![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Thus, panentheists are seeking a passage between the Scylla of a strict ontological divide between God and cosmos on the one hand, and the Charybdis of God and cosmos collapsing into one. However, this inter-relatedness does not collapse into a pantheistic identity-relation between God and the cosmos because panentheists explicitly stress that the cosmos is not divine. The inter-relatedness between God and world is considered as something so strong that one is justified in saying that the cosmos is ‘within’ God and God is ‘within’ the cosmos not only in a metaphorical but metaphysical sense. A unifying theme among panentheists is the aim to construct a maximally strong sense of divine immanence. These brief statements highlight that proponents of panentheism challenge the view of a God being external to, separated from and unaffected by the cosmos-a view generally ascribed to positions labelled as classical theism. Footnote 4 The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines panentheism as the view considering “God and the world to be inter-related with the world being in God and God being in the world.” Footnote 5 Clayton says that, concisely put, “panentheism is the claim that the world exists within the Divine, although God is also more than the world.” Footnote 6 Brierley enumerates the following central themes, among others: (1) the cosmos as God’s body, (2) the cosmos as sacrament, (3) God’s dependence on the cosmos, (4) the inextricable intertwining of God and cosmos and (5) divine passibility. In his survey article on panentheism, Michael W. An obvious method obvious method for doing so is to identify central commitments of its proponents. More important for my purposes is to specify what the particular hard core of panentheism, or an essential part of it, might be. ![]() For this reason, a primary aim of this paper is not to develop possible demarcation lines between panentheism and other accounts such as classical theism, although I will say a little bit about this distinction at the very end of this paper. There might even be a partial overlap among sub-programs of distinct research programs. Second, a research program consists of various sub-programs and different research accounts, which implies that a clear distinction of one research program from another is hard to achieve. Seeing panentheism as a research program brings with it a couple of consequences.įirst, research programs are not true or false simpliciter but argumentatively strong or weak, scientifically progressive or degenerative, consonant or dissonant with our overall knowledge of reality. Roughly put, a research program consists of a hard core, that is, its most essential presuppositions, and auxiliary hypotheses. Footnote 2 For this reason, I consider panentheism to be a theological research program rather than a specific theological thesis. Rather than a monolithic block, panentheism is better characterized as a cluster of different theological accounts sharing some common features. However, a clear classification has proven hard to achieve. By now it presents a traditional strand in theology on its own Footnote 1 with such prolific and productive representatives as Charles Harthshorne, Jürgen Moltmann, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Joseph Bracken and Philip Clayton to name just a few. Panentheism has gained increased attention among theological circles in the last decades. ![]()
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