Pantheism

Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God.Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god.

Pantheism was popularized in the modern era as both a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics was an answer to Descartes' famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate.Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance. Although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate

Pantheism is derived from the Greek roots pan (meaning "all") and theos (meaning "God"). There are a variety of definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God. As a religious position, some describe pantheism as the polar opposite of atheism.From this standpoint, pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God. All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it.Others hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical; in other words: that the Universe (with all its divine extensions, planets, suns, galaxies, thrones and creatures) is what people and religions call "God".

History

The first known use of the term pantheism was by the English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work De spatio reali, written in Latin and published in 1697.In De spatio reali, Raphson begins with a distinction between atheistic ‘panhylists’ (from the Greek roots pan, "all", and hyle, "matter"), who believe everything is matter, and ‘pantheists’ who believe in “a certain universal substance, material as well as intelligent, that fashions all things that exist out of its own essence.” Raphson found the universe to be immeasurable in respect to a human's capacity of understanding, and believed that humans would never be able to comprehend it.

The term was borrowed and first used in English by the Irish writer John Toland in his work of 1705 Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist. John Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno, and used the terms 'pantheist' and 'Spinozist' interchangeably.In 1720 he wrote the Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society in Latin, envisioning a pantheist society which believed, "all things in the world are one, and one is all in all things ... what is all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish." He clarified his idea of pantheism in a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".

Although the term "pantheism" did not exist before the 17th century, various pre-Christian religions and philosophies can be regarded as pantheistic. Pantheism is similar to the ancient Hindu philosophy of Advaita (non-dualism) to the extent that the 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstücker remarked that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus."

Others include some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander.[20] The Stoics were pantheists, beginning with Zeno of Citium and culminating in the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, Stoicism was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism. The early Taoism of Lao Zi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic.Johannes Scotus Eriugena was, as much as possible, a Christian pantheist.

The Catholic church regarded pantheism as heresy. Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who was burned at the stake in 1600 for heresy, is considered by some to be a pantheist. Baruch Spinoza's Ethics, finished in 1675, was the major source from which pantheism spread.

In 1785, a major controversy about Spinoza's philosophy between Friedrich Jacobi, a critic, and Moses Mendelssohn, a defender, known in German as the Pantheismus-Streit, helped to spread pantheism to many German thinkers in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

For a time during the 19th century pantheism was the theological viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge in Britain; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in Germany; and Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in the United States. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, it came under attack 1862 in the Syllabus of Errors of Pius IX.

In the mid-eighteenth century, the English theologian Daniel Waterland defined pantheism as: "It supposes God and nature, or God and the whole universe, to be one and the same substance—one universal being; insomuch that men's souls are only modifications of the divine substance." In the early nineteenth century, the German theologian Julius Wegscheider defined pantheism as the belief that God and the world established by God are one and the same.

In the late 20th century, pantheism was often declared to be the underlying theology of Neopaganism, and Pantheists began forming organizations devoted specifically to Pantheism and treating it as a separate religion.

Recent developments

In 2008, one of Albert Einstein's letters, written in 1954 in German, in which he dismissed belief in a personal God, was sold at auction for more than US$330,000. Einstein wrote, "We followers of Spinoza see our God in the wonderful order and lawfulness of all that exists and in its soul ["Beseeltheit"] as it reveals itself in man and animal," in a letter to Eduard Büsching (25 October 1929) after Büsching sent Einstein a copy of his book Es gibt keinen Gott. Einstein responded that the book only dealt with the concept of a personal God and not the impersonal God of pantheism. "I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly," he wrote in another letter in 1954.

Pantheism is mentioned in a Papal encyclical in 2009 and a statement on New Year's Day in 2010,criticizing pantheism for denying the superiority of humans over nature and "seeing the source of man's salvation in nature". In a review of the 2009 film Avatar, Ross Douthat, an author, described pantheism as "Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now".

In 2011, a letter written in 1886 by William Herndon, Abraham Lincoln's law partner, was sold at auction for US$30,000. In it, Herndon writes of the U.S. President's evolving religious views, which included pantheism.

   "Mr. Lincoln’s religion is too well known to me to allow of even a shadow of a doubt; he is or was a Theist and a Rationalist, denying all extraordinary – supernatural inspiration or revelation. At one time in his life, to say the least, he was an elevated Pantheist, doubting the immortality of the soul as the Christian world understands that term. He believed that the soul lost its identity and was immortal as a force. Subsequent to this he rose to the belief of a God, and this is all the change he ever underwent."

The subject is understandably controversial, but the contents of the letter is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.

much more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheis… (Wiki)