pantheism

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(păn'thē-ĭz'əm) pronunciation
n.
  1. A doctrine identifying the Deity with the universe and its phenomena.
  2. Belief in and worship of all gods.
pantheist pan'the·ist n.
pantheistic pan'the·is'tic or pan'the·is'ti·cal adj.
pantheistically pan'the·is'ti·cal·ly adv.


Doctrine that the universe is God and, conversely, that there is no god apart from the substance, forces, and laws manifested in the universe. Pantheism characterizes many Buddhist and Hindu doctrines and can be seen in such Hindu works as the Vedas and the Bhagavadgita. Numerous Greek philosophers contributed to the foundations of Western pantheism. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the tradition was continued in Neoplatonism and Judeo-Christian mysticism. In the 17th century Benedict de Spinoza formulated the most thoroughly pantheistic philosophical system, arguing that God and Nature are merely two names for one reality.

For more information on pantheism, visit Britannica.com.

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The philosophical doctrine which identifies God with nature. The classical phrase used for describing pantheistic theories is "God is all and all is God." The chief and most systematic philosopher of pantheism is Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677), a Jew who was excommunicated for his views by the Portuguese community in Amsterdam.

Pantheistic ideas are traceable to early Greek thinkers and their idea of emanation as a theory which explains the origin of the universe. Through Neoplatonism (see Platonism and Neoplatonism, Jewish medieval scholars were familiar with such writings. Solomon Ibn Gabirol in his Mekor Ḥayyim has a Neo-platonic system of graded emanation as an explanation of creation from the single source which is God (see Sefirot). Abraham Ibn Ezra wrote, "God is One. He is the creator of all and He is all ... God is all and all comes from Him" (Commentary on Gen. 1:26; Ex. 23:21).

Some writers have even claimed to discover pantheistic implications in classical rabbinic theology with its description of God as Ha-Makom, "the Place." This teaching could mean more than God's omnipresence, pointing to the actual identification of God with the reality of the material world in every place. Philo seems to have understood the rabbinic concept in this way, which can be seen as a derivative of the concept of the immanence of God.

More clearly close to possible pantheistic concepts are ideas put forward by the kabbalists and Ḥasidic theorists (see Mysticism). The Zohar, and particularly Moses Cordovero, explained their systems of the Sefirot as describing the Divine emanations from the pure spirit to the material world, suggesting a kind of unity between God and the world. Menahem Mendel of Lubavich (1789-1866) wrote, "There is no existence whatsoever apart from His existence" (Derekh Mitsvotekha). The contemporary philosopher, Hugo Bergman, described Abraham Isaac Kook's system as "mystical pantheism." Kook taught that all reality is a manifestation of God in a myriad of forms which have no reality without Him.

The Jewish thinker who worked within the framework of Jewish life and thought, and who came the closest to pantheism, was Nachman Krochmal (1785-1840). Adopting some of the kabbalistic theories, he drew the conclusion that God created the world out of Himself.

However, despite all such teachings which seem to leave room for pantheistic concepts, none represents pure pantheism. This is because none of the above Jewish systems identifies God as the universe. To teach that He is the soul or the source or the vital force from which all things emanate still does not say that the emanated world forms a unity with the emanating God. God is immanent, that is, He is ever present and close to all things which He created, but He is still transcendent, that is, over and above the universe which owes its existence to Him. Judaism, in all its varied expressions, is absolute in its theistic emphasis. There is, in Judaism, a transcendental God who acts separately on the world and exercises His separate will on the world.


The Religion Book:

Anthropocentrism

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Webster's dictionary gives three meanings for the word anthropocentrism. Taken together, they lead to a specific mode of religious thought that has affected the course of human history.

1. Considering man to be the central or most significant fact of the universe.

2. Assuming man to be the measure of all things.

3. -Interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences.

Pantheism, on the other hand, is the belief that one absolute reality exists everywhere and in everything. Indigenous pantheistic religions that view humans as part of a whole, neither more nor less important than the animals and plants existing in the environment, tend to view Earth as a living, breathing entity. In this view, Earth is the very body of the divine, so the sacred becomes feminine, the goddess, from whose womb all life springs.

This view is by no means limited to primitive people. Recently one name for the goddess, Gaia, has been resurrected by science to describe the contemporary unifying principle of the earth itself as a living organism, with all systems of life and energy combining to produce the "balance of nature" as we experience it (See Gaia Principle). The Gaia principle is what some religions have called Mother Earth or the Divine Mother Goddess.

But once humans become the center and culminating fact of creation (anthropocentrism), the psychology of religious thought immediately changes. Rather than becoming a living framework for the very existence of the balance of nature, Earth becomes a smorgasbord of natural resources put here for human consumption and exploitation. Humans then live "on" Earth rather than "in" it.

This view is expressed in the first chapter of the Jewish/Christian Bible:

God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food." (Gen. 1:28, 29)

It is probably not a coincidence that once this view became scriptural dogma, and wherever it was introduced into indigenous cultures, conditions quickly changed. Masculine-dominated religious systems quickly replaced the feminine. Nature became something to subdue "by the sweat of your brow," in the words of Genesis 3. Pantheism, respect for Mother Earth, and worship of the goddess became worship of the God. Humans were now separate from nature, and religions developed hierarchical structures.

An example of these conflicting religious views can be seen in the European invasion of New England beginning in the seventeenth century. Puritan preachers such as Cotton Mather thundered warnings from their Boston pulpits about the "howling wilderness" where "wild creatures" (meaning American Indians, presumably without souls) worshiping the "fiery worm who flies by night" practiced all sorts of "abominations." The wilderness was to be tamed. Wolves, trees, bears, panthers, and Indians were to be removed because they hindered the spread of humans who were put on Earth "to subdue it." It became the "Puritan ethic" to work hard to subdue a wild land for the glory of God. The concept of manifest destiny spread this doctrine from sea to shining sea in less than two centuries.

Deep Ecology environmentalists today place what they consider to be exploitation of natural resources into the realm of religious holy war (See Deep Ecology). They believe that both so-called tree-huggers and oil-drilling companies are products of certain religious ideologies.

English historian and philosopher Arnold Toynbee said it this way:

If I am right in my diagnosis of mankind's present-day distress, the remedy lies in reverting from the world view of monotheism to the world view of pantheism, which is older and was once universal.

Sources: Campbell, Joseph. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Gaskell, G. A. Dictionary of All Scriptures and Myths. New York: Gramercy Books, 1960. Mitchell, John Hanson. Ceremonial Time. New York: Warner Books, 1984. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Toynbee, Arnold J. A Study of History. London, 1934. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and Seven Language Dictionary. 3 vols. Chicago: William Benton, 1966.


The view that God is in everything, or that God and the universe are one. The most celebrated pantheistic system of modern philosophy is that of Spinoza, although pantheistic rhetoric flourished in the 19th century, for example in the work of Emerson.

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pantheism (păn'thēĭzəm) [Gr. pan=all, theos=God], name used to denote any system of belief or speculation that includes the teaching "God is all, and all is God." Pantheism, in other words, identifies the universe with God or God with the universe. The term is thought to have been employed first by John Toland in the 18th cent., but pantheistic views are of very great antiquity. While all pantheism is monistic, it is expressed in different ways according to what is meant by the one whole that gathers up in itself all that exists, or what is meant by God. If the pantheist starts with the belief that the one great reality, eternal and infinite, is God, he sees everything finite and temporal as but some part of God. There is nothing separate or distinct from God, for God is the universe. If, on the other hand, the conception taken as the foundation of the system is that the great inclusive unity is the world itself, or the universe, God is swallowed up in that unity, which may be designated nature. Some forms of pantheism have had their beginnings in religion; others have been based upon a philosophic, scientific, or poetic point of view. Noteworthy among the religious forms is Hinduism, in which the only reality, the supreme unity, is Brahman. This conception is closely connected with the idea of emanation. Pantheism had a place in the speculations of some Greek philosophers. Xenophanes taught that the one God could know no motion or change. The conception of Parmenides left no room for development or ethical meaning. Stoicism gave a more definite expression to pantheistic doctrine, emphasizing the identity of God and the world. There is pantheism in the teachings of the Neoplatonists and of such Christian philosophers as Erigena and such mystics as Eckhart and Boehme. The writings of Giordano Bruno of the 16th cent. carried such weight as to influence the development of modern thought, especially through Spinoza, in whose monistic system pantheism receives its most complete and precise expression. In it God is the unlimited, all-inclusive substance, the first cause of the universe, with innumerable attributes, two of which, thinking and extension, are capable of being perceived. Pantheism of a kind can be traced in the idealistic philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and Schleiermacher. Together with mysticism, it fills a large place in literature, particularly in the poetry of nature.


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A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce


n.

The doctrine that everything is God, in contradistinction to the doctrine that God is everything.


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  See crossword solutions for the clue Pantheism.

Pantheism is the view that the Universe (or Nature) and God (or divinity) are identical.[1] Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek (pan) meaning "all" and the Greek (theos) meaning "God". As such, pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of relating to the Universe.[2] The central ideas found in almost all pantheistic beliefs are the view of the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity and the sacredness of Nature.

There is no official universal symbol for all types of pantheism, but one symbol used by the World Pantheist Movement (WPM)is the spiral as seen in the curves of the nautilus shell, or in the spiral arms of a galaxy, showing the link between the cosmic physical and the biological. The spiral represents a variety of things: it means evolution, eternity, spirituality, growth.[3] Sometimes the Nautilus spiral alone is used; it embodies the Fibonacci series and the golden ratio. Another symbol used by the Universal Pantheist Society is a golden sun on an azure background, with a pi symbol in the center.[4]

In pantheism, God is identical with the universe, but in Panentheism God lies within and also beyond or outside of the universe.[5]

Contents

History

The first known use of the term pantheism was by English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work De spatio reali, published in 1697 and written in Latin. He defined "pantheismus" as the belief that God is all-containing and all-penetrating. The term was first used in English by Irish writer John Toland in his 1705 work "Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist". He clarified the idea in a 1710 letter to Gottfried Leibniz when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".[6] However, many earlier writers, schools of philosophy, and religious movements expressed pantheistic ideas.

Although the term "Pantheism" did not exist before the 17th century, various pre-Christian religions and philosophies can be regarded as pantheistic. They include some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander.[6] The Stoics were Pantheists, beginning with Zeno of Citium and culminating in the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, Stoicism was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism. The early Taoism of Lao Zi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic.[6]

In the West, pantheism went into retreat during the Christian years between the 4th and 15th centuries, when it was regarded as heresy. The first open revival was by Giordano Bruno (burned at the stake in 1600). Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, finished in 1675, was the major source from which pantheism spread (though Spinoza himself did not use the word, and there is some controversy over whether he may more accurately be termed a panentheist.[7] John Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno. In 1720 he wrote the Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society in Latin.[8]

In 1785 a major controversy known in German as the Pantheismus-Streit (Pantheism controversy) between critic Friedrich Jacobi and defender Moses Mendelssohn helped to spread pantheism to many German thinkers in the late 18th and in the 19th century.[9]

For a time during the 19th century pantheism was the theological viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in Britain; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in Germany; Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the USA. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, it came under attack in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX.[10]

However, in the 20th century pantheism was sidelined by political ideologies such as Communism and Fascism, by the traumatic upheavals of two world wars, and later by relativistic philosophies such as existentialism and postmodernism. It persisted in eminent pantheists such as the novelist D. H. Lawrence, scientist Albert Einstein, poet Robinson Jeffers, architect Frank Lloyd Wright and historian Arnold Toynbee.[6]

Recent developments

In the late 20th century, pantheism began to see a resurgence.[6] Pantheism chimed with the growing ecological awareness in society and the media. It was described as "Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now",[11] and often declared to be the underlying “theology” of Neopaganism.[12] 1975 saw the foundation of the Universal Pantheist Society, which was the first organization to treat pantheism as a religion in itself. The creation of the World Pantheist Movement in 1999, with its multiple mailing lists and social networks, spread further awareness of pantheism.

Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion gave Naturalistic Pantheism increased credibility among atheists by describing it sympathetically as “sexed-up atheism.” [13] The Vatican gave Pantheism further prominence in a Papal encyclical of 2009[14] and a New Year's Day statement on January 1, 2010,[15] criticizing Naturalistic Pantheism for denying the superiority of humans over nature and "seeing the source of man's salvation in nature".[14]

In 2008, Albert Einstein's 1954 German letter in which he dismissed belief in a personal God was auctioned off for more than $330,000 US. Einstein wrote, "We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul ("Beseeltheit") as it reveals itself in man and animal." in a letter to Eduard Büsching (25 October 1929) after Büsching sent Einstein a copy of his book Es gibt keinen Gott. Einstein responded that the book only dealt with the concept of a personal God and not the impersonal God of pantheism. Einstein usually identified himself as agnostic, but admitted a belief in "Spinoza's God".[16] "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly,” he wrote in another letter in 1954.[17]

Varieties

All varieties of Pantheism involve reverence for the Universe/Cosmos as a totality, all stress some kind of unity and interdependence of all things including humans. All have a strong emphasis on the natural world as a focus for reverence and for ethics. There are four major categories of pantheism, which differ as to whether they regard reality as made up of only one type of substance, or two, and what that type of substance is.[6]

Monist Physicalist Pantheism

Monist physicalist pantheism or Naturalistic Pantheism holds that there is only one type of substance, and that substance is physical, i.e. able at its most basic level to be described by physics, though more complex phenomena such as life, consciousness and societies can appear through emergence. Physicalism is a strong form of metaphysical naturalism. This position was held by John Toland, Ernst Haeckel, D.H. Lawrence and Paul Harrison. This version is represented today by the World Pantheist Movement. In this version, the term god — if used at all — is basically a synonym for Nature or Universe, seen from the point of view of reverence.

Monist Idealist Pantheism

Monist idealist pantheism holds that there is only one type of substance, and that substance is mental or spiritual. Physical reality is regarded as an illusion or projection of the individual mind which is seen as a part of the cosmic mind. This version is common in Hindu philosophies and Consciousness-Only schools of Buddhism, as well as in Religious Science and New Age writers such as Deepak Chopra.

Neutral Monist Pantheism

This philosophy is the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are not separate substances but rather two aspects of a third, underlying reality. This type of pantheism was held by Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), a Jewish philosopher who identified God and Nature. For Spinoza, God was the underlying reality and had infinite attributes of which humans could perceive only two: extension (space and matter) and thought.[6]

Dualist Pantheism

Dualist Pantheism holds that there are two major types of substance, physical and mental/spiritual, which interact or are unified in some way. This type of pantheism can be found in the Dvaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism, which teaches that the Atman (Soul) is eternal but dependent on the Paramatman(Supreme God).

Pantheism in World Religions

Taoism

Taoism in the tradition of its leading thinkers Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi, is comparable with Pantheism, as The Tao is always spoken of with profound religious reverence and respect, similar to the way that Pantheism discusses the "divinity" of the Universe. The Tao te Ching never speaks of a transcendent God, but of a mysterious and numinous ground of being underlying all things. Moreover Taoism stresses the importance of living in harmony with Nature. </ref>[6] Zhuangzi emphasized the pantheistic content of Taoism even more clearly: "Heaven and I were created together, and all things and I are one." When Tung Kuo Tzu asked Zhuangzi where the Tao was, he replied that it was in the ant, the grass, the clay tile, even in excrement: "There is nowhere where it is not… There is not a single thing without Tao."[18]

Hinduism

It is generally asserted that Hindu religious texts are the oldest known literature that contains pantheistic ideas.[19] In Hindu theology, Brahman is the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all things in this Universe, and is also the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. This idea of pantheism is traceable from some of the more ancient Vedas and Upanishads to vishishtadvaita philosophy. All Mahāvākyas (Great Sayings) of the Upanishads, in one way or another, seem to indicate the unity of the world with the Brahman. It further says, “This whole universe is Brahman, from Brahman to a clod of earth." Pantheism is a key component of Advaita philosophy. Other subdivisions of Vedanta do not strictly hold this tenet.

Wicca

Wiccans venerate both a god and a goddess who are variously understood through the frameworks of pantheism, as being dual aspects of a single godhead. Dianic Wiccans see the Great Goddess as pantheistic, while the Church and School of Wicca regard the pantheistic Godhead as genderless. Other gods and goddesses from different cultures may be viewed as aspects of one pantheistic deity. According to the Witches Janet and Stewart Farrar, who held a pantheistic, duotheistic and animistic view of theology, Wiccans "regard the whole cosmos as alive, both as a whole and in all of its parts", but that "such an organic view of the cosmos cannot be fully expressed, and lived, without the concept of the God and Goddess. There is no manifestation without polarization; so at the highest creative level, that of Divinity, the polarization must be the clearest and most powerful of all, reflecting and spreading itself through all the microcosmic levels as well".

Other religions

There are many elements of pantheism in some forms of Buddhism, Sufism, Sikhism, Neopaganism, and Theosophy as well as in several tendencies in the major theistic religions. See also the Neopagan section of Gaia and the Church of All Worlds.

Many Unitarian Universalists consider themselves pantheists. The Islamic religious tradition, in particular Sufism and Alevism has a strong belief in the unitary nature of the universe and the concept that everything in it is an aspect of God itself, although this perspective leans closer to panentheism and may also be termed Theopanism. Many traditional and folk religions including African traditional religions and Native American religions can be seen as pantheistic, or a mixture of pantheism and other doctrines such as polytheism and animism.

Distinction from related concepts

Some other theological models have attempted to incorporate the perceived benefits of pantheism with the perceived benefits of classical monotheism.

The term panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) "all"; ἐν (en) "in"; and θεός (theós) "God"; "all-in-God") was formally coined in Germany in the 19th century in an attempt to offer a philosophical synthesis between traditional theism and pantheism, that God is substantially omnipresent in the physical universe but also in a sense exists "apart from" or "beyond" the universe as its Creator and Sustainer.[20] Thus panentheism is not compatible with pantheism, in which God and the universe are synonymous—with no part of God considered as being distinct from the universe.[21][22]

For the same reasons, pandeism is not a form of pantheism. Though pandeism is characterized as a combination of reconcilable elements of pantheism and deism.[23][24] It is simply a form of deism which assumes a Creator-deity which is at some point distinct from the universe and then merges with the universe it created.

See also

References

  1. ^ The New Oxford Dictionary Of English. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1998. pp. 1341. ISBN 0-19-861263-X. 
  2. ^ Owen, H. P. Concepts of Deity. London: Macmillan, 1971.
  3. ^ pantheism.net.
  4. ^ pantheism.net.
  5. ^ John Culp (May 19, 2009). "Panentheism". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, CA page=: Stanford Uni versity. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/panentheism. "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" .
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h Paul Harrison, Elements of Pantheism, 1999.
  7. ^ Genevieve Lloyd, Routledge Philosophy GuideBook to Spinoza and The Ethics (Routledge Philosophy Guidebooks), Routledge; 1 edition (October 2, 1996), ISBN 978-0-415-10782-2, Page: 40
  8. ^ Toland: The father of modern pantheism (pantheism.net).
  9. ^ Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu).
  10. ^ Syllabus or Errors 1.1 (papalencyclicals.net).
  11. ^ Heaven and Nature, Ross Douthat, New York Times, December 20, 2009.
  12. ^ Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, Beacon Press, 1986.
  13. ^ The God Delusion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 2006.
  14. ^ a b Caritas In Veritate, July 7, 2009.
  15. ^ Message Of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI For The Celebration Of The World Day Of Peace.
  16. ^ "Einstein letter dismissing God sells for $330,000 US". CBC Canada. 2008-05-15. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2008/05/15/einstein-letter.html. Retrieved 2011-08-31. 
  17. ^ "Belief in God a 'product of human weaknesses': Einstein letter". CBC Canada. 2008-05-13. http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2008/05/13/einstein-religion.html. Retrieved 2011-08-31. 
  18. ^ Chuang Tzu - The butterfly philosopher (pantheism.net).
  19. ^ General Sketch of the History of Pantheism, p. 29.
  20. ^ John W. Cooper, The Other God of the Philosophers, Baker Academic, 2006, p. 27.
  21. ^ What is Panentheism?, atheism.about.com. About Agnosticism/Atheism. Retrieved 2 October 2009.
  22. ^ Erwin Fahlbusch, Geoffrey William Bromiley, David B. Barrett (1999). The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 21. ISBN 0-8028-2416-1. http://books.google.com/books?id=sCY4sAjTGIYC&pg=PA21. 
  23. ^ Sean F. Johnston (2009). The History of Science: A Beginner's Guide. pp. 90. ISBN 1-85168-681-9. 
  24. ^ Alex Ashman, BBC News, "Metaphysical Isms".

External links


Translations:

Pantheism

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - panteisme

Nederlands (Dutch)
pantheïsme

Français (French)
n. - panthéisme

Deutsch (German)
n. - Pantheismus

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (θρησκ.) πανθεϊσμός

Italiano (Italian)
panteismo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - panteísmo (m)

Русский (Russian)
пантеизм

Español (Spanish)
n. - panteísmo

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - panteism

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
泛神论

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 泛神論

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 범신론, 다신교, 자연숭배

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 汎神論, 汎神信仰

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) وحدة الوجود, ألوهيه مطلقه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮האמונה שאלוהים זהה עם הטבע ועם מהויות טבעיות, פנתיאיזם, עבודת כל האלים‬


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