Page 143 - Eclipse of God

116 Chapter 9

We should at last extricate ourselves from this ingenious am-
biguity!
But Jung now brings to my attention that men do in fact
have many and different images of God, which they them-
selves make. I think I was already aware of this and have many
times stated and explained it. But that which is essential is still
the fact that they are just images. No man of faith imagines that
he possesses a photograph of God or a reflection of God in
a magic mirror. Each knows that he has painted it, he and
others. But it was painted just as an image, a likeness. That
means it was painted in the intention of faith directed towards
the Imageless whom the image “portrays,” that is, means. This
intention of faith directed towards an existing Being, towards
One Who exists, is common to men who believe out of varied
experience. Certainly “the modern consciousness,” with which
Jung has identified himself in unmistakable places in his writ-
ing, “abhors” faith. But to allow this abhorrence to affect state-
ments which are presented as strictly psychological will not
do. Neither psychology nor any other science is competent to
investigate the truth of the belief in God. It is the right of their
representatives to keep aloof; it is not, within their disciplines,
their right to make judgments about the belief in God as about
something which they know.
The psychological doctrine which deals with mysteries with-
out knowing the attitude of faith towards mystery is the mod-
ern manifestation of Gnosis. Gnosis is not to be understood
as only a historical category, but as a universal one. It— and
not atheism, which annihilates God because it must reject the
hitherto existing images of God— is the real antagonist of the
reality of faith. Its modern manifestation concerns me specif-
ically not only because of its massive pretensions, but also in
particular because of its resumption of the Carpocratian motif.
This motif, which it teaches as psychotherapy, is that of mysti-