Within the depth-psychology corpus, 'Second Coming' functions less as a doctrinal article of faith than as a living symbol of psychic transformation at the threshold of a new aeon. The term enters the literature most forcefully through Yeats's poem of the same name, which Edward Edinger reads as a prophetic diagnosis of the collective psyche: the dissolution of the mandala, the flight of the falcon-ego from its governing center, and the compensatory eruption of archaic, pre-Christian energies from the unconscious. For Edinger, Yeats's 'rough beast' is not merely poetic fancy but symptomatology — the archetypal announcement of a metamorphosis of the God-image that Jung himself associated with the present kairos. Jung's own treatment, particularly in Answer to Job and Aion, situates the Second Coming within an eschatological drama of the Self: the apocalyptic Christ of Revelation and the new-born man-child represent successive, partially contradictory figures of wholeness whose tension Jung refuses to dissolve too easily. Abrams, approaching from literary history rather than analytical psychology, traces how Romantic literature secularized and internalized the apocalyptic schema — the Second Coming becoming a trope for revolutionary self-transformation. The theological sources (Thielman, Bulgakov) supply the doctrinal scaffolding — Parousia, eschatological judgment, the consummation of creation — against which the depth-psychological reinterpretation acquires its critical edge. The central tension in the corpus is between literal-eschatological expectation and the psychological reading of the Second Coming as an inward event of archetypal magnitude.
In the library
12 passages
Surely the Second Coming is at hand... what rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? This poem... succinctly strikes the major themes concerning the current state of the collective psyche.
Edinger reads Yeats's 'Second Coming' as a depth-psychological document diagnosing the dissolution of the collective mandala and the compensatory eruption of archaic unconscious contents in the modern era.
Edinger, Edward F., The Creation of Consciousness Jung's Myth for Modern Man, 1984thesis
There are certain periods in history when the collective God-image undergoes death and rebirth. Such is now the case. The twentieth century is the Holy Saturday of history.
Edinger frames the current historical moment as an interregnum between the death of the old God-image and an anticipated rebirth, implicitly positioning the Second Coming as a psychological rather than literal event.
Edinger, Edward F., The Christian Archetype: A Jungian Commentary on the Life of Christ, 1987supporting
The son who is born of these heavenly nuptials is perforce a complexio oppositorum, a uniting symbol, a totality of life... this strange eschatological experience... was not on any account to be confused with the birth of the Christ-child which had occurred long before.
Jung distinguishes the apocalyptic new-born man-child of Revelation from the historical Christ-birth, treating the eschatological figure as a symbol of the Self's totalizing ambition rather than a reiteration of the Incarnation.
Jung, Carl Gustav, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958supporting
This strange eschatological experience... should not on any account be confused with the birth of the Christ-child which had occurred long before under quite different circumstances.
In Answer to Job, Jung insists that John's vision of the apocalyptic child constitutes a psychologically distinct event from the First Coming, underscoring the structural incompleteness of the Christian God-image.
the image of the bridegroom and of marriage is repeatedly applied to Christ, at both His first and second Advent.
Abrams documents the literary-theological topos of Christ as bridegroom across both Advents, tracing how Romantic poetry inherited and transformed this apocalyptic marriage imagery.
M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971supporting
Biblical history is finite... once Christ died for our sins; and, rising from the dead, He dieth no more... And we ourselves after the resurrection shall be 'ever with the Lord.'
Abrams establishes the Augustinian linear-finite structure of Christian history that undergirds Second Coming expectation, contrasting it with cyclical pagan cosmologies.
M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971supporting
an apocalypse... signifies a vision in which the old world is replaced by a new and better world... even when applied to Biblical visions of the events of the last days, the term is equivocal.
Abrams clarifies the literary-critical scope of 'apocalypse,' insisting on its specific eschatological meaning as world-replacement, which frames Second Coming symbolism within the tradition of prophetic vision.
M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971supporting
Not only can such overheated eschatological fervor lead Christians to follow false messianic claimants... but also to stop working, sponge off the Christian community, and create a public scandal.
Thielman documents Paul's pastoral corrective against premature Second Coming expectation, showing how Parousia-fervor generated both false messianism and social disorder in the early church.
Frank S. Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach, 2005supporting
The main lines of New Testament theology converge in the hope that God will bring his saving purposes to their consummation in a new creation.
Thielman presents the consummation of creation — the theological terminus of Second Coming expectation — as the convergence point of New Testament eschatology.
Frank S. Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach, 2005supporting
The violence of a wrathful but loving Christian God, the conflict with the forces of evil embodied in one adversary, the destruction of the created world in an immense conflagratio in order to make it new.
Abrams reads Donne's compressed apocalyptic conceits as a personal and spiritual translation of the eschatological drama surrounding the Second Coming and final judgment.
M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature, 1971aside
Eventually the rider on the white horse, the King of kings and Lord of lords, will enter the fray, defeat Rome and its allies, and throw them all, together with Satan himself, into 'the fiery lake of burning sulfur.'
Thielman surveys John's Apocalypse as a political-eschatological narrative in which the returning Christ (Parousia) decisively defeats the powers of empire and evil.
Frank S. Thielman, Theology of the New Testament: A Canonical and Synthetic Approach, 2005aside
Jung did say that... he was pointing to the profound symbolic, rather than literal, meaning of that doctrine.
Campbell, channeling Jung, emphasizes that eschatological and apocalyptic declarations carry symbolic rather than literal truth-value, a hermeneutic directly applicable to Second Coming imagery.
Campbell, Joseph, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, 2001aside