Jung and the Bible
Out of the life and thought of a noted psychologist, Carl Jung, comes a captivating approach to reading and interpreting the Bible. The book opens with the question, "Why is it that the images, characters, and stories of Scripture have the power to catalyze the imagination of the human psyche, not only among religious people, but also among artists, moviemakers, playwrights, and songwriters, some of whom are disenchanted with church, clergy, and established religion?" The answer to the question begins with Jung's statement that the Bible is an "utterance of the soul." Jung sees the Bible as a treasury of the soul (psyche), that is, the testimony of our spiritual ancestors proclaiming in history and law, prophecy and psalm, gospel and epistle, genealogy and apocalypse, their experience of the holy, and drawing us and others through us into that experience. The Bible is no stranger to Carl Jung. No document is cited by Jung more often, and no cast of characters from any tradition is summoned to the stage of Jung's discourse with greater regularity than are the Adams and Abrahams, the Melchizedeks and Moseses, the Peters and Pauls of Judaeo-Christian Scripture--185 biblical figures in all. Beyond that, the realities and experiences that concern Jung most are also those that occupy prime attention in the writings of biblical authors: a sense of soul, of personal destiny and call; an openness to the wisdom of dreams, revelations, and visions; the power of symbols and archetypal images; the riddle of evil within God's world; and above all, the sense of God--the numinous, the Holy, at the center of things.
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Jung and the Bible
Out of the life and thought of a noted psychologist, Carl Jung, comes a captivating approach to reading and interpreting the Bible. The book opens with the question, "Why is it that the images, characters, and stories of Scripture have the power to catalyze the imagination of the human psyche, not only among religious people, but also among artists, moviemakers, playwrights, and songwriters, some of whom are disenchanted with church, clergy, and established religion?" The answer to the question begins with Jung's statement that the Bible is an "utterance of the soul." Jung sees the Bible as a treasury of the soul (psyche), that is, the testimony of our spiritual ancestors proclaiming in history and law, prophecy and psalm, gospel and epistle, genealogy and apocalypse, their experience of the holy, and drawing us and others through us into that experience. The Bible is no stranger to Carl Jung. No document is cited by Jung more often, and no cast of characters from any tradition is summoned to the stage of Jung's discourse with greater regularity than are the Adams and Abrahams, the Melchizedeks and Moseses, the Peters and Pauls of Judaeo-Christian Scripture--185 biblical figures in all. Beyond that, the realities and experiences that concern Jung most are also those that occupy prime attention in the writings of biblical authors: a sense of soul, of personal destiny and call; an openness to the wisdom of dreams, revelations, and visions; the power of symbols and archetypal images; the riddle of evil within God's world; and above all, the sense of God--the numinous, the Holy, at the center of things.
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Jung and the Bible

Jung and the Bible

by Wayne Rollins
Jung and the Bible

Jung and the Bible

by Wayne Rollins

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Overview

Out of the life and thought of a noted psychologist, Carl Jung, comes a captivating approach to reading and interpreting the Bible. The book opens with the question, "Why is it that the images, characters, and stories of Scripture have the power to catalyze the imagination of the human psyche, not only among religious people, but also among artists, moviemakers, playwrights, and songwriters, some of whom are disenchanted with church, clergy, and established religion?" The answer to the question begins with Jung's statement that the Bible is an "utterance of the soul." Jung sees the Bible as a treasury of the soul (psyche), that is, the testimony of our spiritual ancestors proclaiming in history and law, prophecy and psalm, gospel and epistle, genealogy and apocalypse, their experience of the holy, and drawing us and others through us into that experience. The Bible is no stranger to Carl Jung. No document is cited by Jung more often, and no cast of characters from any tradition is summoned to the stage of Jung's discourse with greater regularity than are the Adams and Abrahams, the Melchizedeks and Moseses, the Peters and Pauls of Judaeo-Christian Scripture--185 biblical figures in all. Beyond that, the realities and experiences that concern Jung most are also those that occupy prime attention in the writings of biblical authors: a sense of soul, of personal destiny and call; an openness to the wisdom of dreams, revelations, and visions; the power of symbols and archetypal images; the riddle of evil within God's world; and above all, the sense of God--the numinous, the Holy, at the center of things.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781725233423
Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
Publication date: 09/01/2013
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 164
Sales rank: 514,448
File size: 28 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Wayne G. Rollins received his B. A. from Capital University in Columbus , Ohio, and the B.D., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale. He has taught at Princeton University, Wellesley College, and Hartford Seminary Foundation, and served as Director of the Graduate Program in Religious Studies and Ecumenical Institute at Assumption College, Worcester, MA. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. His publications include The Gospels: Portraits of Christ (1963), Soul and Psyche, the Bible in Psychological Perspective (1999). He co-edited four volumes with J. Harold Ellens on Psychology and the Bible: A New Way to Read the Scriptures (2004) and Psychological Insight Into The Bible: Texts And Readings (2007) with D. Andrew Kille. In 2012, at the University of Amsterdam, colleagues presented Rollins with a Festschrift volume of essays , entitled Psychological Hermeneutics for Biblical Themes and Texts, edited by J. Harold Ellens. It honored Rollins' 1991 founding of the Psychology and Biblical Studies Section of the Society of Biblical Literature, an international organization of biblical scholars. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Assumption College and serves as Adjunct Professor of Scripture at Hartford Seminary.

Table of Contents

C. G. Jung Chronology viii

Chapter I What Has Jung to Do with the Bible? 1

Some Unanswered Questions About the Bible 2

The Bible in Jung's Life 3

A Look Ahead 8

Chapter II Jung's Psychology: An Internal Biographical Account 10

Jung's Father and Mother: A Dual Legacy 11

The Choice 14

Jung's "Main Business" 15

Words and Their Meanings 18

Dreams 20

The Break with Freud 26

The Descent into the Unconscious 27

The Anatomy of the Psyche 29

Gnostics and Alchemists 33

Individuation and the Self 35

Chapter III The Bible and the Life of the Soul 41

The Reality of the Soul in Jung's Thought 42

Psyche/Soul in the New Testament 45

Scripture as the Utterance of Soul: Answer to Job 46

Scripture: An Anthology of Soul 54

Chapter IV Biblical Symbols: The Vocabulary of the Soul 56

What Is a Symbol? 57

A Glossary of Biblical Symbols in Jungian Perspective 58

Scripture, the Soul, and the Symbolic Life 70

Chapter V Biblical Archetypes and the Story of the Self 72

What Is an Archetype? 73

The Value of Archetypes 76

Types of Archetypes 77

The Archetype of Archetypes: The Self 84

Christ and the Self 85

The Meaning of "Christ as the Image of the Self" 86

The Christ-Event and the Life of the Soul 89

Why Scripture Speaks 91

Chapter VI Letting the Bible Speak: A Jungian Approach to Biblical Interpretation 93

What Is the Bible? 94

Who Am I, the Reader? 98

Who Are They, the Authors? 99

Some Jungian Guidelines for Interpreting Scripture 100

Amplification and the Art of Listening to Scripture 105

Active Imagination and the Art of Proclaiming Scripture 109

Letting Go with Scripture 111

Chapter VII God, the Bible, and the Self in Jungian

Perspective 112

The Uses (and Misuses) of Scripture 114

The Problem of G-O-D 116

Personality No. 1 and Personality No. 2 116

God in Jung's Professional Psychological Perspective 118

God in Jung's Personal Perspective 121

Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus, Deus Aderit 127

Epilogue: Psychological Criticism and Scriptural Studies 128

Notes 132

Select Bibliography 145

Index of Names and Subjects 147

Index of Biblical References 151

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Jung and the Bible is a short but exceptionally clear book, not only introducing Carl G. Jung and his work of word association, dream, analysis, archetypes, and symbols, but also leading to a new method of biblical interpretation. . . . Rollins shows a sensitivity to Catholic and Protestant traditions of biblical studies and indicates how psychological and psychoanalytic insights support, enrich, and further nuance more customary methods of biblical study."
The Bible Today (1984)

"I'm venturing a course this fall under the banner of 'Freud, James, Jung as Pastoral Theologians,' in which all the reading will be in primary sources from one of the big three, except for your gem, Jung and the Bible. I just don't know any better way for people to come to know Jung intimately. It is such a lucid and penetrating account; it makes Jung accessible without losing any of his power. In fact it shows him powerfully at work . . ."
—Personal letter from Dr. James Dittes, Professor of Psychology of Religion, Yale University (1984)

"What a shame that I'm the first to write a review for this excellent 1983 book . . . . I suppose that had I still been teaching I would have selected Rollins' book as a text, given its focus on the Bible, but I don't think there would have been a better one. Next to Fordham's old book, this is the clearest exposition of Jung's positions that I've seen . . ."
—Amazon.com review by Mona Gustafson Affinito, PhD (2013)

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