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Although etymologies can sometimes mislead one about word meanings, such is not the case with the word "panentheism." Taking each of its components in reverse order, panentheism is the belief that God ("theism") is in ("en," the Greek preposition) all things ("pan," from the Greek panta). Unlike pantheism, however, panentheism does not believe that God is nothing more than the universe. There is something of the divine that transcends or exceeds all else that is. It thus combines the notions of transcendence with immanence, because it believes that there is nothing within the universe from which God is absent. One mark of diversity among panentheistic religions is the degree to which they understand God to be a personal being, that is, whether they are "non-theistic" or "theistic" in their beliefs about the divine (see the discussion of this distinction on the pantheism page). For some, the divine that permeates this universe and extends beyond it is an impersonal power; one might think in terms of popular culture of "the Force" in George Lucas's "Star Wars" movies. Such understandings would represent non-theistic panentheisms. Others would believe that this one "Great Spirit" who pervades all things is personal, having a will and plan for the world and available to be in relationship with persons. These religious systems would be theistic panentheisms. Finally, it is possible to believe that while everything in the universe is pervaded by a divine spirit, there is not a single spirit or God but rather multiple divinities. These beliefs would be characterized as multitheistic panentheisms (or, what is sometimes called "polytheism"). True or "ideal" multitheism can be distinguished from "spiritism" by whether the religion teaches that all spirit(s) encountered in the universe are equally (multitheism) or even identically God (theism), or whether there are lesser spiritual beings that also inhabit the material universe ("spiritism" proper). When the character Pocahontas of the Disney animated film of the same name tells John Smith in the song "Colors of the Wind" that she knows "every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name," she is expressing at a minimum a spiritist form of religion, and quite probably a panentheistic one (whether she is also accurately representing Powhatan religious belief is a quite different question). Many other religions of the world would say that God is everywhere present in creation (what classical theologies call "omnipresence") without say that God is actually in some sense in everything of creation. Those religions would be asserting a further degree of transcendence of God (without making the divine distant or remote) that would distinguish them from panentheism. Panentheism has seen a remarkable resurgence in western cultures in response to what many believe is an overly mechanistic view of the universe derived from post-Enlightenment scientific understandings. It can be discerned as an element in much New Age spirituality, in some expressions of the Gaia hypothesis, and in movements like neo-paganism, Druidism, etc. |
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Scouting and Religious Diversity
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