Panentheism, process theology and an anonymous 12thC philosopher

Alan Anderson some time ago wrote an interesting article about panentheism. He says that panentheism is not;

….. pantheism (all is God), but panentheism, a term devised by Karl C. F. Krause (1781-1832) to describe his thought. It is best known for its use by Charles Hartshorne and recently by Matthew Fox. Panentheism says that all is in God, somewhat as if God were the ocean and we were fish. If one considers what is in God’s body to be part of God, then we can say that God is all there is and then some. The universe is God’s body, but God’s awareness or personality is greater than the sum of all the parts of the universe. All the parts have some degree of freedom in co-creating with God. At the start of its momentary career as a subject, an experience is God–as the divine initial aim. As the experience carries on its choosing process, it is a freely aiming reality that is not strictly God, since it departs from God’s purpose to some degree. Yet everything is within God.

Anderson presents the following by Santiago Sia [in his God in Process Thought, Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1985] which summarizes Hartshorne’s panentheism:

Panentheism . . . holds that God includes the world. But it sets itself apart from pantheism in that it does not maintain that God and the world are identical. . . . Hartshorne explains that God is a whole whose whole-properties are distinct from the properties of the constituents. While this is true of every whole, it is more so of God as the supreme whole. . . . The part is distinguishable from the whole although within it. The power of the parts is something suffered by the whole, not enacted by it. The whole has properties too which are not shared by the parts. Similarly, God as whole possesses attributes which are not shared by his creatures. . . . We perpetually create content not only in ourselves but also in God. And this gives significance to our presence in this world.

I do think however that the point is made most succinctly by an anonymous 12thC philosopher;

God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.

Anonymous, ‘The Book of the Twenty-four Philosophers‘ (12thC)

That is to say God is both wholly immanent and infinitely transcendent.

The article is to be found HERE

See ALSO