Key Differences between Theism, Pantheism, and Panentheism
By definition, theism is the belief that there exists one ultimate or supreme reality unto whom all limited or finite things depend.[1] This supreme reality is called God in the Abrahamic religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Pantheism, on the other side, is the view that the universe as a whole is God and God is the universe as a whole.[2] Pantheism is a basis of religions like Hindu and Buddhism and is a basic principle in most religions.[3] Panentheism differs slightly from pantheism; panentheism sees the universe only as part of God.[4] In other words, from a panentheistic point of view, the supreme reality that is God is greater than the universe; God includes and interpenetrates the universe.[5] From the definitions, it is clear that although all the three approaches appreciate the existence of a supreme reality, they differ in their view of the association of this supreme reality with the universe. In other words, theists believe in a transcendent God who not immanent while pantheism and panentheism believe in a highly immanent God; panentheism, however, posits that this God is also transcendent. As such, this paper analyses the differences among theism, pantheism, and panentheism.
First, the three approaches differ in their placement of divine essence. Theists believe that there is only one Supreme Being unto whom all divinity belongs.[6] Pantheists see God and his creations as one and thus everything that God created is divine.[7] According to pantheists, the universe, as it is, is divine. Panentheists also believe that the universe and all creation therein are divine since they are part of God. One key difference here is that the level of the divinity of creation differs between pantheists and panentheists.
Second, the three approaches differ in their view of the personal quality of God. Theists believe is a personal God who is revealed and unified to a believer by grace. Pantheists see God as an absolute rather than personal being. Moreover, pantheists consider union with God as a natural thing which occurs when one interacts with the environment which is in itself, God.[8] Panentheism rejects the concept of an impersonal God; according to panentheists, the universe is part of a supreme being who is greater than it and interacts with man, who has a free will, at a personal level. This brings out another difference between the three approaches. Theism and panentheism see creation as free-willed while pantheism posits that finite beings do not have free will of their own.[9]
In addition, the three approaches differ on the concept of creation and mortality. According to theists, God created the universe and all that is in it. Panentheists also see God as the author of the universe which is part of Him. On the contrary, pantheists rarely allude to the concept of creation – the universe is God, so God couldn’t have created the universe. Theists believe in personal mortality of all created finite beings and the end of time – God is the only immortal being. The unacceptability of the pantheistic view of impersonal mortality is the basis to panentheism.[10] Pantheism propagates a concept of impersonal immortality which perceives the fusion of finite beings in the universe hence the immortality of the universe as a whole.[11] However, both pantheism and panentheism believe in the theory of reincarnation which is not popular among theists.
Philosophical Advantages and Disadvantages of Theism
The main philosophical advantage of theism is its position on morality. Theists believe in the existence of one all-loving and all-important being who controls the whole universe. This being, God, is also the source of all divine order that is in the universe. As a result of his all-loving nature, God wants the best for humanity and the whole universe and has thus set out morals or regulations which humanity should adhere to for their own good.[12] Adherence to these regulations has the potential of attracting blessings upon one while failure to adhere to these can attract the wrath of the supreme deity. Adams asserts that this belief in supernatural rewards or punishments as the main contributor to morality among theists.[13] Therefore, all theists have a code of morals to which they adhere to – in most instances, this set of morals are in line with or are the basis of communal ethics and the rule of law. In other words, people who prescribe to theist religions and theist morals also adhere to the rule of law and communal ethics. As an advantage, therefore, theism promotes ethics and morality.
Moreover, theism can be a source of comfort and hope to humanity. The idea that there is a higher being who cares for one and listens to them can comfort and give them hope when they are going through difficult times.[14] Also, like any other religious theories, theism helps believers to understand difficult life questions and to avoid unquenchable curiosity on controversial topics like the origin of the world, creation of man, and the origin of diversity.[15] Additionally, the theistic belief in the creation theory, which shows the importance of humanity to creation, helps believers to appreciate their importance in God’s creation.
The main philosophical disadvantage of theism is its insufficiency. Theism is clearly insufficient as it fails to explain some things in the real world. First, a critical view at all theistic religion reveals a level of inconsistence in the single all-knowing deity. For instance, if God were all-good, all-loving, and all-powerful he shouldn’t have created evil; and if His creation would have resorted to evil, he should have stopped it.[16] Secondly, there is an element of exceptionalism when theists are addressing their followers on subjects like mortality and witnessing their blessings. Theists often confirm the existence of God by saying what He did to them even though the same God has the ability to help the millions that suffer but has left them to suffer. Third, as earlier alluded to, theists use their belief in a deity as justification for morality; on the contrary, sections of theistic holy books also seem to justify some behaviors which are obviously immoral.[17] For instance, the Nazi Germany soldiers were Christians who called on God to be with them in their mission of slaughtering millions of innocent lives; the same can be said about Muslim fundamentalists who use religion to justify terrorism. Furthermore, the basic principles of theism are in themselves contradictory. Theists argue that a God who is purely transcendent with no immanence and immortal is all-knowing and all-loving at the same time; this is impossible since for once to love and know, they must be with their subjects and in their subjects’ environment – a purely transcendent God thus has no capability to know and love humans.[18]
Philosophical Advantages and Disadvantages of Pantheism
The main philosophical advantage of pantheism lies in its emphasis on the divinity of nature and the universe; since the universe is God, it is divine and immortal. As such, pantheists, including Hindus and Buddhists, always look to take good care of nature since nature is divine. Their emphasis on maintaining nature is also a result of their conscious quest to maintain the immortality of universe as a unit. Pantheism thus offers the philosophical advantage that it emphasizes the importance of nature and taking care of nature. Although pantheism does not prescribe a specific naturalistic or non-naturalistic ethics for pantheists, their ethical teachings are closely related to ecology and the maintenance of the divine unity.[19] In other words, pantheists are against activities that destroy nature and lead cause the plight of humanity in the long-term.
A key philosophical disadvantage, however, lies in its inability to explain various issues, especially origin and divergence. If God is nature, then God could not have created nature – so who created nature?[20] It is obvious that nature couldn’t have created itself since God cannot create Himself. On the concept of divergence, it becomes difficult to explain why different parts of a whole would look so different. Moreover, not all forms of nature are good; nature contains both good and evil. If all nature is in itself one all-good and all-knowing God, how come nature contains evil? In other words, just like theism, pantheism is largely inadequate in its attempt to explain things. In fact, most theologists find pantheism to have more inadequacies than theism and panentheism; with this two, the belief in transcendence tends to eliminate the need to ask further questions about nature.
Cooper also asserts that pantheism offends and shows total disregard to the differences that exist between various forms of creation and humans in particular when it totalizes all as God and God as all.[21] Pantheism actually liquefies humans into one and offers to give humanity an easy escape from the contingencies and difficulties of life. Pantheism is an item that lacks in genuine knowledge. To most humans, their environment does not have any special features that qualify it to be called divine – the thought that the environment is the very divine and supernatural being is in itself absurd. Other philosophers who have argued against pantheism have tended to raise the issue of evil. Since pantheists argue that everything in the universe represent God and that the universe as a whole is immortal and eternally good, it is not possible to have evil in as part of an all-good and eternal God.[22] Moreover, since the universe as it is, is God, He cannot know and love the world.
Philosophical advantages and disadvantages of panentheism
The main advantage of panentheism is its ability to combine key core values of pantheism and those of theism; according to pantheists, God is both transcendent and immanent.[23] For this reason, panentheism manages to avoid some of the critiques leveled against pantheism. An example of this is the issue of creation – panentheists argue that since God has transcendence, he is not just the universe but he interpenetrates the universe. As such, God has power over the universe and could have created it. Moreover, by arguing that God is transcendent, panentheists reestablish the concept of a personal God who has the capability to know each and every person in the universe and love them.[24] Here, panentheism avoids the criticism that has been leveled against theists that a purely transcendent God cannot be all-loving and all-knowing by asserting that this God is also immanent. In his works, Hartshorne argues that since traditional theists strive to differentiate the world from God, a third unit called God-and-world, which theism omits, emerges; panentheism thus strives to give the nest explanation for the association between God and the world.[25]
In the current materialistic age, panentheism offers another important advantage over traditional theism. Since it appreciates the immanence of God in nature and the theistic creation as it is known, panentheists can propagate their belief in the biological theory of evolution while maintaining their belief in a supernatural most-high and all-important deity.[26] Theists strongly criticize the biological theory of evolution since they believe that God created man and other living organisms and gave the ability to procreate. Moreover, panentheism seems to marry well with science hence another advantage over traditional theism which emphasizes on faith.[27]
A key weakness that panentheism shares with pantheism is the question of evil. Pantheists argue that the universe is part of God.[28] Since pantheists also argue that the transcendent God is perfect and all-good, it becomes hard to conceptualize the evil that is in the universe. A perfect God cannot allow evil to be part of Him. In addition, theists have criticized panentheists for believing in a transcendent God but failing to separate him from the universe which contains too much evil. Moreover, theists have criticized panentheism because of its tendency to lump the world and God into one – if the world was part of God, then it means that God cannot control the world. Furthermore, Barua criticizes the panentheist belief that the world is part of the body of God by alluding to the theistic belief that God is impassible, atemporal, and outside the spatiotemporal matrix – God’s body is not something that is tangible or has the characteristics of matter as the universe does.[29]
Bibliography
Adams, Robert Merrihew. “Moral arguments for theistic belief.” Rationality and Religious Belief (1979): 116-40.
Baggett, David, and Jerry L. Walls. Good God: the theistic foundations of morality. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Barua, Ankur. “God’s Body at Work: Rāmānuja and Panentheism.” International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 14, no. 1 (2010): 1-30.
Flew, Antony, and Dr Gary R. Habermas. “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism.” Philosophia Christi 6, no. 2 (2004): 197-211.
Harrison, Paul. Elements of Pantheism. Coral Springs, FL: Llumina Press. 2004.
Jackson, Roger. “Dharmakīrti’s refutation of theism.” Philosophy East and West, (1986): 315-348.
Lachs, John, and Robert B. Talisse. American philosophy: an encyclopedia. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Levine, Michael P. “Pantheism, ethics and ecology.” Environmental Values (1994): 121-138.
Shook, John R. “Panentheism and Peirce’s God Theology Guided by Philosophy and Cosmology.” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences, vol. 3, no. 1 (2016): 8-31.
Smart, John J. C, and John Haldane. Atheism and Theism. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010.
van Eijck, Jan, and Albert Visser. “Panentheism”. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford, California: Stanford University, 2012.
Wood, Laurence W. “The Panentheism of Charles Hartshorne: A Critique.” The Asbury Journal vol. 37, no. 2, (1982): 5.
[1] John Jamieson Carswell Smart and John Haldane, Atheism and Theism (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 3.
[2] Paul Harrison, Elements of Pantheism, (Coral Springs, FL: Llumina Press, 2004): 4.
[3] Harrison, Elements of Pantheism,16
[4] Jan van Eijck and Visser Albert, “Panentheism”, In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (Stanford, California: Stanford University, 2012), 2
[5] Laurence Wood, “The Panentheism of Charles Hartshorne: A Critique,” The Asbury Journal 37, no. 2 (1982): 25.
[6] Smart and Haldane, Atheism and Theism, 3.
[7] Harrison, Elements of Pantheism, 9
[8] Harrison, Elements of Pantheism, 36
[9] John Shook, “Panentheism and Peirce’s God Theology Guided by Philosophy and Cosmology.” Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences 3, no. 1 (2016): 18
[10] van Eijck and Albert, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 3
[11] van Eijck and Albert, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 15.
[12] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, Good God: the theistic foundations of morality, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 21
[13] Robert Merrihew Adams, “Moral arguments for theistic belief,” Rationality and Religious Belief (1979): 120.
[14] Antony Flew and Dr Gary R. Habermas. “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism.” Philosophia Christi 6, no. 2 (2004): 201.
[15] Antony Flew and Dr Gary R. Habermas, “My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism,” Philosophia Christi, vol. 6, no. 2, (2004): 203.
[16] Roger Jackson, “Dharmakīrti’s refutation of theism,” Philosophy East and West, (1986): 329.
[17] Baggett and Walls, Good God: the theistic foundations of morality, 67
[18] John Lachs and Robert B. Talisse, American philosophy: an encyclopedia, (New York: Routledge, 2008), 559
[19] Michael Levine, “Pantheism, ethics and ecology,” Environmental Values (1994): 121-138.
[20] Lachs and Talisse, American philosophy: an encyclopedia, 559
[21] John W., Cooper, Panentheism–the Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014), 77.
[22] Harrison, Elements of Pantheism, 18.
[23] Cooper, Panentheism–the Other God of the Philosophers, 156.
[24] Cooper, Panentheism–the Other God of the Philosophers,
[25] Wood, “The Panentheism of Charles Hartshorne: A Critique,” 29.
[26] Shook, “Panentheism and Peirce’s God Theology,” 12.
[27] van Eijck and Albert, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 5
[28] van Eijck and Albert, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2
[29] Ankur Barua, “God’s Body at Work: Rāmānuja and Panentheism,” International Journal of Hindu Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, (2010): 2.
