Hi Mendallan

Pantheism is defined as being, "1) the doctrine that God is the transcendant reality of which the material universe and  human beings are only manifestations:  it involves the denial of God's personality and expresses a tendency to identify God and nature. and 2) any religious or philosophical doctrine that identifies God with the universe."

The word itself literally means "all is God."

Under Panentheism there is no personal God everything is a manifestation of the impersonal God.  The tree is as much God as I am and I am as much God as the tree is and both of us together are manifestations of God.

I reject that notion.

I believe in the otherness of God (God as Creator to me as creature).  On that level I compare to the tree in that the tree is no less creature than I am and both the tree and myself are wholly other than God.

Panentheism (literally all in God) points to a God which is hyper present in all things without making those things emanations or manifestations of God.  I find that position more agreable than pantheism.

Grace and peace to you.

John

I'm more apt to believe the definition of panatheism over pantheism.


Where pantheism claims that the Universe is God and that God is the Universe, and nothing more, Panantheism goes little farther by saying that the Universe is just the "physical body of God". There is still, however, a higher and transcendent aspect to God that is bigger than the Universe alone, transcending over It's outer appearance.


The latter makes more sense to me. Just as my physical body is not a singular definition of who I am, I prefer to believe there is a spirit of Life that transcends my form.


"Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of Myself, I remain."
- Krishna, speaking as One with God.

The otherness of God.  Welcome to grammar, and the telling of object, vs. subject.

That's exactly what I'm saying redhead. The objective verses the subjective is the same as comparing the transcended verses the manifest.


So which came first, the chicken or the egg? I'd say the egg or seed of the subjective always precedes the object.

I think and feel that the totality of energy is a singularity in a state of inseparability or synthesis, and I would not hesitate to define this singularity as "God" or "the Godhead" because I also think and feel that this singularity is capable of transcendence. Thus, God, or the Godhead, is object and subject, mover and moved, source and outcome, creator and created.

Although the Godhead multiplied, diversified, and "uniquefied" ITself, IT also is a singularity of inseparable oneness. Nonduality or synthesis is the ultimate state of being. Our analyses are only attempts to analytically understand the inseparable whole. The whole, as IT really is, is an indivsible totality in a state of synthesis. It is not wrong to analyse the totality, but any analysis fragments the totality and therefore does not truly reflect its actual is-ness, which can only be experienced.

The TAO that can be told is not the TAO.

 -Lao Tsu

Thus is the Pan Daemique ... A' Lass some would a' spelt it different ... in an all around rounding out of the cubit on a stick that in oriental icon ... is the well-red dragon ...

Something that a mortal can rheid into only if they slowly creep ...

Very true, redhead.

Both P's run into issues in Christianity.  It is struggling now to try and make nature important because of climate change. 

One big issue is that nature/Creation cannot save you, according to Church doctrine.  Only Christ can.  So reality beyond the human-Christ relationship has always been secondary.  If God is in the plants, animals and mountains, that causes problems.

It's also a problem of consciousness.  Copernicus proved that the earth is not the center of Creation, but modern humanity still acts like humans are the center of conscious universe.  If God's consciousness is in animals, that would rival how special humans are.  Let alone if animals consciousness was given efficacy, AND God's consciousness was in them too, the problems multiply.  Reality is much simpler with reality being just molecules and energy, with 'God' thrown on top.

The two P's seep into modern Christianity for many reasons.  God IS All, but the split between an immanent and transcendent God comes out in this debate.  As Neo points out, God is just like us, with a 'body' and a 'mind.' 

The specific consciousness of God has been out of fashion since the 1960's, when the great religious collapse occurred.  It's too threatening.  And historically it was characterized as 'God the Father,' which was labelled sexist.  God has since been redefined in the United Church as 'love,' an emotion. 

Love fits in well with feeling good about nature outside the city, and 'Creation Care' helps us to have a program that is similar to environmentalism, to give the earth some Christian love, just like we give each other.  Humans can save the earth, just as Christ can save us.

So the old duality persists, and love-as-spirituality lodges itself between the non-specific consciousness of God (Creation) in you and nature, and the specific consciousness of God whom Jesus was talking with throughout His ministry.  The disconnection with the Church's issues with nature and society's issues with the Church's domination God of the past are contained and controlled in just saying 'God is love.'  It makes everyone feel comfortable.

Feminist and eco-theologians are doing a heartfelt job in trying to get the Church to buy into nature/Creation being divine, but it's difficult because Planet Church is so diffuse, and it is not in the hierarchy's best interest to invest in what it doesn't know too much about, and could disturb the congregants.  And the specific consciousness of God is still in abeyance as 'faith.'

About the only thing going on to get the immanent/transcendent/Creation-nature/Creator splits to come together are the Indigenous Christians.  Christianity and Traditional Indigenous spirituality co-exist on reserves.  They retain the spiritual reality and diversity of the divine in nature, like human souls are supposed to have 'Christ sparks' in them. 

Unfortunately, the 'white' Church keeps the Indigenous in a box, not wanting to harm them more than it already has.  It's their context, culture and identity, not ours, so the institution keeps arms-length from them theologically, though some does seep in that is contiguous with current love theologies, just like Buddhist meditation and Hindus' 'Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer' has been massaged into Christ being 'Creator, Sustainer, Redeemer.'  "Right relations" is an Indigenous term, though it is against Church policy to inappropriately 'borrow' others' spiritualities.

It's probably a time thing.  Right now Reiki, yoga and meditation is being experimented with in churches, at the grass roots.  It's human-centered.  But once its efficacy is broadly experienced, it can then be shipped up to the theologians to make it biblical, then the future clergy can be trained in it.  By that time maybe people will have enough experience in nature, and learn to see it through ancient wisdom, so it can be incorporated into theology as well.  

Theology, of course, comes from experience, not slumped over a book reading Schleirmacher and Anselm, creating a reality of logic and order, when Spirit has lots of fun with chaos.  When enough people make contact with non-human life and the specific and non-specific consciousness of God once again, things will change, and Pantheism and Panentheism will become Creator, Creation and human as One, that's been known by ancient cultures that don't place the mind over the heart.  Which, of course, is what Jesus was talking about, spiritual reality through the heart, despite the mind of knowledge culture and the domination of civilization.

"The white church keeps the indiginous in a box?"

Is that aboriginal sin of knowledge; contained in something poorly understood because the church fathers told the common folk this was something they shouldn't know? As a matter of stupidity in the matter of reverse psychology; they swallowed it hook, line and sinker ... they way light usually falls into a shadowy place ...

Hoo'dah th'unque IT? Then how do light things get entrained in the dark? Originally the lighter side didn't know nothing until white washed into this thing that is often called stupidity. If you were fully into it ... how wod yah know? Wod'n that be funny ... as dark humour; an old English expression for Shadow spirits ... baseline of the soul that some fall over and still don't know ... it's almost biblical! How indeterminate is satire on this matter? Research it ... like John's words about word ... they go on and on  getting faiter and faiter like a whisper in the night ... small voices?

Is that alien or what?

RevJohn,

So God is not omniscient and omnipresent  That undrestanding of God is one of the foundations of Christianty.  It is also a foundation of Pantheism.

Categorically, you stated: I reject that position.

So, how do you present Christianity?

You would have to have some light (Levant, Christ) to throw on the word that is dark to illuminate the surrounding matrice. Even in Latin there is some salvation in the light of knowing somethin' ... many choose not!

We learn the understanding thereof by contrast. Why it is best to know the alien as is given in that old syntax called bible. Monotheists just don't get this duality ... because that is what they were taught and they can't get beyond this into the surroundings ...

Monotheists find this a fuzzy arena;  fear going out there ... some call it a stretch of the imagination or a smear to the accepted abstract ... dark eh? The ancients find it bloody humour ... and we are the butte end of the joke ... creation in a destructive dimension? Some prefer collapse ... that gnawing feeling when slipping into any kind of oblivion ... like rest; temporal or otherwise!

There are many that would hang me or burn me at the state for changing what they feel is institution ... a sort of Tory state but perhaps just so much taurus ... BS, or belief system that is collapsing with alteration, the evolution of change?

If viewed from beyond as myth it is odd ... why they call me odd, crazy or justly shunned thinker in the kirk! We can't have that can we? Thus we don't ...

waterbouy. this is gonna like slamming my head against a wall: what is your point?

Good idea. Slamming your head against a wall is one of the techniques that can help you understand WaterBuoy.

Do you not define this wahl as abstract? It is a monstrous collective ...

Then there is this phi'ne connection between Pan, Pantheism, Pan-O'Rhama and the the capricious job of connecting such wildly spread experiences on all-that-is or God in the infinite array as well as God as vaccuous ... that could draw such attraction to such points. The Roman Gods had trouble reconciling the infinite with nut'n ... where the creation of something from nut'n is just an insane experience like love that blows your mind ... there is this sense of collapse ...

Mortals cannot reconcile these opposing fields of emotion and intellect either ... except in the rare case of the a balanced medium ... ever see a balanced medium? It is usually warped by the corporateowners that too ... don't wish us to know what's being dunn t'us ...

Gives rise to the expression R'Eire ... and few get it ... as they don't like extensive ambiguities like satire ... something that amuses those beyond that are trapped in the infinite field ... a dimension that is beyond us ... methodically referred to a myth! This is soul, mind or otherwise psyche actions that are mostly passive. We arenot allowed to think and ponder in depth ... the claim is that everything is superficially real and flat outright ...

First one has to understand a vast pool of words that the paradigm would say makes a person crazy ... the reason for my being it appears to those that don't wish to know such things ... give it time and I'll begone too ...  perhaps yule see me goan ... as a mule ... a numb carrier as thought supported by word?

That's dark eh-bi ... a condition supportedby Leo Buscaglia! Those that God speaks to about reasons are crazy ... there is no reason for emotional states they just are! Now thought is just something else again ... difficult for the masses to grasp, they can't get there heads around it ...

Knocking sense into anon-sense?

Is emotional existence like an abstract sense ... defined as not yet complete?

Some get it some don't, I don't expect anything from people so I just mess with it ... like a child in real food ... but this happens to be about food for the soul ... nothing that you'd like to know as part of the inhumane race!

You don't believe? Have you looked about yourself ? Take a gander ... it is like a swan song ...

It is odd, I believed as I did and nobody ever said "this is that" and "that is this". My faith did not differ from many other faithful.

As folks feel a need to explore how I believe with their little boxes to put it into, they seem to see what they want to see.

Someone may say I keep an otherness to God as Creator.

Another someone will say I am a panentheist.

I do not think I am better than a fish, bird, cat... tree. I am different and a part of a whole of creation.

Putting a "personality" on God is, to me, like putting arms and legs on God. It is making God in my image and more like what I know to be human. 

Panentheism ('All is in God'), is the doctrine that all creation is embraced by God. Do I accept that all creation is embraced by God? Yes.

How could anyone not is more my question.

Panentheism is quite distinct from pantheism or monism. According to pantheistic or monistic theory, God is the name given to the universe as a whole. The 'all' is identified with God, so that it is meaningless to speak of God as distinct from the universe. Pantheism means that all is God and monism (the theory of 'oneness') that God is a synonym for the 'stuff' or 'substance' of the universe. 

I see in panentheism, on the other hand, that 'all' is in God.  God is both transcendent and immanent in relation to the universe. It is inconceivable for there to be a universe without God. Yet, it is not inconceivable for God to exist without the universe.

I also see that it is a heresy to some... that we humans are not superior and mena more to God. That God does not need the universe or, God forbid, us. Then, if all is in God, there is.that tendency to blur the distinction between the sacred and the profane, the clean and the unclean, good and evil... That gets you into trouble.

It poses a great threat to religion. If God is in all and all is in God, what is to be made of the laws based on those distinctions? It certainly got Jesus into trouble....

conviction creates convicts

beware of showing up people's convictions, though -- you might end up being Jesussed

Universe without Omi ... God?

That's all just out of here ... sort of like pas or san .. with great need of a drink in an emotional palace without thought ... that'd be*elle ...

Now with God as a sublime side would that be underhanded, understanding or just undertaking of dissection of errors?

Is this a mire abstraction or an absolutism in a word that doesn't accept large souls as infinite thoughts ... Omi's other side?

Leaves room for: Sum Thin Paed Fore Word if you didn't wish to know ... it's something you must give up ... like a created abstraction, what some call imagination and yet few accept that the imaginary is real!

From that very abstraction of fein'd thought:

Absolutes and Deviants …

This could lead to distraction from thought …

Or what is sometimes called abstraction …

Simply what isn’t there as matter of emotional fallout …

That brings things to point, dot or damned spot of …

Where we just don’t know!

This condition is sometimes Pan’d off as Christian Principle …

O delight of not knowing …

As expressed in the mystical nature of Genesis 2 …

Or even Exodus 20:19 that follows Hebrew off on tan*gent …

A sort of dark monad in what some would state …

As shady thinking, or just Ham!

Now is that kohl in light of the emotional rush that we generally …

Encounter on this side of Cos Mos Empire?

Such emotional flushes, down d’ so’ur …

Do give rise to subliminal fertility …

If you can grasp what I express as frustration with phoqah …

That are in denial of thought and all that’s connected!

Knowing nut’n is what’s demanded ..

Yet when asked, the exegetes will explain …

They have it all under control …

As if to clear the air of all thought, other wise …

Leaving burning dimension of stardust ignition …

Spontaneous act that few see the reason for?

Such Outlanders vision of gravid nature of matter …

That ridiculously shuns all reason …

Giving Eris in exceptional spatial conditions; dissonant brae in storm?

These are considered “out there” or perhaps just beyond …

That can be condensed to a word as “myth” …

The essence of thought in mind …

As non-existential in the abstract side!

But if an individual doesn’t understand …

Would this indicate lack of desire of proper allotment …

Or just corollary of that 9^th verse …

Where knowledge passes …

For mortal is no match for the greater soul!

If one denies such abstraction will imperfection …

In the field of pure love vaporize?

Now what will follow such hateful attitude …

Towards rightful knowledge that is unreasoned …

Because of improper desire towards knowing all that is infinite …

Or what you could say is God’s other domain …

That intellect that is beyond the grosser desires?

Such puts avarice right on the damned spot …

Of much of the present perspective …

That in fact denies there is nothing to be learned …

From past satirical histories, that torrid expression …

And thus so much bull without kohl’s hades!

Call it dark if you will …

But in burning san (without) dimension …

An Oasis or O’Isis …

Is refreshing dip into the Ancient Mother …

A dark formless void that the male never quite recovered from …

Without wile of general knowledge; decrepit simony paed fore word?

Hi Stevie:

 If all is God, and God is in all, what is to be made of the above distinctions?

If we want to be beyond good and evil, then we have to advance to the level of consciousness that is beyond good and evil, the consciousness of the all, and act from the viewpoint of the all, for the benefit of all.

If we are implicated in ego consciousness and unable to do that, then ordinary moral law applies. And if we are able to ascend to the level of all-consciousness, then we will not violate ordinary moral law. People who have ascended to the level of all-consiousness are not against ordinary moral law, they just don't need it to guide their moral actions. Their guidance arise directly from their level of all-consciousness.

In ancient China, there were two spiritual systems: Confucianism and Taoism. Confucianism was a strict rule of moral conduct, Taoism was a highly refined esoteric thought system for the seekers of ultimate truth. Everyone had to abide by the rules of Confucianism, but adherents to Concfucianism did not have to concern themselves with the lofty heights of Taoism. The leading Confucianists were Confucianists as well as Taoists, and all Taoists abided by the moral laws of Confucianism.

Ancient Japan was similar. The ruling class and intellectual elite were Zen Buddhists (Taoist Buddhists), the common people adhered to their indigenous Shinto religion, which had been somewhat refined by the ruling Zen Buddhists, but not fundamentally altered. Shinto had a rule of moral conduct for everyone, Zen was for seekers of ultimate truths. Shintoists did not have to concern themselves with the lofty heights of Zen Buddhism.

The most notorious recent example of someone abusing the teachings of all-consciousness was Adolf Hitler. He abused Nietzsche's stance of "beyond good and evil" for egocentric and ethnocentric purposes, and committed the worst evil of modern times.

What is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good?

And do we need anyone to tell us these things?

-From the Dialogues by Plato

According to the teachings of the Buddha, right thought leads to right action, but right thought arises from the right consciousness, which is all-consciousness. Since all-consciousness necessarily results in the practice of loving kindness and compassion, no-one is beyond practicing universal loving kindness and compassion.

I think the teachings of Jesus say pretty much the same.

Hi Redhead,

Pantheism is not required for omnipresence, omnipotence or omniscience to be present.

I have rejected the understanding that all is God.  Which is the baseline assumption of pantheism.

I am a theist not a pantheist.  I probably lean slightly towards panentheism.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi John: You reject the notion of Pantheism that “there is no personal god; everything is a manifestation of the impersonal god. The tree is as much god as I am and I am as much god as the tree is and both of us together are manifestations of god”. Rather, you see both you and the tree as equal creations of god.

Redhead sees a distinction between subject and object.

Which is a very valid and pertinent point.

English is one of the SVO  (subject-verb-object) languages. It helps us get into some very instrumental mindsets… ourselves, reality and god. Something becomes a “subject” by doing something to something else. An “object” is what it’s done to. It makes the idea of mutuality less obvious. The "object" is the "victim" of the "subject". SVO helps to pave pathways to oppression… or "progress". (Not all languages work that way.)

I think that’ “mutuality” is where our most useful and valid insights about “god” are expressed and found. Space, time, matter and energy exist because we exist to identify and name them. God is the same. And we exist because the whole of god, space, time, energy and matter exist to pop us into sentient existence. We make each other possible.

Ultimately, in these senses, god is just a word, the universe is just a word. The word, someone long ago said, was “god”, or something like it. The word brings all it touches within range of our little bit of intelligence.  It enables us to think.

We think most generatively about our EXPERIENCE of the universe.

Sure, we can talk in languages of mathematics and formal logic if we want to impress PhD examiners but, unless we embrace existence personally, it’s all adrift in ethers that we (okay, mathematicians, logicians, fable weavers, scripture writers, rationalists, poets and anyone else with half an imagination) have created. These are the ethers where ideologies exist, where we can find “demonstrable” truths and affirmations for our theories, hypotheses, theologies, doctrines…  and glow with affirmation for our certainties.

I think we've drawn social models from the ethers that generate all sorts of false options… that counter and suppress urges towards curiosity and first-hand experience. In doing so, our imagined/theoretical “know-how” surrounds us with traffic, technology, noise, comfort and entertainment and distance us from raw experience by interposing arrays of distractions.

So we can “talk” all we like about our rationalisations of other people’s rationalisations about “god” far more easily than we can amplify our personal experience of “god” to a level where it makes social “sense”.

Where this ether-chatter is vigorous enough, it can supplant experience altogether.

So — while there’s a “god” that’s discoverable only through opening fully to life, to journeying beyond encounter to relationship and, beyond that, to the intimacy of mutuality — all sorts of other “gods” are being trundled off the production lines, stacking the shelves of seminary libraries, pimping their attractions on theological catwalks and flattering their proponents’ intellectual self-esteem. This is the bustle, the “where it’s at” in ether-land.

At the same time, these little plastic “gods” manage to dim our capcities to experience awe, transcendence and beauty in the flood of god presence that’s all around us, too big, too exciting, too delicious and gorgeous and fascinating, too transformative, too liberating, too terrifiying, too preoccupying, too inspiring to be noticed because — against all the odds — our cleverness has relegated it all to background noise.

We find the “personal” god in personal intimacy with god. God fills us, god’s decidedly personal. A personal god is not a theological "truth", it's a visceral truth.

Despite that, god seems to have no problem filling a few trees and insects, fish and beaches and ever-changing skies at the same time. My wife has a day job too, I work from home — our visceral relationship isn't impaired by multiple responsibilities. I’d bet god suffuses other planets, other suns, other spaces as well. It’s you and I who let god get personal… curiosity and trust — and letting them lead the way to living in love and fullness — run the risk that happening.

Thank you, sinncerely RevJohn, for your honesty. 

MikePaterson,

English language is difficult to master, and so to is religious language and finally philosophical rhetoric.

I have always tried to be thoughtful, caring and kind.  I started out in University as an English major, with a minor in Music (which probably moved me the head of class) and then I landed in Humanites = and studied religions thoughtfully and carefully.  Also landed in philosphy - I read well.

And now, I am infinitely resigned. 

It is sad, to know much,and then to understand that you know so little.

One thing I was taught in high school, and reminates with me, with regard to our final grade thrteen exams:  verbosity will be penalized.  very proper, very, very British, very colonised, very muzzling. 

I also recall social rule of thumb tauagt to me: never discuss religion, poltics and sex at the table.  Wow.  The most importatant issues.  Muzzled.

Thank you mikeP, for your kindness and consideration

Hi MikePaterson,

The issue isn't whether or not God can fill.  At least not as far as pantheism is concerned, the question is "Who, or what, is God?"  The answer that pantheism gives is that all is God.  

Pan-en-theism holds all to be in God but it does not state that all is God.

Theism allows God to be present in all times, events and persons it does not claim that all times, events and persons are God.

I have no problem with God being in myself or others, in fact I celebrate that God is present in myself and others.

I do have a problem with myself or others being considered God or even on par with God.  Which is why I reject pantheism.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Hi redhead,

Honest questions deserve honest answers.  You are most welcome.

Grace and peace to you.

John

If anyone knows who and what god is, or is not, in absolute terms, I would be very pleased to hear of it. I find I get a bit anxious when people talk with certainty about "god". Any statement about god has, in my experience, not been about "god" so much as it has been about the Person telling me what "god" is, or is not. Male? Female? Omnipotent? Judge? Wellspring of love? Quite probably, providfed you aren't excluding all of the infinite possibilities beyond human comprehension. 

God is, to me, absolute mystery. I know god through MY experience and the teachings of Jesus and others to the extent that I have applied those teachings, but no-one else has lived my life. Maybe some people are privvy to god's nature to the fullest, and wholly knowing, but I've never herd it persuasively expressed… it's always a bit personally selective, like readings from the Bible or Al Qr'an, or whatever.

I know god from what I experience of god hour by hour, day by day. God constantly delights me but I do not assume that the Universe was created for me as its sole reason to exist. I could be wrong about that but, either way, my gratitude level stays pretty constant.

Still, I'd credit every being and creature with its own reading of that. This is not absolutist relativism John… we have to engage to know. But I am a monotheist and I'd find it impossible to draw boundaries around "my" god or, for that matter "not my" god… far less anyone else's "god". It's the not-god stuff that creates all the strife, noise and mess in the World. It's not hard to discern the "not-god", not  because "not-god" usually stated very explicitly by its perpetrators.

I would not see a stone as a "god" but I carry one with me all the time  to remind me of the immediate presence, the weight in my hand, of the mystery… and it is mystery because I do not know what it is formed of, where or when it came from or what will become of it: it is mystery to me too. But portable! Knowing the science of it would be irrelevant. Could my stone be "god"? I don't think so…

…but an angel? Maybe!!!!

Hi Redhead,

You wrote: "It is sad, to know much,and then to understand that you know so little."

Don't be sad. It's liberating!

It's refreshing…

it lets life become a real journey again!

Great discussion. Wasn't sure what would come out of it when I started the thread but there's been lots of food for thought.

To be honest, though I self-describe as a pantheist, I am with RevJohn up to a point. It is very hard to see how classical pantheism is compatible with Christianity unless one really stretches one or the other.

Yes, one can speak of the incarnation as a myth about how we are all divine, but that's not really the message I get from Jesus. Time and time again, he refers to his Father as a clearly separate being while only once that I can think of do we get the "I and my Father are one", or however it goes, line. In my reading, Jesus really did see God as a separate entity to whom one could relate personally. That means at least panentheism.

Yes, one could talk about how a divine universe could be "fully embodied" or "fully aware" in a person like Jesus but, again, that level of will and consciousness seems to suggest something that transcends simple matter and energy to create a personal deity. Again, that means at least panentheism.

I'm not saying that a pantheistic Christianity is absolutely impossible but I'm thinking panentheism is a better fit on many levels. The basic problem, to my eye, is that Christianity postulates a personal relationship to a personal deity and you just don't have that in pantheism.

Mendalla

cf Arm's quote from Lao Tze upthread. "The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao" could be rendered in Christianity as "The God that can be named is not the true God." God, if there be such, must be far beyond human thought and human words and "God" is simply the placeholder we put in to denote that presence, not the sum total of the presence.

Mendalla

This is a Buddhist thought also where there this no such "thing" as God, because once you attempt to name God or even describe It, then you've put a line around something that has no boundaries. Therefore there is no God that you can name.

Hi MikePaterson,

I do not know that panenthism is wrong.  I believe it to be wrong.  Is that belief absolute?  I'll argue yes, it is, simply because I am thoroughly and utterly convinced that I am not God.  Further to that I am thoroughly and utterly convinced that any who believe me to be God in any way or fashion are, at best, mistaken.

Does pantheism speak in absolute terms?  Yes.  All is God is an absolute statement.

Is this you defining God in absolute terms?  It would appear so.

That is good to hear absolutes probably exist somewhere.  Wherever that is I expect it is uneasy.

By describing yourself as a monotheist haven't you easily drawn a boundary though Mike?  Or are you a panmonotheist (All is one god).

Which means that the stone is at best an icon.  Which is not pantheism.  I haven't said I take issue with symbolism or iconography.  I have said I reject pantheism and I am absolute in the knowledge that I am not God.

Angelomorphism?  Is that better than anthropomorphism?

Theology at its best is an approximation, since God is beyond the scope of humanity there is no theology than can capture the fullness of God completely.  That doesn't mean that all theology is of necessity, accurate or even helpful.

I think it is possible to say what God is not, understanding there is always the possiblity of being proven wrong at a later date.

I am supremely confident that I am not God which does not in any way suggest I actually am a supreme being.  I am equally confident that none of you look upon me as God (which is good because if you said the wrong thing when I was in a smitey mood it wouldn't be pretty).

Without wanting to tread heavily on anyone else's ego there are none here I am inclined to think of as God.  I like some of you quite a bit none to the point of prostration.

Pantheism is disqualified if I am not God, unless it can be proven that I am not and never was real, then I don't actually constitutes part of the All that is God under the rubric of pantheism.  Further disqualifications arise as I start going through the member list or ticking off the names of family members.

I do not know everything about God and I'm fairly confident I have never claimed to have  that kind of knowledge.  I do know enough about myself to know I am not God which is the only hole needed to deflate pantheism.

Grace and peace to you.

John

I ain't God, either.

My mom asked us many times, "Who died and made you God?" She also made darn sure we knew we were not God.

BTW We knew she ruled in God's absence, but she wasn't God either and we knew it when we prayed about her to God.

John: I would locate absolutes, along with certainity, within the perimeter fences of human intellect, perceptual reach and ego.

When I write of "god" as absolute mystery"  that is what I mean: that from within human horizons and capacities, there are no adequate, consistent, comprehensive descriptions of "god" — "absolute" is a concept that can exist only within finite boundaries. It  can exist only within human conceptual reach… we can't speak for animals and plants because we've not been very interested in asking them. Some cultures have do talk about the wisdom of other creatures.

Hi Mendalla:

Yes, and it isn't just God that can't be named. Anything that can be named isn't the name, or the concept behind the name. It just is. Naming things is fine, and necessary for effective communication, but the names or concepts don't convey any absolute truths or meanings about them. I think reality is a mystery, as much as God is mystery. I think that God, or the creative power or force of the universe, just is, and Moses' "I AM" is a pretty good definition of God.

Just because I feel that the universe is a unified whole, and its creative or transcendental power an integral part of that whole, I identify myself as a pantheist or unitheist.

To anyone brought up within the Christian tradition, God is so much "other" that a personal unity with God is an unimaginable sacrilege. That's why they came up with Panentheism, whereby God is in everyone and everything, but also a real ontological reality separate from everyone and everything.

Who knows for sure? I don't!

RevJohn, I'm confused. Are you saying that you reject both "pantheism" and "panentheism", and that "theology" is your only true way of viewing God?

Hi Neo,

At this point I think it is clear that I reject pantheism (All is God).

I have not rejected panentheism, it just may not be the most accurate qualifier for the Theism that I readily embrace.

Pantheism, panentheism, monotheism and theism are all theology.

Theology is, broadly speaking, the study of God.  Anyone who speaks of God or articulates a notion of what God is or isn't is engaging in theology.  Just as anyone counting apples in the grocery store is engaging in mathmatics.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Pan ... to reject that which surrounds us as in PanO'Rhama ... is this shunning of part of all that is? Sort of an abstraction that leaves us incomplete ... daemons! One small spark of many as stardusting ... thus it falls or so it goest ...

The infinite chore dealing with the omi-Nous or God's soul as it goes ... unseen due to how little we know? WE/Wii umans are so entangled in the omniscience, omnipotency, and omnipresnet we forget the understanding thereof  that requires heart and soul with ethers ... a place for that Nous (sort of phi'n thing; Ø, Q) which in the mind we fear ...ing us the word paranoid ... and great expressions of terrorism if we don't understand the initial thereof ... is this num'inous ... or just numb in us ... out failure to see how how English is the mongrelization of many tongues?'' Just read the Gospel of John ... God is the word and much of it is just out-of-here; en'verse of John as revelational! ID'll evolve and alter ... change ... why not assist so as to abide by mortal wishes ... to not know? And there you have it extensive Mrs. Undersanding ... as sublime ... the lo' rhodes?

Allows a very abstract pool to play with as the original tongue of Christ ... according to King Jaimes ... who was overloaded with the power of desire and not very clewed in. In matter of fact that particular father of a certain part of English was illiterate ... sorry to shoot holes in your clouds HG. A bit of a mystic shot in the dark ... and the pot flew!

And what is it the Seder (type of fêtè-ish) states on possession of the whole world and losing the sole? Is that active or passive as in the differeence in possessing and being possessed? Some religious folk are just possessed with desires ... circumscribing the word avarice that is said to be an excess expression of desire. Perhaps it is best to desire metaphysical things like thought, meditation and contemplation ... if you are already possessed by the earth ... in time you will be a fecundity to another state ... what Shakespeare called a stage but few really conceived of what Shakespeare was dealing with ... a Jared point? Like a moving bos'n in quantum rants ... God gave us all perspectives so that when collected heh's vision could be fleesed ... ro otherwise the perspective of Lord of the Flies (credits due to Gary Larson) which initiate a'farce ID! ord issomething you can plae with ... like stirring the becoming sole ... that which will be needs some enlightenment as Capitalism isn't leaving much future tuit!

If you say anything here do it so it is ambiguous, or they will claim you're thinking evil ... when you could just pas yourself over as crazy ... and they won't know about your ominous state of thought! Such is frightening in religion as I've been told religion is all about the cutting down of the tree of knowledge to create abstracts ... oblivious holes in the infinite ... like voids of spatial sorts? The garden passed in an inconspicuous filed of consumption like the fruit in the eye of many worms ... and the apple of the eye of God was poked ... all shopt full of holes as people lost their respect for ancient wisdom in two halves ... what is and what isn't ... an out-of-here thought!

The people that studied this expression were gifted with satire as originating from ealier satyr-ists like Milton and Dante  with his allegorizing of 'eL or elle as you might put it into enlightenment  for those in dark clouds ... such is a feast or fete for those of us that see through the spectacle ... such is a hoest of another colour ... abstract meditation?

Do we need anyone to tell us these things in a world that hates individualized thinking the way it was set up? God appears to need all the assistance they can get for Templar Asassination of some of the old greedy conceptions without respect for what's beyond motal clews ... something to put a bitter end of a line about ...

Obviously we can't get it together all alone ... a grand UCC spoof ... we are not alone ... when the fundies and atheists shun us freely! Maybe we are just marginally alone ...

I think I understand what pantheism means. I think I don't understand yet what panentheism means. Everything in our universe is divine, but God is even more than our universe. Is that it?

Yes, RAN, that's how our poster named "panentheism" explained panentheism: God is in the universe, and is the universe, but also more than the universe. An actual, real or ontological entity beyond the universe.

Supercedes the cult of stupidity ... the art of not knowing these things!

Sort of like L'uv when one is susceptable to Luce'n de thoughts ...

Hi RAN,

Pan-en-theism literally means all in God.

It does not posit that the universe itself is divine.  It posits that the universe is held within the divine.

Grace and peace to you.

John

Why I am not a pantheist is the reality of me and other things like trees disapear because what is real is only God.  There is no reality other than the g-d  and only g-d is real. What gives reality to the things of our world is g-d and thus removes agency in each actor in the complexity of becoming.  G-d is both the end and the beginning and the world itsefl has no reality.

Thus I am a panentheist:  God is in the world and the world is in God, and God has reality distinct from the world and we have reality distinct from God, however, the becoming process includes both our agency and God's lure in each nanosecond, what then emerges is a actual reality that perishes, for the world is finite.  However, God is eternal and has to work with what is to lure it to what it could become.

Christology Omniscient.  Omnipresent. Omnipotent.  And then the Holy Trinity - And then the argument for belief in a god is monotheistc.  wow math science and language wins and only blind radcal leap of faith christology will survive -how can a monotheistic religon be based historically on the philosophcal notoion of trinity?

Christology Omniscient.  Omnipresent. Omnipotent.  And then the Holy Trinity - And then the argument for belief in a god is monotheistc.  wow math science and language wins and only blind radcal leap of faith christology will survive -how can a monotheistic religon be based historically on the philosophcal notoion of trinity?

I agree with a lot of what Panentheism says. Therefore, I probably am not a strict pantheist but a pantheist leaning toward panentheism, or a panentheist leaning toward pantheism.

But, most of all, I am a mystic who favours experiencing the divine over speculating about the divine.

Alas, we can't help but speculate. God created us that way, eh?

It's said we are made in God's image... That's an understanding the ancients held... Now we know we are our molecules, cells, organs. We need them to survive, and they all work together as an integrated whole unless some organism infects, or other disruption impacts, their ability to function properly together but we are more than the sum total of a bunch of parts. And all of these parts of this whole I call 'me' are not aware of their integral relationship with one another usually until a problem in functioning reaches my conscious awareness- a pain signal, problems coordinating my body in order to accomplish something necessary. Then I might aknowledge with gratitude the parts that are still serving me well, and I might be inclined to be a little ticked, or grieved over the parts that aren't. I might at first get angry with them. But being a part of me, cursing them only alienates them from me and that serves no good to me on the whole- if I can nurse them back to being healthy and functioning again. But if I can't, then I just accept my achey, weak knee, for example. I love it anyway. I aknowledge its imperfect presence. It's still a part of me. That imperfect presence lives with me as I carry on, and becomes a perfect flaw as I learn to adapt and cope, and my body learns to compensate for this weaker member of it's whole. If I had to lose my leg- I might still feel it as thought it were there. I would remember it being there. I wouldn't begrudge it. The only thing I might begrudge is infection that caused me to lose it-what I might equate with 'evil'. In some way, even as a memory of its original state, my leg remains a part of me no matter what. Even if just a memory and a 'ghost sensation' from when I was whole and fully functioning. And if there was any possibility at all, I would be inclined to encourage healing- sometimes needing to change my habits, my choices, my lifestyle- on a conscious personal level at that point, so all of my component parts operate in harmony- and I am more than the sum my component parts. That's sort of how I have come to understand God through a certain lens. My cells, organs, etc. are not personal- until they are. In rudimentary language-but sort on a visceral level that is just one of the ways in which I understand, imagine, conceptualize, believe in, God- and all being part of God- personal and impersonal. Just as it is one of the several ways, I understand me and all my parts to be part of me-personal and impersonal. We are the micro, God is the macro- all in all.

I don't look at a sunset, a tree, an ocean, the stars and planets,a volcano, or an earthquake etc and think.....ah that is God. I just think that is what God is capable of and probably so much more that I haven't seen.

When I see humanity at it's best I see another glimpse of God and when I see humanity at it's worst, I can still see God working with us through this world.

Still any analysis that I attempt is simple and arrogant  but the fact that I/we seek God or deny God, seems to be yet another essential component towards our understanding of our purpose for the life that we have.

And thus could one say in the spirit of Pan-en-theism in a stretch (abstraction?) that this could be broad based or a broad supportive icon that avacarious creatures would extract from without reverence allowing for subliminal suggestion to persons with wile not to know?

Appears as a tradition but it might just be a pas'n illusion ... UFO? NEO could you fall for that singularity as a discontinuity as a sparticle of Levite?

Such hair braines lucutions assist in the chaos ... that allowing people to "know-not"!

Thus they didn't ...

Hi Kimmio:

Tiny particles uniting to form an integrated whole, which is an inseparable part of a greater whole, which is an inseparable part  of a yet greater whole, which is and inseparable part of an even greater whole, and so on: wholes within wholes within wholes, with the greatest integrated and inseparable whole containing all lesser wholes, this seems to be how the universe works. Theologically, this is Holotheism. Unitheism, Holotheism, Pantheism, Panentheism, they all are pretty much the same, with only subtle differences. Often, one of these thought system overlaps with the other.

When speculating, we must bear in mind that all of our speculations are analyses, but the integrated greatest whole, containing all sub-wholes, is in a state of synthesis: an inseparable, unified whole. This whole, as it really is, can only be experienced. Analysing IT is fragments IT. The analysed state is not how or what IT really is. IT always is an inseparable whole, in a unified state. Although the unified state can be experienced, and is being experienced in the pure, undifferentiated experience, IT, in ITs actual isness, is essentially beyond analysis.

I know that I don't know.

-Socrates

The TAO that can be told is not the TAO.

-Lao Tse

I know that I don't know. It's just one concept, an idea it's not an absolute. Like I said, I understand (not much in the grand scheme of things) God from several different perspectives. At least I try to. My best attempt, today, to explain the idea that came to mind, today.Thinking about humanity as the living parts, all important- integrated into the whole of God- subconsciously working together in harmony (or not when we don't take care to notice when something needs care) like those of our bodies. The goal being perfect integration, perfect harmony. But even when a part of it or it's perfect capacity to function is lost to illness the memory of it is not. The perfect 'blueprint' for a perfectly functioning whole body is never lost. I have had only little glimpses of experience- but have great hope- in this wholeness.