jung does not exercise such a
restraint when he explains that God cannot exist independ-
ent of men. For, once again, if this is a statement about an
archetype called God, then the emphatic assurance that it is
a psychic factor is certainly unnecessary (What else could it
be?). But if it is a statement about some extra- psychical Being
which corresponds to this psychic factor, namely the state-
ment that no such Being exists, then we have here, instead of
the indicated restraint, an illicit overstepping of boundaries.