Victor Francis White (1902–1960) was an English
Dominican priest who corresponded and collaborated with
Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
. He was initially deeply attracted to Jung's psychology, but when Jung's ''
Answer to Job
''Answer to Job'' (german: Antwort auf Hiob) is a 1952 book by Carl Jung that addresses the significance of the Book of Job to the "divine drama" of Christianity. It argues that while he submitted to Yahweh's omnipotence, Job nevertheless proved t ...
'' was published in English, he gave it a very critical review. White's works include ''Soul and Psyche'' and ''God and the Unconscious''. Jung and White enjoyed a series of correspondence, and Jung was so impressed with some of White's ideas that he invited White to his retreat house at Bollingen, where only Jung's very close friends were allowed.
The correspondence between Jung and White has been published by Lammers and Cunningham (2007). While White was a great admirer of Jung, he was at times very critical of Jung. For example, he criticised Jung's essay "On the Self", and accused Jung of being too bound to a
Manichaean
Manichaeism (;
in New Persian ; ) is a former major religionR. van den Broek, Wouter J. Hanegraaff ''Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times''SUNY Press, 1998 p. 37 founded in the 3rd century AD by the Parthian Empire, Parthian ...
dualism. He was also somewhat critical of Jung's
Kantianism
Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, ...
. At the same time, Jung was quite critical of White, for example, over his commitment to the doctrine of ''
privatio boni The absence of good ( la, privatio boni), also known as the privation theory of evil, is a theological and philosophical doctrine that evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading. Instead, evil is rather th ...
'' as means of understanding the
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encyclope ...
.
Letters
When Jung published ''
Answer to Job
''Answer to Job'' (german: Antwort auf Hiob) is a 1952 book by Carl Jung that addresses the significance of the Book of Job to the "divine drama" of Christianity. It argues that while he submitted to Yahweh's omnipotence, Job nevertheless proved t ...
'', and again when it was published in English, White's fellow Roman Catholics reacted and what was once a ripple became a tidal wave. The
Book of Job
The Book of Job (; hbo, אִיּוֹב, ʾIyyōḇ), or simply Job, is a book found in the Ketuvim ("Writings") section of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), and is the first of the Poetic Books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. Scholars ar ...
, a
Wisdom book of
the Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...
, explores the
problem of evil
The problem of evil is the question of how to reconcile the existence of evil and suffering with an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient God.The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,The Problem of Evil, Michael TooleyThe Internet Encyclope ...
. White's correspondence with Jung made Jung refer to him as "my white raven", inasmuch as he was the only theologian who really understood something of the problem of psychology in the present world. He invited him to his retreat in Bollingen.
White followed the
Classical philosophy
This page lists some links to ancient philosophy, namely philosophical thought extending as far as early post-classical history ().
Overview
Genuine philosophical thought, depending upon original individual insights, arose in many cultures ...
and
Thomistic
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed questions ...
theology that defined evil as the absence of good (''
privatio boni The absence of good ( la, privatio boni), also known as the privation theory of evil, is a theological and philosophical doctrine that evil, unlike good, is insubstantial, so that thinking of it as an entity is misleading. Instead, evil is rather th ...
''). God, the ever-existing being, is himself good, whereas evil did not exist until it took origin in the devil and man.
Jung's thought was that evil is not the absence of anything, but the active and dramatically impressive presence of something, personified and named the Devil. Evil ought to be considered a real force, not written-off as an opposite. For Jung a dogma could not be valid unless backed by empirical evidence, showing that it is prime, anything else had to be a dodge.
According to some, Jung's greatest letters were written to White.
Jung could see no evidence of ''privatio boni'', but plenty of evil – devils, demons and other evil characters. The two, good and evil, are locked in an eternal duel for supremacy. Thus if one believes in just one God, He must contain the two within Himself.
White could not accept this and just stated: God is light; in Him there is no darkness.(1John1:5–7).
The conflict produced the ''
Answer to Job
''Answer to Job'' (german: Antwort auf Hiob) is a 1952 book by Carl Jung that addresses the significance of the Book of Job to the "divine drama" of Christianity. It argues that while he submitted to Yahweh's omnipotence, Job nevertheless proved t ...
'', which some say is Jung's best work.
White published a review of ''Answer to Job'' in the journal ''Blackfriars'' in March 1955. It was clear from this review that by this stage, White's feelings on the book were ambivalent, and he even seems to have had mixed feelings about his publication of the review, wondering how Jung would take the review.
Jung, who trained as a psychiatrist at Zurich (First University), shows in his letters the reserved professional at work, yet often gives way to the poet and preacher.
He is clear, though, that it would be beyond the competence of scientific empiricism to talk about the divine entity. He says that he does not preach but attempts to establish psychological facts. He can confirm and prove inter-relationship of the God image with other parts of the psyche, but he cannot go further without committing the error of a metaphysical assertion which is far beyond his scope. He is not a theologian and he has nothing to say about the nature of God.
Their letters also touched on non-theological matters, such as their mutual acquaintance,
Barbara Robb
Barbara Robb (née Anne, 15 April 1912 – 21 June 1976) was a British Empire, British campaigner for the well-being of older people, best known for founding and leading the pressure group Aid for the Elderly in Government Institutions, AEGIS (Aid ...
, who founded (1965) and organised the highly effective pressure group Aid for the Elderly in Government Institutions (AEGIS).
References
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
Father Victor White Information''God And The Unconscious'' (1953) by Victor White, foreword by Jung, on the
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...
Reflection on the Jung-White letters.
{{DEFAULTSORT:White, Victor
1902 births
1960 deaths
British theologians
20th-century English Roman Catholic priests
People educated at Bloxham School