The famous psycho-analyst Carl Jung once said:
"We must read the Bible, or we shall not understand psychology. Our psychology, our whole lives, our language and imagery are built upon the Bible."
This remarkable quote has always resonated with me. As someone who grew up not only immersed in biblical stories but who also spent much of my youth memorizing large segments of the New Testament, this quote means a lot to me now. Not just because I'm familiar with the Bible, but also because I had eventually come to a point when I was younger, where I eventually questioned the biblical literalism of my youth.
The view of what some call “scientism” (“reductionism” or “materialism”) had always seemed way too simplistic to me. Although when younger, I sometimes envied people who could take that path and just be done with the immense problems/paradoxes and headaches of psychology and the Bible (in the same way that others insist on literalist views like creationism, etc), by the time I had come into my adulthood, and after having had such a Bible-imagery-immersed upbringing, I could see that such simple "solutions" were in fact just not going to cut it anymore.
And so after finding the Jungian concept of “archetypes” a long time ago, a whole new way of potential understanding was open to me, and I then became even more grateful that I hadn't turned my back on those stories that had previously become such a deep part of me.
And of course Jordan Peterson had also been a popularizer of Jungian archetypes.
But what are archetypes?
The word can be broken down into two different parts: “arche” and “type”, or rather “ancient types”. Or more specifically, ancient psychological/subconscious “patterns” or “motifs” (recurring subjects or themes) that lie deeply embedded in the human mind, or “subconscious”, as Freud first described.
A good example of this is the ancient archetype of the snake/serpent. A prominent figure in the Genesis account of the creation of humanity, it is also common in many other creation myths and stories.
And when I use the word “myth”, I should be clear to say that I don't mean “false” (which is a very 'reductionist' popular meaning of the word). To me now, there are many true “myths”, but just not “true” in the literal sense, but rather they remain “true” in the sense that they convey profound truths about our world, and about our shared human condition.
Essentially, the idea of “archetypes” (particularly in the psychological field) suggests that the human mind is, like it or not, deeply embedded with these “ancient types/motifs”. And our religious texts are in fact acknowledgements of such motifs already there.
Archetypes Vs Values
But as I have already written in another post, a problem typically with the explanation of the concept of “archetypes”, particularly as explained by Jung and Peterson, eventually presented itself clearly to me. And this problem (inevitably?) pointed me back to another author: Friedrich Nietzsche. For it was indeed Nietzsche who first made distinct/clear an issue that actually supersedes even the extremely helpful topic of archetypes, namely, the problem of values.
"Around the creators of new values revolves the world: -- invisibly it revolves."
Nietzsche, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"
Considered by Jordan Peterson to be a fatal error, Nietzsche claimed/believed that the problem with humanity was not just that us humans lacked a psychological/scientific understanding of the archetypes that lie deep within us, but that humans are in desperate need of a serious REVALUATION of the VALUES that often are associated with those very archetypes.
A more nuanced reading of Nietzsche reveals that, unlike many modern atheists, he wasn't opposed to, for instance, understanding the archetypal story of Genesis as profound metaphor. Nietzsche aimed his contrarian guns rather at the value judgments typically associated with the Genesis story; particularly the idea that humans are “evil” or “bad” for “eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil” (whether one interprets that story literally or not).
People (religious people in particular) typically make a value judgment (along with the holy book) about “eating the fruit” from the tree, and Nietzsche's whole project seems to be an effort to set up a clear counter-movement against this value judgment; hence his last attempted project called “An Attempt at a Revaluation of All Values”, before he finally lost his mind.
Whether or not one agrees with Nietzsche on the value of this pursuit, is at the moment, besides the point. The initial point is just to show that this was indeed his goal. And reading “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” makes that more clear.
Old Values vs New Values
In “The Genealogy of Morals”, Nietzsche went into to detail as much as he could (at the time) regarding the evolution/development not of the biology of humans, but rather, the evolution of our psychology. And more specifically, something that our psychology was (and still is currently) dominated by, namely, what he called our “bad conscience”.
And for Nietzsche, that bad conscience was most clearly solidified and given expression to, within Christianity.
And that is why, in his book “The Anti-Christ”, more than ever before in his writings, he went to the task of outright attacking Christian values.
He considered it a tragedy that people would get rid of Christian dogmas, and yet hold onto to the morality that had always been associated with those dogmas. He disdained those who thought themselves to be “good people” after they got rid of the belief in God (as if, after getting rid of religion, the idea of “good” or “evil” is even coherent... for Nietzsche, it's obviously not).
He had a lot of respect for Dostoevsky, for instance, who was more honest in his assessment of the moral problem:
"If there is no God, then everything is permitted."
And although Dostoevsky himself embraced Christianity (which Nietzsche did not), Nietzsche at least respected his recognition of the fundamental problem facing mankind.
And so Nietzsche's whole project (particularly in Zarathustra and Transvaluation) was to blaze a trail towards NEW VALUES, that one day humans would learn to “will backwards” and liberate itself (“On Redemption”, Zarathustra) from it's self-loathing.
Carl Jung's LACK of Moralizing and Moral Judgements
And although Carl Jung never faced head-on the “problem of morality” as something that needed to be solved (in the same way Nietzsche had), there was still yet a quality about Jung that authors like Alan Watts admired; namely Jung's lack of moral judgements of other people.
And it was in this sense that Carl Jung shared with Nietzsche his vision that morality (and moral judgements) was something to be overcome.
With Carl Jung, there was a “twinkle in his eye” that let you know that, whatever your dark side was, he knew acutely that he had the potential for the same darkness. And he also seemed to be quite aware of Nietzsche's saying that '“a little darkness is needed to see the stars”.
And it was in this general context and demeanor of non-moralizing that Jung developed his concept of archetypes. He offered to the world very valuable insights about man and his psyche.
So instead of having to throw away the book of Genesis (and many other Bible stories) as something that is at odds with science, there is now a new way open to the reader to consider profound underlying truths about humans, our development, and our psychology.
The question of whether or not a literal snake talked in a literal garden of Eden all of a sudden now becomes a silly question (whether answered yes or no).
To quote TS Elliot:
"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time."
The question is now: If we no longer take Genesis literally, what is the meaning of all the archetypes that we see there? What is the meaning of the snake, of “Adam and Eve”, of the “garden”, and of “being banished”? What is the meaning of Cain and Abel? Of Noah and the Ark?
And more to the point... Can we discuss these things without making any value judgements or condemnations? Can we discuss “eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” without having any condemnations of Adam or of mankind in general?
Is it actually possible to make a sharp distinction (and even antagonism?) between: Christian Archetypes and Christian Morality?
If I could sum up the project of "The Anti-Christ" by Nietzsche, that would be it.