Theology for the Third Millennium
- Rick Bonetti
- May 21
- 2 min read
Updated: May 23
"A theology of the third millennium would be one that encompasses, among other disciplines, depth psychology, quantum physics, and neuroscience." ~ Peter Brian Todd
Peter B. Todd is a psychotherapist with a Jungian orientation and the author of The Individuation of God: Integrating Science and Religion (2017), where he outlines what he believes could become a new theology, open to both mystical experience and modern science. "Todd challenges the materialistic reductionism of our age and offers an alternative grounded in the visionary work taking place in a wide array of disciplines, including Jungian archetypal psychology, quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology, epistemology, neuroscience, and an incarnational theology implicit in the evolutionary process."
"Todd builds upon the evolutionary process theology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. He also emphasizes the unification of particle physics and depth psychology as revealed in the explorations of Carl G. Jung and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli. Additionally, he pays homage to the concept of the "implicate order" in the work of physicist David Bohm."
Todd also writes, "Wolfgang Pauli wrote of the need for a reintegration of repressed “spirit” into science, in particular Jungian depth psychology, so that lost wholeness could be restored according to the archetype of the coniunctio oppositorum or union of opposites."
"The God of... archaic theologies had to die in order to be resurrected with the primordial energy and timeless quality of the unconscious archetype, stripped of anthropomorphic garments and animistic projection, while expressing rich symbolic meaning. What is required is nothing less than a theology for the third millennium." ~ Peter B. Todd
In her 2023 book The Not-Yet God, Ilia Delio quotes Peter B. Todd several times (from Teilhard and Other Modern Thinkers on Evolution, Mind, and Matter) as she offers a "new myth" of "relational holism" in the search for "a new connection to divinity in an age of quantum physics, evolution, and cultural pluralism."
Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, host of New Thinking Allowed YouTube channel, interviewed Peter Todd in 2019 in the video above. Mischlove co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series and past vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP). He is the recipient of the Pathfinder Award from that Association for his contributions to the field of human consciousness exploration.
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