Pantheism vs panentheism

wil

wil

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I refer to myself as a nontheistic panentheistic unitic christian.

Nontheistic , because I don't believe in the literal being, the old man in the sky, which was instilled on me as a youth... It took me decades to be able to say G!d without that being my first thought.

Panentheistic, I guess because my agnosticism says I don't know and am acknowledging something...an overlying principle in the matrix that expresses as we know it. http://the-difference-between.com/node/177014

Unitic, because its metaphysic and principles resonate with me.

Christian because while the teachings of Buddha, Mohammed, lao tzu, and all religions intrigue me and I find worth... Those red letters, the words attributed to Jesus, speak to me the most.


But for this thread..

The panentheist vs pantheist....

Those that lean one way or the other on a oneness of G!d, the universe, and our material world...thoughts
 
wil said:
Christian because while the teachings of Buddha, Mohammed, lao tzu, and all religions intrigue me and I find worth... Those red letters, the words attributed to Jesus, speak to me the most.
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Do you believe that Jesus was divine as the Bible depicts?
 
Panentheism means different things to different people.

I am a Christian panentheist in that I believe that all existence comes from God, that all existence therefore participates in the divine gift, that the Cosmos is essentially good, that God is immanently present 'in' and 'to' creation, over, under, through-and-through, but not that God is present or exists 'as' creation.

I do not believe creation is inherently divine. What qualifies the Divine (and the Divine by its nature is beyond qualification) is that the Divine is Uncreate. The Cosmos is created. All nature is, and all natures are, created ... ergo not at all divine.

Furthermore the unlikeness between the Uncreate and the created is infinitely greater than any categorical difference between things that exist within the created order.

God is Uncreate; the Cosmos is created. The laws that govern the Cosmos, eg: being and movement, increase and decrease, contingency and finitude, do not govern nor apply to God.

The Christian idea of God in Christ can be likened – but is not the same as – the idea of Logos as stated by Heraclitus (ca 535-475BC), for whom Logos pervades the cosmos and from whom all thought and things originate: "He who hears not me but the Logos will say: All is one." A similar statement attributed to Our Lord in John 10:30. But John understood Logos in a more Hebraic sense, it's more akin to the Hebrew notion of memra as used in their Scriptures. (Similarly, the Theosophist's understanding of 'Logos' seems to reflect Stoic philosophy rather than Christian theology.)

In orthodox Christianity, creation is not 'part of' God, and God is totally distinct from creation. In that sense, any idealisation of creation as God is idolatry.

If we parse the term "pan-entheism" we have 'God indwells in all things', which is acceptable, but if we parse it as "panen-theism" we have 'all things are part of God, but God is more than the sum of all things' which is not.

Panentheism applies in Christianity, as long as it does not conflict with creatio ex nihilo.

As regards panentheism, the Christian God is neither the "watchmaker God" (nor the God of Intelligent Design) of the European Enlightenment, nor the "Old Man in the Sky" of Wil's youth. And despite the ontological gulf between the created and the Uncreate (gnosiology), the Christian God is closer to, and 'more me than I am myself', to paraphrase Augustine: "But you were more inward than my own inwardness" (Confessions 3.6.11).

The theologian Denys Turner says: "God is not to be sought outside the self, for God is already there 'within', eternally more intimate to me than I am to myself. It is I who am 'outside' myself and it is the God within who initiates, motivates and guides the seeking whereby and in which God is to be found. Not only is God within my interiority; it is from the God within that the power comes which draws me back into myself, and so to God." (The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism, p. 59).
 
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Thomas, I believe your ability to find things pertaining to the topic.is getting up.there with sesttlegals...(oh where is SG, MW, and all the wonderful women of intense thought?)
Namaste Jesus said:
Do you believe that Jesus was divine as the Bible depicts?
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was as in no longer, no...IS.

But I believe that of you as well.
 
Thomas said:
Panentheism means different things to different people.
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Not sure that is entirely accurate. You are not a Panentheist, you are a Christian Panentheist. Which expands the meaning of the original by combining it with another set of religious thinking. Not suggesting there is anything wrong with your belief structure. Just that said structure extends Panentheism beyond its original meaning.

Of course I could be completely wrong about it. Would be interested in your thoughts.

Thomas said:
If we parse the term "pan-entheism" we have 'God indwells in all things', which is acceptable, but if we parse it as "panen-theism" we have 'all things are part of God, but God is more than the sum of all things' which is not.
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Again, finding this difficult to unpack. Panentheism is a doctrine that the universe is part of God, but that God nevertheless transcends or has some existence separate from the universe. Which seems to cover both parts of that quote. I'm missing something.
 
Oh, ok. I look at it from a slightly different angle, but I get where you're coming from. Same mileage more or less.;)
 
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Devils' Advocate said:
Not sure that is entirely accurate. You are not a Panentheist, you are a Christian Panentheist.
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Yep.

Devils' Advocate said:
Which expands the meaning of the original by combining it with another set of religious thinking. Not suggesting there is anything wrong with your belief structure. Just that said structure extends Panentheism beyond its original meaning.
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Or maybe 'Christian panentheism' is actually 'original panentheism', and the term developed later understandings under the influence of German Idealism, Whitehead process theology ...

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says:
“Panentheism” is a constructed word composed of the English equivalents of the Greek terms “pan”, meaning all, “en”, meaning in, and “theism”, meaning God. Panentheism considers God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world.
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Which I agree with, but that does not mean God and the world are of the same substance, or that the world is a mode of divine manifestation.

Panentheism seeks to avoid either isolating God from the world as traditional theism often does or identifying God with the world as pantheism does.
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I think a lot of panentheists are actually pantheists, and do identify the world with God, as everything being divine.

Then again, I'm not sure which 'traditional theisms' isolate God from the world? Biblical theism doesn't?

While panentheism generally emphasizes God's presence in the world without losing the distinct identity of either God or the world, specific forms of panenethism, drawing from a different sources, explain the nature of the relationship of God to the world in a variety of ways and come to different conclusions about the significance of the world for the identity of God.
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There we go, down the rabbit hole.

Devils' Advocate said:
Panentheism is a doctrine that the universe is part of God, but that God nevertheless transcends or has some existence separate from the universe. Which seems to cover both parts of that quote. I'm missing something.
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Well we would say that God is not a composite, is not composed of 'parts', and that the universe is not God, but created by God.
 
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