Panentheism: The Revival

This is the first in a series of essays I’ll be posting on the subject of panentheism (“all in God”) as discussed in a collection of essays entitled In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being.

Introduction
During a conversation with my mother not long ago, she told me she thinks God is no longer in the world the way he was for the people in the Bible. Her explanation was that people today are so distracted by worldly things, they no longer care about God, and so he has turned away. Conceptually, I think she’s largely correct. God is “gone” from the world for many people, even for believers, not because God has abandoned us, but because we have a long history of pushing God out to the cosmos.

The panentheists who contribute to In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being would agree. As Arthur Peacocke writes, Christian theology encompasses an “ancient immanent strand” (137), despite the deistic conception of God that arose in its most extreme form during the Enlightenment. This was God the clockmaker, who created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo), and established the rational principles by which it could run on its own. But Newton, Boyle, and other Enlightenment scientists had some help from the church. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo was the brain child of a few early church fathers (e.g., Tertullian and Irenaeus) in response to the gnostic’s demonization of matter.

The church reinforced supernaturalism in the early modern period to substantiate its claim that Christianity is the one true religion (Griffin 38). It seems then that science and religion have both played a part in alienating God. That notwithstanding, today, panentheists are looking to science for insight in reconceptualizing God-world relations in a way that brings God back into intimate connection with the world (Peacocke xx). In my upcoming posts, I’ll provide an overview of some of the theological perspectives that I believe represent the range of panentheistic views in this collection and panetheism’s basic features.

Works cited:
Clayton, Philip and Arthur Peacocke. In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke, eds. William B. Eerdsman Publishing Company (Grand Rapids: 2004).

Painting: “Deer Stories,” Pamela Yates, copyright, Pamela Yates