When reading about Jacob Boehme and George MacDonald recently, I came upon something that I found very interesting and helped explain much about MacDonald’s theology to me that I thought was worth discussing here. I think it will be helpful for anyone interested in MacDonald—who, of course, is tremendously influential amongst Christian universalists— but I’m also hopeful this can lead to a discussion of “panentheism” and its various strands here.
Throughout his work, MacDonald demonstrates a “high view” of Nature which he expounds upon in his essay “Wordsworth’s Poetry” in A Dish of Orts. He refers to and applauds Wordsworth’s views as “Christian Pantheism” —which we would recognize as panentheism.
"
Here is part of the entry from the *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy *
Now MacDonald’s panentheism was undoubtedly acquired from his reading and love for the German Romantics, Hegel, Schelling and particularly Novalis as well as the British Romantics including Wordsworth and Coleridge particularly. The German Romantics were rooted in the Sturm und Drang movement “taking place from the late 1760s to the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism imposed by the Enlightenment and associated aesthetic movements.”
So when we see something of MacDonald’s like this Dave posted from MacDonald’s A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul:
….We can begin to understand it better when we understand MacDonald’s underlying panentheism.
[tag]DaveB[/tag] said very astutely
MacDonald truly believed, “In him we live and move and have our being”. And as far as Tillich— apparently he did apply the term “panentheism” to his theology.
There are many strands of panentheism and I believe MacDonald’s was essentially Trinitarian and orthodox. Other strands - including those of some of the “process” theologians - may not be. There is a panentheist strand in Quakerism that [tag]sobornost[/tag] is familiar with, apparently there is a doctrine of panentheism in the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches, and the panentheism of theologians such as Moltmann. Panentheism is also part of the theology of McLaren and the “Emergent Church” (or whatever the current term is.)[tag]fatherlearningtolove[/tag] may know more about that…. I am no theologian nor metaphysicist and would love to learn more about these different strands!
Great, great thread, Steve. I’m going to do some pondering and research on this before I respond; but I do think that sooner rather than later, we are going to have to get some definitions - especially ones that clarify the different strands.
I really look forward to this.
I’ll tag [tag]akimel[/tag] has he may want to help explain the Orthodox doctrine of panentheism.
Thought I’d also link to this paper “The Case for Christian Panentheism” by Philip Clayton who is carrying the torch for the “Process” theologians and thinks panentheism is very helpful in solving certain contemporary philosophical problems…philipclayton.net/files/papers/TheCaseforXtianPanentheism1.pdf
That’s pretty cool - I didn’t know MacDonald was a Panentheist! For me, I started using the term about myself because I had started to think along these lines before I discovered a term for it. So when I finally read something about Panentheism, I felt like it described things I already believed but hadn’t known how to put into words before.
If anyone is interested, I wrote about panentheism in this blog post (I included many of the scriptures that led me in the direction in that post), and while I don’t mention panentheism in this other post, you can see my panentheism shining through in that one as well.
I am personally a big fan of David Hayward’s z-theory, which he explains best in two posts:
EDIT: Steve - I should have asked: when you tagged me, were you asking for more about panentheism and panentheistic thought, or were you asking for more about the Emergent church movement and what it is about (specifically McLaren)?
I’d come across one of your posts where you mentioned being interested in panentheism and thought you’d be interested in this thread. I thought you might have been exposed to it through McLaren who is a espouses panentheism but wasn’t sure. Just trying to flesh out the different strands of panentheism so anything you think worthwhile we’d love to hear! Thanks for the links and I’ll take a good look at them.
Edit: Excellent blog posts, Geoff! I highly recommend others take a look at those. Really nice scriptural support there…
Well, McLaren is actually very subtle - it’s a skill of his. He kind of lures people in and drops these big mysteries on them and doesn’t bother to give any solutions - just sends them off with a desire to figure it out on their own. At least that’s how it worked for me - I was actually introduced to the possibility of Universalism through McLaren, but he didn’t really offer much of an argument for it. He just kind of dropped the question in my lap, and then I spent 3 months researching furiously.
So in the context of this particular conversation - I wouldn’t be surprised at all if McLaren was a panentheist. But I also don’t recall him writing anything that gave me that impression. Though he might have been the one to initially influence my thinking in that direction and I didn’t even know it - like I said, when I discovered panentheism it was like someone was giving me a word to describe something I already believed but didn’t know how to describe.
Thank you very much! I try really hard to be thorough and yet concise and understandable, and so it means a lot to me when I receive positive feedback!
You’re welcome and it was really well done and understandable (which is important for someone like me who has a hard time wrapping his head around metaphysics… )
Hi all,
Dick’s a bit fried from watching McClymond’s videos but was kind enough to supply these definitions for some of the terms that will be useful in discussing panentheism.
Ok, here’s a question to focus the discussion a bit. From the quotes of MacDonald above, it appears that he is an emanationist. Is the idea that, “This world is not merely a thing which God hath made, subjecting it to laws; but it is an expression of the thought, the feeling, the heart of God himself” incompatible with “orthodox” (small “O”) christianity? Is creation ex nihilo an essential doctrine? If so, why?
We have no direct knowledge of any material world. We don’t perceive things. We perceive perceptions. So why infer the existence of a material world at all? Surely, we “have no need of that hypothesis.” It’s an unnecessary complication, a multiplication of entities. To say we are minds existing in a infinite sea of ideas completely accounts for our experience. We don’t exist in an objective, autonomous, material universe. We exist as created minds in the uncreated mind of God. Like a fish in a stream, ideas flow past us and through us, and we experience our own particular story. By analogy, a clever icon in a virtual world will perceive many things as objectively real, but in fact they will be the programmer’s ideas expressed in computer code.
I am not a material body generating a non-material mind. I am a small mind (a clever icon of God) experiencing the set of ideas that create the perception called “my body”.
But an idea coming from God can be even more “real” and “material” than we can imagine-- bearing little resemblance to the thoughts and dreams that drift through our minds while awake or asleep.
If somehow God forgot about this universe, or ceased to Be, would this universe continue to expand on its merry way? (The watchmaker has left the shop but the watch keeps on ticking?) Or, is God truly the ground of our existence and his continual “thinking” of us (as ideas?) essential for us—and the universe to exist?
One last aside (of no relevance to this thread), it’s been extremely cold and snowy here the last few weeks (-13 F and -25 C right now), and here’s how I felt shoveling snow today…. youtube.com/watch?v=KHYEthYTMhM I love Dr Evil… (Should I say that? ) I can’t believe it’s the first of March! It’s the coldest, snowiest winter I remember—but I actually love it…. Makes me feel like a little kid or an arctic explorer when I walk to work.
(a view of the house across the street from our back porch.)
Yes. A world perfectly imagined by God would be every bit as real as any “material” world. This immediately leads to the multiverse, since God perfectly imagines every possible world.
If atheism is grounded in materialism, theism will be grounded in amaterialism. If I am a mind existing in a boundless stream of timeless ideas, atheism will be absurd.
I can’t see that a multiverse immediate flows from this, but I think it’s completely plausible that the “imagined” universe of God could be as real as we experience the “world”. God “imagining” the universe is of course an analogy and like all analogies (especially those relating to God) is insufficient and misleading if taken to far. Analagies do help us (at,least me, a non-metaphysical minded person) understand or at least begin to grasp thoughts about something or someone we can’t begin to grasp otherwise. I’ve been waiting to give this quote from Chesterton but I think it’s appropriate now. :
If a hypercomputer runs the relevant code, and my mind is plugged in somehow, the “real” world and the simulation will be indistinguishable. Indistinguishable implies identical. If so, the “real, material” world is code running through a hypercomputer. ie. ideas running through the mind of God. Every possible variation on this code would also be running through God’s mind. More precisely, every possible variation would always be perfectly present to God’s mind, and as such, they would be creations every bit as real as the one in which I find myself now. This would include the world in which I freely choose to write these words, as well as the world in which I freely choose to have a coffee instead.
Alternatively, I could be talking complete nonsense. (Gotta love GKC. )
I’m going to do some pondering and research on this before I respond; but I do think that sooner rather than later, we are going to have to get some definitions - especially ones that clarify the different strands.
I thought you might have been exposed to it through McLaren who is a espouses panentheism but wasn’t sure. 
Just trying to flesh out the different strands of panentheism so anything you think worthwhile we’d love to hear! Thanks for the links and I’ll take a good look at them.
(Should I say that? 
) I can’t believe it’s the first of March! It’s the coldest, snowiest winter I remember—but I actually love it…. 
