Within the depth-psychology corpus, monotheism functions less as a theological datum than as a contested psychological and cultural structure. The term arrives already freighted with ambivalence: Jung correlated it with the Self and placed it developmentally beyond the polytheistic stage of anima and animus—a hierarchy that Hillman's archetypal psychology explicitly contests, arguing that the primacy of the Self encodes a senex bias and smuggles theological monotheism into psychological theory. Miller extends this critique, tracing what he calls 'decadent monotheism' through H. Richard Niebuhr's radical monotheism into broader domains of social and psychological fascism. Campbell offers taxonomic precision, distinguishing monotheism from monolatry and henotheism, while Edinger maps an evolutionary schema of the Western God-image moving from 'tribal monotheism' to 'universal monotheism.' Armstrong supplies the historical substrate, demonstrating that strict monotheism arrived late—second Isaiah, not the Pentateuch—and that its encounter with Greek philosophy generated persistent tensions across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The deepest fault line runs between those who regard monotheism as psychic and cultural integration, and those who regard it as a violent suppression of the plural, imaginal life of the soul.
In the library
18 substantive passages
Jung writes: 'The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism, the self with monotheism.' … A primacy of the self implies rather that the understanding of the complexes at the differentiated level once formulated as a polytheistic pantheon … is of less significance for modern man than is the self of monotheism.
Hillman identifies and contests Jung's implicit developmental hierarchy in which monotheism is the psychological telos, arguing this subordinates the plural archetypal life essential to archetypal psychology.
Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983thesis
Jung writes: 'The anima/animus stage is correlated with polytheism, the self with monotheism.' … he nevertheless also implies that as anima/animus is a pre-stage of self, so is polytheism a pre-stage of monotheism.
Hillman's appendix reprinted in Miller establishes the central psychological problem: Jung's equation of monotheism with the Self installs a value hierarchy that archetypal psychology must resist.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
From the viewpoint of an archetypal psychology 'the special type of temperament and emotion' that produces monotheism and favours the self above anima/animus … would be the senex. This archetype might also help account for theological monotheism's obdurate persistence, religious intolerance, and conviction of superiority.
Hillman diagnoses theological and psychological monotheism as expressions of the senex archetype, explaining its intolerance and hierarchical rigidity in structural rather than merely historical terms.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
Despite the historical evidence of religions, there is a fond notion without adequate foundation that monotheism is the pinnacle and that 'the evolution of religion thus manifests, it would seem, a definite tendency toward an integration of our mental and emotional life.'
Hillman challenges the historiographical assumption, shared by Jung, that monotheism represents the apex of religious-psychological development, citing contrary historical evidence.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974thesis
Monotheism is a narrowed and extremest partial truth, while polytheism is higher because it is more basic, ubiquitous, and lasting. … 'The many contains the unity of the one without losing the possibilities of the many.'
Miller synthesizes the symposium debate by inverting the monotheism-as-summit model, presenting polytheism as ontologically prior and more capacious, with unity immanent rather than imposed.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
Not many, but One: that is the announcement that separates Yahweh from ancient Near East polytheism. … there is a latent dualism in the God-image, even though monotheism is consciously insisted upon.
Edinger distinguishes 'tribal monotheism' from later 'universal monotheism,' noting that the insistence on divine unity barely conceals a structural dualism latent within the early Yahwistic God-image.
Edinger, Edward F., The New God-Image: A Study of Jung's Key Letters Concerning the Evolution of the Western God-Image, 1996supporting
In order to understand the implications of decadent monotheism—whether in society, in self, or in religion—we would do well to familiarize ourselves with what this tempest in a theological teapot was all about.
Miller frames the monotheism-versus-polytheism debate as a cultural and psychological emergency, introducing Niebuhr's radical monotheism as the foil against which the new polytheism defines itself.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
Niebuhr is realistic in noting that most organized religion in the West has been social faith, hence polytheistic. But the religious ideal is a radical monotheism that will 'dethrone all absolutes short of the principle of being itself.'
Miller expounds Niebuhr's radical monotheism as an ideal in perpetual tension with the de facto polytheism of social life, establishing the theological baseline that depth psychology subsequently reimagines.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
By polytheizing his psychology, Hillman provides theology the opportunity to save itself from psychologizing its monotheism. … something far more important than number is at stake in the question of monotheism and polytheism.
Miller argues that Hillman's polytheistic psychology serves a reciprocal corrective function, rescuing theology from reducing God to a psychological category while liberating psychology from monotheistic superego.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
Monotheism is the belief that there is finally but one substantial god; and of monotheism tw[o forms]… Polytheism we may define as the recognition and worship of a plurality of gods; monalatry as the worship of a single god—one's own—while recognizing others.
Campbell supplies the comparative-religion taxonomy distinguishing monotheism from monolatry and henotheism, establishing conceptual precision that the depth-psychological debate frequently elides.
Campbell, Joseph, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964supporting
For Nietzsche monotheism leads to the death of God and the specter of meaninglessness; but for Niebuhr it is polytheism that leads us to this apocalyptic end.
Miller maps a fundamental antinomy between Nietzsche and Niebuhr in which monotheism and polytheism exchange their roles as sources of nihilism, revealing that the stakes of the debate are existential.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
Not only is social and psychological fascism a danger lurking in monotheistic thinking, but there is danger in polytheism, too, especially if one thinks it, like Niebuhr, in a sociological way.
Miller introduces a dialectical caution: monotheism risks authoritarian totalism while sociological polytheism risks fragmentation, a tension that resists any simple resolution in favor of either structure.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974supporting
The idea of the covenant tells us that the Israelites were not yet monotheists … It is very difficult to find a single monotheistic statement in the whole of the Pentateuch.
Armstrong historicizes the emergence of Israelite monotheism, demonstrating that the covenantal structure presupposes a polytheistic world, thereby displacing the assumption of an original biblical monotheism.
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting
Second Isaiah took this one step further and declared that Yahweh was the only God. In his rewriting of Israelite history, the myth of…
Armstrong identifies the Babylonian exile as the historical crucible in which Israelite monolatry was transformed into genuine monotheism through Second Isaiah's theological rewriting.
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting
All talk about God staggers under impossible difficulties. Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality.
Armstrong opens her history by flagging the constitutive aporia of monotheistic discourse: God is the supreme Word and yet transcends all language, a paradox structuring the entire tradition.
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting
Whenever monotheists fell in love with Greek philosophy, they inevitably wanted to try to adapt its God to their own. This will be one of the major themes of our story.
Armstrong identifies the encounter between monotheistic revelation and Greek philosophical reason as the generative and recurrent crisis within the history of the God-concept.
Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting
Judeo-Christian monotheism in its conflict with Greek paganism, however, was tolerant of co-existence, cf. Nilsson, p. 124.
Hillman's footnote, citing Nilsson, complicates the standard narrative by noting that Judeo-Christian monotheism was not invariably intolerant of polytheistic coexistence in the ancient world.
Hillman, James, Archetypal Psychology: A Brief Account, 1983aside
Judeo-Christian monotheism in its conflict with Greek paganism however was intolerant of co-existence, cf. Nilsson, p. 124.
Miller's bibliographic apparatus, via Nilsson, documents the historical intolerance of Judeo-Christian monotheism toward Greek paganism, supplying the scholarly grounding for the new polytheism's cultural argument.
Miller, David L., The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses, 1974aside