Duluth, Minnesota: From September 1987 to the end of May 2009, I taught at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). Over the years, I taught an introductory-level survey course on the Bible as Literature twenty times.
I have discussed my UMD course on the Bible as Literature in my recent OEN article My UMD Course on the Bible as Literature, and Walter J. Ongs Thought (dated September 19, 2025.)
Now, in the present OEN article, I succinctly highlight (1) the religion scholar Elaine Pagels new 2025 book Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus (Doubleday).
At times, I also discuss interpreting biblical texts and the tragic anti-body heritage of Christianity.
Now, in some of my recent OEN articles, I have discussed what the Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) referred to as fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking, which he contrasts with what he refers to as directed thinking involving logic (Jung, 1967, pp. 7-33).
Now, it was not part of Paul the Apostles fantasy life, at least not in the same sense in which it was part of my deliberate personal fantasy life, that he somehow experienced Jesus Christ in his psychic life in his famous conversion process.
Paul the Apostle had not been deliberately engaging his personal fantasy life when he suddenly experienced his famous conversion experience on the road to Damascus.
Paul the Apostles famous conversion experience came upon him suddenly, not as the result of his self-conscious, deliberate actions.
Now, Jung set forth his distinction between fantasy thinking involving images and associative thinking, on the one hand, and directed thinking involving logic, on the other, in Part One: Chapter II: Two Kinds of Thinking in his key book Symbols of Transformation, translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull, second edition (1967, pp. 7-33), Jungs extensively revised and re-titled version of his 1912 book.
Jungs account of symbols of transformation in his book that he originally published in 1912 is based on his own personal experience in his dangerous self-experimentation with the free-associative fantasy meditation practice that he came to refer to as active imagination.
Joan Chodorow collected together Jungs statements about active imagination in the book titled Jung on Active Imagination (1997).
Jung processed his dangerous experiment with what he came to refer to as active imagination by writing out carefully detailed accounts of his fantasies in his Black Books. In addition, he further processed some of his fantasies by making works of art and drawings based on them in his Red Book.
In 2009, W. W. Norton and Company published Jungs Red Book: Liber Novus, edited by Sonu Shamdasani, translated by Mark Kyburz, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani, as an oversized art book.
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