Oy! you don’t ask much James 
seeing as… (from the Wiki article)
I do think it’s interesting that Milton (who would never be confused as a universalist) was influenced by Bohme.
Good, that’s helpful.
And i think it’s probably fair to ask a lot. We have Boehme being used as ammunition against us right now, so i think it’s fair to suggest we establish a good case of how the influence he HAS had is not actually bad influence, and that any bad influence he may have had was
a) not limited to universalists
b) not that effective on universalists (preferably not at all)
If panentheism is simply the belief that God is present everywhere throughout his creation, then all classical expressions of Christianity are panentheistic.
I think the problem is that Boehme had such a broad influence that he can be used if McClymond wishes to tar just about any group he chooses. Here’s the Wiki list of religious groups he influenced…
I think George MacDonald is looking pretty good right now in exploring his panentheism. (By that, I mean pretty orthodox) There will be some universalists influenced by Boehme and some that come out of a completely different theologic and philosophic pedigree. I guess the real question would be how are current universalist leaders (theologians, pastors, and philosophers) influenced by Boehme and is there any “gnostic” taint to what they teach?
Folks may find of interest Kallistos Ware’s article “God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have our Being, ed. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke.
Ware is willing to accept the term “panentheism” if it signifies “the belief that God, while above the world, is at the same time within the world, everywhere present as the heart of its heart, the core of its core.” He suggests that this balance between transcendence and immanence is standard Christian belief, but that the balance has been compromised from the 17th century onward when the universe began to be envisaged “as an artifact, produced by its divine Maker from the outside.”
Eastern Orthodox typically distinguish between the divine essence and the divine energies: “In his essence God is infinitely transcendent, utterly beyond all created being, beyond all understanding and all participation from the human side. But in his energies–which are nothing else than God himself in action–God is inexhaustibly immanent, maintaining all things in being, animating them, making each of them a sacrament of his dynamic presence.”
Thanks, Fr Kimel! 
I’m thinking of getting Clayton and Peacocke’s book, but did find Ware’s article here:profligategrace.com/documents/Grant/Ware_God%20Immanent%20yet%20Transcendent.pdf
Yep this is a complex discussion and I can well see why James is alarmed. We are talking in the end about heresy here and the agenda has been set by Dr McClymond’s lecture and this thread is like a continuation of some of the discussion on the McClymond thread (which I think is half cooked but not completely so).
First of all I wonder what we think heresy is? I remember Karl Barth giving an irenic definition that I rather like namely t– what heretics overemphasise tends to be an aspect of the truth that the Church is underemphasising at the time when the heresies arise – the corollary here is that we can actually learn something from our heretics rather than merely despising them. I don’t know what you think about this – but it seemed like a useful and non paranoid/hate filled definition to me; and certainly I do not look forward to a revival of the juridical category of ‘heresy’ or the dis-fellowshiping variety. And this is more in the spirit with which Origen dealt with heretics than the over the top bile of Tertullian and Epiphanius (and Tertullian himself became a heretic after having spent his life railing against them). The implication is that we are all wobbling a bit – all of us heretics in a sense.
For example, Deism – which sees the universe in mechanistic terms operated by deterministic and immutable laws was obviously in some sense a Calvinist heresy. And the Romantic protest against mechanistic deism could stray into pantheistic heresy (although I’ve no idea if Boehme was actually a pantheist – as Dr McClymond says in his lecture his writings are like a picnic in which you can make absolutely what you like of because they are so dense and obscure)
I think Boehme has very little influence today apart from in obscure circles. However, there is an argument to say that some hermetic ideas live on in NEW Age circles that have grown out of American Transcendentalism.
We haven’t talked much about doctrine of creation here before. Interestingly Karl Barth insisted on creation ex nihilo. For Tillich creation is an emanation from God (he stresses God’s immanence as he does in calling god ‘the depth and ground of our being – and our point of ultimate concern) Moltmann speaks about creation as being ex amore’ – out of love, and suffering love too - this is in part a response to the holocaust and also later to the ecological crisis.
Thank you, Alec, for this link.
Agreed Father Akimel that’s a lovely essay Steve - and it is so striking how much a mature tradition of talking about divine transcendence and immanence that has always existed in the Eastern Church that sort of got lost in the Protestant Reformation - hence the many attempts (some heterodox, some more orthodox) to reinvent it. We seem to have lost our sense of cosmos in a way at the Reformation.
When it comes to systematic theologians talking about doctrine of creation using terms such as divine simplicity, admissibility, aseity etc and concepts such as the economic and immanent trinity I must admit I get very bewildered. They seems to be speaking creatively from within a tradition in which there is much scope for creativity and aporia but in which it is always possible to come up with wrong and inappropriate answers (for example it seems that Tillich wobbled/toppled over into immanence without transcendence and Moltmann’s doctrine of creation ‘ex amore’/out of suffering love - that is intimately related to his universalist eschatology - is a matter of some contention (but from what I’ve read he doesn’t appear to be an emanationist like Tillich).
Steve - I’ll have a think about that list of movements influenced by Boehme (and I’m sure Fahter Akimel with have some thoughts on Dr McClymond’s contention that modern universalism in the Orthodox church is solely a result of the influence of Boehme).
Thanks, Dick. 
So true Dick! I just wonder if Boehme’s influence on the Romantics was just as the match to light the revival in the importance of divine immanence more than anything… 
I also wonder if McClymond would agree with any theology that doesn’t have a purely Calvinist pedigree. Anything influenced by Hegel, Schelling or Schleiermacher would I think be suspect…
Please do! I just posted the list to show how diverse his influence was. He seems to have been almost like a Rorschach test…people seeing what they wanted to see. I do have to read more about Boehme’s influence on Milton, though.
Boehme’s influence was very diffuse –
His hatred of war and religious persecution, his doctrine of the inner light and the conversion of the heart had a diffuse influence on the Quakers for example.
I think Milton was influenced by Boehme in his ideas about religious freedom and in Paradise Lost ‘ – his emphasis on the Fall of Luther and the rebel Angels (and not just on the fall of Adam and Eve
Hegel who thought Boehme both a true philosopher and a complete muddle – was influenced by Boehme’s doctrine of the immanent Trinity and development in time through clash of contraries (and drank a toast to the French revolution until his dying day)
Only a breakaway sect of Martinists were Bohemnists – they emphasised contemplative integration in Christ and were actually very conservative in their support for the French Monarchy etc
The Ephrata Cloisters community and the Harmonic Society were full blown literalist Boehmenist millenarian sects emphasising the restoration of paridisal androgyny through celibacy and the wooing of virgin Sophia etc…
The influence on Gmac was pretty marginal
Thanks Dick, I appreciate that.
Now…what we really want to hear more about is the “Fall of Luther and the rebel Angels”! 
(your Freudian slip typos are wonderful!)
Oh, and for anyone interested in panentheism, particularly the Eastern Orthodox variety, the article by Kallistos Ware (linked to above and here again):profligategrace.com/documents/Grant/Ware_God%20Immanent%20yet%20Transcendent.pdf)… is really excellent. I think George MacDonald would agree completely with panentheism as described here in the teaching of Saint Gregory of Palamas.
Thanks Dick, you’ve addressed my concerns well.
“his influence on GMac was marginal” and restricted, perhaps to a mystical but orthodox view of creation. That’s really good enough. if we can say that Boehme’s views didn’t influence his universalism (which really seems likely as Boehme wasn’t even a universalist as i recall) then linking the two via panenthiesm (which i’ve always understood to be orthodox) is no bad thing.
but still, TIMING. Yeesh, Steve…YEESH 
Hi James -I think that the essay which Steve has given a link to is wonderful and that the theology of a Maximos and a Gregory was all that GMac was trying to express regarding nature when drawing upon ‘Romantic theology’
The other issue of the influence of William Law upon GMac’s thinking is for another thread, another time. OF course William Law was influenced by Boehme but not in his universalism. GMac is in influenced by Law’s thinking about the relationship between God’s love and wrath. I think again you can find equivalents in Law’s thinking about God’s love and wrath in the thinking of the Early Church fathers. A lot of what he says is also uncanny in it’s parallels to Girard and to general Giradian exegesis of the Old Testament - but Girard has never read Law and I’ve never seen a single Girardian quote Law.
Anyway, the essay by Kallistos Ware is indeed wonderful and it’s a shame that we can’t look at it in detail (that would be good ). I think for example that Maximos’ teaching about man as microcosm and priest of creation could be useful in a theology of care for creation for starters.
Why can’t we?
Odd about the Law/Girard indirect connection. if i were more evangelical, i could make assumptions about God’s influence. Heck, i’ll make that assumption anyway!
I may have gotten carried away, James. I was really more interested in this thread in investigating MacDonald’s panentheism than looking at Boehme’s influence on him here. It was while researching any GMac/Boehme connection for the McClymond thread that I realized how important and profound his view of God’s immanence was and when I saw Dave’s quote from GMac emphasizing this, well…
well, it is perhaps a chance to set the record straight on this sort of thing! showing where actual influence occurred and where it didn’t is perhaps a great way to counter bad and untrue arguments from those who disagree.
my main concern is that fans of theirs are not likely to dig any deeper, and so guilt by association (even where it can be proved that we ALL have that association) is likely to be an issue.
although, saying that…fans of McClymond are quite possibly the sort that would confuse Panentheism with Pantheism, because they both start with Pan.
Oh gosh, and they’re likely to assume it’s worship of Pan too!
Help! we’ve become pagans, suddenly!
Here’s a short excerpt from Jerry Hill’s “Mediated Transcendence” - a very good book I’ve read a few times.
I think he is talking a sort of panentheism, so it fits into this discussion pretty well.
From the introduction:
“What does matter is that we come to understand that the debate between traditional dualism and contemporary naturalism is mis-conceived…Moreover, my own proposal is that transcendence can be construed in such a manner as to be compatible with the positive insights and concerns of both of the current angles of approach, while avoiding the difficulties and liabilities of each;…the intangible reality mediated by means of tangible reality neither exists nor is known independently of the particulars of the tangible, but at the same time it cannot be reduced to an account those particulars. If transcendence is thought of as intangible reality mediated in and through the horizontal dimension of human and natural existence, it can serve as a meaningful concept in both philosophy and religion.
In short, the seeming loss of transcendence can be overcome by rethinking at the outset what is meant by the notion.”
Me : he goes on to state that there are four phases in the book"
- Overcome the horns of the dualism/naturalism dilemma by construing reality “as composed of a number of simultaneously interpenetrating dimensions, rather than mutually exclusive realms.”
- “The stress is on the centrality of interaction to all knowledge and on the fundamental priority of tacit knowing over explicit knowing” The social character of knowledge, distinction between verification and confirmation.
- Ethical values “can be viewed as transcendent without becoming static and doctrinaire.”
4.“Speech as a social activity rather than a propositional mirroring of states of affairs.”
All in all a very worthwhile read - not a long book, 150 pages or so - and does bear on this topic of panentheism, which I think we’ve just scratched the surface of.
From GMac’s Book of Strife. (Panentheism is very near the core of his thought. I’ll need to think more about that.) There is no doubt in my mind that GMac not only believed, but lived the idea that “In thee we live, and move, and have our being”
We make, but thou art the creating core.
Whatever thing I dream, invent, or feel,
Thou art the heart of it, the atmosphere.
Thou art inside all love man ever bore;
Yea, the love itself, whatever thing be dear.
Man calls his dog, he follows at his heel,
Because thou first art love, self-caused, essential, mere.
This day be with me, Lord, when I go forth,
Be nearer to me than I am able to ask.
In merriment, in converse, or in task,
Walking the street, listening to men of worth,
Or greeting such as only talk and bask,
Be thy thought still my waiting soul around,
And if He come, I shall be watching found.