An Interview with Diarmuid O'Murchu on Quantum Theology
What happens when you bridge the rigid divide between classical science and institutional religion? You discover a reality that isn't mechanistic and controlled, but pulsating, relational, and deeply alive.
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| Diarmuid O'Murchu |
The Birth of a Paradigm Shift
Yago: Good morning, Diarmuid. Thank you for making yourself available for this interview. Today, we are focusing on your book, Quantum Theology, first published in 1997 with a second edition in 2004. It has been nearly 28 years since it first hit the shelves, yet its relevance has only grown. How did this book originally come about?
Diarmuid: In the 1980s and into the 1990s, there were the beginnings of an opening up in the world of science. People began to move away from the traditional, dualistic split between science and religion. There was a growing realization that we could build bridges across that divide—bridges that would be important not just for religion and science, but for our holistic understanding of life generally. Quantum physics was seen to be the precise dimension of science that could help build that bridge.
I read that book and felt really excited by it; it created all sorts of deep resonances within me, even though I wasn't fully aware of its complete implications at the time. I was working as a school chaplain here in Ireland, and I began talking with some of the science teachers about Capra's book. They happened to be very interested in it too.
With two teachers in particular, we spent five or six months thoroughly exploring that book. At the end of that period, I began to realize that a whole new field was opening up regarding the interface between theology and scientific insights, particularly those coming from quantum physics. That’s when I got the original inspiration to write the book.
It was probably ten years later before I actually sat down to write it. In the intervening period, I was doing a lot of general reading and making myself familiar with science. I quickly realized it was the spirituality of science and the philosophy of science, rather than the raw 'science of science,' that sat comfortably with me. As a result of that integration growing organically through my own personal life, the book became a natural outlet. I wrote it in about two years; it didn't take long because it had been gestating inside me for such a long time.
The original edition came out in 1997. As I continued reading, studying, and reflecting, I realized there was a lot of updating that needed to be done. I rewrote and updated it, and that version came out in 2004. And indeed, there's even more updating to be done now.
Rethinking God: From Static Being to Creative Energy
Yago: To guide our conversation today, let's explore the structure of the 12 principles you outlined in the book's appendix. The first principle states that 'Life is sustained by a creative energy.' Quantum theology suggests the universe is upheld by a pulsating, restless energy—a sacred force of renewal. How does this align with seeing God as an unfolding process rather than a static being?
Diarmuid: Firstly, in terms of science itself, the departure being named there is getting away from the classical approach, which claims that creation is made up of individual, discrete, mechanistic entities. The old paradigm looked at how those entities functioned together like parts in a machine. The metaphor we are looking at now is the holon, coming from the idea of holography—the understanding that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and that something much bigger is going on.
This brings us to the notion of energy. In classical science, energy is viewed from a strictly human point of view: it is something we use, measure, and quantify. We view ourselves as in charge of it, meaning energy has little meaning outside of human management and control. In quantum physics, however, the claim is that energy is the foundational 'stuff' out of which everything emerges. We do not create the energy; in actual fact, we are created by it.
This begs an immediate theological question: what does this tell us about God? This is one area where the book definitely needs updating. The traditional story of creation taken from the Book of Genesis puts the emphasis heavily on creatio ex-nihilo—creation out of nothing. This is what we traditionally associate with God the Father. But ex-nihilo tells us nothing about God, and it tells us nothing about creation. It simply tries to emphasize that before this patriarchal, creator father-figure, there was absolutely nothing. It establishes a model of patriarchal, hierarchical control: God is in control of everything, sets the starting point, and will bring it to an end in due course.
Under creatio ex-profundus, God the Father is moved to one side, and the Holy Spirit takes center stage. As you can imagine, this has huge implications for our understanding of God. Most quantum scientists don't immediately equate this cosmic energy with what Christian theology calls the Holy Spirit, but a growing number of them are using language of a spiritual nature, admitting that without a spiritual perspective, we cannot fully explain what is happening at the quantum level.
Yago: You’ve mentioned that process theologians offer us the model of a polar God. Alfred North Whitehead described two poles: the primordial (relating to the abstract essence of God—free, complete, eternal, immutable, and unconscious) and the consequent (relating to God’s concrete actuality—not determined, dependent, incomplete, vulnerable, and conscious). This brings a completely new understanding of divine mystery.
Diarmuid: Yes, particularly in that latter phrase regarding the concrete actuality and particularity of God, which traditionally we have understood in a rather literalist sense through Jesus. The particularity of God is now moving toward understanding the Holy Spirit as the central dimension of what we call God.
Of course, this can be very worrying for many Christians and theologians who ask: are we in danger of sidelining or undermining the unique, central role of Jesus in our Christian story? For me, the late scripture scholar Marcus Borg offers a great response by frequently alluding to Jesus as a 'spirit-filled person.' From that point of view, we aren't undermining Jesus; we are saying that within our Christian story and our understanding of the primacy of the Spirit, Jesus is an ideal embodiment of that reality for us. It requires us to restructure and rethink our Christology.
Yago: Yeah, and especially I would like to highlight this part of this incompleteness of God. I remember one of the last books of Ilia Delio talks about the 'not-yet God,' and then she talks about the individuation of God. So at the same time, God is complete. How can we hold that paradox?
Diarmuid: Well, I think there are two perspectives here. There is what we humans are trying to do to make sense of it for ourselves, which is what the whole spiritual life and religion are trying to support. On the other hand, historically, apophatic theology possessed great wisdom because it kept reminding us that if we pin everything down regarding God, there is a great danger that we humans are playing God and molding Him into our own image and likeness.
Therefore, for me, the notion of the incompleteness of God is better understood as our vital need to remain open to that mystery which is always bigger and beyond us, while simultaneously being very close and intimate to us.
Embracing Wholeness over Dogma
Yago: The second principle is 'Wholeness is the wellspring of all possibility.' If theology is meant to open new horizons rather than confine truth within rigid dogmas, how can we cultivate a dynamic spirituality that remains responsive to an evolving reality? And what practices help us resist reducing mystery to fixed doctrines while still engaging with our traditions?
Diarmuid: What we are dealing with here is a direct contrast to classical science, where the principle is that the whole equals the sum of the parts. That mechanistic model has long been used, even in modern medicine, to understand the human body—treating it as a collection of parts where, if you have a pain in your side, you focus exclusively on that dysfunctional part to rectify it. The quantum approach dictates that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and yet, paradoxically, the whole is contained in each individual part. That is where the science of holography comes into play.
To my mind, we are touching into pure mysticism here. We are touching a reality that is beyond our comprehension, one we cannot fully grasp or control. If we think we are fully grasping it, we are doing an injustice to the reality itself—whether it's the reality of our world, of nature, or of God. This is the exact piece that makes a substantial number of scientists uncomfortable. Even to this day, many try to bring quantum physics back under the bar of classical science because they find it very difficult to live with this open-endedness.
Religion has gone down that exact same road by staying too close to Greek metaphysics. It has wanted to pin everything down accurately through statements that make humans feel in control. Aristotle put a huge emphasis on the use of reason. There is indeed a place for reason, but theology, faith, and spirituality can never be reduced to rational discourse. We must keep things open to honor the mystery at the heart of reality.
Vast echoes of this cosmic wholeness exist in the New Testament, specifically in the letters to the Colossians and Ephesians. As we begin to appreciate this wholeness in creation, we get a greater sense of the vast yet deeply intimate mystery we call God. It is an invitation not to get locked into over-theorizing and over-doctrinalizing our faith. Our faith is fundamentally about a living relationship, rather than anything that can be reduced to a set of dogmas.
Befriending the Paradox of Destruction
Yago: Your third principle focuses on evolution being 'underpinned by design and purpose.' If light and shadow are interwoven in our unfolding, how do we move beyond the simplistic dualism of 'good versus evil' without falling into moral relativism? How does quantum theology help us embrace paradox, seeing apparent opposites as dynamic elements within a greater wholeness?
Diarmuid: This is one of the supreme questions facing nearly every field of wisdom today, including religion. On the big scale of cosmology, creation evolves and unfolds in a recurring, cyclical pattern: creation, destruction, creation, destruction. Both words carry equal importance. This is incredibly difficult for people to sit with because destruction is almost always equated with evil or a lack of something. Yet, when you look at the story of creation at every level, this amazing paradox is constantly at work. In our human effort to get rid of the destruction, we actually make things worse.
Let's look at the word paradox. My simple definition is that a paradox is a contradiction on the surface, but it has meaning written underneath that connects to the great wholeness. Take St. Paul's example: 'It’s when I’m weak that I’m strong.' In plain ordinary English, that is a flat contradiction. Yet many of us have been through life experiences where we know that to be true. With hindsight, we can see that a specific tragedy, difficulty, or struggle had a vital place in the evolving pattern of our lives. The challenge is learning how to get to that underlying meaning.
When I give workshops, the big cosmic example I use is earthquakes. Earthquakes are caused by the shifting of tectonic plates. If those plates do not shift every now and again, the earth-body itself cannot function in a healthy, normal way. Therefore, we actually need earthquakes for a healthy planet. Now, that statement sounds fine in Western countries where we either don't have earthquakes or have the infrastructure to cope with them. But if you go to parts of Asia, like Indonesia or Pakistan, severe earthquakes result in a massive loss of life. In 1994, for example, several thousand people died in a Pakistani earthquake. Yet, you can have a serious earthquake of 7.4 on the Richter scale along the West Coast of America or in Japan, and the chances are nobody will die. The richer countries have earthquake-resistant buildings; the poorer countries do not. The huge number of deaths is not the fault of the earthquake; it is a problem of our human species and socio-economics.
At a biological level, the Malaysian scientist Ed Yong has written a fascinating book on how microbes work within the human body. The very same microbes that are absolutely essential for our wellbeing and health are the ones that can also kill us. It completely depends on how we work with them. That is a deeply intimate example of paradox.
Moving forward, it is critically important that we distinguish between paradox and flaw. There is a prominent idea of a 'flaw' in creation which, from the viewpoint of Christian theology, is highly anthropocentric. It claims that because we are a flawed species structuralized by original sin, everything else in creation must be flawed. That pathway does not get us very far spiritually. This may well be the most outrageous statement I make in this interview, but there is no flaw anywhere in God’s creation. There is an enormous amount of paradox, and we badly confuse the two. If things were perfect, there would be no freedom and no creativity.
This realization shifts our traditional understanding of salvation (soteriology). The traditional Christian story claims that only the literal death and resurrection of Jesus can save the world from this 'awful flaw.' But that is looking at reality in narrow, human-centered terms without acknowledging the bigger picture.
A highly controversial, contemporary example of us failing to understand paradox is COVID-19. We have learned very little from it because it was a major paradoxical event that we did not deal with effectively. Coming into the third year of the pandemic, I got an email from a friend in the Kiribati Islands out in the Pacific, boasting that they had successfully kept the virus out of their isolated islands. By November of that year, he sent me another email, feeling deeply upset because the virus had finally gotten in and he had contracted it. By the end of 2023, the virus had successfully entered every country on Earth. It outwitted every single vaccine—and I am not anti-vaccine. But once it had done all that, it ceased to be as virulent and dangerous as it had been.
The lesson that pharmaceutical companies and mainstream scientists are failing to acknowledge is that viruses are living organisms. They are not just objects there for us to dominate and control. The challenge is learning how to live and work with them. We live in a creation of paradox, and we cannot get rid of it. If we eliminate the paradox, we eliminate life itself. While humanity is desperately trying to control the paradox, our real spiritual task is to learn to befriend the paradox so that it can befriend us.
Yago: How can we connect that cosmic pattern of decay back to our inner human experiences—specifically to the raw instincts and the deeper archetypes of the 'destroyer' within us?
Love Your Disease, It Is Keeping You Healthy. And the example he uses throughout his work is simple: you come down with a bad flu and you end up stuck in bed for three or four days. He then writes in large, bold print: because your body needs to be in bed for three or four days.
That is the absolute heart of the paradox. Every now and again, our bodies remind us very vividly that we need to stop. It forces us to acknowledge that whatever disruptive or seemingly destructive process is happening inside us actually carries a vital message—one that might be deeply important for changing our lives significantly.
Yago: When you speak of befriending the paradox, it sounds like our difficulty in validating the destructive dimension of reality stems from our incapacity to own our inner 'destroyer archetype.' If we don't own our capacity to destroy, we risk being unconsciously controlled by it, leading us to over-destroy. How relevant is this psychological integration?
Diarmuid: It is incredibly relevant. It should be a major part of our educational systems, our spirituality, and the social sciences—particularly psychology. To address this dilemma, I draw a sharp distinction between instinct and archetype. Both are dimensions of life, but integrating them is our primary challenge.
Instinct is essential for raw survival. If you look at human sexuality through a Darwinian evolutionary lens, the instinct is the capacity and desire to procreate and propagate the species. The archetype, however, operating at a deeper level of meaning, dictates that human sexuality is about the power for bonding, intimacy, and profound interconnection. The question is: how do we interpret and utilize the instinct to serve the archetype? Because the archetype is what is truly important.
I shared a human example of this with a friend recently regarding his days in a boarding school away from home. When he was at home with his family, they had a terrible problem getting him to eat regularly. But at the end of his first year at boarding school, his report card explicitly noted that he possessed a 'ferocious appetite,' leaving his family wondering if he had a medical issue. What was happening was that he was using the physical instinct of eating to compensate for the sudden lack of human intimacy and family connection. When he was home, he was receiving so much emotional nourishment from the family structure that he didn't need to over-eat. The instinct was primarily operative in the boarding school; the archetype was active in his home environment.
Survival is the instinct; flourishing is the archetype.
Original Creativity vs. Original Sin
Yago: The fourth principle highlights 'divine belonging as the context for revelation.' If divine revelation is an ongoing process embedded in creation rather than bound to formal religion, how does that reshape our understanding of spiritual authority and truth?
Diarmuid: We can look at this from a few angles, but let's take the approach that is easiest to grasp. Nobody disputes the scientific date of 13.8 billion years for the age of our universe. Furthermore, almost every religious catechism states in its opening chapters that God created the world and continually maintains it. If we accept that basic guideline—that God is fully at work continually maintaining and co-creating with creation at every stage—then God has been fully at work throughout a 13.8-billion-year timeline. Logically, it follows that creation itself is the primary manifestation and revelation of God.
Let's bring this to the human story to make it real. Current paleontology shows that we have existed as a distinct species on this earth for roughly 7 million years. Following the principle that God is always co-creating with creation, when we first evolved 7 million years ago as the latest embodied form of divine revelation, God was not looking down the timeline saying: 'I’m going to create these human beings now, but I’m going to make them wait 7 million years until I send my Son, and only then will I declare them saved.' To my mind, that model makes no sense whatsoever. We must come to terms with the fact that God has been fully at work right through our entire 7-million-year story.
This leaves us with a distinct Christian question: where does Jesus fit into this massive timeline? This requires us to open up meaningful new ground in our Christology. We are on much safer ground if we think of Jesus using three specific words: as an affirmation, confirmation, and celebration of all that humanity achieved over those 7 million years. Because believe it or not, we actually got it right most of the time.
The objective scientific evidence for this has been gathering momentum since the early 1990s, particularly through archeological work along the Eastern African seaboard. We now have refined scholarly data from the Turkana region of Kenya proving that humans were creatively carving and working with stone 3.3 million years ago. Creativity, not original sin, is our evolutionary default position. I am not saying we were perfect; if we were perfect, we would have no freedom or creativity. But creativity is our baseline.
Therefore, the coming of Jesus 2,000 years ago is an affirmation and celebration of what we achieved, while simultaneously pointing us toward our next evolutionary stage. The immense challenge of quantum theology is that it places the responsibility for salvation and redemption right back onto our shoulders. Jesus gave us the model of the Kingdom—a new way of relating to creation. Instead of looking to a figure on a cross to come down and sort out the global mess for us, we have to start sorting it out for ourselves.
Relationship as the Core of Divine Energy
Diarmuid: There are several dimensions to this question. Just let me begin with the theological one on this occasion. When I was going through my schooling and indeed even in my seminary days, we were still very much at that philosophical level dealing with Greek metaphysical approaches about how do you fit the three into one? That kind of quagmire that of course we could never get our heads quite around. We have moved away from that to a very different understanding of the Trinity, but I think a lot of people haven't yet connected with it at that more personal experiential level.
The understanding today would be that the doctrine of the Trinity, which interestingly, one finds a version of it in every major world religion in one shape or form—and where it's not in the main line religion, you'll find it in the mystical side, like the Kabbalah in Judaism. So archetypally, what's the doctrine of the Trinity about? It's an attempt by human beings at a certain time in the evolution of human consciousness to make a statement that whatever else God is about, God is about a deep capacity for relating.
It's that ancient conviction that then over time got translated into the dogmas that we call the dogma of the Trinity. An important lesson here beyond the immediate question we're dealing with, it's good to ask ourselves when we're dealing with doctrines, whether within Christianity or in any of the other major world religions: what was the experience that led to this doctrine or dogma? Because behind every doctrine, there is an experience. And that experience in one shape or form is about this capacity to connect or this capacity to relate, which is written into the very fabric of creation at large.
Traditionally in science, we were given the image of billiard balls mechanically bouncing off each other; that is no longer a helpful metaphor. Quantum reality shows us how energies interconnect and interrelate. This relational dance is what drives evolution, and it is ultimately what drives human desire. Human desire is to realize more fully and in a more integrated way in our own lives the yearnings of the heart, which we know intuitively are part and parcel of our flourishing—the flourishing that God and evolution desire for all of us.
Then where wisdom is needed, and this brings us back to the Christian word of discernment, is to be able to identify the elements of the light and the shadow or the paradox of instinct and archetype, because both will always be at play. If we allow the instincts to guide our desires, then we are going to end up doing quite destructive things ultimately to ourselves, to each other and to creation. But if we can begin to identify more with the call to the archetype, which is the deeper value, and to channel the instinct in those directions, then we will do something much more holistic. And to do that meaningfully, we all need others in our lives to one degree or another.
A final comment on that one, when it then comes to the church, this in a sense is what the church is meant to be serving at a local level and at a more global level. This is the bit I think St. Paul got absolutely right. The new reign of God, the kingdom of God that Jesus talked about is about a kind of a network for authentic relationships and for authentic relating. Paul took the concept of the ecclesia, which in his day was a political concept related to the local town or city council strictly reserved for men. Paul brings everybody into it.
Paul insists that it has to be for everybody, men and women alike. Unfortunately, some of the things in his writings allow us to see the fuller scope of that, where he talks about that women can't speak and must keep their heads covered. To my mind, those are sort of sideline issues, and we need to be careful that they don't block us from seeing the main point. The main point is the ecclesia is for everybody, and it is meant to function through dynamic, creative ways of relating.
What Paul is doing there is trying to honor the bigger vision of Jesus around the new reign of God. Because the kingdom is also about a whole new way of relating with everything in creation in that more dynamic, creative way. So whether we're looking at relationships from the point of view of the Trinity, from the point of view of our human story, from cosmology at large, or from our own faith as a Christian people, that dynamic of right relating is centrally important. It's in and through these various relational contexts that we can help and support each other in channeling our desires more in the direction of the archetypes.
Ultimate Meaning is Found in the Story, Not in Facts
Yago: That makes immense sense. Let’s look at principle number six: 'Ultimate meaning is found in the story, not in facts.' Religious traditions have often sought truth through rigid doctrine, yet quantum theology suggests that reality is best understood through narrative and meaning. How can theology reclaim the power of sacred storytelling as a true way of knowing?
Diarmuid: I think the short answer to that is in what's known as a census fidelium. That's where we engage the wider population of our faith community, and indeed beyond our faith community to people of other specializations as well, in a conversation. So conversation is another word here for story.
It's interesting when Jesus is asked about the central feature of this emerging narrative—this kingdom of God, this new reign of God—when he's asked, well, what exactly is it about? What exactly is involved? I think the people asking that question probably were expecting a kind of a rational answer with the background of classical Greek philosophy; they were expecting a more concrete, specific answer. But we recall here, the answer he gave them was, 'Well, this new reign of God may be compared to...' and we're into the parables. Parables are very complex, profound stories that I think we have made far too simple at times.
The point I'm trying to make here is that if you look more closely at every religion, including our Christian religion, it's based not so much on doctrine and doctrinal matters; it's based on emerging narratives and emerging stories. In our time, that requires a new kind of dynamic where we come to truth, not merely from the top down of people trying to promote or protect dogmas. There is still a place for doctrine and dogma, but we also have to look at how we relate that doctrine or dogma in a living context among ourselves as human beings and increasingly in the context of creation at large.
At the Synod in Rome over the past two years, all this excitement and delight around the round table is a very vivid reminder to us that intuitively, more and more people are beginning to realize that when we come to truth and a deeper understanding of truth through this dialogical process, we are coming to something more authentic than even the most profound doctrines. I don't think that message was handled very well, but okay, maybe we're at a point where the process needs to continue and can be deepened.
This process will help people to realize, and maybe particularly help our clergy and our church leaders to realize, that there is a desire today for engaging with truth through another method—a way that is not entirely new, although it may seem very new for a long time.
The Global Shadow and the Evolution of Justice
Yago: Principle seven deals with 'the global shadow and the call to integrate it.' Many traditions externalize evil as outside cosmic battles. How do process and quantum theology invite us to integrate rather than reject the shadow? And how does this reshape the work of a peace and justice practitioner?
Diarmuid: We are right back to the great paradox. A lot of what we have traditionally labeled as 'evil' should be re-contextualized as the destructive element inherent to the natural paradox of creation. When we are ignorant of this paradox, our immediate tendency is to react with dualistic splitting—isolating and projecting the shadow out onto others, rather than working at the hard task of internal integration. This splitting is precisely what causes an immense amount of unnecessary suffering.
Consider the Greek word used for sin in the Gospels: hamartia. It literally means 'missing the mark.' That is a far less moralistic, far more reflective interpretation. If we look at human suffering through this lens, we have to ask: how much of our pain is directly caused by our narrow, human-centered perceptions that refuse to entertain paradox.
Yago: In the peacebuilding field, when dealing with structural injustice or deep-seated conflicts, knowing that the universe engages in this dance of creation and destruction changes everything. Part of our discernment becomes identifying what elements of a conflict are healthy expressions of a shifting system that simply need validation, versus what elements are spiraling out of control because people are fighting the paradox.
Diarmuid: That is exactly correct. In cases of severe conflict, we have to look underneath the immediate crisis and ask: where did we miss the mark? Why did we set up a rigid, dysfunctional way of perceiving and controlling reality that ultimately brought about this explosion?
Take the contemporary war in Ukraine. It seems that within the collective Russian mindset, there is a desperate clinging to an old, patriarchal ideal of the Great Russian Empire that must be restored at all costs. That rigid perception completely refuses to entertain an evolving, changing reality. For them, it is a crystal-clear, permanent power structure given by God. Because there is no space for an evolving dynamic, it leads to massive destruction. We must learn to view these structural issues through the lens of the paradox.
Love is the Origin and Goal of All Existence
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| Pierre Teilhard de Chardin |
Diarmuid: The word love, as used philosophically and across the great world religions, encapsulates the innate drive of everything trying to move in the direction of greater flourishing. Flourishing is the foundational word here, echoing John 10:10: 'I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.'
Yet, flourishing is fundamentally like the birth process and the giving of new life—it involves a great deal of pain. Giving birth remains a high-risk activity to this day, and that is the exact paradox at work. Cosmic love is the guiding energy that ensures flourishing happens, but flourishing inherently requires what Christian language frames as death and rising to new possibilities.
Consider a simple example from nature: a tree shedding its leaves. The beautiful foliage of summer must die out in the autumn and winter; if that decline doesn't happen, there can be no flourishing spring to follow. We easily recognize the creativity and love of God in the springtime, but the real spiritual challenge is learning to see it equally in the decline of autumn and the bareness of winter.
A final, critical piece operates at the level of spirituality: the concept of unconditional love. In almost all religious traditions, we are conditioned through our upbringing, prayers, and devotions to believe that we must constantly 'make it up to God' through penance and sacrifice for the ways we have hurt or damaged the divine. But a discerning reading of scripture—such as the first letter of John—reveals that it is not our love for God that matters, but God's unconditional love for us.
If you take unconditional love as your baseline starting point, it changes everything. It forces us to ask: how am I being loved unconditionally in and through my sickness, my aging, or my struggles? The answer is often that we simply need to slow down and change our pace of life, secure in the fact that we are already totally accepted.
Many view this as an ideology that lets us off the hook ethically, but it does the exact opposite. If I know that I am unconditionally loved, I am then tasked with developing a capacity to extend that same unconditional love to every other aspect of life—not just to other human beings, but to everything in God's creation. If we were to adopt this mindset globally, it would change our world radically.
Ritual and Sacrament Providing Sacred Encounters
Yago: Believing we are unconditionally loved brings a tremendous sense of safety to our inner lives and to any encounter we have. Let’s look at your ninth principle: 'Ritual and sacrament provide sacred encounters.' In a quantum-evolving cosmos, sacredness is clearly not confined to church walls. How can we reimagine ritual and sacrament as dynamic processes that help us attune to the divine presence in an ever-changing world?
Diarmuid: Clear archaeological evidence shows humans burying their dead with fairly elaborate rituals about 100,000 years ago. We had no priests, liturgists, churches, or formal religions telling us so to do it. This proves that the capacity for ritual-making is a gift of the Spirit with which all humans are deeply endowed. It is our innate, felt need to create ceremony to mark the profound experiences of our lives, elevating us above and beyond a purely rational world.
Historically, this capacity translated into cultural rites of passage across every indigenous culture on Earth. We must bring a high quality of awareness and discernment to these traditions because they handle very deep energies, meaning there can be a dark shadow as well as a lot of light. For instance, the practice of female genital mutilation is a dark shadow and a highly dangerous ritual. We cannot assume every historical ritual is inherently right; we must apply our reflective, discerning capacities to them.
It is out of this exact same innate human process of ritual-making and rites of passage that the Christian Church eventually developed the notion of sacraments. The late Bernard Cook, the American theologian, followed that line of historical continuity, but unfortunately, most conventional theologians do not. Many take a defensive line, claiming that Christian sacraments are completely unique to us and have absolutely nothing to do with that 'pagan stuff' from our evolutionary past. That is a dangerous and highly irresponsible way to look at our history.
Today, a primary challenge explicitly raised by Laudato Si’ and other modern ecological teachings is how to expand our rituals so they are no longer strictly anthropocentric. Our sacraments cannot just be about human beings and our internal welfare. They must expand to include the welfare of the rest of creation and the lives of the other creatures that share this planet with us.
We traditionally welcome a human baby into the world through baptism. A quantum, ecological revisioning asks: how might we ritually welcome and honor the non-human creatures that are an integral part of our life and our world? That is just one small example of trying to reshape our understanding of sacraments within a larger, creative cosmic context.
Myths of Beginning and End Shape Human Understanding
Yago: That ecological expansion completely breaks down old barriers. Let’s look at principle number ten: 'Myths of beginning and end shape human understanding.' Quantum theology directly challenges linear notions of time, suggesting that beginnings and endings are merely human constructs rather than ultimate realities. How does this cosmic shift influence our understanding of traditional concepts like resurrection, reincarnation, and the afterlife?
Diarmuid: It forces us to transition to a completely different horizon. As process theologian Catherine Keller notes, when we speak of creation arising from the profound depths (creatio ex-profundus), we are describing a reality without a beginning or an end. Linear beginnings and endings are constructs we humans invent because they provide an illusion of control over a reality that overflows our calculations.
We see this linear constraint clearly in the Christian focus on the 'end of the world' or the 'end of the age.' Some scholars claim that even Jesus expected the world to end in his historical lifetime, and St. Paul certainly did. When that didn't happen, the Church structuralized itself into a permanent facility to continue the mission until that final end arrived. We still use that linear doomsday language today, and every now and again we see extreme evangelical groups pointing to imminent doomsday timelines to maintain that sense of control.
Quantum theology invites us to view reality through a basic principle of evolution instead. For me, evolution can be summed up in three simple words: Growth, Change, and Complexity.
Growth is visible all around us and inside our bodies. Change is often the difficult piece for people to sit with because it naturally involves decay, decline, and physical death. In an evolutionary framework, death is not an outside evil to be conquered or eliminated; it is an integral dimension of life itself. Finally, through growth and change, we enter Complexity—a concept I borrow heavily from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As we move through evolution, we are invited into an ever-expanding horizon of life characterized by a greater complexity, a greater sense of mystery.
Historically, concepts like resurrection in Western Christianity or reincarnation in Eastern traditions were early attempts within human consciousness to name this cosmic complexity. They were seeking names for that sense of richness written underneath the mystery of existence.
Today, I prefer to view resurrection as a theological attempt to explain evolutionary complexity. It represents an expanded, open-ended horizon into which we are always being invited to grow more deeply. That is exactly how quantum theology approaches the afterlife.
Theology as an Agent of Global Transformation
Yago: That completely shifts the timeline. Let's look at principle number eleven: 'Theology as an agent of global transformation.' Historically, theology has been confined to academic walls or closed religious institutions. Yet, quantum theology calls for an engaged, evolving spirituality that actively participates in the transformation of the world. What role do you see for theology in addressing systemic injustice and our current global crises?
Diarmuid: For centuries, following the definitions of St. Anselm, we treated theology as the 'Queen of the Sciences,' which was understood in heavily hierarchical and patriarchal terms. Today, I see nothing imperialistic about proposing a total inversion: theology must become the Heart of the Sciences.
It should sit at the center of a large round table, inviting all other disciplines to reflect more deeply and come together dialogically. Our goal must shift toward what we now call eco-justice—a justice that is not strictly anthropocentric, but one where justice is actively realized for all the other non-human creatures that share this planetary home.
Drawing from liberation theology, we must develop structures and systems that empower everything to move toward flourishing, entirely abandoning the old political games of domination and control. I envision theology in the center of a massive circle, empowering outward. Empowering is the key word here, not controlling.
We have to accept the reality that the ‘historical figure’ is not going to come down from the cross to magically clean up the global mess for us. That responsibility rests squarely on us as quantum creatures in a quantum universe. We are not doing this over against God or in the absence of the divine. As a Christian people, it means taking the project of the Kingdom of God seriously, which I prefer to describe as the companionship of empowerment.
With that dual emphasis on companionship and mutual empowerment, we can begin to rise above the dysfunctional, imperial systems that currently destroy human persons and decimate our global environment—shadows we unfortunately see being acted out in the terrible warfare in the Holy Land over recent months.
Contemplation and Justice as Central to Theology
Yago: An engaged companion model completely changes the ethical landscape. This brings us to your final point, principle number twelve: 'Contemplation and justice as central to theology.' Mystical traditions have long emphasized internal contemplation, while prophetic traditions stress the urgency of structural justice. How does an integrated, quantum-informed theology bring these two separate dimensions together?
This is where contemplation and justice become entirely inseparable. Contemplation provides the deep, relational awareness that naturally gives birth to right action. If we are genuinely engaging with life through that relational lens—what I call right relating—the natural consequence is that we will do justice to reality. We won't do it perfectly, but we will do it well enough to diminish the unnecessary oppressions and structural pain in our world.
To put it in a single sentence: justice is the active attempt to create the right relationships for everything to flourish. For that flourishing to happen, you absolutely need the underpinning consciousness that Merton refers to as the keen awareness. The two must work hand in hand. Contemplation is the internal awareness that guides the external prophetic action, and both are necessary if we want to realize the flourishing that every world religion claims to seek in its leading doctrines.
Conclusion: Doing Theology in a Space-Time Continuum
Yago: To conclude our conversation, at the very end of your book, you speak about the necessity of doing theology in a 'space-time continuum.' What exactly do you mean by that phrase?
Diarmuid: Historically, particularly since the Council of Trent in the sixteenth century, theology became a highly narrow, clericalized specialization strictly reserved for priests and men training in seminaries. Women were ruled out completely. It was only in the mid-twentieth century that women began studying the discipline, and today, laypeople make up the vast majority of those pursuing theological degrees.
Doing theology in a space-time continuum means pulling it entirely out of that clericalized, seminary base and reclaiming it as a shared body of wisdom that belongs to everyone. The word theology fundamentally means searching or seeking a deeper sense of meaning around our understanding of God. Every single spiritual human being is already doing that to one degree or another in their daily life.
At our shared table of dialogue, if we want a vibrant, modern theological conversation, we must invite a great variety of participants—not just from all the fields of modern science, but ordinary people who bring the raw depth of their daily human experience, their structural struggles, and their lived achievements. Theology can no longer operate as an imperial Queen; it must be the empowering Heart at the center of the circle. That is my dream and my vision for theology in the twenty-first century.
Yago: That brings us to my final question. What is the immediate, practical relevance of quantum theology for a modern Church that is actively aiming to become truly synodal?
Diarmuid: There is a very direct, structural answer to that. It requires us to completely invert our understanding of the Church as communion. If you look at standard Roman documents issued since Vatican II, they consistently get the ecclesial architecture upside down because of an unyielding, linear hierarchy. Chapter One always defines the Church as communion, or the building of community. Chapter Two immediately moves to how to maintain communion with the Pope, the hierarchy, and the bishops. Finally, way down in Chapter Five, they address what communion actually means among the ordinary people of God.
This layout is a desperate mistake. The material in Chapter Five belongs in Chapter Two, and the material in Chapter Two belongs at the very end in Chapter Five. Unfortunately, even in our recent Synod, this exact problem persists; clericalization is treated as an untouchable reality that we aren't allowed to structurally question, keeping the pyramid intact.
A genuinely quantum, synodal Church must flip that pyramid completely on its head. The entire building of community, relationship, and organic communion from the ground up must take center stage. The role of priests, bishops, and institutional directors is to sit at the end of the list as structural servants to that flourishing people. Communion is the key word. Our call now is to build that community in a dynamic, creative way that embraces the entire creation moving forward.
Yago: Diarmuid, thank you so much for your prophetic vision and for sharing your wisdom with us today. It is incredible to see how a book written nearly three decades ago continues to challenge our faith, our structures, and our theology to align with the science of our times.
Diarmuid: You are very welcome. Thank you for having me.
