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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Pantheism is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract God; or that the Universe, or nature, and God are equivalent. More detailed definitions tend to emphasize the idea that natural law, existence, and the Universe (the sum total of all that is, was, and shall be) is represented in the theological principle of an abstract 'god' rather than a personal, creative deity or deities of any kind. This is the key feature which distinguishes them from panentheists and pandeists. As such, although many religions may claim to hold pantheistic elements, they are more commonly panentheistic or pandeistic in nature.

History

The term "pantheist"—from which the word "pantheism" is derived—was purportedly first used by Irish writer John Toland in his 1705 work, Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist. However, the concept has been discussed as far back as the time of the philosophers of Ancient Greece, by Thales, Parmenides and Heraclitus. The Jewish backgrounds for pantheism may reach as far back as the Torah itself in its account of creation in Genesis and its earlier prophetic material in which clearly "acts of nature" [such as floods, storms, volcanoes, etc.] are all identified as "God's hand" through personification idioms, thus explaining the open references to the concept in both New Testament and Kabbalistic literature.

In 1785 a major controversy began between Friedrich Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn, which eventually involved many important people of the time. Jacobi claimed that Lessing's pantheism was materialistic in that it thought of all Nature and God as one extended substance. For Jacobi, this was the result of the Enlightenment's devotion to reason and it would lead to atheism. Mendelssohn disagreed by asserting that pantheism was the same as theism.

Reception

On the whole, one might be surprised that even in the seventeenth century pantheism did not gain a complete victory over theism; for the most original, finest, and most thorough European expositions of it (none of them, of course, will bear comparison with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all came to light at that period, namely through Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Scotus Eriugena. After Scotus Erigena had been lost and forgotten for many centuries, he was again discovered at Oxford and in 1681, thus four years after Spinoza's death, his work first saw the light in print. This seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot make itself felt so long as the spirit of the age is not ripe to receive it. On the other hand, in our day (1851) pantheism, although presented only in Schelling's eclectic and confused revival thereof, has become the dominant mode of thought of scholars and even of educated people. This is because Kant had preceded it with his overthrow of theistic dogmatism and had cleared the way for it, whereby the spirit of the age was ready for it, just as a ploughed field is ready for the seed.

– Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real"

Varieties of pantheism

This article distinguishes between three divergent groups of pantheists:

• Classical pantheism, which is expressed in the immanent God of Kabalistic Judaism, Advaita Vedanta Sanatana Dharma, and Monism, generally viewing God in either a personal or cosmic manner.

• Biblical pantheism, which is expressed in the writings of the Bible with the understanding of personification linguistics as a cultural communication idiom in Hebrew language. [Isa 55:12] [Acts 17:28]

• Naturalistic pantheism, based on the relatively recent views of Baruch Spinoza {who may have been influenced by Biblical pantheism} and John Toland (who coined the term "pantheism"), as well as contemporary influences.

The vast majority of persons who can be identified as "pantheistic" are of the classical variety (such as Hindus, Sufis, Unitarians, Etc.), while most persons who self-identify as "pantheist" alone (rather than as members of another religion) are of the naturalistic variety. The division between the three strains of pantheism are not entirely clear in all situations, and remains a source of some controversy in pantheist circles. Classical pantheists generally accept the religious doctrine that there is a spiritual basis to all reality, while naturalistic pantheists generally do not and thus see the world in somewhat atheistic terms. Confusion between the concepts of pantheism and atheism may be an ancient problem in linguistics. Rome referred to early Christians as Atheists, and the explanations of this semantic phenomenon vary, one of which references the confusion between these two concepts.

Methods of explanation

An oft-cited feature of pantheism is that each individual human, being part of the Universe or nature, is part of God. One issue discussed by pantheists is how, if this is so, humans can have free will. In answer, the following analogy is sometimes given (particularly by classical pantheists): "you are to God as an individual blood cell in your vein is to you." The analogy further maintains that while a cell may be aware of its own environs, and even has some choices (free will) between right and wrong (killing a bacterium, becoming malignant, or perhaps just doing nothing, among countless others), it likely has little conception of the greater being of which it is a part. Another way to understand this relationship is through the Hindu phrase, tat tvam asi - "that thou art," wherein the human soul/self or Atman is understood to be the same as God or Brahman - only people do not realize it. In this Hindu context, they believe that one must be liberated through enlightenment (moksha) in order to experience and fully understand this relationship - the part becomes no longer disimilar from the whole.

Not all pantheists accept the idea of free will, with determinism being particularly widespread among naturalistic pantheists. Although individual interpretations of pantheism may suggest certain implications for the nature and existence of free will and/or determinism, pantheism itself does not include any requirement of belief either way. However, the issue is widely discussed, as it is in many other religions and philosophies.

Debate

Some critics argue that pantheism is little more than a redefinition of the word "God" to mean "existence", "life" or "reality". Many pantheists reply that even if this is so, such a shift in the way we think about these ideas can serve to create both a new and a potentially far more insightful conception of both existence and God.

Perhaps the most significant debate within the pantheistic community is about the nature of God. Classical pantheism believes in a personal, conscious, and omniscient God, and sees this God as uniting all true religions. Naturalistic pantheism believes in an unconscious, non-sentient Universe, which, while being holy and beautiful, is seen as being a God in a non-traditional and impersonal sense.

Cosmotheism, a small but controversial racialist group which considers itself a form of pantheism, has an evolutionary interpretation of God, seeing God to be impersonal, but not taking a clear stance as to its sentience. “Cosmotheism”, like the terms “pantheism”, “monotheism”, and “polytheism”, was not used in antiquity. The term seems to have been coined by Lamoignon de Malesherbes in 1782 with regard to Pliny the Elder; various scholars have used it since then, but to refer to different sorts of religious belief.

The viewpoints encompassed within the pantheistic community are necessarily diverse, but the central idea of the Universe being an all-encompassing unity and the sanctity of both nature and its natural laws are found throughout. Some pantheists also posit a common purpose for nature and man, while others reject the idea of purpose and view existence as existing "for its own sake."

Related concepts

Panentheism

Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the Universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate. Whereas pantheism finds God to be synonymous with nature, panentheism finds God to be greater than nature alone. Some find this distinction unhelpful, while others see it as a significant point of division. Many of the major faiths described as pantheistic could also be described as panentheistic, whereas naturalistic pantheism cannot (not seeing God as more than nature alone). For example, elements of both panentheism and pantheism are found in Hinduism. Certain interpretations of the Bhagavad Gita and Shri Rudram support this view.

Cosmotheism

While the term is rarely used, and is most often simply a synonym for Pantheism, this unusual philosophy has been used rather differently, but in all cases, the feeling was that God was something created by man, perhaps even an end state of human evolution, through social planning, eugenics and other forms of genetic engineering.

H. G. Wells subscribed to a form of Cosmotheism, which he called the "world brain" (from a book of essays by the same name he printed in 1937, one of which details the creation of a Library-encyclopedia hybrid), and detailed even more in his book God the Invisible King (in which he proscribes mankind to set up a socialist system, structuring itself on social and genetic statistics, education, and eugenics, ideally someday equating itself and possibly even merging with and conquering the Pantheist god itself. See: Omega Point) and there were also some sections of his work Outline of History, which reflected this belief and his finding it in the teachings of Jesus and Siddhartha. His book Shape of Things to Come (and the 1936 film Things to Come) also reflects this, in which mankind, surviving a Nuclear war and an extended Feudal period, unites to form a collectivist Utopia.

In modern Israel, Cosmotheism was described by Mordekhay Nesiyahu, one of the foremost ideologists of the Israeli Labor Movement and a lecturer in its college Beit Berl. He felt that God was something which did not exist before man, and was a secular entity which the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem had an instrumental role in "invent[ing]".

In the 20th century United States, William Luther Pierce, a white nationalist associated with the American Nazi Party and founder of the National Alliance also utilised the term "Cosmotheism". In his eyes (similar to H. G. Wells'), God would be the end result of eugenics and racial hygiene (See: Nazism, Francis Galton and Theosophy).

Vladimir Vernadsky's and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's "Noosphere" could be referenced as a description of the Cosmotheist deity, as does Emile Durkheim's Collective consciousness and Carl Jung's collective unconscious.

Arthur C. Clarke makes a possible reference to the Cosmotheist Noosphere in his 1953 book Childhood's End, referring to it as the "Overmind".

See also: transhumanism, eternal return, Isaac Asimov's The Last Question.

Pandeism

Pandeism is a kind of Pantheism which incorporates a form of Deism, holding that the Universe is identical to God, but also that God was previously a conscious and sentient force or entity that designed and created the Universe. God only became an unconscious and nonsentient God by becoming the Universe. Other than this distinction (and the possibility that the Universe will one day return to the state of being God), Pandeistic beliefs are identical to Pantheism.

Pantheistic concepts in religion

Hinduism

It is generally asserted that Hindu religious texts are the oldest known literature that contains the ideas of Pantheistic doctrine^[1]. 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 pantheistic doctrine is traceable from some of the more ancient Vedas and Upanishads to later Advaita philosophy. All Mahāvākyas(Great Sayings) of the Upanishads, in one way or another, seem to indicate the unity of the world with the Brahman. Chāndogya Upanishad says "All this Universe indeed is Brahman; from him does it proceed; into him it is dissolved; in him it breathes, so let every one adore him calmly". It further says "This whole universe is Brahman, from Brahman to a clod of earth. Brahman is both the efficient and the material cause of the world. He is the potter by whom the vase is formed; He is the clay from which it is fabricated. Everything proceeds from Him, without waste or diminution of the source, as light radiates from sun. Everything merges into Him again, as bubbles bursting mingle with air-as rivers fall into the ocean. Everything proceeds from and returns to Him, as the web of the spider is emitted from and retracted into itself."^[2]. In the hymns of the Rigveda, a pantheistic strain of thought may be discernible in the tenth book (10-121).

This concept of God is of one unity, with the individual personal gods being aspects of the One; thus, different deities are seen by different adherents as particularly well suited to their worship. As the sun has rays of light which emanate from the same source, the same holds true for the multifaceted aspects of God emanating from Brahman, like many colors of the same prism. Vedanta, specifically, Advaita, is a branch of Hindu philosophy which gives this matter a greater focus. Most Vedantic adherents are monists or "non-dualists" (i.e. Advaita Vedanta), seeing multiple manifestations of the one God or source of being, a view which is often considered by non-Hindus as being polytheistic.

Pantheism is a key component of Advaita philosophy. Other subdivisions of Vedanta do not strictly hold this tenet. For example, the Dvaita school of Madhva holds Brahman to be the external personal God Vishnu, whereas the theistic school of Ramanuja espouses Panentheism.

Judaism

The radically immanent sense of the divine in Jewish mystical Kabbalah is said to have inspired Spinoza's formulation of pantheism. However, Spinoza's views have not been accepted in Orthodox Judaism. On the other hand, Schopenhauer asserted that Spinoza's pantheism was a result of his reading of Malebranche:

[Malebranche] teaches that we see all things in God himself. This is certainly equivalent to explaining something unknown by something even more unknown. Moreover, according to him, we see not only all things in God, but God is also the sole activity therein, so that physical causes are so only apparently; they are merely occasional causes. (Recherches de la vérité, Livre VI, seconde partie, chap. 3.) And so here we have essentially the pantheism of Spinoza who appears to have learned more from Malebranche than from Descartes.

– Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real"

Additionally, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, had a mystical sense of the divine that could be described as panentheism.

Biblical Judaism asserts the origin of the Universe was brought forth by the Torah [law] of nature. Thus the original Torah is found not within the writing of Moshe, but within nature itself. "Reading" the Torah of nature is seen as equivalent to "reading" the Torah of revelation and theoretically will agree with one another in the end [as illustrated for example in the discovery of the Big Bang in 1965]. Rabbinical Orthodoxy viewing this as a discrepancy, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A view rejected by Biblical pantheists.

Maimonides, though Orthodox, reflected the sentiment that the Torah of nature and the Torah of scripture were equivalent and found its logic inescapable, in his comments on the reconciliation of science with scripture. These instructions no doubt served as background for the development of Baruch Spinoza's later views.

Christianity

There are a number of minority traditions within and around historical Christianity which trace the origins of their pantheistic beliefs to the New Testament and other related ecclesiastical traditions. The diversity of this view extends from early Quakers, to later Unitarians, to as far as within the traditional Catholic and Liberal Protestant main-line denominations themselves.

Other sources include Process theology, Creation Spirituality, the Brethren of the Free Spirit and some would claim its presence among the gnostics. The idea has had adherents within segments of Christianity for some time.

Christian pantheists, who appeal to its Biblical form, assert its origin is found throughout the scriptures, from the Old Testament to the New Testament and reconciles the difficulties which Roman theologians erroneously attempted to "solve" in the Roman councils concerning both the Trinity and the Nature of Christ as the Logos. As only pantheism provides both an expression of Christ as the "Logos" of God, and the unity of Monotheism.

The Biblical equation of God to acts of nature, and the definition of God within the New Testament itself, all provide the basis of appeal to this belief system.

It is maintained by Christian pantheists, that the Catholic definition of God was heavily influenced by non-biblical sources and was dominated by Neo-platonism, rendering the definition of God as something which "exists" outside of "existence", thus rendering the definition of "God" as something which "does not exist". That is, a non-existent God. It is this basic definition of God into Neo-Platonic non-existence that Christian pantheists find unbiblical and objectionable.

Augustine rejected pantheism on the following grounds:

Ought not men of intelligence, and indeed men of every kind, to be stirred up to examine the nature of this opinion? For there is no need of excellent capacity for this task, that putting away the desire of contention, they may observe that if God is the soul of the world, and the world is as a body to Him, who is the soul, He must be one living being consisting of soul and body, and that this same God is a kind of womb of nature containing all things in Himself, so that the lives and souls of all living things are taken, according to the manner of each one’s birth, out of His soul which vivifies that whole mass, and therefore nothing at all remains which is not a part of God. And if this is so, who cannot see what impious and irreligious consequences follow, such as that whatever one may trample, he must trample a part of God, and in slaying any living creature, a part of God must be slaughtered? But I am unwilling to utter all that may occur to those who think of it, yet cannot be spoken without irreverence.^[3]

as well as:

Concerning the rational animal himself,—that is, man,—what more unhappy belief can be entertained than that a part of God is whipped when a boy is whipped? And who, unless he is quite mad, could bear the thought that parts of God can become lascivious, iniquitous, impious, and altogether damnable? In brief, why is God angry at those who do not worship Him, since these offenders are parts of Himself?^[4]

Islam

A majority of Muslims condemn the concept of pantheism in Islam and state that it is an un-Islamic teaching. However, Sufism is believed by some non-Sufi Muslims to have pantheistic teachings.

Sufism can be divided into the following categories:

• Indigenous Sufism - Syncretisitic: Merges doctrines and concepts from Islam with local religious beliefs and practices ranging from Eastern to Western to local "folk" micro-religions. Very diverse and found predominantly in non-Islamic countries, east and west.

• Hadith Sufism - Traditional: Islam with an emphasis on orthodox forms of Islamic spirituality and mysticism. Essentially orthodox and found predominantly as a subculture within Islamic countries. Sunni or Shia.

• Quranic Sufism - Quranic: Stresses Islamic practice as given in the Quran including prophetism and does not accept the later Hadiths from tradition as equally inspired. Considered non-orthodox or a form of neo-orthodox and found primarily in the west. Influenced by the western Protestant concept of reformation and restoration as applied to Islam. Neither Sunni nor Shia as both are forms of Hadith.

Pantheism may be randomly found in any of the above groups as Sufism, unlike majority orthodox Islam, is very diverse and emphasizes personal and individual spiritual experience and understanding. The sources of pantheistic interpretation would differ in each case according to the tradition it follows. Indigenous Sufism would be obviously influenced by eastern texts, Hadith Sufism would be influenced by Islamic scholars from Sulaiman period, and Quranic Sufis would see the Quran itself as the continuing revelation and interpret personification linguistics is the same manner as consistent with previous Biblical prophets. Most Ismaili Muslims are pantheistic, or to be more precise, panentheistic.

"New Age"/Spirituality

Pantheism is an integral concept in many "New Age" philosophies; it is supported most specifically by the Seth readings given by the psychic Jane Roberts (1929-1984). Seth, the "entity" whom Roberts purportedly channeled, said that God was composed of mental energy, and that God's mental energy was the formative substance of all beings and things, thus carrying God's consciousness into all of existence and making God omnipresent. Seth frequently referred to God as "All That Is" and said, "All faces belong to God." Seth said that God is a gestalt of all the individuals within it, and that God knows itself as itself, but also as each individual. However, this teaching has more in common with panentheism.

Other religions

There are many elements of pantheism in some forms of Buddhism, Neopaganism, and Theosophy along with many varying denominations and individuals within and without denominations. See also the Neopagan section of Gaia and the Church of All Worlds.

Many Unitarian Universalists consider themselves pantheists.

Paul Carus called himself "an atheist who loves God", and advocated "henism", which is often seen as monist or pantheist in nature.

Ethics

According to Schopenhauer, pantheism has no ethics.

All pantheism must ultimately be shipwrecked on the inescapable demands of ethics, and then on the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany, then everything done by man, and even by animal, is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be more censurable and nothing more praiseworthy than anything else; hence there is no ethics.

– The World as Will and Representation, Vol. II, Ch. XLVII

However, some pantheists hold that the pantheist viewpoint is the most ethical viewpoint, pointing out that any harm done to another is doing harm to oneself because what harms one harms all. What is good and evil isn't the mandate of something outside of us, but as a result of the way we are all interconnected. Instead of good choices being based on fear of divine punishment, it comes from a mutual respect from all things.

Traditional forms and definitions of pantheism, would however, reference their classical bodies of sacred texts and teachers for definitions of ethics.

References

1. ^ General Sketch of the History of Pantheism p. 29
2. ^ Chandogya Upanishad 3-14 Williams Translation
3. ^ City of God Book 4 Chapter 12
4. ^ City of God Book 4 Chapter 13,

See also

Collective unconscious Cosmology Cosmotheism Emergence Hermetic Qabalah Hinduism Holism Infinitism Great Spirit Kabbalah List of Pantheists Mana

Naturalistic spirituality Noosphere Oneness Oversoul Paul Harrison Quakerism Ranters Baruch Spinoza Sufism Pierre Teilhard de Chardin John Toland Unitarian Universalism Universal Pantheist Society World Pantheist Movement

External links

• World Pantheist Movement
• Universal Pantheist Society Home Page
• Scientific Pantheism site
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry
• Pantheist Awareness Network

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