Immanuel Kant and Carl Jung, over a century apart but both with something in common, and both influencial in christian circles, yet has their influence been detrimental? I think so. First I write this to encourage prayerful discussion among thoughtful christians in search of truth.
Kant as a philosopher has been described as a Pivot in the development of modern thought (William Barratt - Death of the Soul)
Besides his notion of the categorical imperative, the most well known aspect of his thought was that the noumena cannot be known in the phenomena.
Leanne Payne writes:
"This is the Kantian split: God cannot be an object of knowledge; the noumena cannot be known in the phenomena. This is an abstract, philosophical way of denying Christ's incarnation, and incarnational reality. It denies that the divine Son was born of matter - of woman." (Listening Prayer)
It's this aspect of Kant's thought that I believe amongst other things underlies Carl Jung's types. Jung basically divided humanity into two types introvert and extrovert - though these terms for Jung have a more esoteric, and less straightforward connotations than most would understand them to have.
Kant could be classed perhaps as a nominal christian, but not a born again believer. From his thought comes the modern loss of transcendence, and thus modern liberal theology has its roots in Kant, to whom Jesus was only a moral teacher.
Jung the son of a Lutheran Pastor, and with six or seven uncles all in ministry, nevertheless sought to formulate an psycho-spiritual alternative to Christianity due perhaps to his father's crisis of faith. (due in turn to the influence of Kant??)
In regard to his psychotherapy he was careful to say though he couldn't do it better than Jesus, and sometimes turned christians away (notably a member of the Oxford Group who visited him).
Subject to frightening dreams from early childhood some of which Jung believed wrongly to be divine revelation, he never came to trust in Jesus Christ, rather he sought wisdom through the Gnostic writers. Leanne Payne's book The Healing Presence and Jeffrey Satinover's - The Empty Self - has much more on this.
Because both Kant and Jung's thought leads toward subjectivism I believe christians are detrimentally affected by the influence of both these thinkers.
Recommended reading: Listening Prayer by Leanne Payne
Kant as a philosopher has been described as a Pivot in the development of modern thought (William Barratt - Death of the Soul)
Besides his notion of the categorical imperative, the most well known aspect of his thought was that the noumena cannot be known in the phenomena.
Leanne Payne writes:
"This is the Kantian split: God cannot be an object of knowledge; the noumena cannot be known in the phenomena. This is an abstract, philosophical way of denying Christ's incarnation, and incarnational reality. It denies that the divine Son was born of matter - of woman." (Listening Prayer)
It's this aspect of Kant's thought that I believe amongst other things underlies Carl Jung's types. Jung basically divided humanity into two types introvert and extrovert - though these terms for Jung have a more esoteric, and less straightforward connotations than most would understand them to have.
Kant could be classed perhaps as a nominal christian, but not a born again believer. From his thought comes the modern loss of transcendence, and thus modern liberal theology has its roots in Kant, to whom Jesus was only a moral teacher.
Jung the son of a Lutheran Pastor, and with six or seven uncles all in ministry, nevertheless sought to formulate an psycho-spiritual alternative to Christianity due perhaps to his father's crisis of faith. (due in turn to the influence of Kant??)
In regard to his psychotherapy he was careful to say though he couldn't do it better than Jesus, and sometimes turned christians away (notably a member of the Oxford Group who visited him).
Subject to frightening dreams from early childhood some of which Jung believed wrongly to be divine revelation, he never came to trust in Jesus Christ, rather he sought wisdom through the Gnostic writers. Leanne Payne's book The Healing Presence and Jeffrey Satinover's - The Empty Self - has much more on this.
Because both Kant and Jung's thought leads toward subjectivism I believe christians are detrimentally affected by the influence of both these thinkers.
Recommended reading: Listening Prayer by Leanne Payne
