Panentheism
Panentheism is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.
In panentheism, the universal spirit is present everywhere, which at the same time "transcends" all things created. Whilst pantheism asserts that "all is God", panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe. Some versions of panentheism suggest that the universe is nothing more than the manifestation of God. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God, like in the Kabbalistic concept of Tzimtzum, or with the Sufi concept of Wahdat al-wujud. Much of Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.
In philosophy
Ancient Greek philosophy
The religious beliefs of Neoplatonism can be regarded as panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God of which subsequent realities were emanations. From "the One" emanates the Divine Mind and the Cosmic Soul. In Neoplatonism the world itself is God. This concept of divinity is associated with that of the Logos, which had originated centuries earlier with Heraclitus. The Logos pervades the cosmos, whereby all thoughts and all things originate, or as Heraclitus said: "He who hears not me but the Logos will say: All is one." Neoplatonists such as Iamblichus attempted to reconcile this perspective by adding another hypostasis above the original monad of force or Dynamis. This new all-pervasive monad encompassed all creation and its original uncreated emanations.Modern philosophy
later claimed that "Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived." "Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner." Though Spinoza has been called the "prophet" and "prince" of pantheism, in a letter to Henry Oldenburg Spinoza states that: "as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature, they are quite mistaken". For Spinoza, our universe is a mode under two attributes of Thought and Extension. God has infinitely many other attributes which are not present in our world.According to German philosopher Karl Jaspers, when Spinoza wrote "Deus sive Natura" Spinoza did not mean to say that God and Nature are interchangeable terms, but rather that God's transcendence was attested by God's infinitely many attributes, and that two attributes known by humans, namely Thought and Extension, signified God's immanence. Furthermore, Martial Guéroult suggested the term panentheism, rather than pantheism to describe Spinoza's view of the relation between God and the world. The world is not God, but it is, in a strong sense, "in" God. Yet, American philosopher and self-described panentheist Charles Hartshorne referred to Spinoza's philosophy as "classical pantheism" and distinguished Spinoza's philosophy from panentheism.
In 1828, the German philosopher Karl Christian Friedrich Krause seeking to reconcile monotheism and pantheism, coined the term panentheism. This conception of God influenced New England transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson. The term was popularized by Charles Hartshorne in his development of process theology and has also been closely identified with the New Thought. The formalization of this term in the West in the 19th century was not new; philosophical treatises had been written on it in the context of Hinduism for millennia.
Philosophers who embraced panentheism have included Thomas Hill Green, James Ward, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison and Samuel Alexander. Beginning in the 1940s, Hartshorne examined numerous conceptions of God. He reviewed and discarded pantheism, deism, and pandeism in favor of panentheism, finding that such a "doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations". Hartshorne formulated God as a being who could become "more perfect": God has absolute perfection in categories for which absolute perfection is possible, and relative perfection in categories for which perfection cannot be precisely determined.
In religion
Buddhism
Zen Buddhism
The Reverend Zen Master Soyen Shaku was the first Zen Buddhist Abbot to tour the United States in 1905–6. He wrote a series of essays collected in the book Zen For Americans. In the essay titled "The God Conception of Buddhism," he attempts to explain how a Buddhist looks at the Ultimate without an anthropomorphic God figure while still being able to relate to the term God in a Buddhist sense:At the outset, let me state that Buddhism is not atheistic as the term is ordinarily understood. It has certainly a God, the highest reality and truth, through which and in which this universe exists. However, the followers of Buddhism usually avoid the term God, for it savors so much of Christianity, whose spirit is not always exactly in accord with the Buddhist interpretation of religious experience. Again, Buddhism is not pantheistic in the sense that it identifies the universe with God. On the other hand, the Buddhist God is absolute and transcendent; this world, being merely its manifestation, is necessarily fragmental and imperfect. To define more exactly the Buddhist notion of the highest being, it may be convenient to borrow the term very happily coined by a modern German scholar, "panentheism," according to which God is πᾶν καὶ ἕν and more than the totality of existence.
The essay then goes on to explain first utilizing the term "God" for the American audience to get an initial understanding of what he means by "panentheism," and then discusses the terms that Buddhism uses in place of "God" such as Dharmakaya, Buddha or Adi-Buddha, and Tathagata.
Pure Land Buddhism
Christianity
Panentheism is also a feature of some Christian philosophical theologies and resonates strongly within the theological tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church. It also appears in process theology. Process theological thinkers are generally regarded as unorthodox in the Christian West. Furthermore, process philosophy is widely believed to have paved the way for open theism, a movement that tends to associate itself primarily with the Evangelical branch of Protestantism but is also generally considered unorthodox by most evangelicals.Catholic panentheism
A number of ordained Catholic writers have suggested that panentheism is the original view of Christianity. They hold that such a view is directly supported by mystical experience and the teachings of Jesus and Paul the Apostle. Richard Rohr surmises this in his 2019 book The Universal Christ:Similarly, David Steindl-Rast posits that Christianity's original panentheism is being revealed through contemporary mystical insight:
This sentiment is mirrored in Thomas Keating's 1993 article, Clarifications Regarding Centering Prayer:
Panentheism in other Christian confessions
Panentheistic conceptions of God occur amongst some modern theologians. Process theology and Creation Spirituality, two recent developments in Christian theology, contain panentheistic ideas. Charles Hartshorne, who conjoined process theology with panentheism, maintained a lifelong membership in the Methodist church but was also a Unitarian. In later years, he joined the Austin, Texas, Unitarian Universalist congregation and was an active participant in that church. Referring to ideas such as Thomas Oord's theocosmocentrism, the soft panentheism of open theism, Keith Ward's comparative theology and John Polkinghorne's critical realism, Raymond Potgieter observes distinctions such as dipolar and bipolar:The former suggests two poles separated such as God influencing creation and it in turn its creator, whereas bipolarity completes God’s being implying interdependence between temporal and eternal poles., in dealing with Whitehead’s approach, does not make this distinction. I use the term bipolar as a generic term to include suggestions of the structural definition of God’s transcendence and immanence; to for instance accommodate a present and future reality into which deity must reasonably fit and function, and yet maintain separation from this world and evil whilst remaining within it.
Some argue that panentheism should also include the notion that God has always been related to some world or another, which denies the idea of creation out of nothing. Nazarene Methodist theologian Thomas Jay Oord advocates panentheism, but he uses the word "theocosmocentrism" to highlight the notion that God and some world or another are the primary conceptual starting blocks for eminently fruitful theology. This form of panentheism helps overcome the problem of evil and proposes that God's love for the world is essential to who God is.
The Latter Day Saint movement teaches that the Light of Christ "proceeds from God through Christ and gives life and light to all things".
Gnosticism
, being of another gnostic sect, preached a very different doctrine in positioning the true Manichaean God against matter as well as other deities, that it described as enmeshed with the world, namely the gods of Jews, Christians, and pagans. Nevertheless, this dualistic teaching included an elaborate cosmological myth that narrates the defeat of primal man by the powers of darkness that devoured and imprisoned the particles of light.Valentinianism taught that matter came about through emanations of the supreme being, even if, to some, this event is held to be more accidental than intentional. To other gnostics, these emanations were akin to the Sephirot of the Kabbalists and deliberate manifestations of a transcendent God through a complex system of intermediaries.