Category Archives: Pantheism

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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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 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

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

Pantheist Quotes / Quotations from Famous Philosophers & Scientists

We are part of Nature as a whole whose order we follow (Spinoza) All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature. (Zeno) I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature. (Mikhail Gorbachev)

The word pantheism derives from the Greek words pan (='all') and theos (='God'). Thus pantheism means 'All is God'. In essence, pantheism holds that there is no divinity other than the universe and nature. Pantheism is a religious belief that reveres and cares for nature, a religion that joyously accepts this life as our only life, and this earth as our only paradise, if we look after it. Pantheism revels in the beauty of nature and the night sky, and is full of wonder at their mystery and power. Pantheism believes that all things are linked in profound unity ... All things interconnected and interdependent. In life and in death we humans are an inseparable part of this unity, and in realising this we can find our joy and our peace. (Harrison, Pantheism, 1999)

'All is One and Interconnected' is not a new idea, its foundation lies with the ancient philosophers. For thousands of years, philosophers have gazed at the stars and known that One thing must exist that is common to and connects the Many things within the Universe. As Leibniz profoundly says; Reality cannot be found except in One single source, because of the interconnection of all things with one another. (Leibniz, 1670) Albert Einstein also had a good understanding of humans as an inseparable part of the One, as he writes;

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe ... We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. (Albert Einstein)

Unfortunately (and most likely tragically), this knowledge of our interconnection to the Universe (Nature, God) has been lost (or is naively considered as not important) to modern day humanity. We are 'bleeding at the roots because we are cut off from the Earth' as D. H. Lawrence writes.

It is important to understand that although 'All is One and Interconnected' is a profound idea of the ancients, they did not actually know how the universe was a dynamic unity, what matter was, how the One Thing / Brahman caused and connected the many things. Recent discoveries on the properties of Space and the Wave Structure of Matter (Wolff, Haselhurst) suggests that we can understand Reality and the interconnection of all things from a foundation of science / reason rather than mysticism / intuition.

Please see links on the side of this page for the main articles which explain and solve many of the problems of postmodern Metaphysics, Physics and Philosophy from the new foundation of the Metaphysics of Space and Motion and the Wave Structure of Matter (WSM).

We greatly appreciate any comments on how we can improve this website and its content. So please feel free to write to us.

Geoff Haselhurst, Karene Howie, Email

'Deus sive Natura' (God or Nature) We are part of Nature as a whole whose order we follow (Spinoza)

Behold but One in all things; it is the second that leads you astray. (Kabir)

When the Ten Thousand things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the Origin and remain where we have always been. (Sen T'sen)

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. (Jules Henri Poincare)

One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. (Oscar Wilde, Panthea)

We are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. We can never have enough of nature. (Henry David Thoreau)

A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man. (Albert Einstein)

A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge. (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot)

I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals. Being at one with nature. (Mikhail Gorbachev)

'God is not separate from the world; He is the soul of the world, and each of us contains a part of the Divine Fire. All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature. In one sense, every life is in harmony with Nature, since it is such as Natures laws have caused it to be; but in another sense a human life is only in harmony with Nature when the individual will is directed to ends which are among those of Nature. Virtue consists in a will which is in agreement with Nature.' (Zeno, founder of Stoicism) (Russell, 1946)

Let your gods, therefore, O philosophers, be suited to the present appearances of nature: and presume not to alter these appearances by arbitrary suppositions, in order to suit them to the attributes, which you so fondly ascribe to your deities. (David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, 1737, p137-8)

The word pantheism derives from the Greek words pan (='all') and theos (='God'). Thus pantheism means 'All is God'. In essence, pantheism holds that there is no divinity other than the universe and nature. Pantheism is a religious belief that reveres and cares for nature, a religion that joyously accepts this life as our only life, and this earth as our only paradise, if we look after it. Pantheism revels in the beauty of nature and the night sky, and is full of wonder at their mystery and power. Pantheism believes that all things are linked in profound unity ... All things interconnected and interdependent. In life and in death we humans are an inseparable part of this unity, and in realising this we can find our joy and our peace. (Harrison, Pantheism, 1999)

Taoism is a strongly pantheistic religion .. Its central focus is the Tao or Way, conceived of as a mysterious and numinous unity, infinite and eternal, underlying all things and sustaining them.

The Great Tao flows everywhere ... All things depend on it for life, and it does not turn away from them. One may think of it as the mother of all beneath Heaven. We do not know its name, but we call it Tao .. Deep and still, it seems to have existed forever.

The ideal of Taoism was to live in harmony with the Tao and to cultivate a simple and frugal life, avoiding unnecessary action: 'Being one with nature, he [the sage] is in accord with the Tao'... When Tung Kuo Tzu asked Chuang Tzu where the Tao was, he replied it was in the ant, the grass, the clay tile, even in excrement : 'There is nowhere where it is not ... There is no single thing without Tao'. (Harrison, Pantheism)

I believe the universe is one being; all its parts are different expressions of the same energy, and they are all in communication with each other, therefore parts of one organic whole ... The whole is in all its parts so beautiful, and is felt by me to be so intensely in earnest, that I am compelled to love it, and to think of it as divine. It seems to me that this whole alone is worthy of the deeper sort of love; and there is peace, freedom, I might say a kind of salvation, in turning one's affections outward toward this one God; rather than inwards on one's self, or on humanity, or on human imaginations and abstractions- the world of spirits. (Robinson Jeffers, Pantheism)

We are resolved into the supreme air, We are made one with what we touch and see, With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair, With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change. With beat of systole and of diastole One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart, And mighty waves of single Being roll From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part Of every rock and bird and beast and hill, One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . .

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth Not we alone hath passions hymeneal, The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth At daybreak know a pleasure not less real Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . .

Is the light vanished from our golden sun, Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair, That we are nature's heritors, and one With every pulse of life that beats the air? Rather new suns across the sky shall pass, New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar, Critics of nature, but the joyous sea Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be Part of the mighty universal whole, And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres, And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die, The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

(Panthea, Oscar Wilde)

PANTHEISM - by Paul Harrison is the belief that the universe is divine and nature is sacred. It fuses religion and science, and concern for humans with concern for nature. It provides the the most solid basis for environmental ethics. It is a religion that requires no faith other than common sense, no revelation other than open eyes and a mind open to evidence, no guru other than your own self

All things in the universe are one. They began as one. They may end as one. They are all made of the same basic matter/energy, and they interact with one another, constantly. All things on earth are one: plants, animals, rocks, oceans and atmosphere. All living creatures had a common origin, all depend on each other, and shape and are shaped by non-living things. Life has radically altered the earth's atmosphere, and molded many aspects of its geology. The Gaia system is an organic evolving whole embracing the biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere and atmosphere.

All humans on earth are one. We descend from the same family of common ancestors. We are, in a quite literal sense, siblings, and like siblings we depend on each other's love and care and responsibility. We are interdependent not just in our families and communities, but in nations, and increasingly on a global scale - just as we are also interdependent with nature and the earth.

Yet at the same time things are many. Matter-energy is embodied in many different particles and bodies. Life has evolved into many unique species - at least 1.5 million that we know of - and each individual of each species is unique. Diversity is essential to the beauty and interest of nature and the universe. Without it everything would be blank and monotonous.

All these beings have their own separate existence. Existence as a separate individual is always more or less temporary, from the day's life of a mayfly to the billions of years of a star. Sooner or later, humans, cats, trees, planets, stars will end their temporary existence and be reabsorbed, recycled and recreated as part of new phenomena. Yet even if their existence is temporary, this does not mean that it is unreal or unimportant.

Animals with nervous systems and senses have a greater degree of separation. Their consciousness make each one see themselves as separate. And in many respects they are separate: driven to seek survival, even at the expense of other individuals or other species.

We often think too rigidly in terms of either/or, black/white distinctions. Philosophical systems that talk about unity tend to deny or play down diversity, as if it were in some way not real, or not important. Yet this devalues individual things and creatures. It makes us look at them in a distant and abstract way, makes us ignore their particularity.

Other systems focus too much on diversity and ignore the ways in which things are united and interdependent. This too carries the risk that we see ourselves only as isolated individuals, in competition with each other.

Yet we do not have to make an all-or-nothing choice between unity and multiplicity. Both exist and for wholeness we must embrace both.

Imagine you are standing on a rocky shore by the ocean, on a breezy day. The reach ahead of you is ultimately linked with every stretch of sea on the planet. It is a unity, a vast watery whole.

But in front of you, where water interfaces with air, what you see is waves, hundreds of thousands of waves: some enormous, others smaller, others again tiny waves on the backs of waves. Each of these waves is a distinct entity, with its own characteristics. They are a multiplicity.

The Multiplicity and the Unity are one and the same thing, a thing that is both many and one at the same time. The waves, and the currents underwater, make up the ocean. The ocean is the underlying basis for every wave. Neither the ocean, nor the waves, can be understood in isolation from each other.

We need a sense of the unity of life and of humans for the sake of human welfare and for the survival of the planet. We need a sense of unity with the cosmos so that we can connect with Reality. But we also need a sense of individuality, for the sake of our own dignity and independence and of the loving care for others. We need it to appreciate each natural form, each animal and plant, each human person in their uniqueness.

We must preserve the sense of unity and the sense of diversity and multiplicity.

We must recognize that the One and the Many are the same thing viewed from different angles.

The One is the Many. The One is manifested only in and through the Many. It has no separate existence apart from the Many.

Equally the Many are the One. Even during their temporary separation, they are always part of the One, and always united with the One. Every one of us is always part of the One, and can unite with the One at any time we choose.

Cosmos: unity of matter and energy. This page explores the common origin, composition and interaction of the universe.

Gaia: unity of life: co-evolution and interdependence of animals, plants, ecosystems, and planet.

Polis: unity of society: interdependence at national and international levels.

Microcosmos: interfacing with reality.

Pantheism Philosophy by Paul Harrison http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/

Aurelius, Marcus - Famous Stoic Roman Emperor & his Meditations on our Interconnected Existence in the Universe & how we are to live. 'We should not say - I am an Athenian or I am a Roman but I am a Citizen of the Universe.' Albert Einstein: Cosmology - Albert Einstein's General Relativity laid the Foundations for Modern Cosmology - A Simple Solution to a Complex Problem. 'A human being is part of the whole called by us Universe.' Ancient Greek Philosophy - All is One (Space) and Active-Flux (Wave Motion). Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Atomists (Democritus, Lucretius), Socrates, Plato, Epicurus. Metaphysics: Problem of One and the Many - Brief History of Metaphysics and Solutions to the Fundamental Problems of Uniting the; One and the Many, Infinite and the Finite, Eternal and the Temporal, Absolute and Relative, Continuous and Discrete, Simple and Complex, Matter and Universe. Philosophy: Stoicism Zeno - Famous Roman Stoic Philosopher Zeno realised the Interconnection of All Things in the Universe. Spinoza, Benedictus de - The Wave Structure of Matter in One Infinite Eternal Space explains Spinoza's Substance (God is Nature) and the Interconnection of all things to One Thing and the Importance of (Wave) Motion in the Universe. Tesla, Nikola - Tesla was influenced by Vedic Philosophy that all is one and dynamic. The Wave Structure of Matter confirms Nikola Tesla's Theories on Resonance and Transfer of Energy by Waves in Space. 'One day man will connect his apparatus to the very wheel work of the universe ... and the very forces that motivate the planets in their orbits and cause them to rotate will rotate his own machinery.' Thoreau, Henry David - Thoreau's Civil Disobedience profoundly influenced Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi. On Walden Pond greatly influenced my life of living simply in Nature.

http://www.pantheism.net/ - World Pantheist Movement http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/ - Pantheism: Nature, Universe, Science and Religion. Natural Pantheism, a spiritual approach to Nature and the Cosmos. The Universe is divine and Nature is sacred. The history, theory and practice of Pantheism. By Paul Harrison.

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"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." (George Orwell)

"Hell is Truth Seen Too Late." (Thomas Hobbes)

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." (Mohandas Gandhi)

"When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. ... Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept 'empty space' loses its meaning. ... The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high. ... The free, unhampered exchange of ideas and scientific conclusions is necessary for the sound development of science, as it is in all spheres of cultural life. ... We must not conceal from ourselves that no improvement in the present depressing situation is possible without a severe struggle; for the handful of those who are really determined to do something is minute in comparison with the mass of the lukewarm and the misguided. ... Humanity is going to need a substantially new way of thinking if it is to survive!" (Albert Einstein)

Our world is in great trouble due to human behaviour founded on myths and customs that are causing the destruction of Nature and climate change. We can now deduce the most simple science theory of reality - the wave structure of matter in space. By understanding how we and everything around us are interconnected in Space we can then deduce solutions to the fundamental problems of human knowledge in physics, philosophy, metaphysics, theology, education, health, evolution and ecology, politics and society.

This is the profound new way of thinking that Einstein realised, that we exist as spatially extended structures of the universe - the discrete and separate body an illusion. This simply confirms the intuitions of the ancient philosophers and mystics.

Given the current censorship in physics / philosophy of science journals (based on the standard model of particle physics / big bang cosmology) the internet is the best hope for getting new knowledge known to the world. But that depends on you, the people who care about science and society, realise the importance of truth and reality.

It is easy to help - just click on the social network sites (below) or grab a nice image / quote you like and add it to your favourite blog, wiki or forum. We are listed as one of the top philosophy sites on the Internet (600,000 page views / week) and have a wonderful collection of knowledge from the greatest minds in human history, so people will appreciate your contributions. Thanks! Geoff Haselhurst - Karene Howie - Email

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Metaphysics of Pantheism - Famous Pantheist Quotes

In the famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo there is the memorable scene of the creator God extending his finger to the outstretched hand of the newly formed Adam. The imagery makes clear that Adam is a creation of God, not an extension of him. Creator and creation are distinct.

That is the clear understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview. In contrast to Eastern religions, where God is seen as everything (pantheism), or in everything (panentheism), the biblical teaching is that there is an eternal, personal and infinite God who is not to be confused with his creation.

For millennia the West was based on the monotheistic religions which viewed creation as the finite result of an infinite God, while the East has been shaped by monism (the belief that all is one) and pantheism. But recently these two opposing worldviews have experienced a massive crossover.

There are various reasons why East and West have lost their distinctive differences, and become so entwined. I here wish to focus on just one area. Western popular culture and the entertainment industry have done much to promote the pantheistic worldview and New Age spirituality.

Whether it be popular films such as the Star Wars series, or bestselling New Age tomes such as The Secret by Rhonda Byrne or A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, on all sides the West is being inundated with Eastern thinking and New Age concepts.

The most recent and most spectacular example of this is the runaway hit film, Avatar. It is a classic example of the pantheistic worldview, dressed up to suit modern Western tastes. It is thus quite a part of the New Age revolution which has conquered so much of the West over the past few decades.

Part of the reason why the New Age appeals so much to Westerners is that it offers the Eastern religious system but without much of its more demanding religious and ethical emphases. People are free to choose in the New Age spirituality what they like, and little or no demands are made on them.

Many of the people today who tinker with the East are really just imbibing in the New Age smorgasbord. They pick and choose those aspects which they like, and leave those which they dont. It is all very Western really, fitting our consumerist lifestyle. Thus Eastern thoughts and concepts have very much become a part of Western life.

And films like Avatar are in many ways just a reflection of this. Instead of a creator God who stands outside of us, and places expectations and demands upon us, in the new Easternised spiritualities of the West, people are free to call the shots and determine what is right and wrong, true and false.

Indeed, they get to be God. That is the real attraction of the New Age worldview. Instead of a transcendent God with whom we must do business, and bow to, we in fact are all a part of the divine already. We just need to realise that we are already God, that we are already divine.

And sadly, many Christians have bought into this explicitly non-Christian worldview as well. Many Christians seem to think they can simultaneously hold to Christianity while dabbling in New Age beliefs and practices. I have spoken to many such persons.

Indeed, how many Christians would have gone to a film like Avatar and left it all agog, without even being aware of how in so many ways it is promoting a decidedly non-biblical point of view. Of course many people have warned about how this new paganism is creeping into the churches.

Peter Jones of Westminster Seminary, for example, has written numerous volumes on these dangers. Readers should consult The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (P&R, 1992); Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (WinePress, 1997); Pagans in the Pews (Regal, 2001); and Capturing the Pagan Mind (Broadman & Holman, 2003).

Earlier C.S. Lewis had warned about the dangers of pantheistic thinking. In the 1950s he had penned these words: I freely admit that, believing both, I have stressed the transcendence of God more than His immanence. I thought, and I think, that the present situation demands this. I see around me no danger of Deism but much of an immoral, naive and sentimental pantheism. I have often found that it was in fact the chief obstacle to conversion.

Indeed, it is biblical Christianity which provides the right mix between divine transcendence and divine immanence. God is wholly other and separate from us (his transcendence) and yet he chose to become one with us in the incarnation, and he dwells with those who seek to follow him (his immanence).

There is no possibility in the biblical worldview of confusing who we are and who God is. Indeed, just today I read a great line in the third and final volume of John Goldingays magisterial Old Testament Theology. He says this: The difference between God and us is that God never thinks he is us.

Exactly so. But the tendency amongst so many Westerners influenced by pantheism, Eastern thought and the New Age movement is to think we are God. That type of thinking runs counter to the entire biblical belief system. We are doubly alienated from God: first, by creation, and secondly, by sin. The first renders us finite; the second renders us fallen.

Both these obstacles must be overcome, and we cannot do the overcoming ourselves. It is God who has taken the initiative here, becoming incarnate so that we might become (in the right sense of the word) partakers of the divine nature. And of course to get right with God, we must come to him on his terms, not our own.

But for those who want to call the shots, who want to pretend they are already divine, the Christian answer will never do. Lewis again had all this rightly explained a half century ago. Writing in his classic 1947 volume, Miracles, he wrote that pantheism is in fact the permanent natural bent of the human mind.

Why so? It is so congenial to unregenerate man because it simply means what man says about God, and not what God does about man. In biblical Christianity God is sovereign and we are not. No wonder people prefer pantheism. As Peter Kreeft rightly noted,

Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as a man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheists God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance. If He were the truth, then we could really say that all the Christian images-of kingship were a historical accident of which our religion ought to be cleansed.

Ever since our first parents fell, people have been looking for a way to get back to God, but on their own terms. The way of the cross is simply too hard and too demanding for many. But a worldview which tells us we are already God, well, that is something most people can readily sign up for.

But it is a false path to salvation. There is only one path whereby we can get right with God, and that path goes through a hill with a cross on it, and it goes through a person, Jesus Christ. The masses may marvel at the God-is-everything philosophy of a film like Avatar, but only those who have come to an end of themselves will realise that reunion with God is something that God decides and God lays out the specs for.

We either bow the knee to him and his designated means of becoming reunited with him, or we devise our own paths. But Jesus made it clear that there is only one path. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matt 7:14).

Philosophies like the New Age, and films like Avatar readily appeal to us. They allow us the right to set the boundaries and determine the rules. They assume mankind is already alive and part of the divine. Biblical Christianity, by contrast, assumes that we are all spiritually dead and alienated from God. That is why Christ came not to tell us we are already part of the divine, but to show us how to flee the wrath to come, and how to become who we were truly meant to be.

[1485 words]

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Pantheism and Biblical Christianity Bill Muehlenbergs ...

Is Nature the focus of your deepest spiritual feelings? Are you looking for a spirituality or religion that focuses on Nature, on saving the Earth, on preserving its habitats and species?

World Pantheism is probably the most clearly earth-focussed of spiritual/religious organizations. Nature is the very heart of our spirituality, which is close to Deep Ecology, Gaia theory, Nature religion, or basic and direct Nature Worship. The simplest way to sum it up is in Michael Gorbachev's phrase "Nature is my god."

This beautiful Planet Earth is our mother and our home. This sacred Earth is our ark and all the plants and animals that live in it are our fellow passengers. That ark is threatened now, as never before in history, by human actions and inactions.

World Pantheism focuses on this Earth rather than an imaginary realm, on this life rather than an uncertain afterlife. We recognize that our planet, the habitat of all living things, is a delicate network of interacting elements in which rocks, waters, climate and life all shape each other. This interaction has been described using the metaphor of the Greek Earth goddess, Gaia. The Gaia theory states that life and the planet co-evolve, and that life to some extent works to make the planet stable enough for life to thrive.

The originator of the Gaia theory, Sir James Lovelock, is one of the WPM's honorary advisors, as is renowned Canadian environmentalist Dr David Suzuki. Our president and founder, Dr Paul Harrison, holds a United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 award for his many books on the environment, and has edited UNEP's annual report on the world environment for the past four years.

Care and concern for Earth is one of our central ethical values. As our belief statement says:

We are an integral part of Nature, which we cherish, revere and preserve in all its magnificent beauty and diversity. We strive to live in harmony with Nature locally and globally. We acknowledge the inherent value of all life, human and non-human, and treat all living beings with compassion and respect.

We express these values as a community in several ways. Our active click group at EcologyFund has saved more wildlife habitat than any other religious or environmental group. We also from time to time sponsor ads in EcologyFund which pay for the land to be preserved. And we have a Wildlife Habitat Schemewhere people undertake to manage all our part of their garden or land in the interests of native wildlife.

We have numerous mailing lists about nature-centered ways of living and naturalistic ideas, as well as topical lists and local area lists.

See the rest here:
A Religion of Nature, Earth, Gaia | World Pantheism

by Jan Garrett Contents

What is Pantheism?

Pantheism and Western Monotheism

Differences With Western Monotheism

Pantheism and Personal Divinity

Pantheism and Immortality

Pantheism and Atheism

Is Pantheist Love of Nature Objectively Grounded?

Pantheism and Humanism

The Sacredness of the Earth

Pantheism and Progress

The Question of Divine Providence

For Further Information about Pantheism

Paul Harrison writes,

One of the chief clues to understanding modern pantheism is its consistent refusal to engage in anthropomorphism. "Anthropomorphism" here means the practice of attributing familiar human qualities to objects outside us when there is no good evidence that they have such qualities.

Refusal of anthropomorphism explains one of the key differences between pantheism and paganism. In ancient times, "pagans" referred to adherents of polytheistic pre-Christian religions which Christianity was trying to suppress. Pagans, or people who worship gods and divinities in nature, obviously have much in common with pantheism. But there was a tendency, at least in the paganism of the past, to impose familiar human qualities on natural objects that may not have them, for example, to regard a tree as if it could perceive in the way that animals do or even as if it were a self-conscious being. Most contemporary pantheists would refuse to do this and would regard such an attitude as anthropomorphic.

The divine universe is mysterious. Though we can understand the universe more adequately as scientific research proceeds, there will always be questions to which we will not yet have answers; and explanations of ultimate origins will always remain speculative (they are too far in the past for us to decipher clearly).

The divine universe is awe-inspiring. Would a creator behind it be any more awe-inspiring than the universe itself?

The universe is clearly very powerful. It creates and it destroys on a vast scale.

So far as we know, the universe created all that exists; which is to say that, the universe as it is now was created by the universe as it was a moment ago, and that universe by the universe that existed a moment before that, and so on. If we view universe in this way, we can keep the idea of creator and creation and yet have no need to imagine a being apart from the universe who created it. The divine being is indeed a creator, in the pantheist view. Indeed, the creativity of the natural universe is probably the best evidence for its divinity.

Is the universe eternal? Well, it depends on how you understand eternity. Traditional Western theology understands eternity as a quality of a God that exists altogether outside time. Yet the dynamic and changing universe is very much bound up with time, so it is not eternal in the theological sense. Possibly it is everlasting, maybe it had no first moment and will never cease to exist. Scientific evidence does point to a Big Bang several billion years ago, from which our universe in roughly its current form originated, but if we accept the time-honored precept that nothing comes from nothing, we cannot rule out the existence of a material universe before this Big Bang.

Is the universe transcendent? In Western theology transcendence is a term often paired with eternity. A transcendent being is essentially outside and independent of the universe. Of course, the divinity which pantheists revere is not transcendent in that way. However, in ordinary language, to transcend is to surpass. Well, the universe which includes us also certainly surpasses us, as it surpasses everything we are capable of knowing or observing.

Pantheism has clear differences with the traditional description of God. It departs from the picture of God given in the Old Testament to the extent that the Old Testament attributes human attributes to the divine being, such as a willingness to make deals (You worship me and I'll make you my Chosen People) and anger (for example, Yahweh's anger at the Israelites' worship of the Golden Calf).

Pantheism also avoids some features of the theological conception of God which arises from a mix of Greek philosophical influences and Judaeo-Christian thought. For example, pantheism does not hold that the divinity we revere is a first cause wholly independent of matter, or that the divine being freely creates the physical universe from nothing but its own will.

C. Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse, authors of New Thought: A Practical American Spirituality, have married the process theology of Alfred N. Whitehead and others with the religious tradition known as New Thought. They have criticized pantheism for its resistance to the idea of a personal divinity. Their criticisms are interesting because process theology agrees with pantheism in bringing God and Nature together. But process theologians Anderson and Whitehouse are not pantheists--they are panentheists. That is, they regard the material universe as the body of God--everything material is in God--but God's mind or personhood is somehow something extra or more than the universe. God is impartial, they say, but he is not impersonal--he loves us all as a good father loves his children. Whitehouse accuses pantheists of replacing God as a loving father by a "formless, impersonal Ground of All Being into which we all ultimately melt, or get ground!" On this scenario, says Whitehouse, "we [humans] are illusion, without individuality, smothered by a God that Alan Anderson calls the universal wet blanket'" (cited in D. Whitehouse, "God: Person, Eternal, and New," Unity Magazine April 1996).

Several charges are made here, in just a few words. The charge that the pantheist divinity is a "universal wet blanket" seems to boil down to the charge that pantheists do not accept the view that the divinity literally loves us as a parent would. To that the pantheist response is simple: there is almost as much evidence that the universe hates us as there is that it loves us, in other words, not much. On the other hand, the fact that we are still here is evidence that the universe nurtures us and supports us, at least for the time being. We can certainly be thankful for that.

Deb Whitehouse's charge that pantheism denies the reality of the human individual does actually fit some pantheist philosophies of earlier times, for instance, the seventeenth-century philosophy of Spinoza. But it does not fit modern pantheism as expressed, for example, in most of the publications of the Universal Pantheist Society or the text of Paul Harrison's "Scientific Pantheism" website. Nor is the divine being as conceived by these pantheists "the formless . . . Ground of All Being" (as Whitehouse puts it) since for them, as for modern scientists, the divine universe is anything but formless.

Now, some people who call themselves atheists might really be pantheists because they value the natural world and only reject the concept of a personal God or gods, which they have mistaken for the only possible conception of divinity. On the other hand, some people who might think of themselves as atheists are humanists and not pantheists because they place all ultimate value in things human or some characteristic which only human beings possess.

Although it's risky to generalize about all pantheists, many pantheists reject the idea that when a human being has an aesthetic experience of nature and sees beauty in it, this is nothing but a human projection upon nature. They don't mind admitting that humans who experience natural beauty are contributing something to the experience, but let us remember , they say, (1) that nature has herself given humans the capacity to recognize her beauty and (2) that nature provides the object which we recognize as beautiful. Human beings do not invent the beauty and value of nature --we only recognize it. And we are not the only beings who do. As process philosopher Charles Hartshorne argues, birdsong cannot be entirely explained in terms of its Darwinian function in biological survival and finding a mate. It is probable that birdsong is sometimes a bird's open-hearted response to the natural beauty the bird itself experiences.

A pantheist might well agree with humanists that all or at least most human beings have inherent value and are worthy of our basic moral respect, and that there are many important human achievements worth preserving and transmitting. But a commitment to the idea that human beings and many human achievements are valuable cannot justify blindness to the values which we humans can discover beyond culture in nature.

The pantheist refusal of the idea that humans are the best things in the universe is not merely a matter of faith or attitude. Pantheists might even grant that we do not know whether there are other biological individuals that are superior to humans, e.g., aliens with higher intelligence or greater capacities of cooperation. But pantheism can make the following case:

(1) Surely humans have some value, but clearly

(2) non-human individuals on the earth have some value as well, even if pantheists have to grant their critics that the value of a non-human individual is less than a human's. Well, then, consider the biosphere or the living Earth.

(3) It includes both humans, with their value, and non-humans, with their value, however minimal you want to claim it is.

(4) This collective being must contain at least as much value as these humans and non-humans put together.

Conclusion: (5) there is a being more valuable than humans, namely, the biosphere which includes both humans and non-humans.

Similar reasoning can support the conclusion that the cosmos itself is of still greater value.

For historical reasons, moreover, pantheists are suspicious of the claim that humans are the best things in nature. They are especially aware of the perverse use to which this idea has been put over the last four centuries. It is part of the myth that has been used to justify Western humanity's domination of nature on Earth and the eradication of many cultures, species, and ecosystems as part of the cost of taming nature and allegedly perfecting it, i.e., making it over to fit our human whims, which means, to a great extent, the whims of the industrial and post-industrial growth economy.

For those who believe the idea that humans are the best species, it is more an unquestioned article of faith than an empirically verifiable proposition--in fact, given what members of the human species have done to each other and other species, it appears that humans do not on the whole have a very good record. It is a bad argument to use the rare cases--the Aristotles, the Shakespeares, the Beethovens, the Schweitzers, the Gandhis--as arguments for the surpassing nobility of the human species. Such highly creative or eminently ethical heroes and heroines are far from the average.

Is pantheism essentially a reverence for nature apart from the section of nature transformed by human culture? Well, the Universal Pantheist Society, the only pantheist member organization of which I am aware, seems to encourage open air ceremonies that evoke respect for nature, and it insists that a building is not necessary for the experience of the divine, that sometimes a building can get in the way of that experience. But I do not think that pantheism implies that you can only contemplate the divinity when you are out in the woods far from artifacts that human beings have created.

Still, respect for nature independent of human interference is essential to pantheism. Pantheists are bound to look with mixed feelings upon most social institutions and technological marvels. They know how often those institutions and that technology have given humans the collective strength and the material means for mounting an assault upon nonhuman nature.

Are pantheists opposed to scientific and technological progress? Modern pantheists are definitely not opposed to the scientific method as a method for understanding nature. They are not inclined to use pre-scientific myths to explain inclement weather, for example, as sent by angry gods. They favor scientific explanations whenever we can get them. They recognize that some explanations are better than others, so that if a person first accepts one theory, then another, and still later a third, and each successive theory gives a better explanation of the same phenomenon than the preceding one, that surely is scientific progress worth celebrating. Seen in this light, scientific progress is mainly about understanding, not about control over nature.

Technological progress usually refers to increasing control over the environment. To control something is to render it passive, to make it into something that can be manipulated by the controller. But nature is nothing if it is not active, if it does not have "a source of motion in itself" (Aristotle, Physics ii). Therefore, technological progress in this sense is profoundly disturbing for a pantheist.

It is not a healthy form of pantheism to celebrate the absorption of nature into the human economic-technological machine, as one website which calls itself pantheist (www.the-truth.com) does. Not only is this tantamount to celebrating the "death of nature" on Earth, but it is guilty of overweening pride. For it assumes that because we have the power to push aside the biological diversity that evolved over millions of years and the cultural diversity that developed alongside it over the last several thousand years, it follows that we and our puny Western technology can substitute ourselves for the richness of what we are displacing. The perverse form of anthropocentric "pantheism" to which I am now referring is also guilty of ignorance: it confuses the temporary domination of the planet by the economic-technological machine with the total absorption of nature and God by human (that is, Western) culture. No matter how totally humans control the planet, they cannot control much beyond the planet. There is a lot more universe out there, as pictures and data from the Hubble Space Telescope strikingly confirm. Besides, we probably cannot even control as much as of the planet as we would like. For example, we can't figure out how to reverse the damage we have caused the stratospheric ozone layer, only how to slow down the rate of additional damage in the hope that natural processes will revive the ozone layer after several decades. And we cannot figure out how to do away safely with our nuclear wastes or even how to store them safely over the very long period in which they remain toxic.

If technological progress is a problem, and in many instances an abomination, when it works at dominating nature and making it into something passive and a mere resource, it does not follow that there is no acceptable technical progress. Some technologies are less invasive of nature than others. For example, those which use wind power for augmenting human energy and passive solar collection for heating are ethically less ambiguous than fossil fuels or nuclear energy. One can imagine continuously improved technical solutions of this sort. It is possible that experience in organic farming and composting since the 1960's has developed a battery of soft-technological practices that would constitute an acceptable kind of technical progress. In any case, pantheism as a religious perspective strongly endorses our learning how to live more lightly upon the earth.

Do pantheists believe that the divine universe cares whether we are good or bad, and that it punishes us if we are bad and do not get punished appropriately in this life? Since ancient times, political leaders have held that beneficial social consequences derive from belief in powerful gods who see what we do even when no humans see it and who punish wrongdoing, either in this life or in an afterlife. On their view, people must be convinced that nothing that we do escapes the attention of the divine being. We find political philosophers, both ancient and modern, who do not really believe in a wrathful god but think that it is not a bad idea if most people do.

Even if they were right about human psychology and the crime rate--and, it is not, so far as I know, empirically proven that they are--this fact would not settle the issue of whether the divine being, in the pantheist case, the universe as a whole, really knows and cares about what we do. And pantheists will generally deny this, because it would require that the divine universe has or is a single mind, and that would amount to saying that the universe is a divine person, an idea most modern pantheists would prefer to abandon. Therefore most pantheists do not conceive the divine power as an observer of our misdeeds and as a punisher of the ones that our fellow humans fail to catch.

However, pantheists can admit that there is at least a metaphorical sense in which the universe has providentially arranged for punishment and reward. Here they can borrow a page from the Stoics, who were also pantheists of a sort. The Stoics observed that human beings are endowed with a great capacity for wisdom as well as ignorance, and claimed that if we judge ignorantly we receive misery while if we judge wisely we receive tranquillity. They had in mind the insight that we make ourselves miserable by setting our hearts on things beyond our control. These things, they say, are not truly our private possessions and in claiming them for our own, or acting as if they should be, we are sinning or transgressing against nature. Yet if we do this, we are quickly disappointed and so the ignorance associated with this transgression is swiftly and automatically "punished" by our undergoing fear and distress (Cf. Seneca, De providentia). The Stoic insight is that, in producing us as beings with capacity for reason, the universe has created us with the power to interpret events so as to avoid at least the more extreme forms of emotional turmoil. Such internal turmoil besets individuals who do not have their priorities in proper order and try to treat as their own and under their control things which are actually beyond their control.

For further information about pantheism, see Paul Harrison's Scientific Pantheism website.

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AN INTRODUCTION TO PANTHEISM by Jan Garrett - WKU

Instilled by the power and mystery and beauty of the Universe and Nature, Pantheism is the perennial religion. Children are born with it, and it continually emerges from all human spiritual traditions.

Pantheism is the belief that the universe and nature are numinous - that they and they alone are worthy of the reverence that traditional religions devote to "God."

Pantheism is the perennial religion. Children are born with it, and it continually emerges from all human spiritual traditions. It is the feeling of awe and wonder that reality itself inspires, onto which theistic religions project their imagined deities.

Pantheism is as old as human speculative thought. It dates as far back as the Upanishads, the Tao te Ching and the first Greek philosophers such as Thales and . Heraclitus, the Chinese Taoist Chuang Tzu, and the Stoic philosopher Zeno of Cittium.

After Christianity was enforced as the state religion of the Roman empire, it became dangerous to express pantheistic beliefs. Pantheists such as Meister Eckhart were marginalized, while others were burned and their books suppressed. Giordano Bruno, the first post-Christian pantheist, was burned at the stake in 1600 CE.

When religious tolerance spread in Europe, after the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, Pantheism was able to express itself more openly, starting with Spinoza.

Pantheism began to spread more widely in the later 18th and early 19th centuries, in Germany with Goethe and Hegel, and in Britain with the romantic poets - Wordsworth, Keats, and Shelley, and the transcendentalists in the USA - above all Emerson and Thoreau.

During the 19th century Pantheism seemed set to become the dominant religious philosophy. But the wars and ideologies of the 20th century caused some regress. Political ideologies such as Communism and Fascism, along with the wars and upheavals they caused, commanded attention. Post-war existentialism and post-modernism spread the beliefs that there were no basic truths.

Yet pantheism persisted, often among the most eminent writers and scientists, including Einstein and Hawking, D. H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Related to pantheism is panentheism. Panentheists believe that a conscious, usually personal God is present in the sensible universe, but also extends beyond it. These include the neo-Platonist Plotinus and most Christian and Islamic panentheists. Some of these are included for comparison.

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Pantheists in History: a history of pantheism

Naturalistic pantheism is a phrase referring to a kind of pantheism, and has been used in various ways. It has been used to identify God or divinity with concrete things,[1] determinism,[2] or the substance of the Universe.[3] God, from these perspectives, is seen as the aggregate of all unified natural phenomena.[4] The phrase has often been associated with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza,[5] although academics differ on how it is used.

The term pantheism" is derived from Greek words pan (Greek: ) meaning "all" and theos () meaning God. It was coined by Joseph Raphson in his work De spatio reali, published in 1697. The term was introduced to English by Irish writer John Toland in his 1705 work Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist that described pantheism as the "opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe."[6]

The term "naturalistic" derives from the word "naturalism", which has several meanings in philosophy and aesthetics.[7] In philosophy the term frequently denotes the view that everything belongs to the world of nature and can be studied with the methods appropriate for studying that world, i.e. the sciences.[8] It generally implies an absence of belief in supernatural beings.[7]

Joseph Needham, a modern British scholar of Chinese philosophy and science, has identified Taoism as "a naturalistic pantheism which emphasizes the unity and spontaneity of the operations of Nature."[9] This philosophy can be dated to the late 4th century BCE.[10]

The Hellenistic Greek philosophical school of Stoicism (which started in the early 3rd century BCE)[11] rejected the dualist idea of the separate ideal/conscious and material realms, and identified the substance of God with the entire cosmos and heaven.[3] However, not all philosophers who did so can be classified as naturalistic pantheists.[12]

Naturalistic pantheism was expressed by various thinkers,[5] including Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for his views.[13] However, the 17th century Dutch philosopher Spinoza became particularly known for it.[5]

Possibly drawing upon the ideas of Descartes ,[14]Baruch Spinoza connected God and Nature through the phrase deus sive natura ("God, or Nature"),[15][16][17] making him the father of classical pantheism. He relied upon rationalism rather than the more intuitive approach of some Eastern traditions.[18]

Spinoza's philosophy, sometimes known as Spinozism, has been understood in a number of ways, and caused disagreements such as the Pantheism controversy. However, many scholars have considered it to be a form of naturalistic pantheism. This has included viewing the pantheistic unity as natural.[19] Others focus on the deterministic aspect of naturalism.[20][21] Spinoza inspired a number of other pantheists, with varying degrees of idealism towards nature.[22][23] However, Spinoza's influence in his own time was limited.[24][25]

Scholars have considered Spinoza the founder of a line of naturalistic pantheism, though not necessarily the only one.[26][27][28]

In 1705 the Irish writer John Toland endorsed a form of pantheism in which the God-soul is identical with the material universe.[29][30][6]

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Naturalistic pantheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia