Daily Archives: January 19, 2016

Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Ancient Greek pn, "all", en, "in" and Thes, "God"), also known as Monistic Monotheism,[1] is a belief system which posits that the divine whether as a single God, number of gods, or other form of "cosmic animating force"[2] interpenetrates every part of the universe and extends, timelessly (and, presumably, spacelessly) beyond it. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical,[3] panentheism maintains a distinction between the divine and non-divine and the significance of both.[4]

In pantheism, the universe and everything included in it is equal to the Divine, but in panentheism, the universe and the divine are not ontologically equivalent. God is viewed as the soul of the universe, the universal spirit present everywhere, in everything and everyone, at all times. Some versions suggest that the universe is nothing more than the manifest part of God. In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn "transcends", "pervades" or is "in" the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that 'All is God', panentheism goes further to claim that God is greater than the universe. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God,[3] like in the concept of Tzimtzum. Much Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.[5][6]Hasidic Judaism merges the elite ideal of nullification to paradoxical transcendent Divine Panentheism, through intellectual articulation of inner dimensions of Kabbalah, with the populist emphasis on the panentheistic Divine immanence in everything.[7]

Native American beliefs have been characterized as panentheistic in that there is an emphasis on a single, unified divine spirit that is manifest in each individual entity.[8] (North American Native writers have also translated the word for God as the Great Mystery[9] or as the Sacred Other[10]) This concept is referred to by many as the Great Spirit. Philosopher J. Baird Callicott has described Lakota theology as panentheistic, in that the divine both transcends and is immanent in everything.[11]

One exception can be modern Cherokee who are predominantly monotheistic but apparently not panentheistic (as the two are not mutually exclusive);[12] yet in older Cherokee traditions many observe both aspects of pantheism and panentheism, and are often not beholden to exclusivity, encompassing other spiritual traditions without contradiction, a common trait among some tribes in the Americas.

The Central American empires of the Mayas, Aztecs as well as the South American Incans (Tahuatinsuyu) have typically been characterized as polytheistic, with strong male and female deities.[13]

According to Charles C. Mann's, "1491", only the lower classes of Aztec society were polytheistic. Philosopher James Maffie has argued that Aztec metaphysics was pantheistic rather than panentheistic, since Teotl, the Nahuatl term for God, and the cosmos were considered identical and coextensional.[14]

Neoplatonism is polytheistic and panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent "God" (The One) of which subsequent realities were emanations. From the One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous) and the Cosmic Soul (Psyche). In Neoplatonism the world itself is God [Timaeus 37]. This concept of divinity is associated with that of the Logos, which had originated centuries earlier with Heraclitus (ca. 535475 BC). The Logos pervades the cosmos, whereby all thoughts and all things originate, or as Heraclitus said: "He who hears not me but the Logos will say: All is one." Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus attempted to reconcile this perspective by adding another hypostasis above the original monad of force or Dunamis. This new all-pervasive monad encompassed all creation and its original uncreated emanations.

Baruch Spinoza later claimed that "Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." [15] "Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner." [16] Though Spinoza has been called the "prophet"[17] and "prince"[18] of pantheism, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg Spinoza states that: "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken"[19] For Spinoza, our universe (cosmos) is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world. According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" (God or Nature) Spinoza did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by his infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence.[20] Furthermore, Martial Guroult suggested the term "Panentheism", rather than "Pantheism" to describe Spinozas view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Yet, American philosopher and self-described Panentheist Charles Hartshorne referred to Spinoza's philosophy as "Classical Pantheism" and distinguished Spinoza's philosophy from panentheism.[21]

The German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (17811832) seeking to reconcile monotheism and pantheism, coined the term panentheism ("all in God") in 1828. This conception of God influenced New England transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The term was popularized by Charles Hartshorne in his development of process theology and has also been closely identified with the New Thought.[22] The formalization of this term in the West in the 18th century was not new; philosophical treatises had been written on it in the context of Hinduism for millennia.[23]

Philosophers who embraced panentheism have included Thomas Hill Green (18391882), James Ward (18431925), Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (18561931) and Samuel Alexander (18591938).[24] Beginning in the 1940s, Hartshorne examined numerous conceptions of God. He reviewed and discarded pantheism, deism, and pandeism in favor of panentheism, finding that such a "doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations." Hartshorne formulated God as a being who could become "more perfect": He has absolute perfection in categories for which absolute perfection is possible, and relative perfection (i.e., is superior to all others) in categories for which perfection cannot be precisely determined.[25]

In the Bah' Faith, God is described as a single, imperishable God, the creator of all things, including all the creatures and forces in the universe. The connection between God and the world is that of the creator to his creation.[26] God is understood to be independent of his creation, and that creation is dependent and contingent on God. God, however, is not seen to be part of creation as he cannot be divided and does not descend to the condition of his creatures. Instead, in the Bah' understanding, the world of creation emanates from God, in that all things have been realized by him and have attained to existence.[27] Creation is seen as the expression of God's will in the contingent world,[28] and every created thing is seen as a sign of God's sovereignty, and leading to knowledge of him; the signs of God are most particularly revealed in human beings.[26]

Panentheism is also a feature of some Christian philosophical theologies and resonates strongly within Eastern Orthodoxy.[citation needed] It also appears in Roman Catholic mysticism and process theology. Process theological thinkers are generally regarded in the West as unorthodox, but process philosophical thought paved the way for open theism.

In Christianity, creation is not considered a literal "part of" God, and divinity is essentially distinct from creation. There is, in other words, an irradicable difference between the uncreated (i.e., God) and the created (i.e., everything else). This does not mean, however, that the creation is wholly separated from God, because the creation exists in and from the divine energies. In Eastern Orthodoxy, these operations are the natural activity of God and are in some sense identifiable with God, but the creation is wholly distinct from the divine essence.[citation needed] God creates the universe by His will and from His energies. It is not an imprint or emanation of God's own essence (ousia), the essence He shares pre-eternally with His Word and Holy Spirit. Neither is it a directly literal outworking or effulgence of the divine, nor any other process which implies that creation is essentially God or a necessary part of God. The generally accepted use of "panentheism" to describe the God concept in Orthodox Christian theology is problematic for those who would insist that panentheism requires creation to be "part of" God.

God is not merely Creator of the universe, as His dynamic presence is necessary to sustain the existence of every created thing, small and great, visible and invisible.[29] That is, God's energies (operations) maintain the existence of the created order and all created beings, even if those agencies have explicitly rejected him. His love for creation is such that He will not withdraw His presence, which would be the ultimate form of annihilation, not merely imposing death, but ending existence altogether. By this token, the entirety of creation is fundamentally "good" in its very being, and is not innately evil either in whole or in part. This does not deny the existence of spiritual or moral evil in a fallen universe, only the claim that it is an intrinsic property of creation. Sin results from the essential freedom of creatures to operate outside the divine order, not as a necessary consequence of having inherited human nature. (see problem of evil)

Panentheistic conceptions of God occur amongst some modern theologians. Process theology and Creation Spirituality, two recent developments in Christian theology, contain panentheistic ideas.

Some argue that panentheism should also include the notion that God has always been related to some world or another, which denies the idea of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Nazarene Methodist theologian Thomas Jay Oord advocates panentheism, but he uses the word "theocosmocentrism" to highlight the notion that God and some world or another are the primary conceptual starting blocks for eminently fruitful theology. This form of panentheism helps in overcoming the problem of evil and in proposing that God's love for the world is essential to who God is.[30]

Panentheism was a major force in the Unitarian church for a long time, based on Ralph Waldo Emerson's concept of the Oversoul. This survives today as the panentheistic religion, Oversoul. [3] Charles Hartshorne, who conjoined process theology with panentheism, maintained a lifelong membership in the Methodist church but was also a unitarian. In later years he joined the Austin, Texas, Unitarian Universalist congregation and was an active participant in that church.[31]

Many Christians who believe in universalism hold panentheistic views of God in conjunction with their belief in apocatastasis, also called universal reconciliation.[32] Panentheistic Christian Universalists often believe that all creation's subsistence in God renders untenable the notion of final and permanent alienation from Him, citing Scriptural passages such as Ephesians 4:6 ("[God] is over all and through all and in all") and Romans 11:36 ("from [God] and through him and to him are all things") to justify both panentheism and universalism.

Earliest reference to panentheistic thought in Hindu philosophy is in a creation myth contained in the later section of Rig Veda called the Purusha Sukta,[33] which was compiled before 1100 BCE.[34] The Purusha Sukta gives a description of the spiritual unity of the cosmos. It presents the nature of Purusha or the cosmic being as both immanent in the manifested world and yet transcendent to it.[35] From this being the sukta holds, the original creative will proceeds, by which this vast universe is projected in space and time.[36]

The most influential[37] and dominant[38] school of Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta, rejects theism and dualism by insisting that Brahman [ultimate reality] is without parts or attributesone without a second.[39] Since, Brahman has no properties, contains no internal diversity and is identical with the whole reality it cannot be understood as an anthropomorphic personal God.[40] The relationship between Brahman and the creation is often thought to be panentheistic.[41]

Panentheism is also expressed in the Bhagavad Gita.[41] In verse IX.4, Krishna states:

By Me all this universe is pervaded through My unmanifested form. All beings abide in Me but I do not abide in them.

Many schools of Hindu thought espouse monistic theism, which is thought to be similar to a panentheistic viewpoint. Nimbarka's school of differential monism (Dvaitadvaita), Ramanuja's school of qualified monism (Vishistadvaita) and Saiva Siddhanta and Kashmir Shaivism are all considered to be panentheistic.[42]Caitanya's Gaudiya Vaishnavism, which elucidates the doctrine of Acintya Bheda Abheda (inconceivable oneness and difference), is also thought to be panentheistic.[43] In Kashmir Shaivism, all things are believed to be a manifestation of Universal Consciousness (Cit or Brahman).[44] So from the point of view of this school, the phenomenal world (akti) is real, and it exists and has its being in Consciousness (Cit).[45] Thus, Kashmir Shaivism is also propounding of theistic monism or panentheism.[46]

Shaktism, or Tantra, is regarded as an Indian prototype of Panentheism.[47]Shakti is considered to be the cosmos itself she is the embodiment of energy and dynamism, and the motivating force behind all action and existence in the material universe. Shiva is her transcendent masculine aspect, providing the divine ground of all being. "There is no Shiva without Shakti, or Shakti without Shiva. The two [...] in themselves are One."[48] Thus, it is She who becomes the time and space, the cosmos, it is She who becomes the five elements, and thus all animate life and inanimate forms. She is the primordial energy that holds all creation and destruction, all cycles of birth and death, all laws of cause and effect within Herself, and yet is greater than the sum total of all these. She is transcendent, but becomes immanent as the cosmos (Mula Prakriti). She, the Primordial Energy, directly becomes Matter.

The Sikh gurus have described God in numerous ways in their hymns included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy scripture of Sikhism, but the oneness of the deity is consistently emphasized throughout. God is described in the Mool Mantar, the first passage in the Guru Granth Sahib, and the basic formula of the faith is:

(Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji, Ang 1)

Ik Oankar Satnaam KartaaPurakh Nirbhau Nirvair AkaalMoorat Ajooni Saibhan GurPrasad

One Universal Creator God, Truth is his Name , Creative Being Personified, No Fear, No Hatred, Image Of The Timeless One, Beyond Birth, Self Existent, By Guru's Grace.

Guru Arjan, the fifth guru of Sikhs, says, "God is beyond colour and form, yet His/Her presence is clearly visible" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib,Ang 74), and "Nanak's Lord transcends the world as well as the scriptures of the east and the west, and yet He/She is clearly manifest" (Sri Guru Granth Sahib,Ang 397).

Knowledge of the ultimate Reality is not a matter for reason; it comes by revelation of the ultimate reality through nadar (grace) and by anubhava (mystical experience). Says Guru Nanak; "budhi pathi na paiai bahu chaturaiai bhai milai mani bhane." This translates to "He/She is not accessible through intellect, or through mere scholarship or cleverness at argument; He/She is met, when He/She pleases, through devotion" (GG, 436).

Guru Nanak prefixed the numeral one (ik) to it, making it Ik Oankar or Ek Oankar to stress God's oneness. God is named and known only through his Own immanent nature. The only name which can be said to truly fit God's transcendent state is SatNam ( Sat Sanskrit, Truth), the changeless and timeless Reality. God is transcendent and all-pervasive at the same time. Transcendence and immanence are two aspects of the same single Supreme Reality. The Reality is immanent in the entire creation, but the creation as a whole fails to contain God fully. As says Guru Tegh Bahadur, Nanak IX, "He has himself spread out His/Her Own maya (worldly illusion) which He oversees; many different forms He assumes in many colours, yet He stays independent of all" (GG, 537).

Several Sufi saints and thinkers, primarily Ibn Arabi, held beliefs that have been considered panentheistic.[49] These notions later took shape in the theory of wahdat ul-wujud (the Unity of All Things). Some Sufi Orders, notably the Bektashis[50] and the Universal Sufi movement, continue to espouse panentheistic beliefs. Nizari Ismaili follow panentheism according to Ismaili doctrine.

While mainstream Rabbinic Judaism is classically monotheistic, and follows in the footsteps of Maimonides, the panentheistic conception of God can be found among certain mystical Jewish traditions. A leading scholar of Kabbalah, Moshe Idel[51] ascribes this doctrine to the kabbalistic system of Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (15221570) and in the eighteenth century to the Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, as well as his contemporaries, Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, and Menahem Mendel, the Maggid of Bar. This may be said of many, if not most, subsequent Hasidic masters. There is some debate as to whether Isaac Luria and Lurianic Kabbalah, with its doctrine of Tzimtzum, can be regarded as panentheistic. According to Hasidism, the infinite Ein Sof is incorporeal and exists in a state that is both transcendent and immanent. This appears to be the view of non-Hasidic Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, as well. Many scholars would argue that "panentheism" is the best single-word description of the philosophical theology of Baruch Spinoza.[52] Aspects of panentheism are also evident in the theology of Reconstructionist Judaism as presented in the writings of Mordecai Kaplan, who was strongly influenced by Spinoza.[53]

In his Dictionary of Gnosticism, Andrew Phillip Smith has written that some branches of Gnosticism teach a panentheistic view of reality,[54] and hold to the belief that God exists in the visible world only as sparks of spiritual "light". The goal of human existence is to know the sparks within oneself in order to return to God, who is in the Fullness (or Pleroma).

Gnosticism is panentheistic,[citation needed] believing that the true God is simultaneously both separate from the physical universe and present within it. As Jesus states in the Gospel of Thomas, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all... Split a piece of wood; I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."[55] This seemingly contradictory interpretation of Gnostic theology is not without controversy, since one interpretation of dualistic theology holds that a perfect God of pure spirit would not manifest himself through the fallen world of matter. As Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, stated, "The true God has nothing to do with the material world or cosmos",[56] and, "It is the Prince of Darkness who spoke with Moses, the Jews and their priests. Thus the Christians, the Jews, and the Pagans are involved in the same error when they worship this God. For he leads them astray in the lusts he taught them.[57][58]

Valentinian Gnosticism teaches that matter came about through emanations of the supreme being, and to some this event is held to be more accidental than intentional.[citation needed] To other Gnostics, these emanations are akin to the Sephirot of the Kabbalists; they are deliberate manifestations of a transcendent God through a complex system of intermediaries.

The Reverend Zen Master Soyen Shaku was the first Zen Buddhist Abbot to tour the United States in 1905-6. He wrote a series of essays collected into the book Zen For Americans. In the essay titled "The God Conception of Buddhism" he attempts to explain how a Buddhist looks at the ultimate without an anthropomorphic God figure while still being able to relate to the term God in a Buddhist sense:

At the outset, let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists. However, the followers of Buddhism usually avoid the term God, for it savors so much of Christianity, whose spirit is not always exactly in accord with the Buddhist interpretation of religious experience. Again, Buddhism is not pantheistic in the sense that it identifies the universe with God. On the other hand, the Buddhist God is absolute and transcendent; this world, being merely its manifestation, is necessarily fragmental and imperfect. To define more exactly the Buddhist notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according to which God is (all and one) and more than the totality of existence.[59]

The essay then goes on to explain first utilizing the term "God" for the American audience to get an initial understanding of what he means by "panentheism," and then discusses the terms that Buddhism uses in place of "God" such as Dharmakaya, Buddha or AdiBuddha, and Tathagata.

Originally posted here:
Panentheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

QUESTION: What is Pantheism?

ANSWER:

The word "pantheism," like many theological words, comes from the Greek language. Pan means "all" or "everything" and Theos means "god." So, pantheism is the belief that everything somehow is a part of god. Our galaxy, the stars, our solar system, all living things, all thoughts, all people, everything is part of who or what god is. Much of the pantheistic view can be summed up in the statement, "All is god, and god is all." Although a form of the word "Pantheism" was first used in English in 1705, its roots go far back into antiquity. Many current religious and philosophical systems that have their basis in Pantheism include Buddhism, Confucianism, Darwinism, Freemasonry, Hinduism, Occultism, Taoism, and the New Age movement. These are based on three broad types of Pantheism.

Materialistic Pantheism holds that the material universe is all that exists - there is nothing else. Our thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, and aspirations are nothing more than biochemical reactions occurring in the cells of the brain, glands, and organs. We are nothing but organic machines. In addition, since nothing but matter exists there was no one or nothing to create this matter. Thus matter must be eternal. "God" is just another name for the material universe. This form of Pantheism has more in common with atheism than with other forms of theism.

Idealistic Pantheism teaches that just as the human soul or mind resides in the human body, the universal soul or mind (i.e. god) resides in the physical universe. God infuses, works through, and expresses the divine essence through the material world. Ultimate reality is found, therefore, not in the material world, but in the spiritual world. Some go so far as to say that the physical world is merely an illusion - either god's or mine - in which I play my part. The sum of all thoughts and feelings is therefore "god."

Neutral Pantheism is like a hybrid of the other two. Both the material and immaterial emanate from a single neutral substance or energy. God is this energy that generates all mind and all matter. God creates physical reality out of this divine substance and then extends spiritual attributes to it from this divine substance. Then, in the end, all things return to god. Therefore, the totality of all thought and all matter is what we call "god."

There are at least two significant problems with Pantheism. First, it cannot account for the existence of the universe. Most scientists today accept that matter, energy, space, and even time (our universe) had a point of beginning. But, if god is just part of the universe or another name for the universe, who or what began god? God could not create himself! Second, since our universe includes beings with personality (you and me for example), the Creator of the universe must have personality also. An effect cannot be greater than its cause.

In contrast to Pantheism, the Bible teaches that God is a Person (Exodus 3:7; Hebrews 6:17), that He created the physical universe (Genesis 1:1; John 1:3), and that He wants to have a relationship with you and me (John 3:16; 1 John 4:10).

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Pantheism - History - AllAboutHistory.org

What is Pantheism?

Is the Universe or Nature God?

The term pantheism is built upon the Greek roots pan, which means all, and theos, which mens god; thus, pantheism is either the belief that the universe is God and worthy of worship, or that God is the sum total of all there is and that the combined substances, forces, and natural laws which we see around us are but manifestations of God.

There are several named categories of pantheism that can be found in academic literature:

Panpsychism: Nature as a whole is imbued with a consciousness.

Theomonistic Pantheism: Only God exists and the independent existence of nature is denied - also referred to as acosmism (a-cos-mism, or "no-world")

Physiomonistic Pantheism: Only nature or the universe exist, but they are referred to with the term "God" - thus, God is denied having independent existence.

Immanent-Transcendant Pantheism: God works through and is revealed through nature (also sometimes called Idealism).

Transcendental or Mystical Pantheism: Most common form of panentheism, explained below.

It should be clear that there is a great deal of variety within the pantheistic tradition - far too much variety to allow us to make many generalizations about pantheists overall or pantheism as a whole. Many common beliefs which are often associated with pantheism - like reincarnation or an afterlife - are actually only features of culturally specific manifestations of certain forms of pantheism.

One generalization which might be made, however, is that in truly pantheistic belief systems, only God exists and all that exists is God. Although there are a number of differences among the different forms of pantheism, most argue that the totality of reality - you, the computer, everything - is a part of God. Slightly modified versions might argue that the universe itself or perhaps the laws of nature are God while objects such as us and the computer are manifestations of those laws and principles.

Sometimes there can be confusion between pantheism and polytheism because some pantheists use polytheism as a metaphoric way of approaching the cosmic divinity they believe in. Some simply feel the need for symbols and personages to mediate their relationship with nature and the cosmos. Pantheists can, however, also relate directly to the universe and to nature, without the need for any intermediary symbols or deities.

Early Pantheism Pantheism can be thought of as a natural development of animism, arguing that everything is part of a universal spirit rather than that everything has spirits. On the other hand, pantheism has also tended to resist the personal and anthropomorphic depictions which typify the spirits in animism - and not all pantheists have regarded the "god" of the universe to be spiritual in nature.

Anaximander of Miletos, for example, was very much a materialistic pantheist. On the other hand Xenophanes, one of the founders of the Eleatic school of philosophy, argued for pantheism from observations of the unity of nature; while he did not ascribe a personality to nature itself, he did ascribe to it a spiritual quality which was more "real" than the material world we see around us. This anti-materialistic form of pantheism would become the dominant form until the modern era.

Pantheism is also associated with the Egyptian religion when Ra, Isis, and Osiris were identified with all existence. The pantheism of Hinduism, however, is much more widely known and recognized. Here, the impersonal source of all existence is Brahman. The separation of everything into different objects and persons is but a mere illusion - the true reality is the spiritual, incorporeal, and impersonal reality of Brahman, a reality that we can really know nothing about.

Indeed, some of the earliest evidence of pantheism can be found in the Vedas of Brahmanism, perhaps the oldest existing religion, dating back to 1000 BCE. There are also forms of modern Christianity which describe God as the "ground of all being," a very impersonal and non-anthropomorphic characterization.

Pantheism & Christianity Although it may not be immediately obvious, pantheistic considerations and principles have had an important impact on the development of Christian theology. This is because pantheism played a significant role in Greek philosophy, and much of that in turn would be incorporated into Christianity during the early and medieval periods.

The specific means by which this occurred was through the Neoplatonism. This was a school of Greek philosophy which began under the leadership of Plotinus in the 3rd century CE and which furthered development many of the ideas originally ascribed to Plato. According to Plotinus, true reality originated in an indescribable One from which the rest of the universe emanated as a sequence of lesser beings. Christian adherents of Neoplatonism identified the One as God. One of the most important of the Christian neoplatonists was Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, whose work was very influential in the Middle Ages. Many other early Christian theologians, including Augustine, were also deeply influenced by arguments and ideas of Neoplatonism.

Although pantheism has played an important role in the development of the Christian doctrine of God as creator of the universe and immanent in the universe, explicit pantheism has been rejected by orthodox Christian theologians for three reasons. First, even though some forms of pantheism have been personal and anthropocentric in nature, most tend towards a very impersonal concept of God which is at odds with the Christian belief that God is a person with personal attributes.

Second, pantheism requires a rejection of the doctrine that God is transcendent to and creator of all existence. Christian theology has long had difficulty dealing with the dual doctrines of transcendence and immanence because taken to the logical extremes, each excludes the possibility of the other even though traditional Christian doctrine requires both be true. Although a resolution to this tension by eliminating one or the other might be appealing to some, Christianity has consistently rejected such a choice as heretical.

Thirdly, pantheism tends to exclude the possibilities of both human and divine freedom. The association of God with nature and with natural laws would suggest that God has no freedom to do other than what those laws predict - God cannot, for example, suddenly cause gravity to work backwards without ceasing to be Nature. At the same time, if all humans are incorporated within God and are part of God, then it is difficult to understand where and how we might have moral responsibility for our actions. Indeed, does it even make sense to abhor the presence of evil when that, too, is a part of God?

Modern Pantheism The term pantheist itself seems to have been coined in 1705 by John Toland in his book "Socinianism Truly Stated" to describe someone who believes that everything is God. On this basis in 1732, the Christian apologist Daniel Waterland used the noun "pantheism" for the first time, condemning the belief as "scandalously bad... scarce differing from... Atheism."

Nevertheless, many philosophers through the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries adopted pantheism in some form, including Spinoza, Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling. It was Spinoza, however, who developed one of the most systematic explanations and arguments for pantheism, writing that God and Nature were but two words for the exact same thing and that nothing could possibly exist outside of that single, unlimited substance.

The sentiment of pantheism has had a powerful influenced the thoughts and works of poets, philosophers, mystics, and extremely spiritual people. Notable among pantheistic poets are Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Emerson. Many modern poets consider pantheism as part of their worldview. However, this poetic form of pantheism never developed into a formal doctrine.

Scientific Pantheism Those pantheists today who argue that the universe is their god tend to be naturalistic or scientific pantheists. When scientific pantheists say they revere the universe, they are not talking about a supernatural being whom they worship. Instead, they are referring to the way human senses and our emotions force us to respond to the overwhelming mystery and power that surrounds us.

When the attribute of worship is removed, however, the validity of labeling the natural universe as "god" is often called into question. There seems to be some grounds for the challenge because this "god" is very unlike the gods normally worshipped in the West, and its only purpose appears to be to express some emotional connection or reaction to the universe at large.

On the other hand, our experiences with anthropomorphic and personal gods in the West should not blind us to the fact that there are many different ways to define the term. Impersonal and non-anthropomorphic gods can be found in many traditions. In Islam, anthropomorphism is considered blasphemous and Allah is described as totally unlike anything else in existence.

Problems in Pantheism Pantheism has obviously exerted a strong attraction for many people throughout human history. There are many reasons for this - for example, it allows one to get past many of the difficult problems associated with anthropocentric gods whose personalities and even personhood seem to conflict with reality as we experience it.

Pantheism can suffer from certain problems, however. The acceptance of the presence of God everywhere and in everything comes at the tremendous cost of making God the sole and only actor. Nothing and no one else exists. If we love God, it is really only God loving God - in other words, an instance of narcissism.

On the other hand, if absolutely everything is believed to be a part of God, then there is the possible contradiction that God can simultaneously be aware of something and not be aware of something (i.e., when children do not know something but their parents do). The only way to resolve that would be to deny that the children "really" lack knowledge or that they "really" exist at all, neither of which are very satisfying answers.

Another problem stems from the question of why exactly we would need to apply the label "god" to the universe itself. We already have a perfectly good term: "universe." What new information does "god" supply? At most it might describe a person's emotional reaction to the universe, but that seems to cause unnecessary confusion with more common uses of the word "god."

A final problem comes from the issue of good and evil. If the pantheistic god is the sum of its parts, then it is certainly responsible for all the good which is done and is much more good than any one person. However, it is also responsible for all the evil committed and is much more wicked than any one person. All of the good in this god cannot acquit it of the incredible evil which has occurred. What does it say about the nature and quality of this "god" if we see this god in the horrible suffering and pain which creatures on this planet experience?

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Varieties of Theism: What is Pantheism? Is the Universe or ...

by Matt Slick

Pantheism is the position that God and nature are the same thing. Pantheism comes from two Greek words, pan meaning "all" and theos meaning "god." So, it would teach that all the stars, galaxies, planets, mountains, wind, and rain are all one and the same . . . part of what God is. So, pantheists would say that all is God.

Biblical Christianity teaches that God is separate from His creation, and He created it (Gen. 1:1-30) where pantheism says that Godand creation share the same nature and essence.

A huge problem with pantheism is that it cannot account for the existence of the universe. The universe is not infinitely old. It had a beginning. This would mean that God also had a beginning, buthow can something bring itself into existence? This is impossible, so this leaves us with the question of where God and the universe came from. Pantheism cannot answer this question, and it naturally leads to absurdities.

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What Is Pantheism?|God and Nature Are Same Thing|Bible ...

Pantheism is the belief that God and the universe are equivalent (the same thing). A pantheist believes that everything that exists is a part of God or that God is a part of everything that exists. The name pantheism comes from the words theism (belief in God) and pan (all).

Any doctrine or philosophy that believes that the universe and everything in it is God is said to be pantheistic. Most pantheists believe the universe is sacred and the earth and nature are divine. Most of the early Greek philosophers from Thales on to Aristotle believed in some sort of pantheism.

Pantheism is an important part of many eastern religions such as Hinduism, Druidism and Taoism.

Some western philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza and some scientists are pantheists.

Some Christians, Jews and Sufis are Pantheists. However, their majority believes that while God is in everything, there is more to God than just the universe.

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Pantheism - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pantheism is the religious belief that God is not merely omnipresent, but that God is the universe.

Proponents of pantheism may point to the fact that, if you define God as something that could create the universe and create and nurture life, then you do not need to leave the natural realm to find something that fits the description perfectly; the universe itself does so.

What pantheism means is often open to interpretation, but many versions call on God as the consciousness of all that is. A literal interpretation doesn't stray very far from conventional theology; indeed it builds upon the established God figure present in the Abrahamic religions. In this idea, a person's own individual consciousness is merely a part of the greater whole, the whole that is God himself, who may still possess personable characteristics and may still interefere with life, such as with miracles. St. Paul flirted with this idea of God when St. Luke recorded him saying (in Acts17:28) "For in him we live, and move, and have our being..."

Pantheism has had a great deal of influence on neopaganism, even if most neopagans couldn't name a single pantheist.

Quite a few cosmologists and physicists generally lean towards the concept of pantheism, such as Stephen Hawking (we presume, as the cheeky git doesn't really clarify), Carl Sagan, and Albert Einstein (unlike Hawking, his quotes and writing are quite explicit that he does not "believe in a personal god," while he also made clear he wasn't a straight-up atheist). In the impersonal form, pantheism is taken as meaning that the universe itself fits the description of what God should be perfectly, so rather than inventing a character, it is best to refer to the universe as God. This belief distances itself from the world of dogmatic religion, but allows pantheists to use the vivid language of spirituality to express experiences of wonder, awe, and connectedness in the face of Nature. Baruch Spinoza refined the idea of pantheism in the late 1600's, and some later pantheists, such as Einstein, would credit Spinoza as being influential in the forming of their worldview. In this sense, pantheism is synonymous with the term "Spinoza's God."

Unfortunately, because many respected scientists call the universe "God" in a pantheistic sense, their statements are the unwitting target of creationist or fundamentalist quote mining. In particular, this is for use in appeals to authority, whereby the pantheistic "God" the scientist refers to is conflated with the Abrahamic God of the Bible. In reality, the pantheistic "God" usually has little to do with the Bible or any specific religion, even if the belief is that the pantheistic God is also personable, such as what is hinted at in Hawking's writings. This quote mining is especially true of Einstein due to his almost universal respect, and sometimes Hawking and his famous closing line of A Brief History of Time: "for then we should know the mind of God."

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Pantheism - RationalWiki

Because modern panentheism developed under the influence of German Idealism, Whiteheadian process philosophy, and current scientific thought, panentheists employ a variety of terms with meanings that have specialized content.

Theological terms as understood by panentheists:

Terms influenced by the German Idealism of Hegel and Schelling:

Terms influenced by Whiteheadian process philosophy:

Terms related to current scientific thought:

Although numerous meanings have been attributed to the in in panentheism (Clayton 2004, 253), the more significant meanings are:

Although Panentheism lacked a clear label in philosophical and religious reflection about God until Karl Krause's (17811832) creation of the term in the Eighteenth century (Gregersen 2004, 28), various advocates and critics of panentheism find evidence of incipient or implicit forms of panentheism present in religious thought as early as 1300 BCE. Hartshorne discovers the first indication of panentheistic themes in Ikhnaton (13751358 BCE), the Egyptian pharaoh often considered the first monotheist. In his poetic description of the sun god, Ikhnaton avoids both the separation of God from the world that will characterize traditional theism and the identification of God with the world that will characterize pantheism (Hartshorne 1953, 2930). Early Vedantic thought implies panentheism in non-Advaita forms that understand non-dualism as inclusive of differences. Although there are texts referring to Brahman as contracted and identical to Brahman, other texts speak of Brahman as expanded. In these texts, the perfect includes and surpasses the total of imperfect things as an appropriation of the imperfect. Although not the dominant interpretation of the Upanishads, multiple intimations of panentheism are present in the Upanishads (Whittemore 1988, 33, 4144). Hartshorne finds additional religious concepts of God that hold the unchanging and the changing together in a way that allows for the development and significance of the non-divine in Lao-Tse (fourth century BCE) and in the Judeo-Christian scriptures (1953, 3238).

In philosophical reflection, Plato (427/428348/347 BCE) plays a role in the development of implicit panentheism although there is disagreement about the nature of that role. Hartshorne drew a dipolar understanding of God that includes both immutability and mutability from Plato. Hartshorne understood Plato's concept of the divine to include the Forms as pure and unchanging being and the World soul as changing and in motion. Although he concluded that Plato never reconciled these two elements in his understanding of the divine, both aspects were present (1953, 54). Cooper, instead, thinks that Plato retained an essential distinction between the Good and the other beings that Plato called gods. According to Cooper, Plotinus (204270 CE) rather than Plato provided the basis for panentheism with his description of the physical world as an emanation of being from the One making the world part of the Ultimate (2006, 3539). Baltzly finds evidence in the Timaeus of a polytheistic view that can be identified as panentheistic (2010).

From Plato to Schelling (17751854 CE), various theologians and philosophers developed ideas that are similar to themes in contemporary panentheism. These ideas developed as expressions of traditional theism. Proclus (412485 CE) and Pseudo-Dionysus (late Fifth to early Sixth century) drawing upon Plotinus developed perspectives that included the world in God and understood the relationship between God and the world as a dialectical relationship (Cooper 2006, 4246). In the Middle Ages, the influence of Neoplatonism continued in the thought of Eriugena (815877 CE), Eckhart (12601328 CE), Nicholas of Cusa (14011464 CE), and Boehme (15751624 CE). Although accused of pantheism by their contemporaries, their systems can be identified as panentheistic because they understood God in various ways as including the world rather than being the world and because they used a dialectical method. The dialectical method involved the generation of opposites and then the reconciliation of the opposition in God. This retained the distinct identity of God in God's influence of the world (Cooper 2006, 4762). During the early modern period, Bruno (15481600 CE) and Spinoza (16311677 CE) responded to the dualism of traditional theism by emphasizing the relationship between God and the world to the point that the nature of any ontological distinction between God and the world became problematic. Later thinkers such as the Cambridge Platonists (Seventeenth century), Jonathan Edwards (17031758 CE) (Crisp 2009), and Friedrich Schleiermacher (17681834 CE) thought of the world as in some way in God or a development from God. Although they did not stress the ontological distinction between God and the world, they did emphasize the responsive relationship that humans have to God. Human responsiveness assumed some degree of human initiative if not freedom, which indicates some distinction between God and humans. The assumption of some degree of human initiative was a reaction against the loss of freedom due to Spinoza's close identification between God and the world (Cooper 2006, 6490).

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw the development of panentheism as a specific position regarding God's relationship to the world. The awareness of panentheism as an alternative to theism and pantheism developed out of a complex of approaches. Philosophical idealism and philosophical adaptation of the scientific concept of evolution provided the basic sources of the explicit position of panentheism. Philosophical approaches applying the concept of development to God reached their most complete expression in process philosophy's understanding of God being affected by the events of the world.

Hegel (17701831) and Schelling (17751854) sought to retain the close relationship between God and the world that Spinoza proposed without identifying God with the world. Their concept of God as developing in and through the world provided the means for accomplishing this. Prior to this time, God had been understood as unchanging and the world as changing while existing in God (Cooper 2006, 90). Schelling's understanding of God as personal provided the basis for the unity of the diversity in the world in a manner that was more open than Hegel's understanding. Schelling emphasized the freedom of the creatures in relation to the necessity of God's nature as love. For Schelling, God's free unfolding of God's internal subjective necessity did not result in an external empirical necessity determining the world (Clayton 2000, 474). This relationship resulted in vitality and on-going development. Hartshorne classified this as a dipolar understanding of God in that God is both necessary and developing (1953, 234). Cooper describes Schelling's thought as dynamic cooperative panentheism (2006, 95). Hegel found Schelling inadequate and sought a greater unity for the diversity. He united Fichte's subjective idealism and Schelling's objective idealism to provide a metaphysics of subjectivity rather than substance (Clayton 2008, 125. Hegel's unification of Fichte and Schelling resulted in a more comprehensive and consistent system still based upon change in God. God as well as nature is characterized by dialectical development. In his rejection of pantheism, Hegel understood the infinite as including the finite by absorbing the finite into its own fuller nature. This retained divine transcendence in the sense of the divine surpassing its parts although not separate from the parts (Whittemore 1960, 141142). The divine transcendence provided unity through the development of the Absolute through history. Karl Krause (17811832) in 1828 labeled Schelling's and Hegel's positions as panentheism in order to emphasize their differences from Spinoza's identification of God with the world (Reese 2008, 1). Cooper describes Hegel's panentheism as dialectical historical panentheism (2006, 107).

As Darwin's theory of evolution introduced history into the conceptualization of biology, Samuel Alexander (18591938), Henri Bergson (18591941), and C. Lloyd Morgan (18521936) introduced development into the ways in which all of physical reality was conceptualized. They then worked out positions that in a variety of ways understood God and the world as growing in relationship to each other. Although Hartshorne's classification of panentheism did not include Alexander in the category of panentheism, only occasionally mentioned Bergson, and made no reference to Morgan, Whitehead referred to all three of these thinkers positively. Although it may be too strong to claim that they influenced Whitehead (Emmett 1992), they did provide the background for Whitehead's and then Hartshorne's systematic development of process philosophy as an expression of panentheism. Hartshorne popularized the modern use of the term panentheism and considered Whitehead to be the outstanding panentheist (Hartshorne 1953, 273). Although Hartshorne made several modifications to Whitehead's understanding of God, the basic structures of Whitehead's thought were continued in Hartshorne's further development of Whitehead's philosophy (Ford 1973, Cobb, 1965). God, for process philosophy, is necessary for any actual world. Without God, the world would be nothing more than a static, unchanging existence radically different from the actual world of experience. God as both eternal and temporal provides possibilities that call the world to change and develop. God as eternal provides an actual source of those possibilities. However, if God is only eternal, the possibilities would be unrelated to the actual world as it presently exists. Thus, Whitehead and Hartshorne understand the world to be present in God in order for the possibilities that lead to development to be related to the world (Hartshorne 1953, 273). The implication of God's inclusion of the world is that God is present to the world and the world influences God. Although the presence of the world in God could be understood as a form of pantheism, process philosophy avoids collapsing the world into God or God into the world by maintaining a distinction between God and the world. This distinction is manifest in the eternality of God and the temporality of the world. It is also apparent in the freedom of the events in the world. Although God presents possibilities to the events in the world, each event decides how it will actualize those possibilities. The freedom of each event, the absence of divine determination, provides a way for process thought to avoid God being the cause of evil or containing evil as evil. Since God includes the events of the world, God will include the evil as well as the good that occurs in the world and this evil will affect God since the world affects God's actualization. But, because God does not determine the response of each event to the possibilities that God presents, any event may reject God's purpose of good through the intensification of experience and actualize a less intense experience. God does take this less intense, evil, experience into God's self, but redeems that evil by means of relating it to the ways in which good has been actualized. Thus, God saves what can be saved from the world rather than simply including each event in isolation from other events (Cooper 2006, 174, 180).

Protestant theologians have contributed to recent developments of panentheism by continuing the German Idealist tradition or the tradition of process philosophy. Although the majority of the contemporary expressions of panentheism involve scientists and protestant theologians or philosophers, articulations of forms of panentheism have developed among feminists, in the Roman Catholic tradition, in the Orthodox tradition, and in religions other than Christianity.

Utilizing resources from the tradition of German Idealism, Jrgen Moltmann developed a form of panentheism in his early work, The Crucified God in 1974 (1972 for the German original), where he said that the suffering and renewal of all humanity are taken into the life of the Triune God. He explicated his understanding of panentheism more fully in The Trinity and the Kingdom in 1981. Theological concerns motivate Moltmann's concept of panentheism. Panentheism avoids the arbitrary concept of creation held by traditional theism and the loss of creaturely freedom that occurs in Christian pantheism (Cooper 2006, 248). Moltmann understands panentheism to involve both God in the world and the world in God. The relationship between God and the world is like the relationship among the members of the Trinity in that it involves relationships and communities (Molnar 1990, 674). Moltmann uses the concept of perichoresis to describe this relationship of mutual interpenetration. By using the concept of perichoresis, Moltmann moves away from a Hegelian understanding of the trinity as a dialectical development in history (Cooper 2006, 251). The relationship between God and the world develops because of God's nature as love that seeks the other and the free response of the other (Molnar 1990, 677). Moltmann does not consider creation necessary for God nor the result of any inner divine compulsion. Instead creation is the result of God's essential activity as love rather than the result of God's self-determination (Molnar, 1990, 679). This creation occurs in a process of interaction between nothingness and creativity, contraction and expansion, in God. Because there is no outside of God due to God's infinity, God must withdraw in order for creation to exist. Kenosis, or God's self-emptying, occurs in creation as well as in the incarnation. The nothing in the doctrine of creation from nothing is the primordial result of God's contraction of God's essential infinity (Cooper, 2006, 247). Moltmann finds that panentheism as mutual interpenetration preserves unity and difference in a variety of differences in kind such as God and human being, person and nature, and the spiritual and the sensuous (Moltmann, 1996, 307).

Utilizing process philosophy, David Ray Griffin assumes that scientific understandings of the world are crucial and recognizes the implications of scientific understanding for theology. However, his concept of panentheism builds on the principles of process philosophy rather than scientific concepts directly. Griffin traces modern atheism to the combination of understanding perception as exclusively based on physical sensations, accepting a naturalistic explanation of reality, and identifying matter as the only reality. But, the emergence of mind challenges the adequacy of this contemporary worldview (2004, 4041). He claims that the traditional supernaturalistic form of theism with its emphasis upon the divine will does not provide an adequate alternative to the atheism of the late modern worldview because God becomes the source of evil. Griffin argues that traditional theism makes God the source of evil because God's will establishes the general principles of the universe (2004, 37). Process panentheism provides a way to avoid the problems of both traditional theism and materialistic naturalism (2004, 42). Griffin substitutes panexperientialism for materialism and a doctrine of perception that bases sensory perception on a non-sensory mode of perception in order to explain both the mind-body interaction and the God-world interaction. God is numerically distinct from the world but is ontologically the same avoiding dualism and supernaturalism. God and events in the world interact through non-sensory perception (2004, 4445). Through this interaction, God can influence but not determine the world, and the world can influence God's concrete states without changing God's essence. Process panentheism recognizes two aspects of the divine, an abstract and unchanging essence and a concrete state that involves change. Through this dipolar concept, God both influences and is influenced by the world (2004, 4344). Griffin understands God as essentially the soul of the universe although distinct from the world. The idea of God as the soul of the world stresses the intimacy and direct relationship of God's relationship to the world, not the emergence of the soul from the world (2004, 44). Relationality is part of the divine essence, but this does not mean that this specific world is necessary to God. This world came into existence from relative nothingness. This relative nothingness was a chaos that lacked any individual that sustained specific characteristics over time. However, even in the chaos prior to the creation of this world, events had some degree of self-determination and causal influence upon subsequent events. These fundamental causal principles along with God exist naturally since these causal principles are inherent in things that exist including the nature of God. The principles cannot be broken because such an interruption would be a violation of God's nature. An important implication of the two basic causal principles, a degree of self-determination and causal influence, is that God influences but does not determine other events (2004, 43). Griffin's understanding of naturalism allows for divine action that is formally the same in all events. But this divine action can occur in a variable manner so that some acts are especially revelatory of the divine character and purpose (2004, 45).

Much of the contemporary discussion and development of panentheism occurs in the context of the science and religion discussion. The early modern concept of an unchanging natural order posed a challenge to understandings of divine action in the world. The current discussion draws on the development of scientific information about the natural world that can contribute to religious efforts to explain how God acts in the world. In the contemporary discussion, Arthur Peacocke and Paul Davies have made important contributions as scientists interested in, and knowledgeable about, religion. Peacocke developed his understanding of panentheism beginning in 1979 and continuing through works in 2001, 2004, and 2006. Peacocke starts with the shift in the scientific understanding of the world from a mechanism to the current understandings of the world as a unity composed of complex systems in a hierarchy of different levels. These emergent levels do not become different types of reality but instead compose a unity that can be understood naturally as an emergentist monism. At the same time, the different levels of complexity cannot be reduced to an explanation of one type or level of complexity. The creative dynamic of the emergence of complexity in hierarchies is immanent in the world rather than external to the world (Peacocke 2004, 137142). Similarly, Paul Davies describes the universe by talking about complexity and higher levels of organization in which participant observers bring about a more precise order (2007). An important scientific aspect of this concept of complexity and organization is the notion of entanglement especially conceptual level entanglement (Davies 2006, 4548). Again, the organization, which makes life possible, is an internal, or natural, order rather than an order imposed from outside of the universe (Davies 2004). Peacocke draws upon this contemporary scientific understanding of the universe to think about the relationship between God and the natural world. He rejects any understanding of God as external to nature whether it is a traditional theistic understanding where God intervenes in the natural world or a deistic understanding where God initiates the natural world but does not continue to be active in the world. For Peacocke, God continuously creates through the processes of the natural order. God's active involvement is not an additional, external influence upon events. However, God is not identified with the natural processes, which are the action of God as Creator (Peacocke 2004, 143144). Peacocke identifies his understanding of God's relation to the world as panentheism because of its rejection of dualism and external interactions by God in favor of God always working from inside the universe. At the same time, God transcends the universe because God is infinitely more than the universe. This panentheistic model combines a stronger emphasis upon God's immanence with God's ultimate transcendence over the universe by using a model of personal agency (Peacocke 2004, 147151). Davies also refers to his understanding of the role of laws in nature as panentheism rather than deism because God chose laws that give a co-creative role to nature (2004, 104).

Philip Clayton begins with contemporary scientific understandings of the world and combines them with theological concepts drawn from a variety of sources including process theology. He describes God's relationship with the world as an internal rather than an external relationship. Understanding God's relationship as internal to the world recognizes the validity of modern scientific understandings that do not require any external source in order to account for the order in the world. At the same time, God's internal presence provides the order and regularity that the world manifests (2001, 208210). Clayton agrees that the world is in God and God is in the world. Panentheism, according to him, affirms the interdependence of God and the world (2004b, 83). This affirmation became possible as a result of the rejection of substantialistic language, which excludes all other beings from any one being. Rejection of substantialistic language thus allows for the interaction of beings. Clayton cites Hegel's recognition that the logic of the infinite requires the inclusion of the finite in the infinite and points towards the presence of the world in God (Clayton 2004b, 7879). Clayton, along with Joseph Bracken (1974, 2004), identifies his understanding of panentheism as Trinitarian and kenotic (Clayton 2005, 255). It is Trinitarian because the world participates in God in a manner analogous to the way that members of the trinity participate in each other although the world is not and does not become God. God freely decides to limit God's infinite power in an act of kenosis in order to allow for the existence of non-divine reality. The divine kenotic decision results in the actuality of the world that is taken into God. But, for Clayton, God's inclusion of finite being as actual is contingent upon God's decision rather than necessary to God's essence (2003, 214). Clayton affirms creation from nothing as a description of creaturely existence prior to God's decision. The involvement of the world in an internal relationship with God does not completely constitute the divine being for Clayton. Instead, God is both primordial, or eternal, and responsive to the world. The world does constitute God's relational aspect but not the totality of God (2005, 250254). The best way to describe the interdependence between God and the world for Clayton is through the concept of emergence. Emergence may be explanatory, epistemological, or ontological. Ontological understandings of emergence, which Clayton supports, hold that 1) reality is made up one type of being, physical existence, rather than two or more types of being but this physicality does not mean that only physical objects exist because, 2) properties emerge in objects from the potentiality of an object that cannot be previously identified in the object's parts or structure, 3) the emergence of new properties give rise to distinct levels of causal relations, which leads to 4) downward causation of the emergent level upon prior levels (2006a, 24). Emergence recognizes that change is important to the nature of the world and challenges static views of God (Clayton 2006b, 320).

A number of feminist contribute to the development of panentheism by critiquing traditional understandings of transcendence for continuing dualistic ways of thinking. Feminist panentheists conceive of the divine as continuous with the world rather than being ontologically transcendent over the world (Frankenberry 2011). Sallie McFague's use of metaphors in both theology and science led her to describe the world as God's body. McFague bases the metaphorical nature of all statements about God upon panenethiesm (2001, 30). Further more, for McFague, panentheism sees the world as in God which puts God's name first but includes each person's name and preserves their distinctiveness in the divine reality (2001, 5). God's glory becomes manifest in God's total self-giving to the world so that transcendence becomes immanence rather than being understood as God's power manifest in distant control of the world. Grace Jantzen also uses the metaphor of the world as God's body. Additionally, Jantzen (1998) and Schaab (2007) have proposed metaphors about the womb and midwifery to describe God's relation to the world. Anna CaseWinters challenges McFague's metaphor of the world as God's body. CaseWinters acknowledges that his metaphor maintains God's personal nature, offers a coherent way to talk about God's knowledge of and action in the world, recognizes God's vulnerable suffering love, and revalues nature and embodiment. But at least McFague's early use of the world-as-God's-body metaphor tended towards pantheism and even her later introduction of an agential role for the divine still retains the possibility of the loss of the identity of the world. CaseWinters uses McDaniel's (1989) distinction between emanational and relationsal understandings of God's immanence in the world to establish a form of panentheism with a clearer distinction between God and the world. The world is an other in relation to God rather than being a direct expression of God's own being through emanation for CaseWinters (3032). Frankenberry contrasts McFague's and CaseWinter's two concepts of transcendence to the traditional hierarchical concept of transcendence. McFague's concept is one of total immanence while CaseWinters holds a dialectic between individual transcendence and immanence (2011). Frankenberry suggests that pantheism may provide a more direct repudiation of male domination than panentheism provides (1993).

The feminist discussion about the adequacy of the metaphor of the world as God's body plays a role in the broader panentheistic discussion about how to describe the relationship between God and the world and the adequacy of the specific metaphors that have been used. Many panentheists find that metaphors provide the most adequate way to understand God's relation to the world. McFague argues that any attempt to do theology requires the use of metaphor (2001, 30). Clayton proposes different levels of metaphor as the most adequate way to reconcile the conflict between divine action and the integrity of the created realm (2003, 208). For Peacocke, the limitation of language requires the use of models and metaphors in describing either God or the cosmos (Schabb 2008, 13). The dominant metaphor in panentheism has been the world as God's body. The primary objection to the world as God's body is the substantialistic implications of the term body that lead either to an ontological separation between the world and God or to a loss of identity for God or the world. Bracken proposes a Trinitarian field theory to explain the world's presence in God. The world is a large but finite field of activity within the allcomprehensive field of activity constituted by the three divine persons in ongoing relations with each other and with all the creation (2009, 159). Bracken accepts that other metaphors have been utilized but concludes that the world as God's body and field theory have proven the most helpful. However, more clearly metaphysical panentheistic understandings of God's relation to the world have been articulated. Schelling's German Idealism understood God as freely unfolding as emanation by introducing subjectivity. There is no ontological separation between God and the world because the world participates in the infinite as its source (Clayton 2000, 477481). Krause understood the world's participation in God both ontologically and epistemically. The particularity of each existent being depends upon the Absolute for its existence as what it is (Gocke 2013). The metaphysical concept of participation occurs as a description of world's relation to God but lacks precision and can be understood either metaphorically or literally. Keller offers another metaphysical understanding by arguing for creation out of chaos. She rejects substance metaphysics and describes the relation between God and the world as a complex relationality involving an active indeterminacy and past realities (2003, 219). Finally the science and religion discussion provides another metaphysical understanding by drawing upon scientific concepts such as supervenience, emergence, downward causation, and entanglement to provide a ground for theological concepts explaining God's relation to the world.

Although most of the advocates for panentheism work in the context of Christian belief or responses to Christian belief, indications of panentheism in other religions have been recognized especially in the Vedic tradition. Hartshorne in his discussion of panentheism included a section on Hinduism (1953). The concept of the world as the body of the divine offers a strong similarity to Western panentheism. The Gita identifies the whole world, including all the gods and living creatures, as the Divine body. But the Divine Being has its own body that contains the world while being more than the world. While the Upanishads acknowledge the body of the Divine at times, the body of the divine is never identified as the cosmos. Most of the Tantrics hold a pantheistic view in which the practitioner is a manifestation of the divine. Abhinavagupta, in the tenth century, provided the first panentheistic understanding of the world as God's body. For him, differentiation is Shiva concealing his wholeness. Abhinavagupta also insisted that Shiva transcends the cosmos (Bilimoria and Stansell 2010, 244258). Abhinavagupta and Hartshorne think of the Divine as immanent in the world and as changing but they understood God's mutability in different ways (Stansell and Phillips 2010, 187). Ramunuja in the twelfth century also considered the world to be God's body and the thoughts of ultimate reality, individual selves, and the cosmos as identical (Ward 2004, 62 and Clayton 2010, 187189).

In spite of more than one hundred years of development, panentheism continues to grow and change. Much of this growth has taken place as a result of advances in science. Another impetus for change has been criticisms raised by the major alternatives to panentheistic understandings of the God-world relation. Panentheism faces challenges both from those who find that any lessening of the emphasis upon divine transcendence to be inadequate and from those who find some form of pantheism more adequate than any distinction between God and the world. Finally, the variety of the versions of panentheism have led to an active internal discussion among the various versions.

Both pantheists and scientists working with naturalist assumptions criticize panentheism for its metaphysical claim that there is a being above or other than the natural world. At times, this criticism has been made by claiming that a thorough-going naturalism does not need a transcendent, individualized reality. Corrington describes the development of his thought as a growing awareness that panentheism unnecessarily introduces a being above nature as well as in nature (2002, 49). Drees expresses a similar criticism by arguing that all contemporary explanations of human agency, including non-reductionist explanations, are naturalistic and do not require any reference to a higher being. For panentheists to claim that divine agency is analogous to human agency fails both to recognize that human agency requires no additional source or cause and to explain how a divine source of being could act in the realm of physical and mental processes (1999). Frankenberry makes this objection more specific. Panentheism offers a more complex relationship between God and the world than is necessary. This unnecessary complexity is revealed by the problems that panentheism has with the logic of the freedom of parts in wholistic relations, the possibility of the body-soul analogy relapsing into gender inflected ideas of the soul as the male principle, the problem with simultaneity of events in the divine experience in relation to the principle of the relativity of time, the necessity of the everlasting nature of value, and finally the use of the ontological argument to establish the necessity of the abstract pole of the divine nature (1993, 3639). Gillett points out that panentheism lacks an explanation for a causal efficacy higher than the causal efficacy realized by microphysical causation (2003, 19). Generally, panentheists respond to these criticisms by affirming the inadequacy both scientifically and metaphysically of any type of reductionistic naturalism. Such a naturalism whether articulated in scientific categories or religious categories fails to recognize the emergence of levels of complexity in nature. The emergence of higher levels of organization that cannot be completely explained in terms of lower levels renders non-differentiated accounts of being inadequate. Panentheists often argue that the emergence of higher levels of order makes possible downward causation. Davies describes the difficulties in coming to a clear description of downward causation and concludes that the complexity of systems open to the environment makes room for downward causation but has not yet provided an explanation of how downward causation works (2006, 48). The concepts of entanglement and divine entanglement may offer new perspective on causation and especially the role of the divine in natural causation (WegterMcnelly 2011).

Rather than criticizing an unnecessary transcendence, traditional theism charges panentheism with an inadequate transcendence due to failing to distinguish God from the world. Grounds recognized that panentheists hold that God includes the world but is not identical to the world. Craig recognizes that Clayton claims that God is infinite. But Grounds describes Hartshorne's distinction between God and the world as a distinction that is not consistently held because Hartshorne includes accidents within God's nature. Grounds argues that according to Hartshorne God would cease to be if the world ceased to exist. Such a position lacks an adequate distinction between God and the world since God and the world are interdependent (Grounds, 1970, 154). Craig challenges the understanding of the term infinite within panentheistic thought by arguing that understanding the infinite as including all reality in a monistic sense confuses the definition of infinite with identifying what is infinite (2006, 137). Even though Clayton seeks to retain a distinction between God and the world, he fails to be consistent because he fails to recognize that infinite is an umbrella concept that captures all the qualities that identify God as the perfect being rather than identifying God as an absolutely unlimited reality (Craig 2006, 142150). Rowe responds to Craig by arguing that Clayton would reject understanding the distinction between God and the world as requiring that the world limits God by being distinct. Instead, distinct from God means having an essential property that God lacks or lacking an essential property that God has which agrees with Craig's notion of the infinite as an umbrella concept (Rowe 2007, 67). Clayton describes the infinite as present in finite minds although ungraspable (2008, 152). Vail finds that Keller's panentheism blurs the line between the cosmic and the divine leading to a distinction of degree rather than of quality (2012, 164, 177).

The basic response of panentheists to these criticisms that the distinction between God and the world cannot be maintained is a dipolar concept of God. In a dipolar understanding of God, the essence of God is different from the world because God is infinite and the world is finite; God is everlasting and the world is temporal. Griffin additionally affirms the numerical difference between God and the world even though there is no ontological difference of kind (2004, 4445). Cooper recognizes that the panentheist does actually describe a distinction between God and the world but criticizes panentheism because it does not hold an unqualified ontological distinction between God and the world. Only an ontological distinction between God and the world makes it possible to identify and affirm God's saving presence. According to Cooper, if God's transcendence does not infinitely exceed God's immanence, God's presence, knowledge, and power are limited rather than complete, immediate, and unconditioned. Cooper recognizes that prioritizing divine transcendence raises the problem of evil but thinks that God's unlimited power provides hope that God will provide an ultimate solution to the problem of evil. The basic issue for traditional theism is that panentheism understands a balance between transcendence and immanence to involve the world influencing and affecting God. If God is affected by the world, then God is considered incapable of providing salvation (Cooper 2006, 322328). Peacocke and Eastern Orthodox thinkers (Louth 2004, 184; Nesteruk 2004, 173176; Ware 2004, 167) respond by affirming a weak form of emergence in which the world does not affect God. Clayton and Bracken respond by maintaining that the world does influence God but God's will, expressed through the decisions that God makes, protects God's ability to save (Clayton 2005). Moltmann describes God's essence as directing God's activity in order to maintain the reliability of God as love acting on behalf of creation. Moltmann does not find it necessary to protect divine freedom by giving it priority over divine love but rather understands freedom as acting according to the divine nature of love (Moltmann 1981, 98, 99). Cooper also criticizes panentheism for holding a concept of God that can save through the general processes of nature but not in any distinctive way. Vanhoozer's concern for divine freedom is based on a similar concern (1998, 250). But, Griffin's discussion of divine variable action does allow for specific and distinctive manifestations of divine love (2004, 45). Ultimately, the panentheist response is that God's nature as love directs God's actions bringing salvation. God's nature as love is the crucial aspect of divine action rather than a causal efficacy. The emphasis of traditional theism on divine will misses that the divine will is directed by divine love. Some responses by traditional theists have claimed that traditional theism is not guilty of separating God from the world and thus panentheism is not needed as a corrective (Carroll 2008, Finger 1997). Wildman acknowledges that traditional theism does hold that God has a meaningful presence in the world but has an inadequate ontological basis for that presence. An adequate basis for the active presence of God int he world requires some role for the world in the constitution of God (Wildman 2011, 186).

The varieties of panentheism participate in internal criticism. Clayton (2008, 127) and Crain (2006) emphasize the dependence of the world upon God rather than the dependence of God upon the world although they maintain that God is influenced, and changed, by the world. They criticize understandings of God that limit God by making God subject to metaphysical principles. Griffin emphasizes the regularity provided by metaphysical principles. This regularity recognizes the order in reality that the reliability of God's love provides. Panentheists also caution that the emphasis upon the ontological nature of the relation between God and the world can lead to a loss of the integrity of the world. Richardson warns against losing the discrete identity of finite beings in God (2010, 345). Case-Winters calls for maintaining a balance between the distinction between God and the world and God's involvement with the world. Overemphasis upon either side of the balance leads to positions that are philosophically and theologically inadequate (CaseWinters 2007, 125).

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Panentheism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

pantheism

Definition: Pantheist (pan=all; theos=god) is a term coined in 1705 by John Toland for someone who believes that everything is God. On this basis in 1732, the Christian apologist Daniel Waterland used the noun "pantheism" for the first time, condemning the belief as "scandalously bad... scarce differing from... Atheism."

Under pantheistic theory, only God exists and all that exists is God. There are various forms of pantheism, but the most common argues that the totality of reality - you, the computer, everything - is a part of God. Another common form is that simply the universe itself or perhaps the laws of nature are God. There are four named categories of pantheism in the literature:

Theomonistic Pantheism: Only God exists and the independent existence of nature is denied - also referred to as acosmism (a-*cos-mism, or "no-world")

Physiomonistic Pantheism: Only nature or the universe exist, but they are referred to with the term "God". Thus, God is denied having independent existence.

Transcendental or Mystical Pantheism: Actually panentheism, dealt with below.

Immanent-Transcendent Pantheism: God works through and is revealed through nature (also called Idealism sometimes).

When scientific pantheists say they revere the universe, they are not talking about a supernatural being. Instead, they are referring to the way human senses and our emotions force us to respond to the overwhelming mystery and power that surrounds us.

Pantheism has occurred more often in the East, for example in Hinduism. There are relatively few examples of pantheistic systems developing in the West, with major examples being the philosophies of Spinoza and Hegel. The earliest evidence of pantheism is found in the Vedas of Brahmanism, perhaps the oldest existing religion, dating back to 1000 BCE. It is also associated with the Egyptian religion when Ra, Isis and Osiris were identified with all existence. Many philosophical scholars think the great Greek philosopher Parmenides was a pantheist as well as Plotinus and Erigen.

Many pantheists use polytheism as a metaphoric way of approaching the cosmic divinity they believe in. Some simply feel the need for symbols and personages to mediate their relationship with nature and the cosmos. Pantheists can, however, also relate directly to the universe and to nature, without the need for any intermediary symbols or deities.

The sentiment of pantheism has predominantly influenced the thoughts and works of poets, philosophers, mystics, and extremely spiritual people. Notable among pantheistic poets are Goethe, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Emerson. Many modern poets consider pantheism as part of their world-view. However, pantheism never developed into a formal doctrine.

Pantheism can be thought of as a natural development of animism - arguing that everything is part of a universal spirit rather than that everything has spirits.

Pantheism can suffer from certain problems, however. If absolutely everything is believed to be a part of God, then there is the contradiction that God can simultaneously be aware of something and not be aware of something (i.e., when children do not know something but their parents do). Another problem stems from the question of why exactly we would need to apply the label "god" to the universe itself. We already have a perfectly good term: "universe." What new information does "god" supply?

A final problem comes from the issue of good and evil. If the pantheistic god is the sum of its parts, then it is certainly responsible for all the good which is done and is much more good than any one person. However, it is also responsible for all the evil committed and is much more wicked than any one person. All of the good in this god cannot acquit it of the incredible evil which has occurred.

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What is the Philosophy of Religion? Sometimes confused with theology, the Philosophy of Religion is the philosophical study of religious beliefs, religious doctrines, religious arguments and religious history. The line between theology and the philosophy of religion isn't always sharp, but the primary difference is that theology tends to be apologetical in nature, committed to the defense of particular religious positions, whereas Philosophy of Religion is committed to the investigation of religion itself, rather than the truth of any particular religion.

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pantheism