The evolution of God: the moralization of the Sacred between the philosophy of religions and the psychology of the unconscious

Why does Scripture place evil in God in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament instead outside of God? What does this evolution in the representation of divinity depend on? In this article, some fundamental voices that have studied the process of moralization of the representation of the divine in the Scriptures will be related: those of Rudolf Otto, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung and Friedrich Nietzsche.

di Friend's Shady

Cover: William Blake, "The Ancient of Days"

The relationship between the baggage of religious tradition and the new cultural horizons that have opened up in contemporary thought is broad and complex. The proposals of the philosophy and psychology of the unconscious, while arriving at the most diverse positions, share a decisive interest in religion. In this article I intend to relate some fundamental voices that have studied the process of moralization of the representation of the divine in the Scriptures. In particular, I will examine the opinion of Rudolf Otto, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung and finally of Friedrich Nietzsche, first in chronological order, placed last for reasons of thematic unity.ย 

In particular, the answer of these authors to the question will be highlighted: because Scripture places evil in the Old Testament in God, and in the New Testament instead outside of God? What this depends on evolution in the representation of divinity? Certainly this is not the place to enter into questions concerning the difficult theological problem of the relationship between God and evil; what interests us is the reaction that modern conscience, in the philosophical and psychoanalytic context, has had in front of this particular image offered by the Scriptures.

Rudolph Otto

Rudolf Otto and the "ethicization of the idea of โ€‹โ€‹God"

Already in his work The sacred of 1917 the Protestant theologian Rudolph Otto had highlighted how, in the Old Testament, evil was brought back to the same will of God: with the desire to establish the absolute transcendence of the numinous principle, a synthesis of fascination and terror, the most ancient sections of biblical literature have insisted a lot on bringing back to the divine both the affective and material satisfactions of existence and, equally legitimately, the most serious catastrophes found in human experience.ย 

For Otto this can be clearly seen in the evil that follows the manifestation ofgo to divine, representation of the tremendous at the scriptural level, which, frequently, โ€œin and of itself has nothing to do with moral qualities [โ€ฆ]. It is "uncontrollable" and "random". To anyone who is accustomed to thinking of divinity on the basis of its rational predicates, it must appear as an arbitrary whim and passion " [1]. The unpredictable and chaotic nature ofTheou orge it is therefore at the origin of what is felt as evil in the order of human experience. Otto notes how, in continuity with the developments of religious sensitivity in the Prophets and Psalms, things change considerably with the New Testament:ย 

ยซIn the Gospel of Jesus the trait of rationalization, moralization and humanization of the idea of โ€‹โ€‹God was completed; [โ€ฆ] Making sure that the numinous became richer and filled with predicates typical of the evident and profound rational values โ€‹โ€‹of the soul. " [2]ย 

With the company Christianity, Otto notes, the notion of a God as universal love, as Abba, in a connotation of the transcendent that merges with ethics to the point of being indissolubly linked to it (although in any case it does not give up, at times, the characteristics of tremendous). "The rationalization and moralization of the numinous, increasingly evident and intense, is the main part of what we define 'history of salvation' and we recognize that we are the self-revelation of the divine in constant development " [3]. It's a'"Ethicization of the idea of โ€‹โ€‹God" which, in the parable of biblical literature, "is fulfilled in the numinous itself" [4].

Sigmund Freud

Freud and the expiation of primordial patricide

A evolution of the representation of the divine, this one, which does not go unnoticed by the head of the school of depth psychology. For Freud the sacred "is originally nothing but the continuation of the will of the primitive fatherยป [5], which manifests an ambivalent character in its reflecting the affective ambivalence one feels towards the parent:

ยซThis would shed some light on the ambivalence that generally dominates the relationship with the father. Priest it means not only sacred, consecrated, but also something that we can only translate as "infamous", "execrable" ("auri sacred fames"). However the father's will was not only something untouchable, something to be held highly in honor, but also something in front of which he trembled, because he demanded a painful instinctual renunciation " [6].

The sacred, therefore, is fascinans as is the strength and courage of the father, and it is tremendous, as is the fear of punishment which the transgression of his will may entail. These explanations, however, do not tell us why at a certain point in biblical history the psychology of Yahwรจh becomes more and more one-way, to the point of converging in the substitution of the son for the representation of the father. [7]. They do not take into account what they defined themselves as theevolution of God, its moralization. It is here that Freud feels compelled to consider the question from a different point of view, capable of observing in the transformations of the biblical image of God the historical effect of a complex of psychic mechanisms elevated on a collective scale.ย 

The Old Testament God - Freud writes about it The man Moses and the monotheistic religion - it would in fact be the product of an assembly between two different divinities: one, luminous and ethically connoted, coming from Egypt, the other, terrestrial and shadowy, native to the Qadesh region. The psychological ambivalence that can be seen in the representation of the divine and which depends on the paternal complex of all men, would be married, throughout Jewish history, to the attempt to keep these two figures together, coinciding with the "good" side and the "dark" side of God.

In this regard, it is interesting to see how the psychological transformation of the divine would have been, according to Freud, the product of an ongoing process in the Jewish people. He would have received from his liberator, the Egyptian leader Moses, the monotheistic religion of the god Aten, to then repudiate it in the desert and replace it with the barbaric and Midianite cult of the demon Yahwรจh, not before killing their boss. The sense of guilt and the return of the repressed would thus have favored the emergence of a prophetic tradition capable of restoring atonism and facilitating, in the conscience of the Jew Paul, the possibility of a definitive atonement from what under this web of fatal events continued to stir: the unconscious memory of the killing of the ancestral father in the promiscuous horde.

The atonement of Christ is seen, in this sense, as the sacrifice of the "firstborn of many brethren" of the horde. It represents a real psychological redemption from the sense of guilt towards the killing of the primitive father. The complex is thus "defused" from the inside: the son got himself killed to make amends for what he had done towards his father. With Christianity God loses the character of tremendous, since he seeks no more revenge or punishment. Get good. In this way, however, he marks his own condemnation:

โ€œHaving sprung from a religion of the father, Christianity became a religion of the son. He did not escape the fate of having to get rid of his father " [8].

Carl Gustav Jung

Jung and the splitting of God

Now, a similar treatment is performed by Carl Gustav Jung in its Answer to Job, published in 1952. While Freud pays attention to the implications present in the psychological ambivalence of the representation of Yahwรจh from the point of view of the history of the Jewish people, this situation is examined by the Swiss psychiatrist from the point of view of the mythical imaginary. Interested in grasping the psychological dynamics that are hidden under the character transformations with which the divinity is represented, Jung does not consider the story hidden under biblical events, but takes these events as they are exposed in their narrative dimension.

In other words: Jung examines the question by investigating the psychology of the same evolving subject, namely God. Here it is not important to delve into Jung's particular way of proceeding, whose investigation often seems to cross over from the domain of psychology to introduce himself - as denounces Martin Buber - in a territory that is to all intents and purposes religious [9]. Here it is enough to identify how the founder of analytical psychology explains the transformation the divine image within the Scriptures. Jung plays the moralization of the sacred mentioned - that is, the progressive passage from an ambivalent God to a God transfigured in the summum bonum - like one removal of the will of evil from divinity, will that comes thus hypostatized in a principle antithetical to God: the devil.ย 

The step of the Gospel according to Luke in which we read of the "singular metaphysical event that Christ perceived: I saw Satan fall like a thunderbolt (Lk 10,18) "is read by Jung as concerningย 

โ€œThe temporalization (the entry into time) of a metaphysical event, that is, the definitive historical separation (until further notice) of Yahwรจh from his dark son. Satan has been banished from heaven and no longer has any opportunity to persuade his father to engage in dubious undertakings [such as Job's]. " [10]ย 

Indeed, "following the relative limitation of Satan's influence, Yahwรจh, identifying himself with his luminous aspect, becomes a good God and a loving Father" [11]. The ethicization of the numinous, already grasped by Otto, here becomes a symptom of a process of expulsion of evil from God, parallel to the construction of the New Testament figure of Satan. Now, all this is not achieved without ambiguity. For Jung - as Otto had also partly ascertained when establishing the maintenance of the character of tremendous despite the Johannine identification of God with love (cf. 1 Jn 4,8: XNUMX) - Yahwรจh, having expelled evil from himself, nevertheless continues to be tempted by it, almost moved by the psychological tendency to regression. In fact,ย 

"It must be admitted that it would be contrary to any reasonable expectation to suppose that a God who from the earliest times, despite His generosity, fell prey to devastating fits of anger, has now suddenly become the quintessence of all goodness. " [12]ย 

On the contrary: "the inner instability of Yahwรจhยป [13] will remain evident, despite his transfigurations, also in the New Testament, where, "despite all his precautions and despite his clear intention to become the Summum Bonumยป [14], will continue to manifest itself until it finally explodes in theApocalypse [15].ย 

All this leads Jung to conclude the need to readmit the tremendous in the representation of God, that is, to note how the unilateral proposal of God as love must be rectified in the light of a theology that knows how to accept evil as well, and not only good, as the product of divine action. Evil, therefore, will not be evaluated by Jung in the manner of one good privation, but rather as the fruit of the volubility and inconstancy of a God who in his process of individuation must be able to welcome his own aggressive and destructive tensions in an integrated psychic totality. The same Trinity - argues Jung - must open up to the feminine and the diabolical element, so as to embody the archetype of wholeness and completeness, recovering in itself the attributes that the Christian tradition wanted to alienate from God. ยซFaith in God as Summum Bonum - in fact, the psychiatrist writes - it is impossible for a conscience that reflects " [16].

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche and the aging of God

This overview of the ambivalence of the divine can be concluded with a common reference in the German language, especially for Freud and Jung: I am referring to the curious examination on the psychology of the divine that we find in the fourth section of the Thus spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. Many of the Freudian ideas are derived from Nietzsche, the last of the great philosophers of the nineteenth century, without however the father of psychoanalysis ever having recognized the authorship of these intuitions. The attitude of Jung was quite different, who often referred to the philosopher of Basel in his psychological works, to the point of dedicating a famous seminar precisely to Zarathustra between 1934 and 1939.ย 

For Nietzsche, with an extraordinary closeness to Jung and with what Otto and Freud described, the process of moralization of the divine entailed, in the psychology of the faithful, a repression of aggressive instincts, which were then sublimated into the representation of divine justice. In his opinion it is precisely this dynamic of expulsion of evil from the sacred that has led God to death. If you look at the parable historical of the Jewish-Christian God, we are witnessing a progressive weakening in the vitality of his representation, a gradual process of weakening due to the accentuation of its ethical and universal character. The Jewish God of armies and wars, as proposed by the first part of the Old Testament, is magnified by Nietzsche as an expression of identity belonging; he is exalted for the strength and violence of tones and actions, an expression of the tribal character and manly proper to the cultural conscience of the authors:

ยซWhen he was young - so he writes in Zarathustra - this god of the East was harsh and vindictive, and he built himself a hell for the amusement of his loved ones. Eventually, however, he grew old and soft and frail and compassionate, more like a grandfather than a father, but still more like a trembling old grandmother. Then he sat withered by the stove, afflicted by his weak legs, weary of the world, weakened in his will, and one day he choked on his too great compassion ยป [17]ย 

With Christianity, in fact, the national God of armies is involved in a process of spiritualization aimed at transfiguring him, from an affirmative expression of the spirit of belonging, into an abstract, paternal and merciful idol, now emptied of all other passions. With no more capacity for anger, no more preferences towards individuals or peoples, and indeed, folded into egalitarianism and universalism lukewarm and devoid of ties to a land or a people, this God loving it slowly became evanescent, until it disappeared. Of this God, says Nietzsche, it is right to argue that "compassion strangled him [...], love for man became his hell and ultimately his deathยป [18].ย 

This moralization of the divine is understood by Nietzsche in the manner of an evolution of the psychology of the faithful: the adoration of only one good God testifies the ousting of destructive psychic contents deemed incompatible with morality. If the divine is the scenario in which man projects his own image, the Christian God presents a psychological condition mutilated which is a mirror of the mental state of believers.

In this way Nietzsche anticipates a fundamental instance of depth psychology, namely the need to welcome the Shadow as an essential element of mental and physical health. The man who comes, says Nietzsche, will have this of his own: he will love his aggressive and violent sides as much as the bright ones. He will have to reintegrate precisely what Christianity, by constructing the image of a harmless God, wanted to censor: all the darkness that dwells in the human soul.ย 

William Blake, "Defeat"

Conclusions: from the old religion to a new anthropology

Concluding this brief overview, some observations can be made. What Rudolf Otto identified as a relationship with a "totally Other", together fascinans e tremendous, depth psychology recognized it as a projection of the unconscious. The unconscious is in fact dominated by the coincidence of creative and destructive energy, which, thanks to reason and its system of rules, can be differentiated into ethical antitheses. That is in the unconscious coincidence of opposites that man, in order to distance himself from it, has externalized in the form of the sacred. The sacred is therefore "symbol"(syn-ballein, hold together) of the contrasts that stir in the depths of the psyche, externalized so as to give them an adequate metaphor.ย 

To integrate this profound dimension (whether it is exhaustible or inexhaustible) is the task of the analytic treatment. Which, therefore, does nothing but favor - as often said by Jung - theincarnation of the aspects that the experience of the sacred attributes to God, togetherย  fascinans and tremendous. It is the same operation proposed by Nietzsche. Faced with a Christianity reduced to morality, to the education of a "only good" man, the philosopher of Zarathustra promises the maturation of a beyond-mens able to pose as one complexio oppositorum, as an identity of opposites. Able to recover in a healthy way all that Christian morality has banned: sexuality, aggression, self-love.ย 

"I am that psychoanalytic superman" Freud wrote to Ferenczi in a letter dated 6 October 1910 [19], and it is also in that sense that Richard Noll has come to speak of Jung like of the prophet of a "Nietzschean religion" aimed at replacing traditional Christianity [20]. Acknowledging the inner ambivalence and psychic dissonance has opened the doors to a psychology capable, by transvaluing the moral notions of the past, to ask "beyond Good and Evil". In eschatology both psychoanalysis and philosophy end up converging: the man who comes will have to welcome himself in his lights and shadows, in his good and in his evil. He will have to recover what the divine has lost with the moralization into which Christianity has led him - the vocation not to be good, but to be whole.ย 

William Blake, "The Sun at His Eastern Gate"

Bibliography:

Buber M., The eclipse of God, Passigli, Florence 2000 [ed. original: 1952].

Dell'Amico S. (2020), Myths that cure. The Role of Religious Symbolism in Carl Gustav Jung's Analytical Psychology, Jungian Studies, 1: 54-75.ย 

Freud S., The man Moses and the monotheistic religion, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 2013 [ed. original: 1939].

Jung CG, Answer to Job, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1992 [ed. original: 1952].

Nietzsche F., Thus spake Zarathustra, Adelphi, Milan 1976 [ed. original: 1883-1885].

Noll R., Jung the Aryan prophet. Origins of a charismatic movement, Mondadori, Turin 2001 [ed. original: 1999].

Otto R., The sacred. On the irrational in the idea of โ€‹โ€‹the divine and its relationship with the rational, Morcelliana, Brescia, 2011 [ed. original: 1917].ย 

Palmer M., Freud, Jung and religion, Scientific Center Publisher, Turin 2000 [ed. original: 1997].

Zaretsky E., The mysteries of the soul. A social and cultural history of psychoanalysis, Feltrinelli, Milan 2006 [ed. original: 2004].


Note:

[1] Broken, The sacred. On the irrational in the idea of โ€‹โ€‹the divine and its relationship with the rational, Morcelliana, Brescia, 2011, p. 45.

[2] Ivi, p. 124.

[3] Ivi, p. 152.

[4] Ibid.

[5] St. Freud, The man Moses and the monotheistic religion, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 2013, p. 134.

[6] Ivi, p. 135.

[7] See Ibid, p. 149.

[8] Ivi, p. 149.

[9] See M. Buber, The eclipse of God. Passigli, Florence 2000. For the complex relationship between Jung and religion see M. Palmer, Freud, Jung and religion, Centro Scientifico Editore, Turin 2000. On the particular meaning that Jung attributes to the image of God cf. S. Dell'Amico (2020), Myths that cure. The role of religious symbolism in Carl Gustav Jung's analytical psychology, Jungian Studies, 1: 54-75.

[10] CG Jung, Answer to Job, Bollati Boringhieri, Turin, 1992, p. 82.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid, pp. 84-85.

[13] Ivi, p. 111.

[14] Ibid, pp. 83-84.

[15] See ibid, p. 134.

[16] Ivi, p. 97.

[17] F. Nietzsche, Thus spoke Zarathustra, Adelphi, Milan 1976, pp. 302-303.

[18] Ivi, p. 302.

[19] The German edition inserts a "not" in quotation marks. Zaretsky defines it as "an interesting slip of the tongue": cit. in E. Zaretsky, The mysteries of the soul. A social and cultural history of psychoanalysis, Feltrinelli, Milan 2006, p. 524.

[20] See R. Noll, Jung the Aryan prophet. Origins of a charismatic movement, Mondadori, Turin 2001.

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