Have you ever heard someone say, “The Universe is telling me…” That’s pantheism, the assumption that God is indistinguishable from the universe he created. That means every dog and each diaper is a component of God and accommodates the divine essence inside it. But you might ask, isn’t that similar to God’s omnipresence? Let’s dive into this fascinating topic.
What Are the Basic Beliefs of Pantheism?
Pantheism believes that God is creation moderately than separate from creation. Pantheists often consider the universe is impersonal and doesn’t act, yet connects all the things. Think of the Na’vi in Avatar or the Force in Star Wars. That’s a crude type of pantheism. Christians consider in creation ex nihilo (“out of nothing”), where God created matter from nothing, so it’s connected to him but not him. In contrast, pantheists consider in creation ex deo (“out of God”), so all matter accommodates divine essence and is an extension of God’s being.
People arrive at pantheism either through either mysticism or logic. The mystic (someone attempting to directly connect with the divine source without tradition or sacred texts) involves pantheism after having fun with meditation (probably in an Eastern tradition like Zen Buddhism) and specializing in the oneness of creation. The logician, meanwhile, tries to reason that all the things must come from somewhere, so there may be an underlying force that connects and incorporates all the things inside itself. These two routes to pantheism could seem contradictory, but they’re similar in that they’re each derived from the human mind moderately than using God’s revelation to us. Christianity is distinct from pantheism because God revealed himself to us, which is how we grow in understanding him.
Stanford’s Philosophical Encyclopedia defines pantheism as “the view that rejects the transcendence of God. According to the pantheist, God is, not directly, equivalent with the world.”
Worship in a pantheistic setting looks like appreciating and being mindful of the world around us as divine. Pantheism presents itself as an answer to the ecological and climate crisis. By remembering our unity to the world, that we’re similar to the trees and the rocks, we’ll take higher care of it.
In practice, pantheistic worship looks quite gnostic, with adherents attempting to empty their minds to supersede the ego and attune to the divine self inside. They seek spiritual enlightenment by connecting to the creation around them. Pantheists desire to attach with the circle of life and find the divine inside that.
Can Christians Believe in Pantheism?
Pantheism is incompatible with Christianity since it misses something that’s at the center of our faith: the creator/creation distinction. One of the basic beliefs of Christianity is that God is separate from creation and that it will not be an extension of him. Pantheism elevates creation to the extent of the creator.
Francis Schaeffer wrote a superb and accessible book showing pantheism’s shortcomings. Pollution and the Death of Man deals with and refutes pantheism throughout. He says, “Pantheism eventually gives no intending to any particulars. In true pantheism unity has meaning, however the particulars don’t have any meaning, including the actual of man. Also, if the particulars don’t have any meaning, then nature has no meaning, including the actual of man. A intending to particulars doesn’t exist philosophically in any pantheistic system, whether it’s the pantheism of the East or the “paneverything-ism” within the West, starting all the things only with the energy particles. In each cases, eventually the particulars don’t have any meaning. Pantheism gives you a solution for unity, nevertheless it gives no intending to the variety. Pantheism will not be a solution.”
Pantheism doesn’t give adherents a meaningful option to make sense of the world. Schaeffer discussed Pantheism as a response to the climate crisis. This continues to be a preferred narrative today— that by remembering our oneness with nature, we’ll change ourselves and heal the world.
This denies a critical factor of reality as we understand it: in our default state as sinners, we’re at odds with nature.
Some strains of mystic Christianity will be confused for pantheism, but they’re more accurately described as panentheists. Panentheism is pantheism plus a transcendent God outside of time and space. However, panentheism continues to be a difficulty since it rejects the transcendence and distinctiveness of God because the creator. Richard Rohr is a preferred Christian writer and a panentheist. In his book The Universal Christ, he highlights statements like 1 Corinthians 15:28 (“When all the things is reconciled in him…God will likely be all in all”) and Colossians 1:19-20 (“All fullness is present in him, through him all things are reconciled, all the things in heaven and all the things on earth”) as proof Christ is in all the things. “This will not be heresy, universalism, or an inexpensive version of Unitarianism,” Rohr writes. “This is the Cosmic Christ, who at all times was, who became incarnate in time, and who continues to be being revealed.”
This is Rohr’s best defense of panentheism: because Christ fills all things and sustains all things, they’re, of their essence, Christ. God also exists outside of his creation but is inextricably sure to it. However, there are several issues here. First, Rohr provides his own translation of Colossians 1:19, which is different from all verified Bible translations. Second, Rohr removes the proven fact that the verse talks about Jesus, the person, being fully indwelt by God. It is a pointer to Jesus’ Christ-consciousness, which Rohr believes all of us can attain.
The biblical view starts with God revealing himself to us. This is what separates Christian meditation from Eastern meditation. As former Zen Buddhist Ellis Potter and others have noted, Christian meditation involves filling one’s mind with God’s truth and considering on it, while Eastern meditation involves emptying one’s mind to tap into the divine inside. Only extreme types of Christian mysticism consider we will tap into the divine inside us by our own efforts.
Is Pantheism Different from Saying that God Is Omnipresent?
God’s omnipresence is certainly one of his most confusing attributes, so let’s turn to certainly one of the best minds within the church’s history: Thomas Aquinas. His influential work Summa Theologica systematically goes through philosophical ideas in a question-and-answer format.
Here is what Aquinas says about God’s existence and the way his essence affects the world in Summa Theologica Part 1, Question 8:
“Objection 1: It seems that the mode of God’s existence in all things will not be properly described by means of essence, presence and power. For what’s by essence in anything, is in it essentially. But God will not be essentially in things; for He doesn’t belong to the essence of anything. Therefore it ought to not be said that God is in things by essence, presence and power.”
Reply to Objection 1. God is claimed to be in all things by essence, not indeed by the essence of the things themselves, as if He were of their essence; but by His own essence; because His substance is present to all things because the reason behind their being.”
Pantheism believes that God’s essence is equivalent to that of creation. He holds it together but stays separate at the identical time.
We consider that God creates all things and that in him all things hold together (Colossians 1:16). However, as Christians, we recognize that we ourselves are usually not divine, nor are the things God has created.
Which Religions Follow Pantheism?
Pantheism is the underlying belief of most non-Christian “spiritual, but not religious” people. It is distinct from, but holds some elements of, Advaita Vedanta—a Hindu school of thought that believes Brahmin is all. This spiritual pantheism became popular within the Sixties with the rise of the hippie movement and the influence of Eastern religions on the West.
Stoicism has been revived previously ten years—more as a tweetable philosophy than a worldview. Stoics were certainly one of the primary groups of pantheists within the West. Most individuals who quote the Stoics are usually not aware of this. Zeno of Citium, the founding father of Stoicism, posited a divine reasoning entity through which all parts belong to the entire. He also believed within the divine spark that produces all that exists.
Many individuals who consider in pantheism don’t follow any religious structure since the pantheistic god is impersonal. Albert Einstein, for instance, didn’t practice worship but believed in Baruch Spinoza’s concept of God. Carl Sagan wrote in his book Broca’s Brain that God is the laws governing the universe and holding all the things together, which many have viewed from a pantheistic sense. They could have affirmed this view to stop them from being viewed as atheists, which carried a high cost in some circles in the 20th century, especially amongst on a regular basis people.
How Can Christians Talk with People Who Believe Pantheism?
Talking with a pantheist will be difficult since the language will often be similar on the surface, but in point of fact, the 2 parties may find yourself talking past one another.
One helpful option to understand and get an idea of where someone stands will be to make use of the Spiritual Baseball Model developed by Bob Walz. Walz stars with BASE: we seek to know how the world (B)egan, What is our (A)im, What (S)tandards we use to treat one another, and what happens on the (E)end of our life.
Having productive conversations with pantheists concerning the Gospel must start with sharing the excellence between creator and creation.
Another helpful thing to contemplate when talking with a pantheist is their belief in sin and the autumn. Pollution and the Death of Man shows the failure of pantheism to handle these issues. Schaeffer asserts that five relations were broken in the autumn:
- Man and God
- Man and man
- Man and Nature
- Nature and Nature
- Man and himself.
Pantheism’s answer for the brokenness is to look inward and keep in mind that we’re all one. The Bible asserts that the brokennes can only be healed by Christ’s death on the cross. Through Christ, God sets each of those relationships right. He has begun doing so and can finish the work in the brand new creation. Rather than coming to a oneness with the universe at the top of time, we will likely be in perfect union with God as separate beings because God is God and we are usually not. That is the defining difference between pantheism and Christianity.
Further Reading:
What Do Pantheists Really Believe about God?
Is God in All Things?
God is Omnipresent – Meaning & Significance from the Bible
Photo Credit:©GettyImages/dani3315
Ben Reichert works with college students in New Zealand. He graduated from Iowa State in 2019 with degrees in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, and agronomy. He is keen about church history, theology, and having people walk with Jesus. When not working or writing you’ll find him running or mountaineering in the attractive New Zealand Bush.
