Panentheism

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=185 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="03fb9c00dduajq.jpg"> <div> <B> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="70" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 76 WIDTH="66"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="76" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="66" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></tD> </tR> </TABLE></B></div> <div> <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Apologetics Issues"><U><B>Apologetics Issues</B></U></A></div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFBF0" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>Christian Debatorial Works</B></FONT>    |     <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Christian Debatorial Works"><U>home</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id312.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Defending God"><U>Defending God</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id309.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Defending Christianity"><U>Defending Christianity</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id110.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Defending the Bible"><U>Defending the Bible</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id98.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Strategies for Witnessing to Atheists"><U>Strategies for Witnessing to Atheists</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id138.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Countering Islam"><U>Countering Islam</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id325.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Countering Judaism"><U>Countering Judaism</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id211.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Paganism"><U>Paganism</U></A>   |   <B>Panentheism</B>   |   <A HREF="id375.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Pantheism"><U>Pantheism</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id231.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="WarGods"><U>War-Gods</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id261.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Marxism"><U>Marxism</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id337.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bahai"><U>Baha'i</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id338.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Buddhism"><U>Buddhism</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id359.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Hinduism"><U>Hinduism</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id377.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Shinto"><U>Shinto</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id351.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Sigmund Freud"><U>Sigmund Freud</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id362.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Human Genome Project"><U>Human Genome Project</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id363.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Humanism"><U>Humanism</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id365.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="David Hume"><U>David Hume</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id369.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Immanuel Kant"><U>Immanuel Kant</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id373.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Miracles"><U>Miracles</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id376.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Prayer and Meditation from a Scientific "><U>Prayer and Meditation from a Scientific Perspective</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id385.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="JCNot4Me Webpage"><U>JCNot4Me Webpage</U></A></div> <div> Panentheism</div> <div> The term <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>panentheism </I></FONT>(from the Greek) literally</div> <div> means “all (is) in God.” As a concept of God, panentheism</div> <div> attempts to do justice both to divine transcendence</div> <div> (God is beyond or more than the world)</div> <div> and divine immanence (God is in the world). Panentheism</div> <div> maintains that the world is in God, included</div> <div> in the divine life, but that God’s reality is not</div> <div> reducible to nor exhausted by the reality of the</div> <div> individuals or the structures of the universe or of</div> <div> the universe as a whole. Thus God is all-inclusive or</div> <div> all-encompassing with respect to being.</div> <div> Strictly construed this entails that all divine relations</div> <div> are internal relations, that is, relations between</div> <div> God as integrated whole and the creatures</div> <div> as included parts. For panentheism then, while the</div> <div> universe is part of God, God and the universe do</div> <div> not form an undifferentiated whole. Panentheism</div> <div> draws definite distinctions between God as the including</div> <div> whole and the non-divine parts of the universe</div> <div> considered in themselves. Certain properties</div> <div> of divinity, such as <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>aseity </I></FONT>(self-existence) or necessary</div> <div> existence and the all-encompassing attributes</div> <div> of omnipresence (everywhere present), omniscience</div> <div> (all-knowing), and omnipotence (all power</div> <div> or all-powerful) apply to God but definitely not to</div> <div> individual creatures or to the universe itself. (Note</div> <div> though that process forms of panentheism find the</div> <div> notion of divine omnipotence problematic.)</div> <div> Another important distinction drawn between</div> <div> God and creatures concerns mutual freedom. Panentheism</div> <div> upholds indeterminism: Spontaneity</div> <div> and free will in the universe mean that antecedent</div> <div> causes do not fully determine present events and</div> <div> actions, so the future is not fully predictable or</div> <div> foreknown, even by God; creatures have real</div> <div> choices. In summary, while God is not an individual</div> <div> simply distinct from the nondivine individuals,</div> <div> in the way, for example, that one human being is</div> <div> distinct from another, neither is God to be equated</div> <div> with the universe or its constituents.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Panentheism as alternative</B></div> <div> In construing divine transcendence and immanence</div> <div> as above, panentheism mediates between</div> <div> deism and certain forms of traditional theism on</div> <div> the one hand and pantheism on the other hand, attempting</div> <div> to avoid pitfalls of both. Deism, as developed</div> <div> in the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth</div> <div> and eighteenth centuries, holds that God</div> <div> created the world to operate according to natural</div> <div> laws but is uninvolved in its destiny. The God</div> <div> posited by traditional theism is not as separate</div> <div> from the universe as is in deism; however, panentheists</div> <div> judge what they call <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>classical theism </I></FONT>to be</div> <div> equally inadequate. Classical theism, in affirming</div> <div> certain divine attributes stemming from ancient</div> <div> Greek philosophy—immutability (unchangeability),</div> <div> impassibility (to be unaffected by another),</div> <div> and eternity (in the sense of strict timelessness)—</div> <div> does not permit God to be in genuine relation to</div> <div> the world.</div> <div> The term <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>pantheism </I></FONT>literally means “all (is)</div> <div> God.” That is, everything at least in its true essence</div> <div> is divine. Clearly panentheism has affinities with</div> <div> pantheism. American Charles Hartshorne (1897–</div> <div> 2000), the principle theological interpreter and developer</div> <div> of process philosophy, at first labeled his</div> <div> concept of God “The New Pantheism.” The trajectory</div> <div> of German idealism produced both pantheists</div> <div> and panentheists. One could say that panentheism</div> <div> attempts to get as close to pantheism as possible in</div> <div> stressing the intimate relationship between God</div> <div> and nature, while still maintaining clear distinctions</div> <div> between them. A key difference is that pantheism</div> <div> tends to a (quasi) materialistic or (quasi) substantialistic</div> <div> understanding of God: Entities in the world</div> <div> share the divine essence or substance to a greater</div> <div> or lesser degree. Therefore, any distinction between</div> <div> God as a whole and the constituents of the</div> <div> universe is a matter of degree rather than of kind.</div> <div> In addition, since everything is a mode or attribute</div> <div> of God, pantheism typically denies indeterminate</div> <div> freedom.</div> <div> The metaphor or analogy of the world as the</div> <div> body of God is popular among panentheists.</div> <div> Hartshorne compares the God-world relationship</div> <div> to that between a person’s mind and the cells of its</div> <div> body. Arthur Peacocke (1924– ), a key figure in the</div> <div> science and religion dialogue, speaks approvingly</div> <div> of the feminine, womb imagery that panentheism</div> <div> encourages: As with a fetus in its mother, creation</div> <div> is within God. American Christian theologian Sallie</div> <div> McFague (1933– ) has been the principal developer</div> <div> of the metaphor of world as body of</div> <div> God. British philosophical theologian Grace</div> <div> Jantzen (1948– ), in drawing the connection between</div> <div> God and world so tightly as to jettison indeterminate</div> <div> freedom, offers a pantheistic version</div> <div> of the metaphor.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Some connections with science</B></div> <div> Panentheism offers diverse advantages for those</div> <div> interested in the intersection of science and religion.</div> <div> Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947), in his</div> <div> role as a philosopher of science, and others have</div> <div> observed that the dominant model for the natural</div> <div> world moved from mechanism to organism during</div> <div> the nineteenth century. Panentheism offers an</div> <div> organistic understanding of the God-world relation</div> <div> in contrast to deism’s mechanistic understanding.</div> <div> Like deism, panentheism offers a concept of God</div> <div> where natural laws or processes are respected,</div> <div> where God refrains from interventions that overturn</div> <div> nature. The crucial difference is that panentheism</div> <div> posits a God intimately involved, continuously</div> <div> interacting, with the world.</div> <div> Panentheism’s intimate connection of God with</div> <div> a world in time entails a God who in some sense or</div> <div> dimension is also temporal. As the trajectory of</div> <div> modern science—from the Newtonian mechanics</div> <div> of the Enlightenment to evolution to Albert Einstein’s</div> <div> theory of relativity—has put an exclamation</div> <div> point on the temporal nature of reality, panentheism</div> <div> offers a consonant concept of the divine.</div> <div> As indicated above, creaturely spontaneity and</div> <div> indeterminate freedom are crucial for panentheism</div> <div> in its distinction of God from creation. Both quantum</div> <div> mechanics, in stating that the motions of subatomic</div> <div> particles are probabilistic rather than determinable</div> <div> from known antecedent conditions, and</div> <div> chaos theory, in demonstrating the unpredictability</div> <div> of future events, provide openings for panentheists</div> <div> and other supporters of indeterminacy. In particular,</div> <div> Peacocke, a British physical chemist, Anglican</div> <div> priest, and panentheistic theologian, applauds panentheism’s</div> <div> picture of a God who is continuously</div> <div> creative in relation to an open universe. It must be</div> <div> noted, though, that no consensus exists among scientists</div> <div> that quantum indeterminacy or, even less,</div> <div> chaos theory unpredictability entail any ultimate</div> <div> indeterminacy in the universe.</div> <div> Avoiding violation of natural processes is not</div> <div> only a concern of panentheists but of other theologians</div> <div> involved in the science and religion dialogue,</div> <div> including Americans Thomas F. Tracy and</div> <div> Nancey Murphy. It may seem that such thinkers</div> <div> must renounce any traditional Christian notion of</div> <div> special providence, namely, that God causes particular</div> <div> events in natural or human history (in contrast</div> <div> to general providence, that God determines</div> <div> the general laws or processes of the universe),</div> <div> however, this is not uniformly the case.</div> <div> For example, in his later writings, Peacocke</div> <div> develops his notion of top-down causation, maintaining</div> <div> that divine action with respect to the universe</div> <div> not only upholds general laws or patterns</div> <div> but causes specific events. Whether such divine</div> <div> predetermination is compatible with indeterminate</div> <div> creaturely decisions and their chance interactions</div> <div> is a major difficulty for this viewpoint.</div> <div> Murphy and Tracy purchase special providence</div> <div> by positing that God determines the probabilistic</div> <div> quantum movements of subatomic particles</div> <div> and that these in turn produce macro-effects that</div> <div> result in specific events. The virtue of this notion is</div> <div> that it contravenes no natural laws or regularities:</div> <div> The quantum events that God determines are</div> <div> within the scientifically permissible ranges of motion,</div> <div> and apparently no conceivable method exists</div> <div> for discerning God’s causation on the quantum</div> <div> level. At the same time, this “invisibility” is problematic:</div> <div> That God ultimately causes a valued event</div> <div> (as opposed to, say, an event issuing in tremendous</div> <div> evil) appears to be a matter of blind faith, at</div> <div> least as far as physics is concerned. Other problems</div> <div> for this viewpoint are the speculative nature</div> <div> of the connection between quantum events and</div> <div> macro-effects and, for advocates of indeterminacy</div> <div> and openness, the denial that quantum events are</div> <div> ultimately indeterminate. More broadly, critics of</div> <div> the above approaches might judge them to be</div> <div> backdoor attempts to reintroduce too much transcendent</div> <div> or interventionist causation by God.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Panentheism’s history</B></div> <div> The term <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>panentheism </I></FONT>was coined by German idealist</div> <div> philosopher Carl Christian Friedrich Krause</div> <div> (1781–1832). As mentioned above, German idealism,</div> <div> with strong ties to nature romanticism, produced</div> <div> various panentheistic and pantheistic</div> <div> thinkers. The clearest and most fully developed</div> <div> panentheistic model was that of physicist, experimental</div> <div> psychologist, and philosopher Gustav</div> <div> Theodor Fechner (1801–1887). Earlier examples of</div> <div> panentheism or panentheistic tendencies include</div> <div> Western mysticism and Hindu <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>bhakti </I></FONT>(referring to</div> <div> devotion to a personal god) and its principal theologian</div> <div> Ramanuja (traditional dates, 1017–1137).</div> <div> These examples are not surprising, as mysticism</div> <div> generally softens the creator-creature distinction,</div> <div> while in India that distinction is not drawn as</div> <div> sharply as is typical in Western religions.</div> <div> Various philosophers and theologians of the</div> <div> twentieth century have been labeled panentheists,</div> <div> including Nicolai Berdyaev, William Pepperell</div> <div> Montague, Paul Weiss, Karl Rahner, and John Mac-</div> <div> Quarrie. While the panentheistic affinities of these</div> <div> thinkers are undeniable, some failed to develop a</div> <div> clear panentheistic model, others promoted ideas</div> <div> contrary to basic premises of panentheism, while</div> <div> still others explicitly refused the label <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>panentheism</I></FONT></div> <div> for their thought. Coming out of German idealism,</div> <div> American Paul Tillich (1886–1965), an exile from</div> <div> the Nazis, is regarded as one of the premier theologians</div> <div> of the twentieth century. Tillichians</div> <div> widely acknowledge his panentheism. His famous</div> <div> phrase, “God is not a being, but being-itself,” has</div> <div> obvious panentheistic implications. Tillich, who</div> <div> claimed the phrase “eschatological pan-en-theism,”</div> <div> was accused by some critics of pantheism, to</div> <div> which he would jokingly respond, “This pantheist</div> <div> is going to take a walk in his garden.” Tillich’s reluctance</div> <div> to disavow the attributes of divine immutability,</div> <div> impassibility, and eternity compromise</div> <div> his manifest panentheistic intentions, according to</div> <div> American theologian David Nikkel (1952– ).</div> <div> The fullest explicit development of panentheism</div> <div> in the twentieth century came from process</div> <div> thought. Whitehead, a British mathematical physicist</div> <div> and philosopher, originated process philosophy,</div> <div> its theism developed and to some extent modified</div> <div> by Hartshorne. For process thought, reality at</div> <div> its depth is not static being but rather a process of</div> <div> becoming. God is not an exception to, but the</div> <div> highest exemplar of, this ultimate or metaphysical</div> <div> principle. As did Fechner, process thought advocates</div> <div> <I>panpsychism, </I><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-Light" >that all integrated entities of the</FONT></div> <div> universe possess some degree of sentience or feeling.</div> <div> The fundamental unit of reality for process philosophy</div> <div> is an occasion of experience. God, in the</div> <div> consequent nature for Whitehead or the concrete</div> <div> pole of divinity for Hartshorne, includes all past occasions</div> <div> of experience. Process panentheism emphasizes</div> <div> omniscience and, to coin a word, <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>omnipathy</I></FONT></div> <div> (all-feeling). God intimately knows all</div> <div> experience, is affected by, sympathizes with, all</div> <div> feelings. As Whitehead puts it, “God is the fellow</div> <div> sufferer who understands” (1928, p. 351). Whitehead</div> <div> purchases divine transcendence through the</div> <div> primordial nature, which is the reservoir of all possibility.</div> <div> Hartshorne purchases the same through the</div> <div> abstract pole of divinity, which refers to the</div> <div> changeless character of God, namely, that God will</div> <div> always lovingly know and integrate whatever experiences</div> <div> occur in the universe. If the world influences</div> <div> God as object of divine knowledge, God</div> <div> likewise influences the nondivine individuals as</div> <div> object of their awareness, as a lure providing</div> <div> preferences for their actions. To what extent the divine</div> <div> lure only persuades versus constrains decisions</div> <div> as the unavoidable object of awareness is debated</div> <div> by process theologians. What is beyond</div> <div> dispute is the rejection of omnipotence, if interpreted</div> <div> to mean God is all-powerful, which would</div> <div> overthrow indeterminate freedom.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Contemporary issues</B></div> <div> McFague, mentioned earlier in relation to feminist</div> <div> divine imagery, has presented one of the most</div> <div> well-known models of panentheism in the late</div> <div> twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her development</div> <div> of metaphors for a God in intimate relation</div> <div> with the world enflesh and enhance the</div> <div> sense of the concept of panentheism. On the other</div> <div> hand, her doubts concerning what we can actually</div> <div> know about God pose a potential problem for her</div> <div> panentheism. McFague’s minimal Christian theistic</div> <div> claim is that there is a power in the universe on the</div> <div> side of life that is, metaphorically speaking, personal.</div> <div> When McFague adds that this power is</div> <div> many rather than one, critics may question</div> <div> whether God in her concept or metaphor is sufficiently</div> <div> integrated to panentheistically include the</div> <div> universe; critics may question whether there is a</div> <div> difference of substance between her view and</div> <div> American Christian theologian Gordon Kaufman’s</div> <div> serendipitous creativity, that <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>God </I></FONT>should refer to</div> <div> the cosmic and evolutionary forces that have resulted</div> <div> in life and human life rather than to any</div> <div> personal or agential reality. Contrast McFague’s</div> <div> outlook to that of Tillich and Hartshorne, who</div> <div> maintained that God is “not less than conscious” or</div> <div> superconscious (while recognizing the anthropomorphic</div> <div> dangers of attributing conscious personhood</div> <div> to God).</div> <div> Many theologians in the science and religion</div> <div> dialogue affirm some notion of God’s sustaining</div> <div> creativity common to the Western religious traditions:</div> <div> Every aspect of every particular constituent</div> <div> of the universe is radically contingent, dependent</div> <div> upon divine power for its continued existence moment</div> <div> by moment. Process theism rejects such an</div> <div> understanding of divine power. Whitehead is clear</div> <div> that both divine and finite occasions of experience</div> <div> are manifestations of the ultimate metaphysical</div> <div> principle of creative synthesis, each such occasion</div> <div> possessing ultimate independence of being. Whitehead</div> <div> reasons that if God were upholding the very</div> <div> existence of occasions, then indeterminate freedom</div> <div> would be overridden and his panentheism</div> <div> would transmute into a pantheism. Christian process</div> <div> theologians, while often neglecting to acknowledge</div> <div> this Whiteheadian perspective on divine</div> <div> power, have not challenged it either. The</div> <div> question for panentheists who wish to retain a notion</div> <div> of divine sustaining activity is this: Can <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Garamond-LightItalic" ><I>omnipotence</I></FONT></div> <div> be defined as “all power” rather than</div> <div> “all-powerful”? Can God panentheistically encompass</div> <div> all power by sustaining and thus empowering</div> <div> the existence of each creature, as an existence with</div> <div> indeterminate freedom? If such a concept is not</div> <div> self-contradictory, then one can avoid pantheism</div> <div> and affirm a notion of divine power more consonant</div> <div> with the all-inclusive logic of panentheism.</div> </td> </tr></table></body>