Some Brief Thoughts on Gnosticism and Carl Jung
Having just completed my series of articles on Jung and religion, I’ve received some important responses about his interest in Gnosticism. The main point has been made by Gerald R. Baron thus: “As I recall from before you have identified with Gnosticism yourself to some degree and seem very sympathetic to Gnostic ideas. One of the important teachings of Gnosticism in my understanding is the separation of spirit and matter. Matter is inherently and unchangeably evil, which separates God entirely from it. Is this correct? And is this your understanding? If so, I’m interested in how this works with your view expressed last week or so that life is consciousness and consciousness is all there is. This seems to be a monistic viewpoint where Gnosticism in separating God and goodness from matter and evil is dualistic. Maybe you can enlighten me”.
Bruce McGraw, who is a professor of philosophy and religious studies, also has said that he understands Gnosticism in that way and, some time ago, Geoff Ward asked me a similar question. It is therefore important to offer some clarification. This is a slightly edited version of my reply to Baron:
“ With regard to Gnosticism (and my personal liking for it), we have to be very careful to understand what someone means if they claim to be a Gnostic. Gnosticism is a term invented by later scholars to label certain groups, who at the time were independent of each other and wouldn’t have recognised the term. They would probably have said that they were seeking gnosis, i.e. inner illumination, transformation of consciousness, something similar to the inner search of Hinduism and Buddhism. That is the sense in which I identify with them, and I assume that is also what Jung thought. He recognised that they were integrating and interpreting the images and visions emerging from the unconscious”.
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The Jungian analyst June Singer puts it very well: “No one was told what to believe, nor did anyone need to profess any collective belief… Gnostics feel that ignorance, not sin, is responsible for the unhappy condition of many human beings. Ignorance is an intoxication, a drunkenness, a sleep. The soul’s ignorance of itself, its origin, and its situation is the cause of much of human misery”.
“Since Gnosticism has no creed, and each person seeks the truth from inner wisdom, Gnostics do not always agree on what Gnosticism is”.
“Christianity closed the canon, implying that revelation happened at a certain time in history, for all time. Gnosticism recognizes many books contemporary with the New Testament and later, and sees revelations as an ongoing tradition”.
Roman Catholicism “places authority within the Church establishment, with the Pope as final authority on certain important issues. Gnosticism stresses the authority of the inner voice, sometimes referred to as the voice of God, within each person”¹.
Continuing my response to Baron:
“That said, these groups, or at least some of them, had similar beliefs. This enables the term Gnosticism to become meaningful in modern times. These beliefs involved elaborate cosmogonies and complicated mythologies, including the theology you mention. So Gnosticism is now considered dualistic, it believed that the material world is evil and was not created by the ultimate ‘good’ God, rather a lower figure known as the Demiurge, and so on. These are beliefs that I don’t subscribe to, although it’s possible to understand why they might have come to those conclusions. Also, I’ve never found anything in Jung to suggest that he agrees with such ideas.
“All that said, it’s important not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There remains a lot of interesting material in the Gnostic texts, much of it still relevant to modern times, hence Jung’s interest in it. As a Christian, you probably won’t agree, but the most obvious example is the belief in the Divine Feminine.
“There were several previously unknown texts relevant to Christianity discovered at Nag Hammadi in the 1940s. The most important of these is the Gospel of Thomas, which contains many purported but previously unknown sayings of Jesus, along with some similar to the Gospels”.
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Footnote:
- in an essay ‘Jung’s Gnosticism and Contemporary Gnosis’, in Jung’s Challenge to Contemporary Religion, edited by Murray Stein and Robert L. Moore, Chiron Publications, 1987, p86–88
