The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole
304
The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626985353 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Orbis Books |
| Publication date: | 08/30/2023 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introduction
∞∞
Every five hundred years or so religion undergoes a significant paradigm shift.1 The shift we are in today is so dramatic I thought about putting a warning label at the beginning of this book. WARNING: This book may be hazardous to the stability of your soul and may cause undue anxiety or outright bursts of emotion.
We are, indeed, in a major “God” shift. The old God of the starry heavens, the sky God, has been falling since the early twentieth century; at the same time, a new God has been rising up from the strange world of matter. This book tells the story of the new God emerging in a new paradigm. The title, The Not‑Yet God, was inspired by John Haught’s recent book, God after Einstein, where he brilliantly discusses how the new universe story evokes a new understanding of God.2 What Haught describes on the cosmic level, I describe on the personal level, for the human person not only recapitulates but also advances the universe on the level of self-consciousness.
I wish this could be a book of meditations rather than one with numerous footnotes and heavy philosophical ideas. But we are a complex people in a complex world, and philosophical in‑ sight is necessary for theology. So, please, be patient as you ponder the ideas put forth. Of course, I should be able to tell this story without having to rely on so many external sources, but if I were to do so, I doubt the new God story would be taken too seriously. Even now, with all the footnotes, many theologians and philosophy will undoubtedly dismiss my claims as sheer nonsense or, better yet, heretical (this is more likely the case). A woman theologian espousing a new theology is bound to be suspect. Yet, “God speaks in many and various ways” (Heb 1:1–4), and today God is speaking loudly through women. So, please, pay attention.
When Albert Einstein proposed the theory of relativity in 1905, the world of physics was shocked to its core. Isaac Newton’s laws had reigned for more than three hundred years, and to over‑ turn them seemed—well—scientifically heretical. Yet Einstein’s mathematics pointed to the fact that the laws of relativity better fit reality than did Newton’s laws of absolute space and time. Pondering a beam of light, Einstein came up with equations that upset Newtonian physics and gave birth to a new science of quantum physics. Both quantum physics and evolution turned the God question upside down by challenging religions to realize there is no “up” or “down.” What we thought was beyond us is now within us. What we considered to be clear and logical is now dark and mysterious. The renowned physicists Max Planck, Werner Heisenberg, and Albert Einstein all agreed that the universe is filled with mystery. Planck’s brilliant insight is integral to this book: “Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery we are trying to solve.”3
To appreciate the new God story, we have to enter into the greatest mystery of all: the human person. What are we humans, after all, but gods in the making, and making the wrong god makes the wrong kind of world in which to live. One sign that our God‑compass is out of whack is the cultural entropy of our fragile world. Global warming, the power of greed, sexism and racism—all are wearing down the integrity of the earth. The development of artificial intelligence and the meteoric rise of cyber‑ space in the late twentieth century revealed the human person’s desperate search for ultimate connections. Despite our well‑ honed Christian theology, there seems to be a cavernous God‑ hole in the human heart. The great Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner recognized this fact in the twentieth century, as did Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Corporation. What Rahner sought in the development of his transcendental theology, Jobs sought in the development of the computer. Both Rahner and Jobs realized that the inmost center of the human person is nothing less than the in‑ finite depth of desire.
Science has overturned our understanding of mind and matter, and religion is being uprooted as I write. We are not what we think we are, and we are not quite happy with what we are. The poet T. S. Elliot expresses human depth in its open mystery:
Love is most nearly itself. When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.4
We humans are always ending and beginning; this is the story of our evolution. We humans are in evolution, and evolution is fundamental to the new story of religion.
MYTH
We need a new story because we Homo sapiens are a story species. Myths are stories that help us make sense of our liminal existence. A myth is always a true story because it narrates a sacred history, not necessarily a factual history, but one that has meaning and value for human life. Myths are true in that they have the symbolic and imaginative power to make us aware of the unity of reality in its greatest depth and breadth. Myth begins in humanity’s experience of the sacred which, Mircea Eliade states, is an element in the structure of consciousness, not a stage in the history of events. Eliade spoke of an irreducible sacred dimension of all reality, a cosmic axis around which everything, both literally and metaphorically, revolves. He saw the motif of the separation of heaven and earth in creation myths pointing to a fundamental alienation from the primordial unity of spiritual being. Consequently, people could maintain their connection to the spiritual sources of meaning only through an imaginal conduit, an axis mundi, a bond between heaven and earth which became implicitly present in religious ritual and which was embodied architecturally in important temples and sacred sites. The axis mundi (“axis of the world”) is an image of connection between the mundane, terrestrial plane and the transcendent home of the spirit(s) above.
Myths naturally evolve and change. Karl Jaspers noted a major shift in consciousness from about 800 BCE to 200 BCE, what he called the “axial age,” in Europe and Asia. The axis of the world had shifted over time, and that shift corresponded to new understandings of cosmic order. During the “pre-axial age,” early communities of the human species thought the world was flat and two-tiered, with spiritual and material realms. Religious consciousness manifested itself in communal rituals and animism —godly powers in nature—all woven together, linking nature and humanity. The pre-axial period was marked by a level of religious‑mythic consciousness that was cosmic, collective, tribal, and ritualistic. Ancient civilizations looked at the physical and human worlds as interdependent. An imbalance in one sphere could result in an imbalance in the other. Ewert Cousins notes that the pre-axial consciousness of tribal cultures was rooted in the cosmos and in fertility cycles of nature.5 These early humans, or “first earth persons,” “mimed” and venerated nature in which nature appeared as a sacred reality determining one’s destiny.
The axial age differed from pre‑axial in that it was marked by the rise of the individual and of religious cultures. In the axial age, persons gained possession of their own identity, but they lost their organic relationship to nature and community, severing the harmony with nature and the tribe. Jaspers notes that the axial age gave rise to “a new departure within mankind,” “a kind of critical, reflective questioning of the actual and a new vision of what lies beyond.”6 Describing human consciousness in the axial age, he writes: “Man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations. He experiences the terror of the world and his own powerlessness. He asks radical questions. Face to face with the void, he strives for liberation and redemption. . . . He experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence.” 7
Axial consciousness generated a new self‑awareness, which included awareness of autonomy and a new sense of individuality.8 The human person as subject emerged. The monotheistic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—are axial religions. Now, more than two thousand years later, we seem to be undergoing another paradigm shift. With the development of the theory of evolution and the rise of quantum physics and Big Bang cosmology, the twentieth century saw the dawning of a new axis of consciousness that has led to what Cousins called a “second axial age.”9 Like the first axial age, this new axial age has been developing for several centuries, beginning with the rise of modern science. And, also like the first, it is effecting a radical transformation of consciousness. While the first axial age produced the self-reflective individual, the second axial age is giving rise to the hyperpersonal or hyperconnected person. Technology has fundamentally altered our view of the world and of ourselves in the world. The tribe is no longer the local community but the global community, which can now be accessed immediately via television, internet, satellite communication, and travel. “For the first time since the appearance of human life on our planet,” Cousins wrote, “all of the tribes, all of the nations, all of the religions are beginning to share a common history.”10 People are becoming more aware of belonging to humanity as a whole and not just to a specific group.
Today, we are religiously in the first axial period and culturally in the second axial period. We are a species “in between,” and thus our religious myths are struggling to find new connections in a global, ecological order. The new myth of relational holism, which I will propose in this book, has to do with the search for a new connection to divinity in an age of quantum physics, evolution, and cultural pluralism. The idea of relational holism is one that is rooted in the God‑world relationship, beginning with the Book of Genesis, but it finds its real meaning in quantum physics and the new understanding of the relationship between mind and matter. Our story, therefore, will traverse the fields of science, scripture, theology, history, culture, and psychology. The complex human can no longer be reduced to one view or another. We must see our existence within the whole or we will not see the truth of our existence at all .
SCRIPTURAL HOLISM
The ancient Hebrews did not coin the word “God.” Rather, the word “God,” Raimon Panikkar states, has its origin in Sanskrit and means light or brilliance.11 This root meaning of God is more helpful than the later scholastic definition, ipsum esse subsistans, or self‑subsistent Being or simply Being itself. Scripture is not conceptual but experiential and relational. It is significant that the Book of Genesis begins with God bringing forth light out of darkness: “Darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen 1:3). In the axial age people had an experience of God, a light‑filled awareness of God, a sense of God’s openness. God does not preserve Godself but goes forth into the openness of the creation, illuminating all life with life itself.
The Hebrew word for “create” is bara, which means “to bring into relationship.” The author of Genesis used bara to denote a work of God altogether sui generis, a bringing forth into existence of what had not been here previously (Exod 34:10). The newness of creation gives us a glimpse into the myth of divine reality. If creation means being brought into relationship with the divine source of life, then to say “God creates” means that God shares God’s life with us. God is the ungraspable openness of life. Divinity is not a projection of a supernatural being but the excess of life experienced as a personal invitation into the fullness of life. The divine mystery is the ultimate AM of everything. Creation exists because God exists and God exists because creation exists: God and creation mutually co‑inhere. The divine is never alone or by itself, Panikkar states, because it has no “self”; it is a dimension of the Whole.
Relationship is fundamental to the God‑world unity. Creation is not radically separate from God. Creation is not a mere external act of God, an object on the fringe of divine power; rather, it is rooted in the self-diffusive goodness of God’s own life; it is God’s action in the very actuality of action. We humans are part of God’s own life and God is integral to our lives. The integral relationship of God and world is such that God and world form a complementary whole. Panikkar called this God-world unity “cosmotheandrism,” indicating that cosmos, theos, and anthropos are three integral realities.12 Traditionally, God and the universe have been understood as two realities over against each other, with God reaching into the world to act at particular moments. This common way of imaging the God‑world relationship results in an interventionist view of divine action. God is imagined as intervening to create and to move creation in the right direction at certain times. However, God cannot transcend the world without first in some way being in it. The dual notion of God’s nearness (immanence) and beyondness (transcendence) exists in both preaxial and axial religions. Divine immanence is the basis of divine transcendence. The God‑world unity poetically expressed in the Old Testament reflects the integral relationship between the development of the human person and the awareness of divine reality. The Jewish scholar, Abraham Heschel, insightfully proclaimed that we are not simply related to God, we are part of God’s own life. The human is in search of God because God is in search of the human. The God‑human relationship is an irreducible wholeness that cannot be reduced to either God or human as separate and distinct entities. The earliest scripture writers were experiential, not philosophical, and the language of scripture symbolically conveys what is otherwise ineffable mystery. Reality is an inextricable whole. 12. See Raimon Panikkar, The Trinit
LET THERE BE LIGHT
Light is a fundamental component of the universe. When medieval scholars were studying light, they believed they were studying God or the emanations of God. One of the major proponents of a light metaphysics was Robert Grosseteste, who taught at the University of Oxford in the thirteenth century. Grosseteste developed a metaphysics of light whereby the basis of all that exists, including the cosmos itself, is formed out of light. In describing the initiation of the process of creation from a single point of primordial light, Grosseteste used the image of an expanding sphere of light that diffuses in every direction instantaneously so long as no opaque matter stands in the way. The expansion of light replicating itself infinitely in all directions is the basis of the created world.13
Recent studies show that light is the most important factor in the first formation of the universe and is integral to matter.14 Some scholars even argue that light and consciousness are correlated, and that consciousness may be light itself.15 Revelation is the awakening to light or becoming “enlightened,” conscious of a deep reality beyond the everyday world. The prophet Isaiah spoke of darkness and light as the meaning of revelation: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those walking in darkness a new light has dawned” (Isa 9:2). Early Christian writers spoke of the light‑filled presence of God. For ex‑ ample, in the words of Saint Augustine:
But what do I love when I love my God?... when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.16
Pseudo‑Dionysius, writing in the fifth century, spoke of God as the superluminous light, a blinding light that darkens vision by its sheer luminosity, like the flash of a camera aimed directly on the human eye, “the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.”17 Light and consciousness: God and human. The ancient writers spoke of these realities as symbols, but modern science is beginning to explore light and consciousness as our most fundamental realities. God seems to be hardwired into the human brain because the brain is like a giant electronic grid in the field of consciousness.18
HOLISM
The ubiquity of light prompted early physicists to explore the nature of matter. Is light a wave or a particle? The well-known double‑ slit experiment led to the theory of waveparticle duality and the introduction of quantum physics. Niels Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics brought quantum physics to the level of philosophical discussion. Bohr rejected the notion of “things” as ontologically basic entities. He called into question the Cartesian belief in the inherent distinction between subject and object, knower and known, since nothing can be said apart from an act of conscious knowing. He rejected language and measurement as performing mediating functions. There is no mediator between mind and matter, he claimed. Language has artificially carved up the world. In Bohr’s view, the conceptual and the physical are intertwined. The inseparability of knower and known, subject and object, gives rise to a new God‑human relationship—a holism. To enter into this new relationship of holism is to explore the fundamental mysteries of mind and matter.
Einstein had an intuitive sense of the whole when he wrote:
A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.19
The notion of wholeness at the quantum level corresponds to something recognized by systems biologists, namely, that living systems are networks within the so‑called hierarchies of nature. The interconnected levels of networks constitute a web of life wherein systems interact with other systems, forming networks within networks. Because reality exists in systems, every system is a supersystem; systems exist within systems. Such insights led to the positing of holons or whole/parts. Arthur Koestler proposed the word holon to describe the hybrid nature of sub‑wholes and parts within in‑vivo systems. A holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part. From this perspective, holons exist simultaneously as self-contained wholes in relation to their sub-ordinate parts and as dependent parts when considered from the inverse direction. Koestler defines a holarchy as a hierarchy of self‑regulating holons that function first as autonomous wholes in supra‑ordination to their parts; second, as dependent parts in sub-ordination to controls on higher levels; and third, in coordination with their local environment. Holarchy is the principle of holons or whole/parts whereby the number of levels in a holarchy describe its depth. David Spangler distinguishes hierarchy from holarchy in this way: “In a hierarchy participants can be compared and evaluated on the basis of position, rank, relative power, seniority and the like. But in a holarchy each person’s value comes from his or her individuality and uniqueness and the capacity to engage and interact with others to make the fruits of that uniqueness available.”20 Ken Wilber notes that evolution produces greater depth and less span; as the individual holon acquires greater depth, the span or the collective gets smaller and smaller.21 A whole atom is part of a whole molecule; a whole molecule is part of a whole cell; a whole cell is part of a whole organism. Similarly, the human person is a whole within oneself and yet is a part of a larger communal whole, which is a part within a whole society. Reality is composed of neither wholes nor parts but of whole/parts—holons—or what Wilber calls integral systems.22
MIND AND MATTER
Two principal positions on consciousness and matter have been at the heart of philosophical discussions in the twentieth century: the first, known as monism or panpsychism, claims that both the physical and mental are ontologically equal parts of reality and that one cannot be reduced to the other. Physicist Max Tegmark holds to a radical panpsychism whereby there is a fundamental realm of matter, which is consciousness.23 Philosopher Phillip Goff, author of Galileo’s Error, explains that panpsychism is the best explanation for our current understanding of physics. He writes:
Physical science doesn’t tell us what matter is, only what it does. The job of physics is to provide us with mathematical models that allow us to predict with great accuracy how matter will behave. This is incredibly useful information; it allows us to manipulate the world in extraordinary ways, leading to the technological advancements that have transformed our society beyond recognition. But it is one thing to know the behavior of an electron and quite another to know its intrinsic nature: how the electron is, in and of itself. Physical science gives us rich information about the behavior of matter but leaves us completely in the dark about its intrinsic nature. In fact, the only thing we know about the intrinsic nature of matter is that some of it—the stuff in brains—involves experience. We now face a theoretical choice. We either suppose that the intrinsic nature of fundamental particles involves experi‑ ence or we suppose that they have some entirely unknown intrinsic nature. On the former supposition, the nature of macroscopic things is continuous with the nature of microscopic things. The latter supposition leads us to complexity, discontinuity and mystery. The theoretical imperative to form as simple and unified a view as is consistent with the data leads us quite straightforwardly in the direction of panpsychism.24
The second position, known as dual‑aspect monism, states that the mental and the material are different aspects or attributes of a unitary reality, which itself is neither mental nor material. They are both properties of one neutral substance x, which is neither physical nor mental. Harald Atmanspacher describes the phenomenon in this way: “In dual‑aspect monism according to Pauli and Jung, the mental and the material are manifestations of an underlying, psychophysically neutral, holistic reality called unus mundus, whose symmetry must be broken to yield dual, complementary aspects. From the mental, the neutral reality is approached via Jung’s collective unconscious; from the material, it is approached via quantum nonlocality.”25 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was aware of the problem of consciousness and held to a dual‑aspect monist position to explain evolution. Life, he wrote, is “a specific effect of matter turned complex; a property that is present in the entire cosmic stuff.”26 He considered matter and consciousness not as “two substances” or “two different modes of existence, but as two aspects of the same cosmic stuff.”27 Mind and matter form the reality of the whole.
CARL JUNG AND TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
Our guides for a new myth of relational holism are the psychoanalyst Carl Jung and the Jesuit scientist‑theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Jung was a psychiatrist who came from a deeply religious background. His father was a devout Christian and an ordained pastor. Jung was to follow in his father’s footsteps, but instead decided to study medicine and specialized in the field of psychiatry. He collaborated with Sigmund Freud for several years but differed with Freud largely over the latter’s insistence on the sexual bases of neurosis. A serious disagreement came in 1912, with the publication of Jung’s Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido (Psychology of the Unconscious, 1916), which ran counter to many of Freud’s ideas. Jung broke with Freud and developed his own ideas on the unconscious, especially because of his intense dream life, which gave him insight into the hidden levels of the mind. He became interested in the connection between psychology and religion and saw that the Christian religion was part of a historic process necessary for the development of consciousness. He also became interested in esoteric movements, such as Gnosticism and alchemy, and saw these movements as manifestations of unconscious archetypal elements not adequately expressed in mainstream Christianity. His view of alchemy was that it had constructed a kind of textbook of the collective unconscious. He developed an interest in older people who had lost meaning in their lives and had abandoned religious belief. He thought that if they could discover their own myth as expressed in dreams and imagination, they could develop more complete personalities. This process of personal myth‑making he called “individuation.”
Teilhard de Chardin was a scientist and mystic. Educated as a Jesuit priest, he studied at the Sorbonne and became a specialist in the Eocene era of evolutionary biology (about 56 million years ago). His writings focused on synthesizing science and religion into a new vision of the whole. He understood Christianity as a religion of evolution because of God’s involvement in the material world, and he saw the direction of incarnation as moving to‑ ward the pleroma or the fullness of Christ Omega. For Teilhard, matter is the incarnating presence of divinity; God is present in matter and not merely to matter. Both Jung and Teilhard rejected the Thomistic view of divine creation and participation. God and matter, they said, form a relational whole.
The insights of Teilhard, like those of Jung, sprang from the type of inquisitive search that a scientist brings to the open book of nature. Teilhard thought of science as a process, and he found joy in exploring the unknown mysteries of matter. Science is a mystical quest; it is the pursuit of a discovery that can create a new truth. Truth is not a given; it is the unitive horizon of reality formed by the mind in its pursuit of knowledge. Teilhard spoke of scientific truth as “the supreme spiritual act by which the dust‑cloud of experience takes on form and is kindled at the fire of knowledge.”28 As scientists struggle to make sense of their findings, they are searching for new truths, grasping for new horizons of insight. The fibers of the unifying universe are seeking to come together in the scientist’s mind. “It is in these terms...that we must understand Teilhard’s talk of loving God . . . ‘with every fiber of the unifying universe.’”29 Teilhard called the work of science, “dark adoration,” because the mind is drawn to a power hidden in matter. To enter the world of matter disturbs the mind and affects our prayer and worship because we discover new insights never before imagined. He also spoke of scientific work as “troubled worship.”30 When the mind opens up to the heart of matter, we lose our sense of control, everything becomes disturbed, and rightly so. When we enter into the mysterious domains of matter, we find ourselves in a strange and wonderful land of the unknown, a place where we discover new worlds never even dreamed of before. The scientist, whether explicitly or implicitly, finds oneself in the midst of mystery— better yet—in the midst of God. Matter is the elusive playground of God.
A NEW PANTHEISM
Both Jung and Teilhard espoused a pantheism, not Spinoza’s God but indeed an inseparable union of God and matter. The word “pantheism” undergirds a doctrine that essentially states, All (pan) is God and God (theos) is All. There are many different types of pantheism, as Dean Inge notes. For our purposes here, use of the word pantheism is distinct from monism which does not recognize distinct orders of being (God and All) but simply affirms the absolute Oneness of all that there is. The type of pantheism engaged here recognizes God as unique Being but is not simply content to accept God’s functions (what God does) without recognizing God’s essential existence (what God is). Christian theology has fallen into dualism partly out of fear of pantheism. The vehement opposition to pantheism is rooted in the need to preserve God’s unique, divine Being which, in classical terms, cannot be reduced to created being.
A related term, “panentheism,” has tried to preserve the integral relationship of God and world without collapsing them, like flour and eggs, into a pancake. The word “panentheism” consists of pan (all), en (in) and theos (God), or all is in God. Anthony Thiselton explains:
The term stands in contrast to pantheism. If pantheism identifies God with the whole of reality, panentheism denotes the belief that the reality of the world and the whole created order does not exhaust the reality of God without remainder. Yet it also holds in common with pantheism that God’s presence and active agency permeates the world, actively sustaining it in every part....Panentheism stresses first and foremost divine immanence, but without excluding divine transcendence.31
Marcus Borg states it this way:
Panentheism as a way of thinking about God affirms both the transcendence of God and the immanence of God. For Panentheism, God is not a being “out there.” The Greek roots of the word point to its meaning: pan means “everything,” en means “in,” and theos means “God.” God is more than everything (and thus transcendent), yet everything is in God (hence God is immanent). For Panentheism, God is “right here,” even as God is also more than “right here.”32
Whereas pantheism equates God and matter with no distinction (all pancakes are God), panentheism aims for a relationship that is like the mind‑body relationship. God is in the world and the world is in God, but God is not the world and the world is not God. However, the God model of neither Jung nor Teilhard fits these descriptions. Teilhard was clear that a healthy dose of pantheism can heal God and earth, but his understanding of matter puts a whole new spin on this term. Quantum physics significantly affects the language of matter, which is why the classical terms of pantheism or panentheism are not helpful today. I will use the term “entanglement” throughout the book because it better expresses the inextricable relationship of mind and matter. Entanglement is a concept born from the strangeness of quantum physics and depends on non‑local entities or reality constituting an unbroken whole. Entanglement refers to the inseparability of phenomena, so that relationship is primary to that which is related. However, I will retain use of the word “pantheism” when discussing the insights of Jung and Teilhard, in fidelity to their ideas.
OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS
Chapter 1 explores the quantum model of relational holism based on David Bohm’s model of implicate order and is introduced as a conceptual framework for a new understanding of the mind-matter relationship and of the God‑matter relationship. I am using the word “matter” instead of “world” because the nature of matter is experiential in contrast with the notion of world, which is conceptual. As we will see, experience is everything in the new paradigm. The essential role of consciousness in the formation of matter and the notion of matter as a mirror of the mind are discussed. Hence, the fundamental order of unbroken wholeness as the integral unity of consciousness and matter is explored as a helpful model for a new theology.
Chapters 2 and 3 examine the insights of Teilhard de Chardin and Carl Jung, respectively, on the mind‑matter relationship as expressed in the human person. While Teilhard situates the human person within the flow of evolution, Jung plunges into the depth dimension of personhood, from consciousness into unconsciousness. Between these two thinkers, we begin to appreciate the horizontal and vertical axes of human development. Jung’s thought is particularly provocative and original. In a sense, Jung hacked the human brain long before artificial intelligence burst onto the scene. We will examine his understanding of the psyche as the field of the unconscious, the similarities between the psyche and quantum physics, and the implications of the psyche for God.
Chapters 4 and 5 take up theological concerns. Chapter 4 deals with the meaning of God in terms of transcendence and immanence. A brief history of the supernatural is discussed and reconsidered in view of quantum physics and evolution. The God‑world is viewed as a relational whole and explored in terms of complexity and consciousness. Chapter 5 continues the exploration by considering the question of God in terms of the depth dimension of matter and looking to the insights of theologian Paul Tillich to support Jung’s claims. Tillich was influenced by Freud’s notion of the human depth dimension and interprets this Freudian idea in terms of God as ground. In this respect, Tillich approaches the type of pantheism espoused by Jung and Teil‑ hard, although he is reticent about assuming such a position. Tillich, like Jung and Teilhard, realized that God‑talk can be dangerous if it begins to rattle the cages of ancient and medieval doctrine. However, one cannot be attentive to the insights of modern science today without taking up the challenge of a new pantheism or God-nes (theos) throughout wholeness (pan). One way into the new paradigm of holism is through the mystics, such as Meister Eckhart and Angela of Foligno, who broke through the wall of orthodoxy and expressed inspirational pantheistic ideas. In light of the mystics and relational holism, I coin a new term, “theohology” (from theos = God; and holos = whole). Theohology is experiential talk of the God‑whole. This new theology or theohology is inspired by quantum physics and a renewed mysticism, in which the higher degrees of consciousness play a fundamental role in one’s experience of the whole.
Chapter 6 focuses on the Trinity as a relational God and explores the Trinity as both the basis of psychosomatic unity and a dynamic process of trinitization. “Trinitization” is a word coined by Teilhard de Chardin to suggest that the Trinity unfolds throughout the evolution of complexified life. With the enfolding Trinity, complexified life on a higher level of consciousness comes into awareness of God. The new paradigm of relational holism, with its corresponding view of the complexity of God, radically overturns the classical attributes of divine simplicity and immutability. David Nikkel writes: “Classical theism, in affirming certain divine attributes stemming from ancient Greek philosophy—immutability (un‑ changeability), impassibility (to be unaffected by another), and eternity (in the sense of strict timelessness)—does not permit God to be in genuine relation to the world.”33 Trinitization is based on the Trinity of love. A God who is seeking completion in creation is one who is open to change and new relationships, which reflect the essence of God as love. Where there is real love, there is real relationship and the desire to grow more deeply in love.
The discussion on trinitization leads into chapter 7 and what Jung called the concept of “the individuation of God.” God be‑ comes God, assumes Godly life, in evolution through a process of increasing consciousness and development. Teilhard’s position is similar to that of Jung and summed up in the words of Peter Todd: [I]t is precisely [an] expanded and higher consciousness which Jung [and Teilhard] believes God acquires through incarnation in humankind.”34 The inextricable relationship of God and human in evolution is the full meaning of the incarnation. Hence, the model of divine individuation is Christ.
Chapter 8 examines Jung’s notion of Christ as archetype or model of human development; for Teilhard, Christ is the model of human evolution. Neither spoke of Christ as savior, and both emphasized human participation in the work of salvation. While Jung’s ideas do not really contradict scripture, they challenge us to revisit the formula of Chalcedon and reconsider the significance of this formula for us today. His ideas call for a new understanding of salvation in an open and unfinished universe. In his view, every person has the capacity to be Christ because every person has the capacity for Christ consciousness, a position sup‑ ported by Raimon Panikkar’s notion of Christophany.
Chapter 9 builds on the Christ archetype by rethinking the topic of salvation. Jung rejected the doctrine of Christ as universal savior because he thought it significantly undermined theology. Teilhard is less explicit in dismissing Christ as universal savior, but nowhere does he explicitly support the doctrine of Christ as universal savior either. His emphasis on the human person as the spearhead of evolution and his ideas on the incarnate God as empowering evolution suggest that, in his view, salvation is a coredemptive process of pleromization. As God is fulfilled in us and we are fulfilled in God, we are made whole together and thus “saved” by the energies of love. Like Jung, Teilhard places the onus of salvation on human choice and action.
The active and integral role of the human person in the redemptive process, which is integral to God’s own completion, undergirds the rise of the cosmic Christ in evolution. This complex process leads to the notion of quaternity, or the fourth person of the Trinity, which I discuss in chapter 10. Jung regarded quaternity as the most important symbol, even more important than Trinity, because quaternity is cosmic, an archetype of universal occurrence. He was influenced by the mystic Jacob Boehme who spoke of quaternity in his writings. However, I think Teilhard’s ideas on trinitization and pleromization offer a new way to think of quaternity, not as a fourth member of the Trinity, but as the emergent New Person, the Christic, who complexifies Trinity (3) and the human person (1) into a new type of person—the ultra‑ human—who is neither God nor human but a mutation of both, a radically new God‑human. For Teilhard, the unitive process is one in which God transforms Godself as God incorporates us. This is the ongoing development of the fullness of Christ or pleroma. This process of pleromization is one in which we complete God and God completes us.35 Quaternity refers to the complexity of God in human evolution, which culminates in Omega. Hence, Omega is the symbol of quaternity.
My intention is to offer a new framework for thinking about God and salvation in an age of quantum physics and evolution. With a new model of Wholeness, we can consider new models of the Church and sacramental life. Building on the model of relational holism helps us realize the work needed for the healing of the earth and the process of cosmic personalization. Teilhard claimed that matter is the divine milieu, charged with creative power, “like the ocean stirred by the Spirit; matter is the clay molded and infused with life by the incarnate Word.”36 Something, or rather Someone, he says, is rising up in this world of chaos through the sufferings and struggles of the world. The universe is a transpersonal and cosmic formative process—the rise of the cosmic Christ. God is being born from within.
Chapter 11 anticipates what religion might look like in the future as we move beyond the axial religions. Religion will not go away, because religion emerges from the “inside” of matter, that is, the spiritual side of evolution. God is the name of unlimited life undergirding all reality. How we find meaning today depends on how we experience the reality of God and the many names of God that speak to us. In this chapter I discuss the in‑ sights of media specialist Marshall McLuhan, who prophetically identified computer technology and artificial intelligence with the next stage of evolution, reflecting Teilhard’s notion of Chris‑ togenesis (the birthing of Christ) on the level of noogenesis (the new level of mind). If God is the depth of matter, and matter is a reflection of mind, then cyberspace not only extends the psyche but makes it more accessible to the conscious person. Cyber‑ space, in a sense, is the digitized psyche. Hence, the process of individuation and, even more so, divinization, is ideally enhanced on the level of computer technology. McLuhan understood the implications of computer technology in terms of the Body of Christ and thought that it could bring about a new level of holism and world unity. The religion of tomorrow will have no final claim on reality, no final revelation; heaven will find a new relationship with earth.
TOWARD A NEW MYTH
We humans are in transition but unsure of where we are going. We have built a world of extraordinary complexity, but it is a world too large for our small brains to handle. Axial religions arose in a different age and are no longer helpful in guiding us collectively on this earth journey in an expanding universe. Religious myths abound, but they are tribal and conflicting and stifle the whole we desperately seek. Jung thought that true religion was yet to be born. In his view, Christianity established the right direction for growth in consciousness, but Christianity was not meant to be a new religion, much less an institution. We hesitate to confront this question: Did the Church cut off the root meaning of the New Testament as the path to Christ consciousness, forging the Christ experience into philosophical doctrine shaped by Greek metaphysics? Both Jung and Teilhard said “yes.” While the New Testament put an end to tribal gods and warring religions, narrowly defined doctrine has stifled the New Testament. Both Jung and Teilhard attempted to relocate the God question on the level of human experience and growth, understood in terms of modern science. God is the name of the transcendent psyche, the collective unconscious, the depth and ground of matter. If matter is the mirror of mind, as Teilhard claimed, then God is integral to matter and matter is integral to God, without collapsing or blend‑ ing matter and God into a vague wisp of thought. Any type of supernatural God is an abstraction and unhelpful, diverting our attention away from our divine depth toward a projected otherworldly realm. Jesus of Nazareth entered into unitive Christ consciousness and lived from the center of his own divine reality. Jesus is the model of Christ consciousness, according to Jung, because Jesus was fully human like us. Jung summed up the root reality of incarnation this way: the many gods become one God, the one God becomes human, and the human is to become God. Every human person has the capacity to be divine, holy, and sacred. God is seeking fulfillment in human life, as human life seeks fulfillment in God. Teilhard fully agreed and saw the ongoing event of incarnation as the impulse of evolution. Augustine was right when he said: “[O]ur hearts are restless until they rest in You.”37 We are seeking God because God is seeking us. With‑ out God, we do not really exist, and without humans, God is an abstraction.
A culture without God is sheer cosmic information, in which the human person becomes part of the information that can be deleted or changed. Faith tells us otherwise. We are here because we are the thinking portion of the universe, part of a cosmic wholeness that is grounded in divine reality. God is the Whole of the whole in evolution, distinct yet inseparable from everything else that exists. Relational holism means that everything is connected. There are no separate parts; rather, each distinct entity is determined by its relationships. The works of Jung and Teilhard impel us to rethink the Christian story as a relational whole—a “theohology.” Holism calls for a new type of logic, one defined not by causality but by relationality. The logic of love is the logic of the whole; the energy of love is the energy of the whole. Love sees the whole, while the partial intellect sees fragments. We hu‑ mans have a capacity to actualize the whole by personalizing divine love.
Actualization is part of the process of individuation, coming home to ourselves as irreducible fractals of divine light. Both Jung and Teilhard de Chardin made this journey. They were mystics who thought from their own inner depths and felt the pulse of life, unafraid of power and authority or of small gods who distort the truth. If we are seeking logical and causal explanations to govern our lives, institutions to save us, we will fail as an earth community. The Godliness of matter must be reborn in the human seeker, one who can face the familiar and see it with new eyes. The quantum world evokes the new mystic, one who dreams from a deeper center and loves from an unknown spring of life, for the mystic already lives in the world of tomorrow.
Table of Contents
Contents∞∞
Introduction ix
1. Consciousness and the Unbroken Whole 1
2. Teilhard de Chardin and the Human Convergent 22
3. Carl Jung and the Cosmic Psyche 42
4. The Question of God 66
5. God, Ground, and Mystics 89
6. Trinitization 108
7. The Individuation of God 126
8. Christ as Archetype 143
9. Are We Saved? 166
10. Quaternization and the Not‑Yet God 191
11. The Religion of Tomorrow 213
12. Conclusion 243
13. Closing Prayer: “The Christic” 259