Pantheism and Panentheism

  Pantheism is “the doctrine that the universe is God, or the system of theology in which it is maintained that the universe is the supreme God.” Pantheism is the philosophical form of monism that identifies mind and matter, finite and infinite, as manifestations of One Universal or Absolute Being, the doctrine which holds that the self-existent universe, conceived as a whole, is God.

  Panentheism “considers God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world. It offers an increasingly popular alternative to both traditional theism and pantheism. Panentheism seeks to avoid either isolating God from the world as traditional theism often does or identifying God with the world as pantheism does. Traditional theistic systems emphasize the difference between God and the world while panentheism stresses God’s active presence in the world.”–John Culp, Panentheism.

  “The essential difference between the two forms of pantheology is manifest in their answers to the question ‘Do the creatures have genuine freedom of decision making, or does God determine everything?’ Classical pantheism was a form of theological determinism: God decides or determines everything, including our supposed decisions. Both the ancient Greek Stoics and Spinoza (1632–1677) held this view. Panentheists object that, if one power determines all, there is, causally speaking, only one agent in all action. The Stoic-Spinozistic doctrine is an extreme monism rather than a genuine pluralism. Or, at best, its pluralism is unclear or ambiguous, for reality is active agency or nothing. As Plato said, ‘being is power’; for him every soul is ‘self-moved.’ This agrees with panentheism, which admits a plurality of active agents within the reality of the supreme agent.”–Oxford Encyclopedia of Religion

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