Pantheism


Pantheism refers to a diverse family of philosophical and religious beliefs, that equate reality with divinity. Pantheistic concepts date back thousands of years, and pantheistic elements have been identified in diverse religious traditions, such as Christianity. Most notably, pantheism refers to the belief that the totality of being—called by various names Nature, universe, cosmos—is a self-organizing unity that needs no distinct creator, and can be met with the same sense of reveration and awe as theists attribute to their gods.
Pantheism is not to be confused with the panentheism, which maintains divinity as an entity greater than the universe out of which the universe arises.
Pantheist belief does not recognize a distinct personal god, anthropomorphic or otherwise, but instead characterizes a broad range of doctrines differing in forms of relationships between reality and divinity. One of the earliest uses of the term pantheism dates back to mathematician Joseph Raphson in 1697.
Pantheism was popularized in Western culture based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza—in particular, his book Ethics. A pantheistic stance was also taken in the 16th century by philosopher and cosmologist Giordano Bruno, who for his pantheist views was burnt at the stake by the inquisition of the Catholic church.
In the East, Advaita Vedanta, a school of Hindu philosophy is thought to be similar to pantheism in Western philosophy. The early Taoism of Laozi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic, although it could be more similar to panentheism. Cheondoism, which arose in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, and Won Buddhism are also considered pantheistic.

Etymology

Pantheism derives from the Greek πᾶν pan "all, of everything" and θεός theos "deity, divinity, god". The first known combination of these roots appears in Latin, in Joseph Raphson's 1697 book De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito, where he refers to "pantheismus". It was subsequently translated into English as "pantheism" in 1702.

Definitions

There are numerous definitions of pantheism, including:
  • a theological and philosophical position which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God;
  • the belief that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God and that all forms of reality may then be considered either mode of that Being, or identical with it; and
  • a non-religious philosophical position maintaining that the Universe and God are identical.

    History

Pre-modern times

Pantheism "is primarily a polemical term", so there are not many pantheists in Ancient history.
Early traces of pantheist thought can be found within animistic beliefs and tribal religions throughout the world as an expression of unity with the divine, specifically in beliefs that have no central polytheist or monotheist personas. Hellenistic theology makes early recorded reference to pantheism within the ancient Greek religion of Orphism, where pan is made cognate with the creator God Phanes, and with Zeus, after the swallowing of Phanes.
Pantheistic tendencies existed in a number of Gnostic groups, with pantheistic thought appearing throughout the Middle Ages. These included the beliefs of mystics such as Ortlieb of Strasbourg, David of Dinant, Amalric of Bena, and Eckhart.
The Bible affirms pantheism. According to others, Acts 17:28 is not pantheist, but panentheist. According to Jacqueline Lagrée, Acts 17:28 could be pantheistic, but panentheism is more accurate for what has been called pantheism. The Catholic Church has long regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy. Sebastian Franck was considered an early Pantheist. Giordano Bruno, an Italian friar who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, was burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. He has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science.
The Hindu philosophy of Advaita Vedanta is thought to be similar to pantheism. The term Advaita refers to the idea that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while the transient phenomenal world is an illusory appearance of Brahman. In this view, jivatman, the experiencing self, is ultimately non-different from Ātman-Brahman, the highest Self or Reality. The jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies.

Baruch Spinoza

In the West, pantheism was formalized as a separate theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese descent raised in the Sephardi Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine, and was effectively excluded from Jewish society at age 23, when the local synagogue issued a herem against him. A number of his books were published posthumously, and shortly thereafter included in the Catholic Church's Index of Forbidden Books.
In the posthumously published Ethics, he opposed René Descartes' famous mind–body dualism, the theory that the body and spirit are separate. Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man" and used the word "God" to describe the unity of all substances. This view influenced philosophers such as Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, who said, "You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all." Spinoza earned praise as one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy and one of Western philosophy's most important thinkers. Although the term "pantheism" was not coined until after his death, he is regarded as the most celebrated advocate of the concept. His book, Ethics, was the major source from which Western pantheism spread.

18th century

The first known use of the term "pantheism" was in Latin by the English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work De Spatio Reali seu Ente Infinito, published in 1697. Raphson begins with a distinction between atheistic "panhylists", who believe everything is matter, and Spinozan "pantheists" who believe in "a certain universal substance, material as well as intelligence, that fashions all things that exist out of its own essence." Raphson thought that the universe was immeasurable in respect to a human's capacity of understanding, and believed that humans would never be able to comprehend it. He referred to the pantheism of the Ancient Egyptians, Persians, Syrians, Assyrians, Greek, Indians, and Jewish Kabbalists, specifically referring to Spinoza.
The term was first used in English in a translation of Raphson's work in 1702. It was later used and popularized by Irish writer John Toland in his work of 1705 Socinianism Truly Stated, by a Pantheist. Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno and had read Joseph Raphson's De Spatio Reali, referring to it as "the ingenious Mr. Ralphson's Book of Real Space". Like Raphson, he used the terms "pantheist" and "Spinozist" interchangeably. In 1720 he wrote the Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society in Latin, envisioning a pantheist society that believed, "All things in the world are one, and one is all in all things... what is all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish." He clarified his idea of pantheism in a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".
In the mid-eighteenth century, the English theologian Daniel Waterland defined pantheism this way: "It supposes God and nature, or God and the whole universe, to be one and the same substance—one universal being; insomuch that men's souls are only modifications of the divine substance." In the early nineteenth century, the German theologian Julius Wegscheider defined pantheism as the belief that God and the world established by God are one and the same.
Between 1785–89, a controversy about Spinoza's philosophy arose between the German philosophers Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn. Known in German as the Pantheismusstreit, it helped spread pantheism to many German thinkers.

19th century

Growing influence

During the beginning of the 19th century, pantheism was the viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in Britain; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Schelling and Hegel in Germany; Knut Hamsun in Norway; and Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the United States. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, in 1864, it was formally condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors.
A letter written in 1886 by William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner, was sold at auction for US$30,000 in 2011. In it, Herndon writes of the U.S. President's evolving religious views, which included pantheism.
The subject is understandably controversial, but the letter's content is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.

Comparison with non-Christian religions

Some 19th-century theologians thought that various pre-Christian religions and philosophies were pantheistic. They thought Pantheism was similar to the ancient Hinduism philosophy of Advaita.
19th-century European theologians also considered Ancient Egyptian religion to contain pantheistic elements and pointed to Egyptian philosophy as a source of Greek Pantheism. The latter included some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander. 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 Laozi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic, although it could be more similar to panentheism.
Cheondoism, which arose in the Joseon Dynasty of Korea, and Won Buddhism are also considered pantheistic. The Realist Society of Canada believes that the consciousness of the self-aware universe is reality, which is an alternative view of Pantheism.