Don Murray discusses Bonhoeffer's challenge to traditional Christianity and the insights of Carl Jung.
April 30 1944 marks the day the face of theology changed. On that date Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from the loneliness and darkness of Tegel prison in Berlin, wrote a letter to his friend Eberhard Bethge in which he started asking the questions with which we still wrestle, or fail to wrestle:
'You would be surprised and perhaps disturbed if you knew how our ideas on theology are taking shape. The thing that keeps coming back to me is, what is Christianity, and indeed what is Christ, for us today? We are proceeding toward a time of no religion at all. Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old preaching and theology rests upon the "religious premise". But if one day it becomes apparent that this a priori premise simply does not exist, what does that mean for Christianity? It means that the linchpin is removed from the whole structure of our Christianity to date.'
Challenging words. There is much more, but in one paragraph, plus a line, Bonhoeffer ended an era and began a new one. Bonhoeffer was already a well renowned theologian, teacher, Nazi resister, to the point of being involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, for which he was put to death slightly less than a year later, April 8 1945. He had earlier written, 'When God calls a man, he bids him come and die.' He literally answered that call. However, on this singular April day he changed the course of theological history, even if it takes us ages to catch on.
Bonhoeffer's words seem to have burst forth from nowhere. There is nothing in his background that hinted at his radical questions. He was the model of a faithful person and theologian. However, the reality of what was happening with religion in the midst of the war-torn world, in which he was so deeply involved, broke into his consciousness. In the intimacy of letters to a friend he began sharing his revolutionary insights and concerns.
What seems so new in Bonhoeffer was actually centuries in the making. Bonhoeffer gave words to what had been simmering ever since Copernicus and Galileo looked up into the heavens, reason and the scientific method began taking over, and Darwin affirmed evolution. Matthew Arnold, in 1851, began voicing his awareness that Christianity was receding fast. While gazing out on the waters and cliffs of Dover Beach he pondered these lines:
The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full and round Earth's shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar…
Nietzsche, not one to say things quietly, knew that something immense was happening. 'God is dead, and we have killed him' (1883). Years later, in 1921, felt the stirring of something new:
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
This is a mere glimpse, but you get the drift. Bonhoeffer continued the flow of a long history. His words sat untouched until the millennial cultural/social/religious upheaval of the 1960s. 'Is God Dead?' read a Time cover for a brief time. It reached a pinnacle when on April 8 1966 'Is God Dead?' appeared in large red letters on the black cover of Time magazine. It quickly disappeared, however, because of a culture that didn't care and a church that didn't know what to do with it.
Gretta Vosper has made a valiant effort with her radical denial of theism. But the church refuses to take her on theologically. So with 'the linchpin [theism, the supernatural] removed from the whole structure of our Christianity to date', the Bonhoeffer Challenge remains as the elephant in the room: unseen, unchallenged, awaiting the further demise of Christianity.
Carl Jung
However, we are not left bereft. One who has met the Bonhoeffer Challenge is Carl Jung (1875–1961). Jung laid no claim to being a theologian. He does, however, re-envision the Christian story in psychological language. No doubt he will eventually be seen as the most important theologian of the twentieth century, Karl Barth and Paul Tillich notwithstanding. As far as I know, Jung and Bonhoeffer had no awareness of one another. Each was pursuing their own path independently of the other. Jung's decisive book, Answer to Job, was published nearly ten years after Bonhoeffer's words. In it he answers Bonhoeffer's concern by developing his own understanding of how the Universe works.
Carl Gustav Jung was born 26 July 1875 in Kesswil, Switzerland. He was the son of a Lutheran pastor, and had several clergy uncles. Although surrounded by Christian theology he could not believe what his father preached and taught. His own experience, even as a child, did not jive with his father's words. After deciding on psychology as his life's work he was drawn to the insights of Sigmund Freud, especially his explorations of the unconscious. However, about 1908 he parted from Freud, believing his view of the unconscious to be too narrow. He then had a major and long lasting encounter with his own unconscious, recorded in The Red Book, which resulted in the remainder of his copious writings, including Answer to Job.
Jung observed that Job was the first person in the biblical account to take God on. In the Job story – and Job is a story, a myth, not an actual happening – Job calls God to account: 'I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God' (13:3). 'I have indeed prepared my case; I know that I will be vindicated' (13:17–18). 'Call and I will answer; or let me speak, and you reply to me' (13:22). 'O that I knew where I might find him, that I might come even to his dwelling! I would lay my case before him, and fill my mouth with arguments' (23:3–4). 'I will not put away my integrity from me. I hold fast to my righteousness and will not let it go' (27:5–6). 'O that I had one to hear me!… Let the Almighty answer me' (31:35).
In confronting God he exposed God as acting like an unconscious patriarch with no moral awareness of what he was doing. This caused Jung to conclude that God (for Jung, the Psyche) along with Job and everyone else, is in the process of evolving consciousness, and that Job was at least slightly more conscious than God. This is a complex subject. You need to read Answer to Job and Memories, Dreams, Reflections to better comprehend Jung's insight.
Jung's primary contribution to Christianity, especially in relation to the 'Bonhoeffer Challenge', was translating religious/supernatural language into psychological language. By so doing he changed the concept of theism, the view of a supernatural, all-powerful deity out there in control of everything, to the experience of our inner life. This is a change from the realm of intuitive awareness to the careful observance of what we are experiencing. Jung was a scientist of the soul.
What has happened with the Greek gods and goddesses presents us with a good example of what Jung instigated in relation to Christianity. The Greek religion was once a living reality for the Greeks. They felt themselves the object, and often victims, of the whims and plans of Zeus, Hera, and the whole pantheon. They understood them as supernatural, external, forces acting arbitrarily on their lives.
The Greek religion is long gone as a living religion, but now we understand their gods and goddesses as psychological entities, archetypes, which work in our lives. The Greek religion has been transformed into a rich source of wisdom to be mined for the understanding and enrichment of our lives. Jung has transformed Christianity in the same way. Now the story of the Jewish and Christian people, the Bible, becomes a rich source of wisdom as we seek to grow as individuals and as the community of humanity so that we may evolve a just and peaceful society.
We need also note that when Jung speaks of God, or uses any religious language, he is always referring to the 'Psyche', which for Jung was the soul of the universe in intimate communion with our individual psyches, with the will and intent to bring humanity and the universe to full consciousness.
Jung's translation of religious language to psychological language amounts to the death and resurrection of God, who is resurrected as the 'Psyche', which communes with our psyches, urging us to be our true selves. It is our way of relating to the ultimate mystery. So Jung offered an answer to Job 2500 years after the inspired creator of the Job myth conjured up the story. In so doing he also met the 'Bonhoeffer Challenge' by providing a non-religious, non-supernatural approach to our traditional understanding of things religious.
For Further Reading
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (Macmillan, New York 1954).
C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aniela Jaffé, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Vintage Books, New York 1989).
C.G. Jung, Answer to Job, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press, New York 1959).
Edward F. Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness: Jung's Myth for Modern Man (Inner City Books, Toronto 1984).
Edward F. Edinger, Transformation of the God Image: An Elucidation of Jung's Answer to Job (Inner City Books, Toronto 1992).
Don Murray is a United Church of Canada minister, educator and workshop facilitator. He has published four books: For Unbelieving Christians (1987); Celebrating Eve (2001); The Death and Resurrection of God: From Christianity to the New Story (2014); The Bible Beyond Religion: Witness to the Evolution of Consciousness (2021).