Answer to Job: (From Vol. 11 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung) (Jung Extracts)

I found this book to be insightful , absorbing and enlightening. The book does touch upon the malevolent nature of the deity who pitted himself against Job in one of the most lopsided contests in history. More than that I find that the book examines the dichotomy that exists between the god of the old testament and the god of the new testament. The god of the old testament seems to be unsure of himself , a bully, brutish and unaware of his own nature and the nature of his creation. For an entity that in the old testament was considered to be omnipotent and omniscient the Jehovah in the story of Job seems to be neither. He seems to be easily manipulated by Lucifer and unaware of his own real motives and his own supposed knowledge. The book is not an easy book to read - Jung makes reference to many concepts, ideas and names which are unknown to most readers. I believe that if you are to really understand the book you will have to take notes and do some research as you move from chapter to chapter. I have read a number of books by Jung and this is one of my favorites. I recommend this book to anyone who is a serious student of theology, religion or mythology.

In Answer to Job, Jung examines God’s malevolent side (or, in Jungian terminology, His shadow), with the book of Job as a launching point.This is a sophisticated and quite complex book. I can’t even imagine trying to read it if I hadn’t been actively grappling with some of his concepts already, having just read Modern Man In Search of a Soul. Even so, I struggled to keep up. Be ready to have to google the definition of phrases and words constantly throughout the book.Jung covers such concepts as God’s capacity to do evil, His amorality, His masculinity vs. femininity, and the extent to which God was/is a conscious being. Furthermore, he makes the case that God lost the moral high ground and was thus defeated by Job, leading to the need to essentially re-create Himself as a loving, moral, benevolent human (in Jesus Christ). If any of those concepts interest you, this is the book for you.I hate to reduce Jung’s work into just a few sentences such as I have, but Jung has essentially rendered my mind as mush for the time being.Final say: It’s a very difficult but very worthwhile book. Read it.

Before attempting to read this book, I recommend a review of Jung's artwork, particularly the shadows images. The first image is that of an unjust God matched with innocent righteous Job. As he ventures further into an analysis of the Apocalypse of John, it becomes more and more clear that he cannot reconcile a just loving God with his experience as a psychoanalyst. His views are on a collision course with his dogged adherence to strict Roman Catholicism. At heart his professional experiences with troubled patients has apparently driven him to a Gnostic view of the demiurge with the corresponding Gnostic God nowhere in sight. His work contradicts his faith. I wonder if he ever achieved wholeness. It is my personal opinion that GOD cannot be analyzed from mankind's social communal perspective. It seems the more we understand Man, the less we understand GOD.

The book is an interesting and refreshing look at the problem posed by the book of Job in the Bible. The book is seldom discussed in sermons and this makes it even more useful to those of us who wonder why this is included.

This book contains Jung’s comprehensive statement on Christianity as a whole. it goes into God of the Old Testament and the New, the angry Yahweh and the God of love. But his reading of Job, Enoch, Revelation is groundbreaking in that they are seen in light of other ancient mythologies. The central thesis is that in the battle between God and Job, God lost. He suffers “the moral injury” as his vehement and mighty power of creation is put to shame by Job’s righteousness: that he did not subcom to Satan’s wedged. God depends on man to prove his omniscience about Job in his wedges against Satan. In this process, God discovers his consciousness and wanted to become a man like Job. Thus, Christ was born. The subject of Jung’s analysis is not Job but God the Yahweh who awakes from his unconsciousness of destruction to consciousness of morality. Thus awakened from the nightmare of his unconsciousness, God wants to become man. This sequence of destruction of his own creation and rebirth as a man is repeated in the Book of Revelation, too, as if God had learnt nothing from Job.But why does Jung talk about these books? Because the symbolism holds the opposites together: the good and evil, the light and darkness, destruction and regeneration.His criticism of atonement is rather similar to Nietzsche’s: What kind of father is he who is appeased by murdering his own son? The cross is the symbol of good and evil: the robber on one side who is accepted to the paradise and the other who is condemned to hell. The Cross is both curse and salvation, cruelty and love. But beyond the symbolism of dreams, images, archetypes, myths, we cannot move further into the Thing-in-Itself. John who preaches love, according to Jung, also wrote the most vehement book of destruction, almost predicting the fate of civilization in Jung’s time as well as our time. Man’s unconscious destructive impulse must be balanced and somehow mediated by his consciousness through symbols and mythologies.What is a Christian response? In wanting to be a god of love do we not become a god of destruction and vengeance? But what if the ultimate reality is not duality but one: the good and the beautiful. In this reality, who we are ultimately is the one who gives, like God the Father, like Christ the son. The myth of the sacrificial lamb must be replaced by the ritual of gift offering at the altar. For in our vigilance we give, after being awaked from the nightmare. Must we accept Heraclitus dictum that war is father of all things? Did not altar exist before war, Levinas asks? What was Cain doing before he murdered Abel?

I should have read this in toto fifty years ago in one sitting rather than piecemeal. Jung makes sense to me now...after reading thousands of books and hearing thousands of people. This is a must read until it is understood and applied to the present.

Dissects the story of Job, painting the accurate picture of God as biblical bully, toying with and destroying a faithful servant's life for the sake of a bet.

One of easy to read Jung’s collection

Every few pages has mind-blowing interpretations. They might not be "accurate" but this is one of Jung's more rigorously researched critical texts. If you study punishment or misfortune, or are thinking about patriarchy and politics, this book is a fast read that will keep you thinking for days.

j'ai obtenu ce que je souhaitais

satisfaite

would never dream of challenging Carl Jung's scholarly psychological evaluations. That said, he made a singular assumption, to be true, which I thought was uncharacteristic. He made no assertions about 'the gods', although some eluding to, but said that "god" was too busy with his own might over right to have oversight of his own omniscience; isn't that an immediate contradiction? Doesn't that imply pettiness? thus non-omniscience?IMHO. Did enjoy his psych evaluations.