Pan, Panic, Pantheism

Pan, Panic, Pantheism

Adam Jacobs

I've been grappling with Pantheism—the concept that God and the Universe are one—for some time. It generally feels at odds with my personal understanding of reality, yet at times, it resonates deeply. This tension is perplexing. My first attempt to explore it was with Dr. Peter Sjostedt-Hughes, whose insights were invaluable. Now, I'm diving deeper with gratitude to Dr. Mary-Jane Rubenstein and her illuminating book, Pantheologies.

1. How does Pantheism differ from both classical theism and secular materialism?

Classical theism posits a singular, omnipotent, disembodied God who exists outside the material universe. Secular materialism rejects the existence of such a God and affirms the material universe as all there is. Pantheism argues that God is the universe and that this God-universe is the material-intellectual-spiritual reality that makes, sustains, and destroys all things.

2. What kind of evidence is there to support it?

Every natural science—from physics and chemistry to geology and biology to cybernetics and cosmology—attests to the immanent power of creation; that is, the emergence of new life forms (stars, mitochondria, tree roots, funghi, homo sapiens, artificial intelligence) from the relationships among old life forms. From evolution to plate tectonics to supernovae, the processes of creation, sustenance, and destruction are clearly internal to the universe itself. Of course, the immanence of these processes does not disprove the existence of a transcendent creator; most scientifically informed theists will argue that a transcendent creator is fully compatible with the operations of the natural world.

But even as none of these processes rules out an extra-cosmic creator, none of them requires one, either. In the face of such immanent accounts, there seem to be three possibilities: 1) affirm an extra-cosmic God as the source of natural processes (theism); 2) affirm natural processes as “all there is” (atheism); 3) affirm the divinity of those natural processes (pantheism). It’s not clear that any of these possibilities is more demonstrable than any of the rest. For me, then, the question is which of these metaphysical visions is ethically useful. That is, which of them most reliably grounds an appreciation for, and obligation to, the world that humans both compose and decompose?

3. Pantheism posits an underlying unity, yet our experience is of diversity. What is the metaphysical mechanism or rationale by which multiplicity arises from unity?

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