Expanding Theological Horizons

Theology has the capacity to be a field‐encompassing discourse. Whether or not God is confessed in faith to be a metaphysical reality independent of human thought, theologically the concept of God is always a metaphor through which the whole of reality is filtered and understood by a community speaking words‐about‐God. This means theology is not just words‐about‐God, but also words about the totality of the universe and everything contained therein. For theology to become a legitimate field‐encompassing discourse, it must first learn to become genuinely conversant with disciplines in other fields, because conversation does not presume that one discourse rules.

Conventional wisdom assumes that theology and the sciences—quantum physics, depth psychology, and everything in between—are incommensurable. Ostensibly, theology is based on faith and revelation, while the sciences on empirical evidence and research. While theology and the sciences are clearly separate disciplines, neither reducible to the other, this is not quite the whole story. As it turns out, fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”) is not exclusive to theological and religious discourse. All knowledge requires commitment and has a faith component—mathematics and the natural sciences are no exception. In the 1930s, Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems demonstrated that mathematics, understood as a system of fundamental axioms, cannot prove its own consistency, and that truth is a much stronger and more compelling notion than provability (Hofstadter ). Then, in the 1950s, Michael Polanyi's postcritical philosophy argued that all knowledge—even scientific knowledge like e = mc²—is personal in nature and necessarily contains fiduciary elements (Polanyi ). If faith and commitment go all the way down in every discipline, then theology has common ground with other disciplines; a basis for conversation.

In a healthy conversation, neither participant is assimilated by the other, neither is consumed by the other, and neither is ignored by the other. But both are encountered by the other, and honored distinctly as an other. In a healthy conversation, theology will not be reduced to its conversation partners nor eliminated by them—but it might be challenged by them to expand its horizon. In the 1970s, John Dominic Crossan recognized that, in the future, “Biblical study will no longer be conducted under the exclusive or even dominant hegemony [of a single discipline, but rather] through a multitude of disciplines interacting mutually as a field criticism” (Crossan , 41). This essay is a humble attempt to expand theology's horizon by bringing it into conversation with depth psychology.

Depth psychology has the potential to be a fruitful conversation partner for theology because depth psychology is concerned with the full spectrum of human experiences. Theology and depth psychology are both disciplines concerned with our becoming human (Wink , xiii). Polanyi affirmed that we know more than we can tell (Polanyi , 88–94) and depth psychology affirms that we are more than we consciously know (Neumann , 7). Ergo, we know more than we consciously know, and we are more than we could ever tell. As a field‐encompassing discourse, theology has a vested interest in the fullness of the human experience in all its ambiguity, beauty, and complexity.

Origin Stories

One specific idea championed by depth psychology contains a surplus of untapped theological potential. Depth psychology recognizes that whenever a myth develops in a culture addressing the question about the origin of the world, it is always “at the same time the question about the origin of man, the origin of consciousness and the ego; it is the fateful question ‘Where did I come from?’ that faces every human being as soon as he arrives upon the threshold of self‐consciousness” (Neumann , 7). My claim is that this single insight can have exceedingly positive implications for the development of a robust theological anthropology. Such a theological anthropology will be capable of interdisciplinary conversation, it will take the biblical narrative seriously, it will be mindful of core Christian theological commitments, but it will not be “more of the same” (Tracy , 15). I will lay the groundwork for the development of this theological anthropology by reading Genesis 1–3 from the perspective of depth psychology, thus reading it as a story about the development of human consciousness. Instead of doing damage to the text's historical and theological contexts, I will argue that such a reading enhances them.

My analysis of the text will initially focus on numerous manifestations of different archetypes in Genesis 1–3. The particular representations of these universal archetypes will then be placed against the backdrop of two theological concepts: exile and return. I will demonstrate that exile and return have particular and universal aspects in this text. The particular aspects are specifically related to Israel's experience of exile in Babylon. The universal aspects are related to the emergence and development of differentiated ego‐consciousness in humanity in general. The text is driven by both conscious and unconscious motives. One of my central arguments is that these are not mutually exclusive categories. Reading the narrative from the perspective of depth psychology allows us to appreciate the historical/theological context of Israel's particular experience of exile and hope for return as well as the psychological context which is the universal human experience of being a differentiated center of ego‐consciousness moving toward individuation—which Jung understood as a reintegration with the Self and thus with the Divine. I will tentatively conclude that not only will such a reading allow the particular aspects of exile and return to accentuate their universal aspects, and vice versa, but that such a reading of Genesis 1–3 strongly suggests that humanity's exile from the garden was not the result of moral failure, but the necessary consequence of a differentiated ego‐consciousness. The narrative attests to the fact that humanity's universal alienation from God is the very thing that makes genuine relationship with God possible. A robust, holistic theological anthropology ought to account for this.

Fundamentals of Depth Psychology

To appreciate the gravity of Erich Neumann's claim that myths about the origin of the world are also myths about the origin of consciousness, we need to describe the fundamental presuppositions of depth psychology. Essentially, depth psychology holds that our general conscious experience comprises only a portion of the totality of our experience and identity. There is also an unconscious element to the human psyche. From a Jungian perspective, the unconscious is itself divided into two parts: personal and collective. The personal unconscious consists of things we might have forgotten or have repressed, but is, either way, uniquely shaped by our own individual experiences. The collective unconscious, on the other hand, is the deepest part of the human psyche, a common reservoir of potentiality shared by every human person, rooting and assimilating every experience of every member of the species. The collective unconscious is a “system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of preexistent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents” (Jung –79, 9.i.90). Hence, we are more than we [consciously] know.

Even so, our conscious experience is not exhaustively scripted by the collective unconscious, inasmuch as the two constitute a dialectic: “It is quite clear that the unconscious only makes sense if we presuppose consciousness. As long as there is no consciousness, there is no meaning in the word unconscious, there is no such thing! So as soon as we begin to speak about the phenomenon of consciousness, we set forth, logically, the counteraspect, the unconscious” (von Franz , 109). Neither precedes the other; they came into existence together and develop in tandem. The collective unconscious autonomously assimilates the conscious experiences of individuals, thus, it is to be understood as plastic and responsive—though it is not a thing, per se. We can think of the collective unconscious along the lines of natural selection: it is not a mystical, other worldly phenomenon, but something that happens naturally, from the inside; a feature of the human experience as we know it. According to Jung, “Whatever the unconscious may be, it is a natural phenomenon producing symbols that prove to be meaningful” (Jung , 102).

Given the purely hypothetical nature of the collective unconscious in Jungian psychology, it is quite appropriate to raise questions about the scientific status of depth psychology's fundamental presupposition. To begin with, Jung insisted that notion of a collective unconscious was not a particularly new idea: it can be understood as a new formulation of the archetypal “world‐spirit” of the Stoics; it can also be seen as a development of the Gnostic “on‐grown” soul (von Franz , 78). As far as Jung was concerned, the primary purpose of the collective unconscious hypothesis qua hypothesis was to unite traditions of the idea as found in cultural history with “the empirical findings of contemporary natural science and through which the dualism of matter and mind/psyche may perhaps at the same time be overcome” (von Franz , 77). In considering the collective unconscious as a scientific hypothesis, we must keep in mind that Jung never speculated about its contents for the simple reason that the contents belong to the province of experience alone. Nevertheless, Jung did demonstrate that the contents of the collective unconscious could be investigated empirically in the dreams of men and women, and even more importantly, through comparative mythology (von Franz , 78).

Jung describes the totality of the individual, consisting of conscious and unconscious processes, in terms of the “Self” archetype. The “ego” is not to be confused with the “Self.” The ego is the subject of consciousness. It is as much a content of consciousness as a condition of it, but it is not the totality of the psyche—the totality is the Self. The evolution of individualized ego‐consciousness “is as much a collective human phenomenon as a particular individual phenomenon” (Neumann , xx). The ego is initially contained in and undifferentiated from the unconscious (Neumann , 5). By eventually learning to represent the world symbolically, the ego becomes aware of itself and its position in the world (Neumann , 367; cf. Deacon , 23, 322, 436, 448–52). With the capacity to symbolically represent, the ego becomes a subject to itself in the same way the external world becomes a subject to the ego.

What all this means, is that collectively and individually, the threshold of ego self‐consciousness “was a Rubicon that was crossed at a definite time and in a specific evolutionary context” (Deacon , 23). Thus, from the perspective of biosemiotics and evolutionary biology, as a species, we were not always conscious as we are today; humans do not come equipped with an innate individualized consciousness at birth (Dennett , 218). Consciousness develops over time (Cassirer , 175). Consciousness has an origin (Jaynes , 66). And yet, because the only reality humanity can speak about is the reality of which humanity is aware, “It is therefore understandable that stories which are supposed to describe the origin of the real world are completely intertwined and mixed up with factors which we would rather call stories of the preconscious processes about the origin of human consciousness” (von Franz , 11).

As early humans became aware that they were aware, they began to ask questions; questions familiar to us all. Their questions were similar to ours in the sense that all of humanity's deepest questions originate in the same collective unconscious. Yet, their questions about the origin of the world are categorically different from ours. In no way were early humans interested in abstract philosophical speculation in a modern sense. It cannot be overstated that the symbols comprising their origin myths are not the product of philosophical speculation (Neumann, , 104). Something much more profound is at work when the collective unconscious erupts into the conscious world through origin stories: “The symbolic story of the beginning, which speaks to us from the mythology of all ages, is the attempt made by man's childlike, prescientific consciousness to master problems and enigmas which are mostly beyond the grasp of even our developed modern consciousness” (Neumann , 7). As Jung and Neumann argue, because the human psyche is the source of all cultural and religious phenomena, “It is sometimes revealed very clearly that [origin myths] present unconscious and preconscious processes which describe not the origin of our cosmos, but the origin of man's conscious awareness of the world” (von Franz , 5).

Much more could be said about the relationship between evolution, symbolic representation, and the development of human consciousness, but for this essay it must be sufficient simply to acknowledge that the fundamental convictions of depth psychology are clearly congruent with what contemporary science is saying about the origins of human consciousness.

Depth Psychology and Mythological Thinking

The concept of “myth” does not carry negative connotations in depth psychology as it does in some theological systems. As far as depth psychology is concerned, myths are not fairy tales. Myths are not the result of premodern naiveté or an unsophisticated primitive worldview. Neumann argues that there is in fact genius in mythological thinking: “Mankind is not infantile and is not to be fobbed off with wishful thinking. Despite all the idiosyncrasies of human nature, a purely illusory sort of thinking, even in the case of primitive man, stands in flagrant contrast to his genius for adaptation and his sense of reality, to which we owe all the elementary inventions that make civilization possible” (Neumann , 208). Myths are imaginative and symbolic eruptions of humanity's collective unconscious into the conscious realm—not the result of primitive philosophical speculation. Myths are true in the psychological sense (Hanna , 45). Myths can thus be understood as “the imaginative literary form which connects the depth of human individual consciousness to something beyond it and greater, whether the future, the nation, or God” (Drury , 65). And in the characteristically insightful words of Rollo May, “There is surely no conflict between science rightly defined and myth also rightly understood” (May , 25).

The Function of Jungian Archetypes

Myths consist of primordial symbols known as archetypes, and their function and effect “is not to inform the mind but to awaken consciousness” (Rollins , 100). An archetype is a pattern of experience, rooted in humanity's collective unconscious, devoid of specific content until the experience of an individual fills it out (Jung –79, 7.219; Kille , 40). These patterns of experience are rooted in the unconscious collective mind of humanity, revealed to the conscious individual mind symbolically in mythological thinking. On an individual level, the unconscious reveals these primordial images to the conscious mind in the form of dreams, fantasies, and so on. But on a collective level, these primordial images are manifest in rituals and mythological types (Neumann , xv).

Jung was convinced that the concept of an archetype was often misunderstood. The archetype, as a general pattern of human experience, is not to be confused with the way it is represented in particular images or ideas mediated to us by the unconscious: “They are very varied structures which all point back to one essentially ‘irrepresentable’ basic form” (Jung –79, 8.417). The representation of an archetype can vary a great deal in detail without losing its basic pattern (Jung , 67).

For the archetype to have life and be a dynamic force it must be charged with emotion (Jung , 96). The failure to recognize the unique, real‐life experiences and situations that give shape to the basic pattern of an archetype will lead to an analysis that will inevitably “end with nothing more than a jumble of mythological concepts, which can be strung together to show that everything means anything—or nothing at all” (Jung , 96). Because the real‐life experiences of a community and of an individual are situated at unique points in space and time, it is impossible to give an arbitrary or universal interpretation of any archetype (Jung , 96).

Archetypes cannot be perceived directly. An archetype is always incarnated in particularity. Even though the archetype is a “psychic organ” present in all of us, “Not for a moment dare we succumb to the illusion that an archetype can be finally explained and disposed of. Even the best attempts at explanation are only more or less successful translations into another metaphorical language” (Jung –79, 9.i.271). This will be important to keep in mind when we examine the ways in which archetypes manifest in Genesis 1–3. Identifying the way a myth manifests a particular archetype does not destroy the ways in which the redactors consciously shaped the narrative for their unique purposes.

Insofar as the archetype is the source of mythological thinking, and the unconscious is the source of the archetype, religious myths about the origin of the world can be understood as projections from the collective unconscious in a way that the conscious mind can experience and assimilate them (Jung –79, 7.219). Archetypes are the translators of the hidden world within every human, and of the collective unconscious in which every human participates. The archetypal psyche spontaneously produces symbols. Symbols cannot be manufactured—only discovered: “The archetypal psyche is constantly creating a steady stream of living symbolic imagery… Symbols seep into the ego, causing it to identify with them and act them out unconsciously; or they spill out into the external environment via projection, causing the individual to become fascinated and involved with external objects and activities” (Edinger , 110). The symbol conveys living, subjective meaning, even though it points to something essentially unknown, to a mystery. The epistemological implications of this can be seen by returning once again to the core conviction of Polanyi's postcritical philosophy: we know more than we can tell. Depth psychology affirms that we are more than we consciously know. Therefore, we know more than we consciously know, and we are more than we can ever tell. The eruption of archetypal primordial symbols from the unconscious into the conscious through mythological thinking is a testimony to the depth and incompleteness of the human psyche as well as the complexity of the human experience.

Toward a Psycho‐Theological Hermeneutic

The first step in the construction of a theological anthropology capable of integrating the above insights of depth psychology is the development of a psycho‐theological hermeneutic. Wayne Rollins, a proponent of such an interdisciplinary hermeneutic, identifies numerous contributions that depth psychology can make to a holistic, theological reading of the biblical text (Rollins , 10). I will discuss just a few here.

Depth psychology challenges us to recognize that numerous factors shape the biblical text: “Jung challenges the Biblical scholar to recognize that the text is to be perceived not only as part of an historical, literary, social, and linguistic process, but also, and perhaps above all, as part of a psychic process in which unconscious as well as conscious factors are at work, not only in the Biblical author and his community, but in the psyche of the Biblical interpreter and his community as well” (Rollins , 115). Meaning making is a holistic process involving the unconscious and conscious dimensions of human experience. Depth psychology allows us to begin to appreciate the role of the unconscious in the hermeneutic event.

Jung also challenged biblical scholars to recognize that meaning exceeds language and that scriptural language is neither univocal nor unambiguous. If the biblical text is truly imbued with a surplus of meaning, then Jung's challenge is legitimate. Creating space for the polyvalence of the biblical text to blossom will allow us to see the ways in which the authors have consciously appropriated material with unconscious origins for specific theological purposes.

A psycho‐theological hermeneutic challenges us to recognize the plurality of effects a text can have on the reader as well. By engaging the “active imagination” we can interact with a text in a way that evokes truth and meaning latent in our unconscious; the text can move us even if we do not know how or why. Such a hermeneutic recognizes that the purely literal approaches of fundamentalists and enlightened rationalists alike are inadequate to appreciate the text's surplus of meaning and to allow its transformative potential to come to life. Such a hermeneutic “promises to put existential meat on the theological bones of Biblical religious language, rescuing it from being mere technical indicators of antique religious experience, to become symbols of profound psycho‐spiritual reality available to humankind everywhere” (Rollins , 123). A psycho‐theological hermeneutic will allow us to more fully appreciate the masterful ways the redactors crafted the narrative to make specific theological claims while highlighting the depth of the human experience.

The Unique Character of Genesis 1–3

From the perspective of depth psychology, Genesis 1–3 is clearly an origin myth, the archetypes contained in the myth being rooted in humanity's collective unconscious. At the same, while the archetypes present in Genesis 1–3 can be read symbolically from the perspective of depth psychology, we must realize that the text is not “pure myth.” We must recognize that the story was intentionally included in the greater Genesis narrative by a redactor (or redactors). Even though the roots of the symbols forming the creation story in Genesis originate in humanity's collective unconscious, its conscious incorporation into the larger narrative demands we see it as a more than just a myth about the origin of the world. This origin story also serves important theological purposes that cannot be understood solely as a product of the collective unconscious.

Nevertheless, because depth psychology holds that a myth is fundamentally the product of the unconscious mind, “its full meaning goes beyond the present state of awareness not only of those who read the myth but of those who tell the myth” (Sanford , 160–61). The redactors were doing something more than they could know or tell in organizing the narrative into its final form. Thus, it seems plausible that the traditions woven together in Genesis 1–3 can have their origin in humanity's collective unconscious even while the final version of the story we read has a distinct Israelite flavor and is the final product of countless revisions and conglomerations of originally disparate traditions. The theological agenda, historical context, and literary virtuosity that shaped the final narrative do not eradicate the unconscious origin or the mythological elements from the text. Far from destroying the unconscious influences of the tradition behind the text, the crafting of the narrative into its final form has beautifully preserved them.

Analysis of Jungian Archetypes in Genesis 1–3

Many of the archetypes we would expect to find in an origin myth are present in this text. The basic archetypal patterns can be identified despite the reworking of the material by redactors to serve specific theological purposes. The linguistic and literary symbolism of Genesis 1–3 “invites the reader to perceive something else or something more than what is literally expressed” (Stordalen , 76). Analyzing these symbols as Jungian archetypes is one way to appreciate the “something more” of this text.

Exile and Return

Regardless of how we understand the garden narrative, theologically or psychologically, the historical context of the text is almost certainly Israel's Babylonian Exile (Enns , 5). Biblical scholars are fairly confident that the Pentateuch was not completed until the postexilic period of Israel's history, circa 539 BCE. This means that if the final forms of the narrative reflect the concerns of the community that produced it we can say with confidence that, although the narratives are rooted in much older material, the creation narratives were shaped as a theological response to Israel's experience of exile in Babylon. Placing Genesis in its ancient Near Eastern context allows us to see it as a sort of declaration‐of‐religious‐independence that allows a community recovering from the trauma of exile to begin to rediscover a sense of identity.

But as I have argued, exile is both a particular and a universal experience. Israel's exile in Babylon was the experience of a particular people at a particular time in history. Yet, all of us must leave the garden of pre‐ego‐conscious innocence in the same way Adam and Eve are exiled from the garden in Genesis 3:24.

Consider that the woman and her husband eat the fruit of the Tree in Genesis 3 after having seen that it was good for eating, that “it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to contemplate” (Genesis 3:6). They see the fruit of the Tree is tov, “good,” in the same way that God saw the creation was “good” after each day (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). God's seeing is an affirmation of the goodness of creation. We can understand the woman's seeing of the fruit in the same manner. Make no mistake, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was placed in the garden by YHWH and is a “good” aspect of creation—even if eating its fruit brings with it a loss of innocence and a new knowledge of life's complexity and ambiguity. Jacques Lacan would say that prohibition creates desire in the first place (Lacan , 83–84). If we are to understand the Tree as part of YHWH God's good creation, then the desire to transgress the prohibition—even with its ambiguous consequences—was also part of the good creation. The desire to transgress the prohibition was made possible by YHWH, incited by the serpent, and actualized by the humans. Unless the redactors of Genesis are insinuating that their God is some sort of cosmic trickster, the placing of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the garden should be understood as a catalyst for humanity's development—not a test of their obedience or faithfulness.

Eating the fruit of the Tree leads the human and the woman to realize they are naked. Something all children eventually realize. Upon eating, they hide from the sound of YHWH God during the breezy time of the day (Genesis 3:8). Something has changed. They experience themselves differently upon eating. If it is the eating of the fruit of the Tree that allows the human and the woman to enter into a new stage in the development of ego‐consciousness, then it is also the eating of the Tree—the very experience of differentiated ego‐consciousness—that opens the door for the possibility of estrangement from God, neighbor, self, and indeed from creation itself.

The human and his wife are not exiled from the garden because of moral failure. Eating the fruit enabled them to cross a threshold from childlike innocence into fully differentiated ego‐consciousness. Granted, this new experience of ego‐consciousness—becoming like God (in a certain sense) by becoming acquainted with good and evil—is precisely what makes it possible for sin to eventually enter into the human world.

Keep in mind that the human and his wife are exiled “eastward of the garden of Eden” (Genesis 3.24). “Eastward,” once again, is a metaphor for a new beginning. Too often the “winged sphinxes” and the “flashing, ever‐turning sword” watching over the way to the Tree of Life are understood as sentinels that prevent the return of the human and his wife to the garden; the equivalent of a divine “keep out” sign. But this hardly does justice to the character of YHWH revealed throughout the Old Testament and the literary context of Genesis 1–3 in particular. It is true that the winged creature and the flashing sword are set to “watch” over the way to the Tree of Life—but it is also true that the human was placed in the garden of Eden to work it and to “watch” it (Genesis 2:15). In both instances, the root word is shamar, (related to shalom) and it means to “keep,” “guard,” “watch,” or “preserve.” The winged creature and the flashing sword of Genesis 3:24 can just as easily be understood as guarding and preserving the way back to the garden rather than preventing a return. Interpreting Genesis 3:24 requires a decision similar to reading the following: “GODISNOWHERE.” This can be read either as “God is nowhere” or “God is now here.” Both readings are equally valid—yet ultimately convey very different ideas. This anticipated return to the garden in the future can be understood as the final stage of the individuation process (subsequent to wrestling with the shadow archetype—which shows up in the Genesis 32 narrative)—the encounter with the Self and the Divine.

Theologically, the narrative supports the notion of exile and return on universal and particular levels. The exile of the human and his wife from the garden in Eden is the universal experience of humanity's development of consciousness in relationship to YHWH God. It is the universal experience of exile from the garden that sets the stage for Israel's particular experience of Babylonian exile—the theological engine driving the text. Exile is not the end of the story, however. As the human and his wife are exiled from the garden the way back is guarded and preserved for them when they are ready and able to return. If there ever was a community in need of the hope of a new beginning, of a return, it is a community recovering from the trauma of exile.

Conclusion

This essay has essentially been an attempt to outline the features of a theological anthropology capable of participating in genuine interdisciplinary dialogue. I have attempted to show how depth psychology can be a valuable conversation partner for theology by reading Genesis 1–3 against the backdrop of the exile/return motif in light of what I referred to as a psycho‐theological hermeneutic. It has been my contention that the fundamental insights of depth psychology are not only extremely congruent with what contemporary science has to say about the origins and development of human consciousness, but that the mythological, theological, psychological, and scientific elements of a robust theological anthropology do not stand in tension with one another, rather, they complement each other. Of course, much more needs to be said about how the fundamental presuppositions of depth psychology dovetail with the specific findings of evolutionary biology and neuroscience in particular, however, space constraints limit me here to simply acknowledge that these are in fact significant issues that will require further exploration and analysis—that is, if my argument is to carry any weight in scientific communities. That being said, at least from a theological perspective, this essay can be seen as a small step toward a genuine interdisciplinary dialogue that refuses to be paralyzed by perpetual discussions of scope and methodology by taking the risk of crossing disciplinary boundaries and attempting to deal with specific issues in a bold, constructive fashion.

Where has this exercise led us? It must be acknowledged that reading the text in this manner is not without precedent: a few of the most significant conclusions reached were (partially) anticipated by Hegel, for whom the original state of humanity was not one of pure innocence, innate wisdom, or even immortality, but rather one of barbarism and savagery. For Hegel this text is not a myth about the origins of sin. Instead, the garden narrative attests to the fact that this “cleavage” or “rupture” we call “consciousness” occurred at the very beginning of human history, and that it is precisely this cleavage/rupture which allows for the knowledge of good and evil—a cleavage which ultimately creates the condition of possibility for human freedom and maturation (Hegel , 210–17; 442–43).

Given the similarities between our two readings, we must also admit Hegel did not arrive at his conclusions with the aid of depth psychology. Indeed, others have reached similar exegetical conclusions without ever specifically appealing to depth psychology (e.g., Paul Tillich, Stanley Grenz, and so on) And so, we must ask: what then is the actual of value of depth psychology as part of a theological‐hermeneutical tool if we can arrive at similar conclusions without it? While this is a fair question without a straightforward answer, we must admit it would be more worrisome if our psycho‐theological hermeneutic led us to read the text in a way that was completely disconnected from any tradition—whether orthodox or heterodox.

Thus, the true value of depth psychology in this context is not that it allows for a completely novel reading of the text or necessarily demands a corresponding revolutionary anthropology. Its value as a theological/hermeneutical resource lies is in the recognition that mythological thinking is not the product of intentional philosophical speculation—that mythological thinking and ritual are the symbolic eruption of humanity's collective unconscious into the conscious world. Consequently, it is neither trivial nor reductive to claim that origin stories tell us something significant about ourselves as a species. This allows us to further appreciate—regardless of confession or creed—that in crafting a theological response to Israel's experience of exile in Babylon, the redactors of Genesis tapped into the universal experience of becoming a fully differentiated, conscious human being and crafted a multilayered narrative overflowing with the ambiguity, the beauty, and the complexity of the human experience. Israel's experience of exile in Babylon is like the experience of our ego‐consciousness as it emerges and differentiates from the unconscious. Israel's hope for life after the exile is also our hope for a return to the garden and an encounter with our true Self, the Divine. The untapped theological potential of depth psychology is precisely in that it locates the theological moment in context of the broader human experience, further preparing the way for interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue.