Answer to Job Quotes

“The difference between the "natural" individuation process, which runs its course unconsciously, and the one which is consciously realized, is tremendous. In the first case consciousness nowhere intervenes; the end remains as dark as the beginning. In the second case so much darkness comes to light that the personality is permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and insight. The encounter between conscious and unconscious has to ensure that the light which shines in the darkness is not only comprehended by the darkness, but comprehends it. The filius solis et lunae (the son of the Sun and Moon) is the possible result as well as the symbol of this union of opposites. It is the alpha and omega of the process, the mediator and intermedius. "It has a thousand names," say the alchemists, meaning that the source from which the individuation process rises and the goal toward which it aims is nameless, ineffable.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“Is it worth the lion's while to terrify the mouse?”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“Job is no more than the outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in God. His thunderings at Job so completely miss the point that one cannot help but see how much he is occupied with himself. The tremendous emphasis he lays on his omnipotence and greatness makes no sense in relation to Job, who certainly needs no more convincing, but only becomes intelligible when aimed at a listener who doubts it.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“The thread by which our fate hangs is wearing thin. Not nature, but the “genius of mankind,” has knotted the hangman’s noose with which it can execute itself at any moment. This is simply another façon de parler for what John called the “wrath of God.” 735”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job: (From Vol. 11 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung)

“I would even go so far as to say that the mythical character of a life is just what expresses its universal human validity. It is perfectly possible, psychologically, for the unconscious or an archetype to take complete possession of a man and to determine his fate down to the smallest detail. At the same time objective, non-psychic parallel phenomena can occur which also represent the archetype. It not only seems so, it simply is so, that the archetype fulfils itself not only psychically in the individual, but objectively outside the individual.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“We can say that just because John loved God and did his best to love his fellows also, this “gnosis,” this knowledge of God, struck him. Like Job, he saw the fierce and terrible side of Yahweh. For this reason he felt his gospel of love to be one-sided, and he supplemented it with the gospel of fear: God can be loved but must be feared.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“One should keep before one’s eyes the strange fact that the God of goodness is so unforgiving that he can only be appeased by a human sacrifice! This is an insufferable incongruity which modern man can no longer swallow, for he must be blind if he does not see the glaring light it throws on the divine character, giving the lie to all talk about love and the Summum Bonum.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“There is no evidence that Christ ever wondered about himself, or that he ever confronted himself. To this rule there is only one significant exception—the despairing cry from the Cross: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Here his human nature attains divinity; at that moment God experiences what it means to be a mortal man and drinks to the dregs what he made his faithful servant Job suffer. Here is given the answer to Job, and, clearly, this supreme moment is as divine as it is human, as “eschatological” as it is “psychological.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“Only that which acts upon me do I recognize as real and actual. But that which has no effect upon me might as well not exist. The religious need longs for wholeness, and therefore lays hold of the images of wholeness offered by the unconscious, which, independently of the conscious mind, rise up from the depths of our psychic nature.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“The logical consistency of the papal declaration (the Assumption of Mary) cannot be surpassed, and it leaves Protestantism with the odium of being nothing but a man’s religion which allows no metaphysical representation of woman”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“Whatever man’s wholeness, or the self, may mean per se, empirically it is an image of the goal of life spontaneously produced by the unconscious, irrespective of the wishes and fears of the conscious mind. It stands for the goal of the total man, for the realization of his wholeness and individuality with or without the consent of his will.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“It is the task of the Paraclete, the “spirit of truth,” to dwell and work in individual human beings, so as to remind them of Christ’s teachings and lead them into the light. A good example of this activity is Paul, who knew not the Lord and received his gospel not from the apostles but through revelation. He is one of those people whose unconscious was disturbed and produced revelatory ecstasies.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“This, one suspects, may have been the reason which moved John to assimilate the newborn man-child to the figure of the avenger, thereby blurring his mythological character as the lovely and lovable divine youth whom we know so well in the figures of Tammuz, Adonis, and Balder. The enchanting springlike beauty of this divine youth is one of those pagan values which we miss so sorely in Christianity, and particularly in the sombre world of the apocalypse—the indescribable morning glory of a day in spring, which after the deathly stillness of winter causes the earth to put forth and blossom, gladdens the heart of man and makes him believe in a kind and loving God.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job: (From Vol. 11 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung)

“«Es necesario acostumbrarse a la idea de que 'tiempo' es un concepto relativo, y que propiamente tiene que ser completado por el concepto de una pleromática existencia 'simultánea' o 'bárdica' de todos los acontecimientos históricos. Lo que existe en el pléroma como 'acontecimiento' eterno, aparece en el tiempo como secuencia aperiódica, es decir, se repite varias veces de modo irregular.»”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“«El que algo sea una realidad 'física' no es el único criterio de verdad. También existen verdades 'anímicas', las cuales no pueden ni probarse ni explicarse, pero tampoco negarse físicamente. [...] Los milagros son únicamente una apelación al entendimiento de aquellos hombres que no son capaces de entender el 'sentido'; los milagros son en realidad un simple sustituto de la realidad no comprendida del 'espíritu'.»”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

“It is just by following Christian morality that one gets into the worst collisions of duty. Only those who habitually make five an even number can escape them.”
― C.G. Jung, Answer to Job: (From Vol. 11 of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung)