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Pantheism (Greek: πάν ( 'pan' ) = all and θεός ( 'theos' ) = God) literally means "God is All" and "All is God". It is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent 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 or personified in the theological principle of 'God'. See Cosmotheism
History The term "pantheist" — of which the word "pantheism" is a variation — 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 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, volcanos, 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 Varieties of pantheism This article distinguishes between three divergent groups of pantheists: The vast majority of persons who can be identified as "pantheistic" are of the classical variety (such as Hindus, Jews, 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 "flavours" 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 lingusitics. 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 the Hindu concept of Jiva, wherein the human soul is an aspect of God not yet having reached enlightenment (moksha), after which it becomes Atman. However, it should be noted that 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." Panentheism Pantheism has features in common with panentheism, such as the idea that the universe is part of God. Technically, the two are separate, inasmuch as pantheism finds God synonymous with nature, and 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 great work Outline of History, which reflected this belief and his finding it in the teachings of Jesus Christ 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 "inventing". 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". Pandeism Pandeism, too, is a kind of Pantheism, 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. Hinduism In Hindu theology, Moksha and achieving godness is the ultimate - both transcendent and immanent -, the absolute infinite existence, and the sum total of all that ever is, was, or ever shall be. 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. 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. Pantheism and panentheism are key components of Advaita theology. In Smartist tradition, which follows Advaita philosophy, Brahman is seen as the one God, with aspects of God emanating therefrom. With all Hindus, there is a strong belief in all paths, or true religions, leading to One God. Some of the Hindu aspects of God include Ganesa, Devi, Vishnu, and Siva. Hindus who follow the Smarta tradition believe that these different aspects of God can bring worshippers closer to Moksha, end of the cycle of rebirth. Other subdivisions of Vedanta do not strictly hold this tenet. For example, Dvaita school of Madhva holds Brahman to be only Vishnu. In contrast, Arya Samaj believes in worshipping Brahman directly, without conceptualizing God through form such as Ishta-deva or using an icon, the Hindu murti to focus. Arya Samaj only takes into consideration the formless Brahman while Advaita states that the formless Brahman (Nirguna Brahman) and the formful God Saguna Brahman are the same and hence worship of either is valid and equivalent. However, Advaita agrees with Arya Samaj that the Ultimate Reality is attributeless, in contrast to the theistic schools of Ramanuja, who also stressed panentheism, and Madhva, an advocate of duality. 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 confused by non-Hindus as being polytheistic. 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 Rabbinical Judaism. On the other hand, Schopenhauer asserted that Spinoza's pantheism was a result of his reading of Malebranche: 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 unverise 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 veiwing this as a discrepency, in order to maintain the written Torah above that given first in nature, has argued that written Torah preceeded creation, and it was from the written Torah that God "spoke" creation. A veiw 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 developement of Buruch Spinoza's later veiws. 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 expresison 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 defintion 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. 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? Islam Islamic Sufism is regarded by some as being influenced by eastern philosophies (Indian and Persian) and has Pantheistic doctrines (Wahadat-al-Wajood) وحدة الوجود within its many varieties. Islamic Sufism can be divided into the following catagories: 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 interpetation 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 Suliman period, and Quranic Sufis would see the Quran itself as the continuing revelation and interpet personification linguistics is the same manner as consistent with previous Biblcial prophets. Other religions There are many elements of pantheism in Philosophical Taoism, some forms of Buddhism, and Theosophy along with many varying denominations and individuals within and without denominations. 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. 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. Quotations While Sagan never described himself as a pantheist, many maintain that pantheism fit his views better than any other term. This claim, while widely accepted among pantheists of all varieties, remains somewhat controversial outside the pantheist community. A similar debate surrounds the attribution of pantheism to other notable figures, including Albert Einstein. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) established the formal philosophy of Pantheism over 300 years ago. In his “Ethics” he wrote: Albert Einstein appeared to agree with Spinoza when he said: Notes See also | ||||||||
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