Carl Jung: Pre-Christian sources of the Trinity Concept from Greece.

III. GREECE In enumerating the pre-Christian sources of the Trinity concept, we should not omit the mathematical speculations of the Greek philosophers. As we know, the philosophizing temper of the Greek mind is discernible even in St, John’s gospel, a work that is, very obviously, of Gnostic inspiration. Later, at the time of the Greek Fathers, this spirit begins to amplify the archetypal content of the Revelation, interpreting it in Gnostic terms. Pythagoras and his school probably had the most to do with the moulding of Greek thought, and as one aspect of the Trinity is based on number symbolism, it would be worth our while to further examine the Pythagorean system of numbers and see what it has to say about the three basic numbers with which we are concerned here. Zeller says: “One is the first from which all other numbers arise, and in which the opposite qualities of numbers, the odd and the even, must therefore be united; two is the first even number; three the first that is uneven and perfect, because in it we first find beginning, middle, and end.” The views of the Pythagoreans influenced Plato, as is evident from his Timaeus; and, as this had an incalculable influence on the philosophical speculations of posterity, we shall have to go rather deeply into the psychology of number speculation. The number one claims an exceptional position, which we meet again in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages. According to this, one is not a number at all; the first number is two. Two is the first number because, with it, separation and multiplication begin, which alone make counting possible. With the appearance of the number two, another appears alongside the one, a happening which is so striking that in many languages “the other” and “the second” are expressed by the same word. Also associated with the number two is the idea of right and left, and remarkably enough, of favourable and unfavorable, good and bad. The “other” can have a “sinister” significance or one feels it, at least, as something opposite and alien. Therefore, argues a medieval alchemist, God did not praise the second day of creation, because on this day (Monday, the day of the moon) the binarius, alias the devil, came into existence. Two implies a one which is different and distinct from the “numberless” One. In other words, as soon as the number two appears, a unit is produced out of the original unity, and this unit is none other than that same unity split into two and turned into a “number.” The “One” and the “Other” form an opposition, but there is no opposition between one and two, for these are simple numbers which are distinguished only by their arithmetical value and by nothing else. The “One,” however, seeks to hold to its one-and-alone existence, while the “Other” ever strives to be another opposed to the One. The One will not let go to the Other because, if it did, it would lose its character; and the Other pushes itself away from the One in order to exist at all. Thus there arises a tension of opposites between the One and the Other. But every tension of opposites culminates in a release, out of which comes the “third.” In the third, the tension is resolved and the lost unity is restored. Unity, the absolute One, cannot be numbered, it is indefinable and unknowable; only when it appears as a unit, the number one, is it knowable, for the “Other” which is required for this act of knowing is lacking in the condition of the One. Three is an unfolding of the One to a condition where it can be known unity become recognizable; had it not been resolved into the polarity of the One and the Other, it would have remained fixed in a condition devoid of every quality. Three therefore appears as a suitable synonym for a process of development in time, and thus forms, a parallel to the self-revelation of the Deity as the absolute One unfolded into Three. The relation of Threeness to Oneness can be expressed by an equilateral triangle, A = B =: C, that is, by the identity of the three, threeness being contained in its entirety in each of the three angles. This intellectual idea of the equilateral triangle is a conceptual model for the logical image of the Trinity. In addition to the Pythagorean interpretation of numbers, we have to consider, as a more direct source of Trinitarian ideas in Greek philosophy, the mystery-laden Timaeus of Plato. I shall quote, first of all, the classical argument: “Hence the god, when he began to put together the body of the universe, set about making it of fire and earth. But two things alone cannot be satisfactorily united without a third; for there must be some bond between them drawing them together. And of all bonds the best is that which makes itself and the terms it connects a unity in the fullest sense; and it is of the nature of a continued geometrical proportion to effect this most perfectly. For whenever, of three numbers, the middle one between any two that are either solids or planes [i.e., cubes or squares] is such that, as the first is to it, so is it to the last, and conversely as the last is to the middle, so is the middle to the first, then since the middle becomes first and last, and again the last and first become middle, in that way all will necessarily come to play the same part towards one another, and by so doing they will all make a unity. In a geometrical progression, the quotient (q) of a series of terms remains the same, e.g.: 2: i === 4 : 2 =; 8:4 = 2, or, algebraically expressed: a, aq, aq. The proportion is therefore as follows: 2 is to 4 as 4 is to 8, or a is to aq as aq is to aq. This argument is now followed by a reflection which has far reaching psychological implications: if a simple pair of opposites, say fire and earth, are bound together by a mean, and if this bond is a geometrical proportion, then one mean can only connect plane figures, since two means are required to connect solids: Now if it had been required that the body of the universe should be a plane surface with no depth, a single mean would have been enough to connect its companions and itself; but in fact the world was to be solid in form, and solids are always conjoined, not by one mean, but by two. Accordingly, the two-dimensional connection is not yet a physical reality, for a plane without extension in the third dimension is only an abstract thought. If it is to become a physical reality, three dimensions and therefore two means are required. Accordingly, the god set water and air between fire and earth, and remade them, so far as was possible, proportional to one another, so that as fire is to air, so is air to water, and fire as air is to water, so is water to earth, and thus he bound together the frame of a world visible and tangible. For these reasons and from such constituents, four in number, the body of the universe was brought into being, coming into concord by means of proportion, and from these it acquired Amity, so that united with itself it became indissoluble by any other power save him who bound it together. The union of one pair of opposites only produces a two dimensional triad: p2 + pq + q. This, being a plane figure, is not a reality but a thought. Hence two pairs of opposites, making a quaternio (p* + p*q + pq 2 +

Carl Jung: Pre-Christian parallels to the Trinity in Babylonia…

[Pre-Christian parallels to the Trinity in Babylonia…~Carl Jung]

In proposing to approach this central symbol of Christianity, the Trinity, from the psychological point of view, I realize that I am trespassing on territory that must seem very far removed from psychology.

But everything to do with religion, everything it says, impinges so closely on the human soul that psychology cannot, in my opinion, afford to overlook it.

A conception like the Trinity pertains so much to the realm of theology that the only one of the profane sciences to pay any attention to it nowadays is history.

Indeed, most people have ceased even to think about dogma, especially about a concept as hard to visualize as the Trinity.

Even among professing Christians there are very few who think seriously about the Trinity as a matter of dogma and would consider it a possible subject for reflection not to mention the educated public.

A recent exception is Georg Koepgen’s very important book, Die Gnosis des Christenturns, which, unfortunately, soon found its way onto the Index despite the episcopal “Placet.”

For all those who are seriously concerned to understand dogmatic ideas, this book of Koepgen’s is a perfect example of thinking which has fallen under the spell of Trinitarian symbolism.

Triads of gods appear very early, at a primitive level. The archaic triads in the religions of antiquity and of the East are too numerous to be mentioned here.

Arrangement in triads is an archetype in the history of religion, which in all probability formed the basis of the Christian Trinity.

Often these triads do not consist of three different deities independent of one another; instead, there is a distinct tendency for certain family relationships to arise within the triads.

I would mention as an example the Babylonian triads, of which the most important is Anu, Bel, and Ea. Ea, personifying knowledge, is the father of Bel (“Lord”), who personifies practical activity.

A secondary, rather later triad is the one made up of Sin (moon), Shainash (sun), and Adad (storm). Here Adad is the son of the supreme god, Anu. Under Nebuchadnezzar, Adad was the “Lord of heaven and earth.”

This suggestion of a father-son relationship comes out more clearly at the time of Hammurabi: Marduk, the son of Ea, was entrusted with Bel’s power and thrust him into the background. Ea was a “loving, proud father, who willingly transferred his power and rights to his son.”

Marduk was originally a sun-god, with the cognomen “Lord” (Bel); he was the mediator between his father Ea and mankind. Ea declared that he knew nothing that his son did not know. Marduk, as his fight with Tiamat shows, is a redeemer.

He is “the compassionate one, who loves to awaken the dead”; the “Great eared,” who hears the pleadings of men. He is a helper and healer, a true savior.

This teaching about a redeemer flourished on Babylonian soil all through the Christian era and goes on living today in the religion of the Mandaeans (who still exist in Mesopotamia), especially in their redeemer figure Manda d’Hayya or Hibil Ziwa.

Among the Mandaeans he appears also as a light-bringer and at the same time as a world-creator. Just as, in the Babylonian epic, Marduk fashions the universe out of Tiamat, so Mani, the Original Man, makes heaven and earth from the skin, bones, and excrement of the children of darkness.

“The all-round influence which the myth of Marduk had on the religious ideas of the Israelites is surprising and this at a time when the worship of Marduk was nearing its height.

Hammurabi felt himself the god of a new aeon [the aeon of Aries], which was then beginning and the suspicion is probably justified that tacit recognition was given to the triad Anu-Bel-Hammurabi.

The fact that there is a secondary triad, Sin-Shamash-Ishtar, is indicative of another intra-triadic relationship. Ishtar appears here in the place of Adad, the storm god.

She is the mother of the gods, and at the same time the daughter of Anu as well as of Sin.

Invocation of the ancient triads soon takes on a purely formal character. The triads prove to be ”more a theological tenet than a living force.”

They represent, in fact, the earliest beginnings of theology. Anu is the Lord of heaven, Bel is the Lord of the lower realm, earth, and Ea too is the god of an “underworld,” but in his case it is the watery deep.

The knowledge that Ea personifies comes from the “depths of the waters.” According to* one Babylonian legend, Ea created Uddushunamir, a creature of light, who was the messenger of the gods on Ishtar’s journey to hell.

The name means: “His light (orrising) shines.” Jeremias connects him with Gilgamesh, the hero who was more than half a god.

The messenger of the gods was usually called Girru (Sumerian “Gibil”), the god of fire.

As such he has an ethical aspect, for with his purifying fire he destroys evil.

He too is a son of Ea, but on the other hand he is also escribed as a son of Anu. In this connection it is worth mentioning that Marduk as well has a dual nature, since in one hymn he is called Mar Mummi, ‘son of chaos/ In the same hymn his consort Sarpanitu is invoked along with Ea’s wife, the mother of Marduk, as the “Silver-shining One.”

This is probably a reference to Venus, the femina alba.

In alchemy the albedo changes into the moon, which, in Babylonia, was still masculine. Four may signify totality, just as it does in the case of the four sons of Horus, the four seraphim in the vision of Ezekiel, and the four symbols of the evangelists, consisting of three animals and one angel.

The ideas which are present only as intimations in Babylonian tradition are developed to full clarity in Egypt.

I shall pass lightly over this subject here, as I have dealt with the Egyptian prefigurations of the Trinity at greater length elsewhere, in an as yet unfinished study of the symbolical bases of alchemy shall only emphasize that Egyptian theology asserts, first and foremost, the essential unity (homoousia) of God as father and son, both represented by the king.

The third person appears in the form of Ka-mutef (“the bull of his mother”), who is none other than the ka, the procreative power of the deity. In it and through it father and son are combined not in a triad but in a triunity.

To the extent that Ka-mutef is a special manifestation of the divine ka> we can “actually speak of a triunity of God, king, and kay in the sense that God is the father, the king is the son, and ka the connecting-link between them.”

In his concluding chapter Jacobsohn draws a parallel between this Egyptian idea and the Christian credo.

Apropos the passage “qui conceptus est de Spiritu Sancto, natus ex Maria virgine,” he cites Karl Earth’s formulation: “There is indeed a unity of God and man; God himself creates it. … It is no other unity than his own eternal unity as father and son.

This unity is the Holy Ghost.” As procreator the Holy Ghost would correspond to Ka-mutef, who connotes and guarantees the unity of father and son.

In this connection Jacobsohn cites Earth’s comment on Luke i : 35 (“The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God”):

“When the Bible speaks of the Holy Ghost, it is speaking of God as the combination of father and son, of the vinculum caritatis.”

The divine procreation of Pharaoh takes place through Ka-mutef, in the human mother of the king. But, like Mary, she remains outside the Trinity.

As Preisigke points out, the early Christian Egyptians simply transferred their traditional ideas about the ka to the Holy Ghost.

This explains the curious fact that in the Coptic version of Pistis Sophia, dating from the third century, Jesus has the Holy Ghost as his double, just like a proper ka.

The Egyptian mythologem of the unity of substance of father and son, and of procreation in the king’s mother, lasted until the Vth dynasty (about 2500 B.C.).

Speaking of the birth of the divine boy in whom Horus manifests himself, God the Father says: “He will exercise a kingship of grace in this land, for my soul is in him,” and to the child he says: “You are the son of my body, begotten by me.” “The sun he bears within him from his father’s seed rises anew in him.”

His eyes are the sun and moon, the eyes of Horus. We know that the passage in Luke 1:78!: “Through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,” refers to Malachi 4:2: “But unto you that fear my name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings.”

Who does not think here of the winged sun-disc of Egypt? These ideas passed over into Hellenistic syncretism and were transmitted to Christianity through Philo and Plutarch.

So it is not true, as is sometimes asserted even by modern theologians, that Egypt had little if any influence on the formation of Christian ideas. Quite the contrary.

It is, indeed, highly improbable that only Babylonian ideas should have penetrated into Palestine, considering that this small buffer state had long been under Egyptian hegemony and had, moreover, the closest cultural ties with its powerful neighbor, especially after a flourishing Jewish colony established itself in Alexandria, several centuries before the birth of Christ.

It is difficult to understand what could have induced Protestant theologians, whenever possible, to make it appear that the world of Christian ideas dropped straight out of heaven.

The Catholic Church is liberal enough to look upon the Osiris-Horus-Isis myth, or at any rate suitable portions of it, as a prefiguration of the Christian legend of salvation.

The numinous power of a mythologem and its value as truth are considerably enhanced if its archetypal character can be proved.

The archetype is “that which is believed always, everywhere, and by everybody,” and if it is not recognized consciously, then it appears from behind in its “wrathful” form, as the dark “son of chaos,” the evil-doer, as Antichrist instead of Savior a fact which is all too clearly demonstrated by contemporary history. ~Carl Jung; Psychology and Religion; Pages 112-126.

Carl Jung on the "Trinity" - Anthology

The dream was of the general form of three elements being differentiated and a fourth less well developed; he elaborated at great length the problem of adding the fourth element to the existing trinity of faculties and the implications of this development. . ~Robert Johnson, C. G. Jung, Emma Jung and Toni Wolff - A Collection of Remembrances; Pages 36-39

Go not outside, return into thyself: truth dwells in the inner man." Augustine, Liber de vera religione. Motto to: "A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity." ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 466-467.

“God imagined the world. The Trinity is imaged in the creature." In spite of exhaustive inquiries the source remains unidentified. But cf. von Franz, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas, p. 186, n. 141: "God created all visible things through imagination and manifests himself in everything . . . . Thus the creative fantasy of God is contained in the visible. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Page 400, Footnote 6.

My view comes very close to Koepgen's lapidary formula, which moreover bears the ecclesiastical imprimatur: "The Trinity is a revelation not only of God but at the same time of man." ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 74.

The suffering God-Man may be at least five thousand years old and the Trinity is probably even older. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 46.

In reality the orthodox Christian formula is not quite complete, because the dogmatic aspect of the evil principle is absent from the Trinity and leads a more or less awkward existence on its own as the devil. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 59.

It was, indeed, a great problem to the Middle Ages, this problem of the Trinity and the exclusion, or the very qualified recognition, of the feminine element, of the earth, the body, and matter in general, which were yet, in the form of Mary's womb, the sacred abode of the Deity and the indispensable instrument for the divine work of redemption. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 72.

The Trinity is a revelation not only of God but at the same time of man. ~Carl Jung citing Koepgen, CW 11, Page 74.

Even among professing Christians there are very few who think seriously about the Trinity as a matter of dogma and would consider it a possible subject for reflection—not to mention the educated public. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 112.

Arrangement in triads is an archetype in the history of religion, which in all probability formed the basis of the Christian Trinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, Page 113.

The quaternity is the sine qua non of divine birth and consequently of the inner life of the trinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 11, para 125.

"God" in this sense is a biological, instinctual and elemental "model," an archetypal "arrangement" of individual, contemporary and historical contents, which, despite its numinosity, is and must be exposed to intellectual and moral criticism, just like the image of the "evolving" God or of Yahweh or the Summum Bonum or the Trinity. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 254-256.

On the other hand it is just the Trinity dogma, as it stands, that is the classical example of an artificial structure and an intellectual product, so much so that no theologian has yet recognized or admitted its origin in Egyptian theology. ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 422-423.

The mystery of the Virgin Birth, or the homoousia of the Son with the Father, or the Trinity which is nevertheless not a triad—these no longer lend wings to any philosophical fancy. They have stiffened into mere objects of belief. So it is not surprising if the religious need, the believing mind, and the philosophical speculations of the educated European are attracted by the symbols of the East—those grandiose conceptions of divinity in India and the abysms of Taoist philosophy in China—just as once before the heart and mind of the men of antiquity were gripped by Christian ideas.

There are many Europeans who began by surrendering completely to the influence of the Christian symbol until they landed themselves in a Kierkegaardian neurosis, or whose relation to God, owing to the progressive impoverishment of symbolism, developed into an unbearably sophisticated I-You relationship—only to fall victims in their turn to the magic and novelty of Eastern symbols. This surrender is not necessarily a defeat; rather it proves the receptiveness and vitality of the religious sense.

We can observe much the same thing in the educated Oriental, who not infrequently feels drawn to the Christian symbol or to the science that is so unsuited to the Oriental mind, and even develops an enviable understanding of them. That people should succumb to these eternal images is entirely normal, in fact it is what these images are for. They are meant to attract, to convince, to fascinate, and to overpower. They are created out of the primal stuff of revelation and reflect the ever-unique experience of divinity. ~Carl Jung, CW 9i, Para II