Carl Jung’s psychology attempts to bridge ancient spirituality with today’s rationality. To do so, it uses the language of symbols. Symbolic interpretation, Jung suggests, allows us to extract the wisdom of ancient traditions without the associated dogma and superstition. He writes:

[If] the statement that Christ rose from the dead is to be understood not literally but symbolically, then it is capable of various interpretations that do not conflict with knowledge and do not impair the meaning of the statement…

Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self

The purely symbolic approach is a compromise, to be sure. It fails to account for the fact that spiritual reality does sometimes manifest physically. But a compromise is better than losing our relationship with the transcendent altogether. It is this relationship, Jung writes, that is our deepest source of meaning in life.

Learn more in my essay on the Psychology of God…