Karl Rahner’s Theology of Symbol and the Transcendent Function of C.G. Jung
by Cathy H.
Symbol in the Theology of Karl Rahner and Psychology of C.G. Jung
In his essay, The Theology of the Symbol, Karl Rahner explores the question of what it means when we speak of the symbol in the theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. To approach the question, Rahner offers an ontology of symbolic reality in general that leads him to a theology of the symbol, “of the appearance and the expression, of self-presence in that which has been constituted as the other.” [1] For Christians, Jesus Christ is the primary symbol of meaning and the mystery of the Trinity lies at the background of all ontological considerations of the meaning of being.[2]
In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, an autobiography written towards the end of his life, Carl Jung looks at the question of the relationship of the symbolism of the unconscious to Christianity as well as to other religions. In his work with ancient alchemical and Gnostic texts, Jung’s “attempt to bring analytical psychology into relation with Christianity ultimately led to the question of Christ as a psychological figure.”[3] In this paper, I will look at Rahner’s theology of symbol in relation to Jung’s psychology of symbol and attempt to reconcile the empirical, analytical psychology of Jung, who was Christian, with the transcendental theology of Karl Rahner.
Rahner’s own attempt to reconcile the tension between the categorical and the transcendental can be brought into play here as an example of how the reconciliation is possible, whether or not we accept the “fundamental option” of saying yes or no to God’s gratuitous offer of grace. Whether we start by descending into the depths of the psyche or by ascending to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, both movements of descending and ascending need to be included in a discussion of the theories of symbols of Rahner and Jung.
Karl Rahner’s investigation into the grounds of symbolic reality begins with the question of what symbols are and what they express. For Rahner, “all beings are by their nature symbolic, because they necessarily “express themselves in order to attain their own nature.” [4] Michael Downey’s definition of symbol in The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality was influenced by Rahner when he states that “symbol is a sensible reality that mediates or reveals a meaning related to, but not limited to its form. The function of any symbol is to evoke and invite a participation that facilitates both revelation and union.[5] Rahner’s theology of symbol is primarily a Christology that makes thorough use of the language of symbol, metaphor and poetry in its exploration of the Heart of Jesus, the Realsymbol of the incarnate Logos. In his essay Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner, Harvey D. Egan argues that Rahner successfully combined a Christology “from above” with one “from below,” a Christology at once metaphysical, functional, psychological, spiritual and soteriological.”[6]
The definition of symbol for Carl Jung in Symbols of Transformation is that “a symbol is an indefinite expression with many meanings, pointing to something not easily defined and therefore not known.” In addition, “the symbol therefore has a large number of analogous variants, and the more of these variants it has at its disposal, the more complete and clear-cut will be the image it projects of its object.”[7] Both Rahner and Jung distinguish between symbols and signs “The basic distinction is between a representative form with a fixed meaning (a sign) and a representative form that evokes an accumulation of meaning.”[8] Through symbols we are able to express ourselves in relation to the ultimate symbol of Christ and the outpouring of the multiplicity of derivative images of suffering and redemption that we encounter in Scripture.
Moving from Logos to Symbol
As mentioned in the opening, the body of Christ is the primary symbol for Christianity. From the self expression of God as Logos to the conscious and unconscious reception of God’s self communication to humans in the message of Christianity and through the Incarnation, the Logos becomes embodied and transforms itself into a symbol for all humanity. In turn, our own bodies become ultimate symbols of the Incarnation of Christ as multiple and analogous symbols participating in communion with the symbol of Christ’s body.[9] Within an incarnational theology of symbol, our bodies are symbols of our souls and make it possible for the body of Christ to be present in his absence; our hands, hearts and heads are categorical substitutes for the transcendental reality of Christ. For Rahner, only through the Incarnation and through the body of Christ can we self actualize and become fully ourselves, while, for Jung, we become fully ourselves through the ongoing process of individuation which remains at the level of the self as the embodiment of the soul and is the primary ordering force and source of ultimate meaning.
The movement of the personal unconscious self to the level of consciousness for Jung is transcendent within a horizon that is limited by the boundaries of the soul as self. For Rahner, on the other hand, the horizon is pure mystery and the self is confronted with the abyss of the soul’s distance from God who in his absence is present. Jung’s notion of self suggests the image of a cascading series of mirrors all reflecting different variations of myself (body) in a limitless horizon that ends when the mirrors are broken. In comparison, Rahner’s notion of self consciousness and self actualization is more expansive, allowing for an escape from the negation that surrounds us when the mirrors are broken and our reflections (both signs and symbols) disappear. “The Logos is image, likeness, reflexion, representation, and presence filled with all the fullness of the Godhead,” while “The incarnate word is the absolute symbol of God in the world, filled as nothing else can be with what is symbolized.”[10]
Moving From Symbol to the Other
Rahner’s principle that the body is the symbol of the soul is reminiscent of Jung’s view of the soul or psyche and the symbols that the psyche creates out of the psyche’s unconscious and conscious content. Rahner was influenced by the doctrine of Thomism which presupposed a dualism between soul and body. For Rahner, “It follows at once that what we call body is nothing else than the actuality of the soul itself in the ‘other’ of materia prima, the ‘otherness’ produced by the soul itself, and hence its expression and symbol in the very sense which we have given to the term symbolic reality.”[11] Through our relationships with our neighbors and ourselves, we see a mirror image of who we are in the form of other persons with bodies and souls similar to our own bodies and souls. The dialogical exchange between who I am and who others see me as is constitutive of the moment of knowing God in the face of the Other, a natural symbol for the body of Christ. Everything expresses itself in order to become itself and “all beings are by their nature symbolic.”[12] Rahner’s theology of symbol unites soul and body by making the body an actualized form of the soul. In this sense, the specific parts of our bodies such as our eyes, ears, mouths are sensate openings to the soul that animates our entire being as embodied creatures. We are the accumulation of external, environmental influences, yet we are also something more, and the something more is symbolized by our relationships with others.
In addition, a real something that becomes a symbol is something distinctly other. Symbols are distinct and yet constitutive of what is symbolized. My body is constitutive of who I am. The plurality of Others, all signifying the symbolic reality of the Logos, is unified in the symbol of Christ, the Realsymbol of the incarnate Logos. In this sense, human bodies are both signs and natural symbols pointing to and sharing in the holy mystery of God and the Holy Spirit. Symbols, however, are generally more than signs because they are intimately connected with what they symbolize. In general, Rahner maintains, “symbols should be thought of as making actual, real and present that which they symbolize.”[13] From this perspective, the symbolic function can be said to transform the God concept of the collective unconscious (Jung) into the Logos of the Triune God (Rahner).
In comparison, Jung’s depth psychology holds that archetypes are fixed patterns that cannot be explained empirically and function within the level of the collective unconscious and the spiritual. In Jung’s words, “The archetypes are the numinous structural elements of the psyche and possess a certain autonomy and specific energy which enables them to attract out of the conscious mind, those contents which are best suited to themselves.”[14] The only immediate experience we can have of the subjective reality of the world is through the soul, “the only experient of life and existence.” Symbols created by the soul are always grounded in the unconscious archetype but their forms are shaped by the ideas acquired by the conscious mind. “The symbol works by suggestion; that is to say, it carries conviction and at the same time expresses the content of that conviction. It is able to do this because of the numen, the specific energy stored up in the archetype.”[15]
Essentially, for Jung, all products of the unconscious are symbolic, including Christ and the archetype or concept of God. With or without the incarnate Logos as the message of Christianity, the symbolic, meaning-creating activities in the psyche result in a contemplative move in the human spirit towards self transcendence. In a sense, Jung’s depth psychology and therapeutic method for healing and reaching wholeness in individual souls prepares the ground for us to hear and then to respond to Rahner’s theology of symbol which moves to the level of God’s grace and self communication to us in prayer and in our devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Jung considered himself to be an empirical scientist, yet his psychological theory of symbols of transformation in the collective unconscious of humanity brings him in close proximity to Rahner’s own theology of symbol. The natural heart of humanity preserved in the collective unconscious is touched and transformed by the symbol of the sacred Heart of Jesus.
Moving from the Other Back to the Logos
Rahner’s theology of symbol can be seen as an effort to integrate the ontological level of being for itself with the ontic level of being in itself. Unlike Heidegger, Rahner was not concerned with the meaning of being in itself (Dasein) in separation from the manifestation of being in the lived experience of the ontological level of being. Instead he calls his project a theological ontology of the symbol. “We know, on the contrary, from the mystery of the Trinity–we are doing theological ontology, which need not be afraid of adducing revealed data: that there is a true and real–even though only relative–distinction of ‘persons’ in the supreme simplicity of God, and hence a plurality.”[16] The plurality of being comes out of its unity as the symbolic expression of unity as the whole of being at the same time expresses itself through symbols. In a sense, everything is a symbol because we represent a plurality of categorical and mystical moments expressed in the finitude of time and space. What is most challenging is the shifting of perspectives within the unity of spirit of matter as both a concealing and a revealing of the ultimate reality of the Triune God. In this context, grace is a derivative symbol of the Holy Spirit in the sense that it is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit doing its invisible work within the visible world. Our relationships with others is another derivative symbol of the Holy Spirit because our spirits can be transformed within a community of other persons all seeking meaning and purpose. To be human is to be embodied spirit. The Holy Spirit is the dynamic force that moves us from the internal to the external, from the level of the categorical to the transcendental and to the acceptance of the ultimate reality of the Logos in the other.
What then is the primordial meaning of symbol and symbolic, according to which each being is in itself and for itself symbolic, and hence (and to this extent) symbolic for another? It is this: as a being realizes itself in its own intrinsic ‘otherness’ (which is constitutive of its being), retentive of its intrinsic plurality (which is contained in its self-realization) as its derivative and hence congruous expression, it makes itself known …. The being is known in this symbol, without which it cannot be known at all: thus it is symbol in the original (transcendental sense of the word).”[17]
Through the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, Rahner maintains that we can all have an experience of grace, a mystical experience in which the “horizon draws near and gifts itself to us.”[18] The Logos, in turn, is seen as the self emptying or kenosis of God and becomes incarnate, the goal and plan for Christianity itself, while grace is a precursor to the Beatific Vision. In his essay “Poetry and the Christian,” Rahner is at his poetic and pastoral best when he states that words are all pointing to God, “words of the mystery, as the coming of the blessed, gripping incomprehensibility of the holy, for they speak of God.”[19] Further, “if one is to grow ever more profoundly Christian, one must never cease to practice listening for this incarnational possibility in the human word.”[20]
Despite their different positions on the existence of a transcendent God and the primacy of a transcendent self, both Rahner and Jung attempted to reintroduce the transcendent in itself and for itself to the modern world, whether through the mediation of the Church or through analytical psychology that probes into our inner depths through the use of active imagination and the language of symbol and myth. Although his language is extremely technical in many places, Rahner realized that the message of Christianity was becoming of decreasing importance in modern society and that urgent efforts were needed to breathe spirit into the dogmatic teachings of the Church. He felt the need to define the meaning of symbol in philosophical and theological terms so that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus would make sense to a modern world. Jung was also a prophet of his time who realized that Sigmund Freud’s obsession with his theory of sexuality as being constitutive of who we are as human beings was in itself a serious neurosis that Freud could not overcome.
Rahner and Jung, both strongly impacted by the catastrophes of the 20th Century, which were to some extent natural consequences of Freud’s theory of sexuality and Nietzsche’s will to power, recognized the “signs of the times,” and acted decisively to make their voices heard. In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung has shared his own journey of individuation and the painful experience of isolation from his own colleagues with an invisible future of colleagues who would be in a position to help people integrate their shadow unconscious selves into the light of God. Jung wrote in German at the same level of difficulty as Rahner. Both men, however, made thorough use of art, poetry, symbol, myth and metaphor in their more pastoral writings. The following is an exemplary example from Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections that shows Jung’s appreciation for the invisible reality existing around us.
Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears about ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away — an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.[21]
A comparison here can be made between the self as the central archetype Jung’s psychology, and Jesus Christ as the primary symbol of Christianity. Both the psychological and theological perspectives address the creative, dynamic, unifying center of human personality with Jung using psychological language and Rahner using theological Christological language. But, there remains a danger in making this type of comparison which is, as Rahner notes, that “of turning the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God into a sublime gnosis in which once again a man replaces God with Self.“[22] However, by ministering to others in the language of symbol and metaphor, the danger of the Divine being usurped by man diminishes because the Divine grace of God is always and everywhere present in the world. The transcendent self can only be transcendent in relation to the existence of a transcendent God, otherwise the self remains in negation, its existence split off from its essence.
The Unity of the Psychological and the Theological in Symbolic Reality
The psychology of symbol of Carl Jung and the theology of symbol of Karl Rahner reveal far more similarities than differences, despite Jung’s focus on the self and Rahner’s focus on God. Jung asked questions about Christ as a psychological figure that exists as a universal symbol in the collective unconscious, while Rahner provided answers to Jung’s questions by grounding the collective unconscious of humankind within the categorical (subjective) and transcendental (objective) experience of our dialogical exchange with God through his gift of grace and his self communication with us and as we respond. For Jung, God’s self communication came to him in the form of dreams and a vision of Christ that he experienced after giving a seminar on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola in 1939. At the time of the seminar, he had been thinking a great deal about the Anima Christi of the Spiritual Exercises.
One night I awoke and saw, bathed in bright light at the foot of my bed, the figure of Christ on the Cross. I saw that his body was made of greenish gold. The vision was marvelously beautiful, and yet I was profoundly shaken by it. The vision came to me as if to point out that I had overlooked something in my reflections: the analogy of Christ with the aurum non vulgi (“not the common gold”) and the viriditas (greenness) of the alchemists. When I realized the vision pointed to this central alchemical symbol, and that I had had an essentially alchemical vision of Christ, I felt comforted.[23]
As the primary symbol of Christianity, the body of Christ came forth from out of the personal unconscious of Jung and represented in his dream a synthesis of images from ancient alchemy and Christian theology in the clearly distinct body of the crucified Christ. Jung’s interpretation of this powerful dream in relation to his work as a pioneer in the field of analytical psychology shows a deeply religious person reflecting in old age on his mystical experience. Whether the perspective taken in interpreting Jung’s retelling of his dreams and visions is psychological or theological, the content of the interpretation is the same – a vision of the radical experience of Christ crucified on the cross. The psychological and theological come together in Rahner’s “principle that the body is the symbol of the soul, in as much as it is formed as the self-realization of the soul, though it is not adequately this, and the soul renders itself present and makes its ‘appearance’ in the body which is distinct from it.” (TX, 247) In our dreams, the incarnate Word becomes the absolute symbol of God in the world, final and irrevocable. It is entirely possible that God’s very self was revealed to Carl Jung in his vision of Christ and that it became his duty to retell this vision many years later in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Our memories are limited by the finite nature of our bodies but our dreams and reflections on our dreams are unlimited openings to the incomprehensible mystery of God.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Downey, Michael. (1993) The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Collegeville, MN. The Liturgical Press
Egan, Harvey D. (1985) “Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner.” Theological Studies, 46
Jung, Carl. (1989) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York, NY: Random House (originally published by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, 1963)
Jung, C.G.. (1956) Symbols of Transformation. Princeton, NJ. Princeton University Press, Bollingen Series XX
Kilby, Karen. (2007). Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction. New York, NY. The Crossroad Publishing Company
Rahner, Karl. “The Hiddenness of God.” Theological Investigations, Volume XVI
Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 231
Rahner, Karl. “Poetry and the Christian.” Theological Investigations, Volume IV, page 359
[1] Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 235
[2] Kilby, Karen. Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction, pages 41-42
[3] Jung, C.G., Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 210
[4] Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 224
[5] Downey, Michael. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, page 953
[6] Egan, Harvey D. “Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner.” Theological Studies, 46 1985, page 735
[7] Jung, C.G. Symbols of Transformation, page 124
[8] Downey, Michael. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, page 954
[9] Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 236
[10] Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 237
[11] Ibid, page 247
[12] Kilby, Karen. Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction, page 42
[13] Kilby, Karen. Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction, page 41
[14] Jung, C.G.. Symbols of Transformation, page 232
[15] Ibid, page 232
[16] Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 226
[17] Rahner, Karl. “The Theology of Symbol.” Theological Investigations, Volume V, page 231
[18] Kilby, Karen. Karl Rahner: A Brief Introduction, page 66
[19] Rahner, Karl. “Poetry and the Christian.” Theological Investigations, Volume IV, page 359
[20] Ibid, page 362
[21] Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 4
[22] Rahner, Karl. “The Hiddenness of God.” Theological Investigations, Volume XVI, page 239
[23] Jung, Carl. Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pages 210-211