- Scott
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Re: Panentheism
Etzelnik wrote:
So now I'm reading that Spinoza actually felt like I do, and not like the Classical Pantheism he is generally associated with.
Yes, I agree that Spinoza is best regarded as a panentheist.
- Etzelnik
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Re: Panentheism
So now I'm reading that Spinoza actually felt like I do, and not like the Classical Pantheism he is generally associated with.
Yes, I agree that Spinoza is best regarded as a panentheist.
Panentheism also works with an essentially Maimonidean framework.
I feel like Spinoza, Einstein, and the other prominent Panentheists have been engaging a straw man in their critiques of a personal God. Maimonides, for example, would agree that God doesn't "love" us in the sense that we love, but rather interacts with us in a manner analogous to love.
That God is by His nature the source of all doesn't preclude Him from "revealing" himself to us by way of his Creation.
Noli turbare circulos meos.
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Thread Starter- Karl3125
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Re: Panentheism
Either way, for myself, why can't we approach the universe as all a manifestation of God's Will, created and constantly sustained on Will alone, while leaving God's essence untouched?
I don't see why we can't. The problem with panentheism hinges almost entirely on what we mean by "in." As John West says, if the Thomistic arguments work, then God is simple and without parts; any version of panentheism that implies otherwise would then have to be false. But if "being 'in' God" can be construed to mean something like "being an object of God's thought/intellect/will," then it's much less problematic; Scholasticism generally and Thomism particularly already have ways of understanding God's intellect/will that allow it to have multiple objects without compromising divine simplicity.
Scott:
One way of how we can be "in" God is implied in Thesis 3 of the 24 Thomistic Theses states,
Wherefore, in the exclusive domain of existence itself God alone subsists, He alone is the most simple. Everything else, which participates in existence, has a nature whereby existence is restricted, and is composed of essence and existence as of two really distinct principles.
The exposition of the analogia entis in Thesis 4 seems to follow upon this conception of creaturely participation in God's being.
It also seems that we could argue this same conception of being "in" God from our being temporal beings. Aquinas states that we know what is eternal primarily as interminable while also being a "simultaneous whole" (ST I.10.1). And since the whole is prior to its parts, eternity must be prior to time, and God's eternity must be prior to our temporality. I believe James Orr discusses this in his paper "'Being and Timelessness': Edith Stein's Critique of Heideggerian Temporality".