Jung's equation of the ground of being with the ground of psyche

The paper amplifies Jung's psychology of ground associated with the culmination of the alchemical process in the unus mundus. It argues that Jung and Dorn identify the experience of the ground with the experience of divinity as the common originary source of individual and totality. It notes the monistic and pantheistic implications of the experience and goes on to amplify the experience through Eckhart's mediaeval mysticism of ground and Paul Tillich's modern philosophical/theological understanding of ground. It concludes that the Jung/Dorn psychological understanding of ground supersedes monotheistic consciousness. Their vision supports the emergence of a societal myth based on the identification of the ground as the source of all divinities and faith in them. This source currently urges a mythic consciousness that would surpass its past and current concretions and so alleviate the threat that monotheistic consciousness in any domain now poses to human survival

Conspiracies of immanence: Paul Tillich, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and C.G. Jung

Jung's psychology proffers a sustained reflection on the traditional religious question of the relation of divine transcendence to immanence. On this issue his psychology affirms a position of radical immanence in its contention that the experience of divinity is initially wholly from within. Though this position remains on the periphery of religious and theological orthodoxy Jung is not alone in holding it among moderns. Paul Tillich adopts a similar stance with his controlling symbols of the divine as 'Ground of Being' and 'Depth of Reason'. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin understands divinity as the experiential energy of evolution itself working within nature and humanity toward greater configurations of universal communion as the basis of community. All of Jung's master symbols of individuation assume such an understanding of immanence uniting individual and totality. His psychology strongly suggests and contributes to the current emergence of a new religious sensitivity based on the awareness of the intra-psychic origin of all religions. In his later writings he held out such a position as a significant alternative to genocide

Tillich in dialogue with psychology

Tillich's dialogue with psychology has many faces. It can be understood in the light of his conversations with specific psychologists and their schools. It can be understood in terms of his sustained efforts to establish the legitimate boundaries between religious and psychological healing. Finally, there is the tribute he paid to Carl Jung on the occasion of the latter's death indicative of Tillich's late theological appreciation of and intellectual affinity with Jung's understanding of the human psyche (CGJ, 28-32). Yet there is a dimension to Tillich's relation to psychology that precedes these specifics. It lies in the way his theology itself is infused with a profound psychological sense lending to the foundations of his thought a compelling impact on the psyche of his reader. In his description of existential thinking Tillich refers to Boehme, Schelling, Baader and even Heidegger as philosophers who used 'psychological notions with a non-psychological connotation'. Such thinkers have 'developed an ontology in psychological terms' ('Existential Philosophy: Its Historical Meaning' in TC, 94, 96). Tillich himself stood in this tradition. Tillich's unforced synthesis of ontology and psychology is evident throughout his work. It is, perhaps, most prominent in his understanding of faith as humanity's ultimate concern. Such a conception of concern, in admitted continuity with Schleiermacher's 'feeling of unconditional dependence', becomes for Tillich humanity's universal, religious and psychological experience of alienation from and drive towards its essential nature grounded in the divine (DF, 1-4, 38-40)

The Jung-White dialogue and why it couldn't work and won't go away

White's Thomism and its Aristotelian foundation were at the heart of his differences with Jung over the fifteen years of their dialogue. The paper examines the precedents and consequences of the imposition of Thomism on the Catholic Church in 1879 in order to clarify the presuppositions White carried into his dialogue with Jung. It then selects two of Jung's major letters to White to show how their dialogue influenced Jung's later substantial work, especially his Answer to Job. The dialogue with White contributed to foundational elements in the older Jung's development of his myth which simply outstripped White's theological imagination and continues to challenge the worlds of contemporary monotheistic orthodoxy in all their variants

Issues of naturalism and supranaturalism in Tillich's correlation of religious with psychological healing

This article shows that Tillich's understanding of the relation of religious to psychological healing rests on the theological anthropology which informs his method of correlation and his understanding of the relation of essence to existence. Through these categories Tillich understands religious healing as essentialization and psychological healing as removing pathological responses to ontologically inescapable existential anxiety. The article summarizes the three locations in his work where Tillich establishes the above positions, argues that they are too clearly drawn and contends that the correlation of his own thought with contemporary psychologies of the self would effect a happier understanding of the relation of religious to psychological healing

Toward a salvageable Tillich: The implications of his late confession of provinicialism

In occasional addresses late in his life Paul Tillich confesses to a lingering provincialism in his theology during the same period in which he was completing the third volu