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Panentheism
The term panentheism (from the Greek) literally
means “all (is) in God.” As a concept of God, panentheism
attempts to do justice both to divine transcendence
(God is beyond or more than the world)
and divine immanence (God is in the world). Panentheism
maintains that the world is in God, included
in the divine life, but that God’s reality is not
reducible to nor exhausted by the reality of the
individuals or the structures of the universe or of
the universe as a whole. Thus God is all-inclusive or
all-encompassing with respect to being.
Strictly construed this entails that all divine relations
are internal relations, that is, relations between
God as integrated whole and the creatures
as included parts. For panentheism then, while the
universe is part of God, God and the universe do
not form an undifferentiated whole. Panentheism
draws definite distinctions between God as the including
whole and the non-divine parts of the universe
considered in themselves. Certain properties
of divinity, such as aseity (self-existence) or necessary
existence and the all-encompassing attributes
of omnipresence (everywhere present), omniscience
(all-knowing), and omnipotence (all power
or all-powerful) apply to God but definitely not to
individual creatures or to the universe itself. (Note
though that process forms of panentheism find the
notion of divine omnipotence problematic.)
Another important distinction drawn between
God and creatures concerns mutual freedom. Panentheism
upholds indeterminism: Spontaneity
and free will in the universe mean that antecedent
causes do not fully determine present events and
actions, so the future is not fully predictable or
foreknown, even by God; creatures have real
choices. In summary, while God is not an individual
simply distinct from the nondivine individuals,
in the way, for example, that one human being is
distinct from another, neither is God to be equated
with the universe or its constituents.
Panentheism as alternative
In construing divine transcendence and immanence
as above, panentheism mediates between
deism and certain forms of traditional theism on
the one hand and pantheism on the other hand, attempting
to avoid pitfalls of both. Deism, as developed
in the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, holds that God
created the world to operate according to natural
laws but is uninvolved in its destiny. The God
posited by traditional theism is not as separate
from the universe as is in deism; however, panentheists
judge what they call classical theism to be
equally inadequate. Classical theism, in affirming
certain divine attributes stemming from ancient
Greek philosophy—immutability (unchangeability),
impassibility (to be unaffected by another),
and eternity (in the sense of strict timelessness)—
does not permit God to be in genuine relation to
the world.
The term pantheism literally means “all (is)
God.” That is, everything at least in its true essence
is divine. Clearly panentheism has affinities with
pantheism. American Charles Hartshorne (1897–
2000), the principle theological interpreter and developer
of process philosophy, at first labeled his
concept of God “The New Pantheism.” The trajectory
of German idealism produced both pantheists
and panentheists. One could say that panentheism
attempts to get as close to pantheism as possible in
stressing the intimate relationship between God
and nature, while still maintaining clear distinctions
between them. A key difference is that pantheism
tends to a (quasi) materialistic or (quasi) substantialistic
understanding of God: Entities in the world
share the divine essence or substance to a greater
or lesser degree. Therefore, any distinction between
God as a whole and the constituents of the
universe is a matter of degree rather than of kind.
In addition, since everything is a mode or attribute
of God, pantheism typically denies indeterminate
freedom.
The metaphor or analogy of the world as the
body of God is popular among panentheists.
Hartshorne compares the God-world relationship
to that between a person’s mind and the cells of its
body. Arthur Peacocke (1924– ), a key figure in the
science and religion dialogue, speaks approvingly
of the feminine, womb imagery that panentheism
encourages: As with a fetus in its mother, creation
is within God. American Christian theologian Sallie
McFague (1933– ) has been the principal developer
of the metaphor of world as body of
God. British philosophical theologian Grace
Jantzen (1948– ), in drawing the connection between
God and world so tightly as to jettison indeterminate
freedom, offers a pantheistic version
of the metaphor.
Some connections with science
Panentheism offers diverse advantages for those
interested in the intersection of science and religion.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), in his
role as a philosopher of science, and others have
observed that the dominant model for the natural
world moved from mechanism to organism during
the nineteenth century. Panentheism offers an
organistic understanding of the God-world relation
in contrast to deism’s mechanistic understanding.
Like deism, panentheism offers a concept of God
where natural laws or processes are respected,
where God refrains from interventions that overturn
nature. The crucial difference is that panentheism
posits a God intimately involved, continuously
interacting, with the world.
Panentheism’s intimate connection of God with
a world in time entails a God who in some sense or
dimension is also temporal. As the trajectory of
modern science—from the Newtonian mechanics
of the Enlightenment to evolution to Albert Einstein’s
theory of relativity—has put an exclamation
point on the temporal nature of reality, panentheism
offers a consonant concept of the divine.
As indicated above, creaturely spontaneity and
indeterminate freedom are crucial for panentheism
in its distinction of God from creation. Both quantum
mechanics, in stating that the motions of subatomic
particles are probabilistic rather than determinable
from known antecedent conditions, and
chaos theory, in demonstrating the unpredictability
of future events, provide openings for panentheists
and other supporters of indeterminacy. In particular,
Peacocke, a British physical chemist, Anglican
priest, and panentheistic theologian, applauds panentheism’s
picture of a God who is continuously
creative in relation to an open universe. It must be
noted, though, that no consensus exists among scientists
that quantum indeterminacy or, even less,
chaos theory unpredictability entail any ultimate
indeterminacy in the universe.
Avoiding violation of natural processes is not
only a concern of panentheists but of other theologians
involved in the science and religion dialogue,
including Americans Thomas F. Tracy and
Nancey Murphy. It may seem that such thinkers
must renounce any traditional Christian notion of
special providence, namely, that God causes particular
events in natural or human history (in contrast
to general providence, that God determines
the general laws or processes of the universe),
however, this is not uniformly the case.
For example, in his later writings, Peacocke
develops his notion of top-down causation, maintaining
that divine action with respect to the universe
not only upholds general laws or patterns
but causes specific events. Whether such divine
predetermination is compatible with indeterminate
creaturely decisions and their chance interactions
is a major difficulty for this viewpoint.
Murphy and Tracy purchase special providence
by positing that God determines the probabilistic
quantum movements of subatomic particles
and that these in turn produce macro-effects that
result in specific events. The virtue of this notion is
that it contravenes no natural laws or regularities:
The quantum events that God determines are
within the scientifically permissible ranges of motion,
and apparently no conceivable method exists
for discerning God’s causation on the quantum
level. At the same time, this “invisibility” is problematic:
That God ultimately causes a valued event
(as opposed to, say, an event issuing in tremendous
evil) appears to be a matter of blind faith, at
least as far as physics is concerned. Other problems
for this viewpoint are the speculative nature
of the connection between quantum events and
macro-effects and, for advocates of indeterminacy
and openness, the denial that quantum events are
ultimately indeterminate. More broadly, critics of
the above approaches might judge them to be
backdoor attempts to reintroduce too much transcendent
or interventionist causation by God.
Panentheism’s history
The term panentheism was coined by German idealist
philosopher Carl Christian Friedrich Krause
(1781–1832). As mentioned above, German idealism,
with strong ties to nature romanticism, produced
various panentheistic and pantheistic
thinkers. The clearest and most fully developed
panentheistic model was that of physicist, experimental
psychologist, and philosopher Gustav
Theodor Fechner (1801–1887). Earlier examples of
panentheism or panentheistic tendencies include
Western mysticism and Hindu bhakti (referring to
devotion to a personal god) and its principal theologian
Ramanuja (traditional dates, 1017–1137).
These examples are not surprising, as mysticism
generally softens the creator-creature distinction,
while in India that distinction is not drawn as
sharply as is typical in Western religions.
Various philosophers and theologians of the
twentieth century have been labeled panentheists,
including Nicolai Berdyaev, William Pepperell
Montague, Paul Weiss, Karl Rahner, and John Mac-
Quarrie. While the panentheistic affinities of these
thinkers are undeniable, some failed to develop a
clear panentheistic model, others promoted ideas
contrary to basic premises of panentheism, while
still others explicitly refused the label panentheism
for their thought. Coming out of German idealism,
American Paul Tillich (1886–1965), an exile from
the Nazis, is regarded as one of the premier theologians
of the twentieth century. Tillichians
widely acknowledge his panentheism. His famous
phrase, “God is not a being, but being-itself,” has
obvious panentheistic implications. Tillich, who
claimed the phrase “eschatological pan-en-theism,”
was accused by some critics of pantheism, to
which he would jokingly respond, “This pantheist
is going to take a walk in his garden.” Tillich’s reluctance
to disavow the attributes of divine immutability,
impassibility, and eternity compromise
his manifest panentheistic intentions, according to
American theologian David Nikkel (1952– ).
The fullest explicit development of panentheism
in the twentieth century came from process
thought. Whitehead, a British mathematical physicist
and philosopher, originated process philosophy,
its theism developed and to some extent modified
by Hartshorne. For process thought, reality at
its depth is not static being but rather a process of
becoming. God is not an exception to, but the
highest exemplar of, this ultimate or metaphysical
principle. As did Fechner, process thought advocates
panpsychism, that all integrated entities of the
universe possess some degree of sentience or feeling.
The fundamental unit of reality for process philosophy
is an occasion of experience. God, in the
consequent nature for Whitehead or the concrete
pole of divinity for Hartshorne, includes all past occasions
of experience. Process panentheism emphasizes
omniscience and, to coin a word, omnipathy
(all-feeling). God intimately knows all
experience, is affected by, sympathizes with, all
feelings. As Whitehead puts it, “God is the fellow
sufferer who understands” (1928, p. 351). Whitehead
purchases divine transcendence through the
primordial nature, which is the reservoir of all possibility.
Hartshorne purchases the same through the
abstract pole of divinity, which refers to the
changeless character of God, namely, that God will
always lovingly know and integrate whatever experiences
occur in the universe. If the world influences
God as object of divine knowledge, God
likewise influences the nondivine individuals as
object of their awareness, as a lure providing
preferences for their actions. To what extent the divine
lure only persuades versus constrains decisions
as the unavoidable object of awareness is debated
by process theologians. What is beyond
dispute is the rejection of omnipotence, if interpreted
to mean God is all-powerful, which would
overthrow indeterminate freedom.
Contemporary issues
McFague, mentioned earlier in relation to feminist
divine imagery, has presented one of the most
well-known models of panentheism in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her development
of metaphors for a God in intimate relation
with the world enflesh and enhance the
sense of the concept of panentheism. On the other
hand, her doubts concerning what we can actually
know about God pose a potential problem for her
panentheism. McFague’s minimal Christian theistic
claim is that there is a power in the universe on the
side of life that is, metaphorically speaking, personal.
When McFague adds that this power is
many rather than one, critics may question
whether God in her concept or metaphor is sufficiently
integrated to panentheistically include the
universe; critics may question whether there is a
difference of substance between her view and
American Christian theologian Gordon Kaufman’s
serendipitous creativity, that God should refer to
the cosmic and evolutionary forces that have resulted
in life and human life rather than to any
personal or agential reality. Contrast McFague’s
outlook to that of Tillich and Hartshorne, who
maintained that God is “not less than conscious” or
superconscious (while recognizing the anthropomorphic
dangers of attributing conscious personhood
to God).
Many theologians in the science and religion
dialogue affirm some notion of God’s sustaining
creativity common to the Western religious traditions:
Every aspect of every particular constituent
of the universe is radically contingent, dependent
upon divine power for its continued existence moment
by moment. Process theism rejects such an
understanding of divine power. Whitehead is clear
that both divine and finite occasions of experience
are manifestations of the ultimate metaphysical
principle of creative synthesis, each such occasion
possessing ultimate independence of being. Whitehead
reasons that if God were upholding the very
existence of occasions, then indeterminate freedom
would be overridden and his panentheism
would transmute into a pantheism. Christian process
theologians, while often neglecting to acknowledge
this Whiteheadian perspective on divine
power, have not challenged it either. The
question for panentheists who wish to retain a notion
of divine sustaining activity is this: Can omnipotence
be defined as “all power” rather than
“all-powerful”? Can God panentheistically encompass
all power by sustaining and thus empowering
the existence of each creature, as an existence with
indeterminate freedom? If such a concept is not
self-contradictory, then one can avoid pantheism
and affirm a notion of divine power more consonant
with the all-inclusive logic of panentheism.
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