Theisms – A Pictorial
March 10, 2010 by Kay · Leave a Comment
There are, of course, other diagrams that could be added. And some of them could be tweaked. But this gives the gist of the differences.
Lenten Morning Routine
March 7, 2010 by Kay · Leave a Comment
I can’t say that this cartoon describes me as I observe Lent (because I’ve never observed Lent – though I’d like that to change – maybe next year). However, I can really appreciate the spirit of both the cartoon pictured below and the words of St. John Chrysostom that follow the cartoon, because though I am not observing Lent, I DO see myself aptly pictured therein.
Do you fast?
Give me proof of it by your works.
If you see someone who is poor, take pity on that one.
If you see a friend being honored, do not be envious.
Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eyes, and the feet,
and the hands and all the member of our bodies.
Let the hands fast, by being free of avarice.
Let the feet fast, by ceasing to run after sin.
Let the eyes fast, by disciplining them not to glare at that which is sinful.
Let the ears by not listening to evil talk and gossip.
Let the mouth fast from foul words and unjust criticism
For what good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes,
but bite and devour our brothers and sisters?
Panentheism Links Part Two
March 7, 2010 by Kay · 18 Comments
I found a really good collection of thoughts about panentheism over at the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and it highlights the varieties of viewpoints found within the panentheism framework. The bolded parts are my emphases (things that jumped out at me).
The first quote is about Jurgen Moltmann:
Utilizing resources from the tradition of German Idealism, Jürgen Moltmann developed a form of panentheism in his early work, The Crucified God 1974 (1972 for the German original), where he said that the suffering and renewal of all humanity are taken into the life of the Triune God. He explicated his understanding of panentheism more fully in The Trinity and the Kingdom 1981. Theological concerns motivate Moltmann’s concept of panentheism. Panentheism avoids the arbitrary concept of creation held by traditional theism and the loss of creaturely freedom that occurs in Christian pantheism (Cooper 2006, 248). Moltmann understands panentheism to involve both God in the world and the world in God. The relationship between God and the world is like the relationship among the members of the Trinity in that it involves relationships and communities (Molnar 1990, 674). Moltmann uses the concept of perichoresis to describe this relationship of mutual interpenetration. By using the concept of perichoresis, Moltmann moves away from a Hegelian understanding of the trinity as a dialectical development in history (Cooper 2006, 251). The relationship between God and the world develops because of God’s nature as love that seeks the other and the free response of the other (Molnar 1990, 677). Moltmann does not consider creation necessary for God nor the result of any inner divine compulsion. But creation is the result of God’s essential activity as love rather than the result of God’s self-determination (Molnar, 1990,679). This creation occurs in a process of interaction between nothingness and creativity, contraction and expansion, in God. Because there is no “outside” of God due to God’s infinity, God must withdraw in order for creation to exist. Kenosis, or God’s self-emptying, occurs in creation as well as in the incarnation. The nothing in the doctrine of “creation from nothing” is the primordial result of God’s contraction of God’s essential infinity (Cooper, 2006, 247). Moltmann finds that panentheism as mutual interpenetration preserves unity and difference in a variety of differences in kind such as God and human being, person and nature, and the spiritual and the sensuous (Moltmann, 1996, 307).
The second quote is about Arthur Peacocke:
Peacocke begins with the shift in the scientific understanding of the world from a mechanism to the current understandings of the world as a unity composed of complex systems in a hierarchy of different levels. These emergent levels do not become different types of reality but instead compose a unity that can be understood naturally as an emergentist monism. At the same time, the different levels of complexity cannot be reduced to an explanation of one type or level of complexity. The creative dynamic of the emergence of complexity in hierarchies is immanent in the world rather than external to the world (Peacocke 2004, 137–142) … Peacocke draws upon this contemporary scientific understanding of the universe to think about the relationship between God and the natural world. He rejects any understanding of God as external to nature whether it is a traditional theistic understanding where God intervenes in the natural world or a deistic understanding where God initiates the natural world but does not continue to be active in the world. For Peacocke, God continuously creates through the processes of the natural order. God’s active involvement is not an additional, external influence upon events. However, God is not identified with the natural processes, which are the action of God as Creator (Peacocke 2004, 143–144). Peacocke identifies his understanding of God’s relation to the world as panentheism because of its rejection of dualism and external interactions by God in favor of God always working from inside the universe. At the same time, God transcends the universe because God is infinitely more than the universe. This panentheistic model combines a stronger emphasis upon God’s immanence with God’s ultimate transcendence over the universe by using a model of personal agency (Peacocke 2004, 147–151)
The next quote is about Philip Clayton:
Philip Clayton begins with contemporary scientific understandings of the world and combines them with theological concepts drawn from a variety of sources including process theology. He describes God’s relationship with the world as an internal rather than an external relationship. Understanding God’s relationship as internal to the world recognizes the validity of modern scientific understandings that do not require any external source in order to account for the order in the world. At the same time, God’s internal presence provides the order and regularity that the world manifests (2001, 208–210). Clayton agrees that the world is in God and God is in the world. Panentheism, according to him, affirms the interdependence of God and the world (2004b, 83). This affirmation became possible as a result of the rejection of substantialistic language, which excludes all other beings from any one being. Rejection of substantialistic language thus allows for the interaction of beings. Clayton cites Hegel’s recognition that the logic of the infinite requires the inclusion of the finite in the infinite and points towards the presence of the world in God (Clayton 2004b, 78–79). Clayton, along with Joseph Bracken (1974; 2004), identifies his understanding of panentheism as Trinitarian and kenotic (Clayton 2005, 255). It is Trinitarian because the world participates in God in a manner analogous to the way that members of the trinity participate in each other although the world is not and does not become God. God freely decides to limit God’s infinite power in an act of kenosis in order to allow for the existence of non-divine reality. The divine kenotic decision results in the actuality of the world that is taken into God. But, for Clayton, God’s inclusion of finite being as actual is contingent upon God’s decision rather than necessary to God’s essence (2003, 214). Clayton affirms creation from nothing as a description of creaturely existence prior to God’s decision. The involvement of the world in an internal relationship with God does not completely constitute the divine being for Clayton. Instead, God is both primordial, or eternal, and responsive to the world. The world does constitute God’s relational aspect but not the totality of God (2005, 250–254). The best way to describe the interdependence between God and the world for Clayton is through the concept of emergence. Emergence may be explanatory, epistemological, or ontological. Ontological understandings of emergence, which Clayton supports, hold that 1) reality is made up one type of being, physical existence, rather than two or more types of being but this physicality does not mean that only physical objects exist because, 2) properties emerge in objects from the potentiality of an object that cannot be previously identified in the object’s parts or structure, 3) the emergence of new properties give rise to distinct levels of causal relations, which leads to 4) downward causation of the emergent level upon prior levels (2006a, 2–4). Emergence recognizes that change is important to the nature of the world and challenges static views of God (Clayton 2006b, 320).
At the bottom of the Stanford article there is a couple of paragraphs of modern criticisms and responses to those criticisms by those I’ve quoted above.
Panentheism Links – Pros and Cons
March 6, 2010 by Kay · 9 Comments
Because I made peace with my own personal definition of Panentheism quite a while ago, it has been a long time since I’ve Googled the term. However I was inspired to do so today and of course came across a whole new crop of articles that I found interesting for one reason or another.
One of the first articles that I read today – Why I am not a Pantheist (Nor a Panentheist) is very long, but quite worth reading. I wish I had cut and paste some of the paragraphs that made me go “Hmmm” as I read them, but alas, I did not and now most of those thoughts are gone. 
However, I will say that I wish that the author had called his article “Why I am not a Pantheist” only because, in my opinion, none of his arguments apply to Panentheism. Here are two quotes that I did make a mental note of my reaction:
So far, I have argued as follows: If the absolute is considered impersonal, than to call it “God” is disingenuous to both the original tenor of Abrahamic theism (before its absorption of ideologies like Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism) as well as the traditions which have always espoused a radically immanent notion of the divine. The latter have typically been either flatly non-theistic, or have depicted personal gods as derivative, a manifestation of a deeper and undifferentiated reality. If we must spiritualize all of existence, labeling it God adds nothing at best, and plays frivolously with a word deeply resonant to the great majority of theists. That is, unless the cosmos or the “All” can be argued to have a personal element over and above the sentient beings who occupy it (as insisted upon by process theologians), a position which has little experiential or philosophical justification.
Well that’s just it, isn’t it? Panentheists DO argue that The All DOES have a ‘personal element’ over and above the sentient beings that occupy it. Otherwise they would be Pantheists. And many Panentheists would argue that there is experiential justification (as they have experienced it). And I’d think that Panentheists like Whitehead or Clayton would argue that there is philosophical justification, as they are, ummm, philosophers and Panentheists.
It is neither the cosmos which merits spiritualization, nor the self considered alone, but the depth of the relationship between the two.
An obvious rejoinder is that this relationship is itself part of the All, and to think of it in abstraction from the totality of things is as fallacious as conceiving of heightened and exalted experiences without the human beings undergoing them. I have no quarrel with this picture; that we are part of the totality of things is a matter of logic (where else can we be?). But this is no argument for pantheism or panentheism, and in fact can be turned against both: For the relationship of the self to the rest of existence is indeed part of the All—and not to be identified with the totality in which it inheres.
Of course it’s an argument for Panentheism. It’s the very definition of Panentheism – that we are part of the totality of things and are not to be identified with the totality in which we inhere. (That would be Pantheism.)
A blog that I found during my searching is Theology in the 3rd Millennium. There is a very good article on Panentheism. Alas it doesn’t look like it has been updated since 2008. (I’d hoped I’d found a new blog to put on my RSS reader. 
)
I’m out of time but will return to this post later and add more links and comments. Until then, your thoughts are appreciated.
Solitude – The Cure for Lonliness
March 6, 2010 by Kay · 6 Comments
Today’s daily meditation by Richard Rohr really spoke to me. It made me think of the “episodes” that I’ve had in the past where modern society seems so surreal (and unreal) and I’ve wondered if we are living the way we are supposed to be living for our physical, mental and spiritual health.
As I read Rohr’s words I pictured myself standing in a field, barefoot, under a huge sky, surrounded by grasses and trees, with the sun shining down on me. There were no noises other than the wind and birdsong. No planes. No cars. No power lines. No people. Just me and Presence.
Here is the Daily Meditation:
Do you know what the answer for deep loneliness is? Solitude! No one would have ever imagined it, but I promise you it is true.
In solitude, we are able to let Reality/God define us from the inside out. We stop looking outside of ourselves for diversions, entertainment, or real satisfaction. It is the birth of the soul. When we keep looking outside of ourselves, we always and forever need another and then another diversion.
In solitude we slowly learn to live face to face with a Presence that asks nothing of us but presence in return (see I Corinthians 13:12 (JB)). It is too good to be true. This is the birth of the soul.
If we’ve never lived in the realm of pure presence without any need for achieving and performing, we don’t know how to breathe there at first. It is like living on a different planet. But eventually, we allow ourselves to be defined by relationship itself instead of by the good or bad—or even the holy—things we’ve done. And now it is relationship with everything, the rocks at our feet, the air that we breathe consciously, the little animals and birds, the God who is now obvious and praiseworthy in all things. Solitude, ironically and surprisingly, can connect us to everything else. Who would have thought?
