Pantheism
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Pantheism is the view that everything is of an all-encompassing immanent abstract 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 in the theological principle of an abstract 'god' rather than a personal, creative deity or deities of any kind. This is the key feature which distinguishes them from panentheists and pandeists. As such, although many religions may claim to hold pantheistic elements, they are more commonly panentheistic or pandeistic in nature.
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[edit] History
The term "pantheist"—from which the word "pantheism" is derived—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 Thales, 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, volcanoes, 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.
[edit] Reception
On the whole, one might be surprised that even in the seventeenth century pantheism did not gain a complete victory over theism; for the most original, finest, and most thorough European expositions of it (none of them, of course, will bear comparison with the Upanishads of the Vedas) all came to light at that period, namely through Bruno, Malebranche, Spinoza, and Scotus Eriugena. After Scotus Erigena had been lost and forgotten for many centuries, he was again discovered at Oxford and in 1681, thus four years after Spinoza's death, his work first saw the light in print. This seems to prove that the insight of individuals cannot make itself felt so long as the spirit of the age is not ripe to receive it. On the other hand, in our day (1851) pantheism, although presented only in Schelling's eclectic and confused revival thereof, has become the dominant mode of thought of scholars and even of educated people. This is because Kant had preceded it with his overthrow of theistic dogmatism and had cleared the way for it, whereby the spirit of the age was ready for it, just as a ploughed field is ready for the seed.
– Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Doctrine of the Ideal and the Real"
[edit] Varieties of pantheism
This article distinguishes between three divergent groups of pantheists:
- Classical pantheism, which is expressed in the immanent God of Kabalistic Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Monism, neopaganism, and the New Age, generally viewing God in either a personal or cosmic manner.
- Biblical pantheism, which is expressed in the writings of the Bible with the understanding of personification linguistics as a cultural communication idiom in Hebrew language. [Isa 55:12] [Acts 17:28]
- Naturalistic pantheism, based on the relatively recent views of Baruch Spinoza (who may have been influenced by Biblical pantheism) and John Toland (who coined the term "pantheism"), as well as contemporary influences.
The vast majority of persons who can be identified as "pantheistic" are of the classical variety (such as Hindus, Sufis, Unitarians, neopagans, New Agers, 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 strains 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 more naturalistic terms. Confusion between the concepts of pantheism and atheism may be an ancient problem in linguistics. Rome referred to early Christians as atheists, and the explanations of this semantic phenomenon vary, one of which refers to the confusion between these two concepts.[citation needed]
[edit] 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 free will may exist in this framework. 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 through the Hindu phrase, tat tvam asi - "that thou art", wherein the human soul/self or Atman is understood to be the same as God or Brahman - only people do not realize it. In this Hindu context, they believe that one must be liberated through enlightenment (moksha) in order to experience and fully understand this relationship - the part becomes no longer dissimilar from the whole.
Not all pantheists accept the idea of free will,