The Blog: Cogito Ergo Blogo
Pantheism
24 February, 2012, 02:45 pm
Posted by LM.
Pantheism is the view that the world is either identical to God, or an expression of God’s nature. It comes from ‘pan’ meaning all, and ‘theism,’ which means belief in God. So according to pantheism, “God is everything and everything is God.”
This may sound like a familiar Judeo-Christian concept, namely God’s immanence, which is the idea that God pervades or is ever-present throughout the universe. However, pantheism differs from traditional theistic religions in two important ways.
First, pantheism rejects the idea that God is transcendent. According to traditional Western conceptions of God, He is an entity that is above and beyond the universe. So, although God may be fully present in the universe, He is also outside of it. Simply put, He transcends the totality of objects in the world. When pantheists say that “God is everything and everything is God,” this is meant to capture that idea that God does not transcend the world.
A second important difference between pantheism and traditional theistic religions is that pantheists also reject the idea of God’s personhood. The pantheist God is not a personal God, the kind of entity that could have beliefs, desires, intentions, or agency. Unlike the traditional God of theism, the pantheistic God does not have a will and cannot act in or upon the universe. These are the kind of things that only a person, or a person-like entity, could do. For the pantheist, God is the non-personal divinity that pervades all existence. It is the divine Unity of the world.
While these two points may clarify how pantheism and traditional theism differ, they may make us wonder if there’s much difference between pantheism and atheism. After all, pantheism denies the existence of a transcendent, personal God, which is the God of traditional theism. So, in that sense, pantheism seems to be a form of atheism. It’s not clear what exactly pantheists are talking about when they talk of “God.” If pantheists just consider God to be the totality of all existence, then why talk of “God” at all? Moreover, if that’s what “God” means to the pantheist, then the slogan “God is everything and everything is God” now seems circular and redundant. As Schopenhauer, a critic of pantheism, says, “to call the world ‘God’ is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word ‘world’.”
But Schopenhauer seems to be operating with a very narrow definition of God here. Why suppose that God must be personal and transcendent in order to be God? This limits the concept of God in an ad hoc way that privileges the traditional theistic view of divinity. Looking at other non-theistic religious traditions, we find many conceptions of a divinity that pervades all existence, like Lao Tzu’s Tao, Sankara’s Brahman, and arguably also Hegel’s Geist and Plotinus’s One. To call all these views “atheist” simply because they reject the traditional theistic conception of a personal, transcendent God is to miss the point. Atheism, after all, is not a religion.
If we accept that pantheism differs from atheism, in that it does posit some kind of divinity in the world whereas atheism does not, it’s still a little difficult to see in what sense pantheism is a religion. There are no pantheist churches or services, for example, and it’s not even clear if there are any particular pantheist rituals or practices. Do practices like prayer or worship even make sense in the pantheist scheme of things?
Love of nature is often associated with pantheism, but that does not seem to be a central tenet of the religion. Self-professed pantheists like Wordsworth, Whitman, and other Romantic poets certainly had a deep love of nature, but that was not necessarily the case for pantheists like Spinoza and Lao Tzu. Nevertheless, for some pantheists the idea that nature is something that inspires awe, wonder, and reverence is important. This attitude toward nature is perhaps what motivates many contemporary pantheists to identify themselves as such. It is no coincidence that there are strong ties between pantheism and the ecology movement.
Given some of the issues raised here, I look forward to having a number of questions clarified during our upcoming show. One important question is: what exactly is the relationship between pantheism and atheism? Are they complementary or conflicting views of the world? Can we distinguish pantheism from traditional theism without the view simply collapsing into atheism? Is pantheism really a religion, or just a metaphysical view of the world? Does it have distinctive rituals or practices? What would motivate someone to identify as a pantheist? And how central is reverence for nature to pantheism?
Joining the conversation with John and Ken will be Philip Clayton, Dean of the Claremont School of Theology and Provost of Claremont Lincoln University. He is also the co-author of The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy and Faith.
This may sound like a familiar Judeo-Christian concept, namely God’s immanence, which is the idea that God pervades or is ever-present throughout the universe. However, pantheism differs from traditional theistic religions in two important ways.
First, pantheism rejects the idea that God is transcendent. According to traditional Western conceptions of God, He is an entity that is above and beyond the universe. So, although God may be fully present in the universe, He is also outside of it. Simply put, He transcends the totality of objects in the world. When pantheists say that “God is everything and everything is God,” this is meant to capture that idea that God does not transcend the world.
A second important difference between pantheism and traditional theistic religions is that pantheists also reject the idea of God’s personhood. The pantheist God is not a personal God, the kind of entity that could have beliefs, desires, intentions, or agency. Unlike the traditional God of theism, the pantheistic God does not have a will and cannot act in or upon the universe. These are the kind of things that only a person, or a person-like entity, could do. For the pantheist, God is the non-personal divinity that pervades all existence. It is the divine Unity of the world.
While these two points may clarify how pantheism and traditional theism differ, they may make us wonder if there’s much difference between pantheism and atheism. After all, pantheism denies the existence of a transcendent, personal God, which is the God of traditional theism. So, in that sense, pantheism seems to be a form of atheism. It’s not clear what exactly pantheists are talking about when they talk of “God.” If pantheists just consider God to be the totality of all existence, then why talk of “God” at all? Moreover, if that’s what “God” means to the pantheist, then the slogan “God is everything and everything is God” now seems circular and redundant. As Schopenhauer, a critic of pantheism, says, “to call the world ‘God’ is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word ‘world’.”
But Schopenhauer seems to be operating with a very narrow definition of God here. Why suppose that God must be personal and transcendent in order to be God? This limits the concept of God in an ad hoc way that privileges the traditional theistic view of divinity. Looking at other non-theistic religious traditions, we find many conceptions of a divinity that pervades all existence, like Lao Tzu’s Tao, Sankara’s Brahman, and arguably also Hegel’s Geist and Plotinus’s One. To call all these views “atheist” simply because they reject the traditional theistic conception of a personal, transcendent God is to miss the point. Atheism, after all, is not a religion.
If we accept that pantheism differs from atheism, in that it does posit some kind of divinity in the world whereas atheism does not, it’s still a little difficult to see in what sense pantheism is a religion. There are no pantheist churches or services, for example, and it’s not even clear if there are any particular pantheist rituals or practices. Do practices like prayer or worship even make sense in the pantheist scheme of things?
Love of nature is often associated with pantheism, but that does not seem to be a central tenet of the religion. Self-professed pantheists like Wordsworth, Whitman, and other Romantic poets certainly had a deep love of nature, but that was not necessarily the case for pantheists like Spinoza and Lao Tzu. Nevertheless, for some pantheists the idea that nature is something that inspires awe, wonder, and reverence is important. This attitude toward nature is perhaps what motivates many contemporary pantheists to identify themselves as such. It is no coincidence that there are strong ties between pantheism and the ecology movement.
Given some of the issues raised here, I look forward to having a number of questions clarified during our upcoming show. One important question is: what exactly is the relationship between pantheism and atheism? Are they complementary or conflicting views of the world? Can we distinguish pantheism from traditional theism without the view simply collapsing into atheism? Is pantheism really a religion, or just a metaphysical view of the world? Does it have distinctive rituals or practices? What would motivate someone to identify as a pantheist? And how central is reverence for nature to pantheism?
Joining the conversation with John and Ken will be Philip Clayton, Dean of the Claremont School of Theology and Provost of Claremont Lincoln University. He is also the co-author of The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy and Faith.
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Comments
Hmmmm. Pantheism/Pantheists sound(s) like believers in evolution who do not wish to be identified with evolution thinking. I only arrived at that hypothesis after reading your post and seeing the title of your guest's book. See, there is no predicament* befitting the title of the book. Science derives from method and proof (as Russell said: the things that we know.) Philosophy and Faith derive from the things (as Russell also said) we believe (or don't) but DON'T know. This territory has been traversed by greater minds than mine, but, you know, just sayin'. Best Wishes for Mr. Clayton. Advice to all who would write about religion, philosophy and science in the same book? Be clear about what your arguments/assertions are, before choosing a title for your work. And then think on it a spell before making a decision. Some of us still pay attention.
(*see: Stephen Jay Gould's ROCKS OF AGES, 1998)
Harold, Clayton has an interesting view about pantheism as the metaphysical position that best supports the pursuit of science. He argues that it is the reasoning person's religious response to the world because it doesn't interfere with science. Philosophers tend to think about science and faith as pulling in opposite directions, so his view is quite novel. I hope you can tune in to hear more!
I believe it is just a metaphysical view and not a religious ideology or so. Was there any philosopher who announced himself a pantheist, yet was an active member in a religion? If so, then it seems we can take the Christian God and stick him in everything while sticking everything in him.
God is One as All is One.
The Universe is not a twoneverse; it is united except for those who would divide us.
Science and religion or theories and faiths divide the Universe with uncertainty while the single truth of Oneness, simply, absolutely, or most certainly unites us All. If theories and faiths were true they would be called truth.
United we stand, divided we fall, which One are you?
There is no greater power or strength than One.
Am I a theist or an atheist? I am simply a trueist who loves the truth,
And as for the worshop of nature's Oneness, nature's absolute, nature's truth, or nature ourselves, I prefer to just be,
=
If religion is defined as "an effort to make sense of a mysterious world, and to get into satisfactory relations with the mysterious powers that control it," (Herbert J. Muller) then pantheism may well be included as one in the multiplicity of religions. It seems that pantheism has found its most organized form in Hinduism. As Charles Francis Potter put it, "Underlying all sects of Hinduism is usually some sort of pantheism." Every organized religion has a ritual appeal, emotional appeal and intellectual appeal but is in danger of degenerating into "systems of rigid belief and oppressive moral fantasies." (Jacob Needleman) The ultimate test of a religion is not to provide answers but to inspire people to find meaning and direction within their life.
No, Laura. The view, as you have capsulized it, is not novel to me. Nor was it to Gould when he wrote ROCKS OF AGES. Well. We do focus on what we have observations, experiences and opinions (OEOs) about.( Beliefs are in another mode or category, seems to me). Or, alternatively, we may focus on something/someone in which/whom, we have some vested interest. I bought two books yesterday. for two dollars each, I got Paul Davies' THE LAST THREE MINUTES, and Stephen J. Gould's WONDERFUL LIFE. (Hint: I have no vested interested in the lives, notions and writings of these men---but, I do value their OEOs, as scientists first and humans second)
Pantheism?: Read Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land. I did not know the word pantheism when I read that sci-fi novel, uh, fifty years ago. I do know the word now---probably paid attention to it when I hit about age 55. We are all on our own learning curve. Yeah. Pretty much.
The "God principle"
Pantheism is too limited for me.
God is our expression of our inability to to understand!
The god principle is the Universe.
It's the only "thing" that fits all the descriptions, both theological and scientific; Infinite in time, space and energy/power!
The Universe is/are multidimensional 'field(s)" of possibilities/probabilities, unable to depict/grasp = ever changing in all it's aspects= Neti, Neti, Neti; do I have to continue?
Creator and destructor of all "life". Heaven and hell at the same time/space (multi dimentional)
In the beginning there was a void, then there was a "sound"= the Big Bang
It's our finite/primitive/obsolete senses / brain that makes us focus on "substances" limited in time, space and energy.
All religions (= the business of spirituality), "materialized" / limited "God" in words, pictures, statues, stars/planets and even living organisms including ourselves and e.t.'s
and thus creating a huge pandemonium of limited God's.
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.......
J. Lennon
WHY GOD, HOW GOD
John sagely asked: why create a god with qualities which “might not make Him lovable?”
God: NOT who or what is it, but: the object of our (who or what is “we”) love.
The instinct to religiously believe is:
1. to fulfill the ache to give that amazing gift we feel, of our love, and
2. to be confirmed in what we think is good and right, and
3. to refer to a consciousness outside our own (but which we have no evidence of).
In all monotheistic religions, it is some human prophet who provides a roadmap to follow to accomplish 1,2 and 3.
Because we are only aware of one consciousness, each of us, alone, can only invest consciousness in anything else (i.e., other than ourself). We are, each of us, the only participant in this. This is the truest pantheism. 1 = ALL (am I right in this, MJA? I am learning from you).
Here is a truth I found that connects everything, ya everything:
Albert Einstein died searching for an equation that unifies energy or everything, a unified field theory UFT. or theory of everything TOE. He reduced or simplified the universe to his most famous equation e = mc2 then unfortunately got lost and went the other way. Had he simply reduced his own equation to its simplist or single truth, to =, he would have found the proof or truth he was looking for.
It was C or the speed of light that stood in his Way.
Equal or =, mathematically or empirically, is the equation for truth, the truth that unites us all..
When all is equal all is truly One.
Equal cannot be challanged, it can only be obscured.
It is the equation's single absolute.
Thanks John Ken and Philip for the great show,
=
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