The question, “Is there a God?” has been burdening humanity since the dawn of time. The number of different religions and beliefs throughout the world is innumerable. These beliefs have been approached by different philosophers and theologians who have thoroughly examined, described, argued, discussed, and questioned them. In this paper, only three of the many positions will be critically assessed: theism, pantheism, and panentheism.
These three conceptions view God, or the Divine, from different angles, and although panentheism includes some standpoints from both theism and pantheism, it would be incorrect to call it a simple combination of the two. Each of the conceptions has a unique approach to the Divine, and the idea and understanding of God vary significantly between them.
One of the most important aspects of theism that distinguishes it from pantheism and panentheism is the belief that God is a person or a personal being. Richard Swinburne describes God as compared to humans and explores how and to what extent the actions and knowledge of humans and God differ. While humans can perform intentional and basic actions (e.g., travel to a city, say something, drink tea) and have some power over objects, God’s power is limitless and infinite: “He does have a power to create, conserve, or annihilate anything, big or small.”
God is not only limitless in his power, but he is also limitless in his knowledge of everything that ever was or ever will be. Regarding God’s power to know everything, Swinburne claims that God knows everything that is logical at any possible time. Nevertheless, God cannot know what an individual will do or not do, since all individuals have free will, although limited. This point of view is what differentiates Swinburne’s understanding of theism from the Christian and Jewish interpretations. He believes that God can show us the correct actions to take, but he cannot change them because “it is wrong to command what is wrong.” God’s duties and his will to perform them are also a sign of his perfection.
God does not perform any bad actions, but rather follows his duties and performs many good deeds; in fact, these three conditions are perceived by Swinburne to be proof of God’s perfection. However, other views on God’s perfection also exist; Michael Peterson, William Hasker, Bruce Reichenbach and David Basinger stress that the current understanding of God as a perfect creature has actually changed throughout the years and depends on the particular philosopher or religious tradition. For example, medieval theologians believed that in order to be perfect, God must be incapable of emotion; on the contrary, modern theologians argue that God is not only capable of love and affection for his beings, but he can also suffer along with them.
Another standpoint that these authors discuss is God’s timelessness and how it has been perceived by different religious institutions and philosophers of religion. When one says that God is everlasting, it means that God’s existence has neither beginning nor end; though he exists along with the world, his timeline has never begun and will never end. Other philosophers view God’s existence differently: according to them, God is timeless. This perception of God argues that “God does not experience the world moment by moment as we finite persons do; rather, he experiences the world’s history all at once, in a total simultaneous present.”
The authors point out that the perception of God as an eternal being has become more popular in recent history; however, these two theories have more in common than it may appear at first—which is why Peterson et al. proclaim the issue between them to be “very doubtful.” Thus, the theist God is eternal, perfect, omniscient and limitlessly powerful—but different religious institutions, philosophers of religion and theologians may perceive these qualities in a completely different or even contradictory manner.
The conception of the theist God has also been criticized and reviewed from the feminist point of view. Rosemary Radford Ruether stated that the concept of a male God is not a problem of linguistics, but rather the problem of a patriarchal society and woman’s subordination in it. According to her, the image of God as a male forms the basis of a human-divine relationship in which everyone but men are excluded from communing with God. A woman does not have any connection to God, and her head, as described by Paul in the New Testament, is her husband.
This issue becomes even more complex when Ruether discusses the feminine side of God. She emphasizes the fact the God’s faithfulness to Israel can be compared to a woman in travail, and no other gendered comparison is provided. God as a female can also represent the Holy Wisdom, the daughter of God, who moderates the created world. Ruether’s main point is that God(ess) should not be enclosed in terms of gender and that the idea of a predominately male or a predominately female God is not possible. The theist God should be genderless and bear the qualities of both genders within itself.
While theism approaches God as a personal being, pantheism sees him as unity. That being said, the pantheist view of God can even include inanimate objects (e.g. the Vedas, the Hindu holy texts). The holiness of these texts lies in their language, the sum of their words and sounds. The Veda, namely its collection of hymns known as the Rigveda, is perceived “as a collection of chants rather than as a written text, and therefore take access to it to be had by ear rather than by eye.”
The Veda, as it does not have any author, cannot include mistakes: “The Veda may… fail to communicate truth… by being misunderstood. But this is an imperfection only in those who hear or read it, not an imperfection in the Veda itself.” But as Griffith asks, if the sounds of the Veda are so important for the existence of the universe, does that mean that someone in the world should always be chanting the text of the Veda? Although some Indian philosophers considered this to be possible, it is clear that “for other reasons Vedic chant might altogether cease.”
Another pantheist idea in the Vedas is Brahman, the universal being who is the ruler of everyone. According to the Rigveda, Brahman (who is perceived to be God) also has an identity named Atman that has an individual Self. Atman and Brahman are identical. Moreover, Atman is considered to be a part of the human body: “the inner essence of humanity—a permanent substance which remains fixed and constant amidst all sorts of change of the body.” So if Atman is Brahman and Brahman is God, that means that God is the part of the human body, or what we consider the soul. Furthermore, the Veda explains that Atman is also the outer essence of the universe. Thus Brahman (God) and Atman (the inner essence of the human and outer essence of the universe) are also part of the human body, and the human body is part of both God and the universe. As mentioned above, pantheism views God as the universe.
Its main difference from theism is the idea that there is no personal, powerful God; it is only the universe that gives pantheists the same awe-inspiring feeling that other believers feel towards their God. To call the universe God does not mean that it takes on personal qualities like the God of Judaism or Christianity, but it rather expresses the emotions that pantheists experience by being here, in this exact universe. It is important for a pantheist to perceive the world as it is in this exact moment, and pantheism does not contemplate the idea of an afterlife such as heaven or hell.
Since the pantheistic God is not a personal being, it cannot judge or punish creatures if they sin. Because of this point, some people assume that pantheism allows “people [to] ignore moral codes and commit as many crimes as they can get away with.” This perspective, however, is a problem of theistic perception, since there are many countries where God is perceived in a pantheistic way, and the low crime rates in those countries refute this assumption.
Another argument is often brought up about the pantheists’ awe of the universe: if the universe is sacred, does that mean that every part of it must be treated as sacred too, even things like bombs, guns, and weapons of mass destruction? Harrison notices that it is a common mistake to assume that every part of the universe is equal in worth; in fact, pantheism does not regard everything in the universe as sacred, although some radical pantheists may do so. A pantheist therefore can believe in a perfect, sacred and non-personal universe that does not judge or possess any qualities itself.
The definition of panentheism was introduced by Karl Christian Friedrich Krause, and the literal translation of the word is ‘everything is in God’. According to panentheism, the world “is an intrinsic and essential property of God.” God is the cause and the principle of everything that exists; furthermore, though the world was created out of nothing, “God could not have refrained from creating a world.” The conception of ‘everything’ in pantheism involves not only the physical world but also the mental: “The mental realm is in God if and only if its nature is determined by God without God being reducible to the realm of mentality, and necessarily there is something mental.” If everything is both mental and physical, and we know what everything is, then we know what God is, according to Göcke.
Since everything is in God, any changes will also affect God, who cannot renounce the world that is in him. Panentheism’s special approach is also in the way it sees the relationship between God and humans. The traditional sense of God was considered to be the result of God’s image in human form, or he was perceived as the sustainer of human beings, or it was explicit divine agency; panentheism adds another means of experiencing God within through a person’s understanding that one is a part of him. Panentheism can also be understood as a part of Abrahamic religions:
“To the Hebrew writer, God is always present within the individual human, knowing every thought and every desire… The words en Christo express in Christological terms something of the intimate relationship between God and creation… characterised… by the closest proximity in which two entities can exist without being identified.”
So, although panentheism still sees God as a personal being, unlike in Abrahamic religions, it views God as inseparable from humans; he is within humanity, and every individual is within God. Nevertheless, the definition of panentheism varies from one philosophical work to the other, and that forms the main problem of it: if theologians and philosophers are discussing different ideas but refer to the same word, can one assume that panentheism is a variety of beliefs and conceptions, each of which should be named differently?
While some point out that “the line between panentheism and pantheism must also remain permeable—without thereby erasing the difference between them.” others insist that “panentheism needs to offer a clear way of demarcating itself from other positions, and this is not something that contemporary panentheists have done.” The perspective that panentheism provides is extremely interesting, but as long as there are different or even contradictory opinions on what panentheism is, this concept is at risk of remaining vague both for philosophers and for a wider audience.
To conclude, it is clear that every position examined has its strong and weak points. Theism follows the idea of a personal God who has certain qualities and can be represented by a person, while pantheism regards God as a universe that is impersonal and cannot judge or contact humans. Finally, panentheism, although it shares the idea of a personal God with theism, claims that God is within humans and that therefore humanity is within God.
References
Göcke B., ‘Panentheism and Classical Theism’, Springer Science+Business, Media, vol. 52, no. 1, 2012, pp. 61-75.
Griffiths, P.J., ‘Nontheistic Conceptions of the Divine’, in Wainwright W. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, Oxford, England, Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 1-29.
Harrison, P., Elements of Pantheism, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Llumina Press, 2011.
Keller, C., ‘The Body of Panentheism’, in Biernacki, L., and Clayton, P. (eds) Panentheism across the World’s Traditions, Oxford, England, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 64-75.
Levine M., Pantheism: a Non-Theistic Concept of Deity, London, England, Routledge, 1994.
Mullins, R., ‘ The Difficulty with Demarcating Panentheism’, Sophia, vol. 49, no. 1, 2016, pp. 183–191.
Peterson, M., Hasker, W., Reichenbach, B. and Basinger, D., ‘The Divine attributes: what is God like?’, in Eshleman A. (ed.) Readings in philosophy of religion: East meets West, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing, 2008, pp. 21-30.
Ruether, R., ‘The female nature of God: a problem in contemporary religious life’, in Eshleman A. (ed.) Readings in philosophy of religion: East meets West, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing, 2008, pp. 31-35.
Sen, S., ‘The Vedic-Upanisadic concept of Brahma’, in Eshleman A. (ed.) Readings in philosophy of religion: East meets West, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing, 2008, pp. 43- 51.
Swinburne, R., ‘God’, in Taliaferro, C. and Griffiths, P. (eds) Philosophy of religion: an anthology, Malden, MA, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, pp. 51-57.