Pandeism (or pan-deism) is a theological doctrine that combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism. Unlike classical deism, which holds that the creator deity does not interfere with the universe after its creation, pandeism holds that such an entity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate entity.[1][2][3][4] Pandeism (as it relates to deism) purports to explain why God would create a universe and then appear to abandon it, and pandeism (as it relates to pantheism) seeks to explain the origin and purpose of the universe.
Various theories suggest the coining of the word "pandeism" as early as the 1780s, but one of the earliest unequivocal uses of the word with its present meaning was in 1859 with Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal.[5]
Definition
The word "pandeism" is a hybrid blend of the root words "pantheism" and "deism"[6] (Ancient Greek: πᾶν, romanized:pan, lit.'all' and Latin: deus 'god'). The earliest use of the term pandeism appears to have been 1787,[7] with another usage found in 1838,[8] a first appearance in a dictionary in 1849 (in German, as 'Pandeismus' and 'Pandeistisch'),[9] and an 1859 usage of "pandeism" expressly in contrast to both pantheism and deism by philosophers and frequent collaborators Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal.[5]
In his 1910 work Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature"), physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein presented the broadest and most far-reaching examination of pandeism written up to that point.[10] Weinstein noted the distinction between pantheism and pandeism, stating "even if only by a letter (d in place of th), we fundamentally differ Pandeism from Pantheism" - indicating that the words, though spelled similarly, have very different implications.[11]
Some pantheists identify themselves as pandeists as well, to underscore that "they share with the deists the idea that God is not a personal God who desires to be worshipped".[12] It has also been suggested that "many religions may classify themselves as pantheistic" but "fit more essentially under the description of panentheistic or pandeistic."[13]
Pandeism falls within the traditional hierarchy of monistic and nontheistic philosophies which address the nature of God. It is one of several subsets of deism:[14][15] "Over time there have been other schools of thought formed under the umbrella of deism including Christian deism, belief in deistic principles coupled with the moral teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, and Pandeism, a belief that God became the entire universe and no longer exists as a separate being."[16]
Bruner, Davenport and Norwine, alluding to Victorian scholar George Levine's suggestion that secularism can bring the "fullness" always promised by religion, observe that "for others, this "fullness" is present in more religious-oriented pantheistic or pandeistic belief systems with, in the latter case, the inclusion of God as the ever unfolding expression of a complex universe with an identifiable beginning but no teleological direction necessarily present."[17] They suggest that pandeism, within a general tendency of postmodernity, has the capacity to "fundamentally alter future geographies of mind and being by shifting the locus of causality from an exalted Godhead to the domain of Nature".[17]
In the 2013 edition of their philosophy textbook, Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments, Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn define "pandeism" as "[t]he view that the universe is not only God but also a person".[18]
The earliest seeds of pandeism coincide with notions of monotheism, which generally can be traced back to the Atenism of Akhenaten, and the Babylonian-era Marduk.[19] Weinstein thought the ancient Egyptian idea of primary matter derived from an original spirit was a form of pandeism.[20] He also found varieties of pandeism in spiritual traditions from ancient China[21] (especially with respect to Taoism as expressed by Lao-Tze),[22] India (especially in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita),[23] and among various Greek and Roman philosophers.
The 6th century BC Greek philosopher Xenophanes of Colophon has been described by some scholars as a pandeistic thinker.[24][25] Weinstein wrote that Xenophanes spoke as a pandeist in stating that there was one god which "abideth ever in the selfsame place, moving not at all" and yet "sees all over, thinks all over, and hears all over."[25] Weinstein also found elements of pandeism in the ideas of Heraclitus, the Stoics, and especially in the later students of the 'Platonic Pythagoreans' and the 'Pythagorean Platonists.[26] He specifically identified 3rd century BC philosopher Chrysippus, who affirmed that "the universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul,"[27] as a pandeist.[26]
Religious studies professor, F. E. Peters, however, found that "[w]hat appeared... at the center of the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism that is the legacy of the Milesians."[28] Historian of philosophy Andrew Gregory thought that, of the Milesians, "some construction using pan-, whether it be pantheism, pandeism or pankubernism, describes Anaximander reasonably well", although he questions whether Anaximander's view of the distinction between apeiron and cosmos makes these labels technically relevant at all.[29] Gottfried Große in his 1787 interpretation of Pliny the Elder's Natural History, describes Pliny, a first-century figure, as "if not a Spinozist, then perhaps a Pandeist."[7]
Middle Ages to Enlightenment
The philosophy of 9th century theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who proposed that "God has created the world out of his own being", has been identified as a form of pandeism.[30][31] Weinstein notes that Eriugena's vision of God was one which does not know what it is, and learns this through the process of existing as its creation.[31] In his great work, De divisione naturae (also called Periphyseon, probably completed around 867 AD), Eriugena proposed that the nature of the universe is divisible into four distinct classes:
1 – that which creates and is not created;
2 – that which is created and creates;
3 – that which is created and does not create;
4 – that which neither is created nor creates.
The first stage is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second is the world of Platonic ideals or forms; the third is the wholly physical manifestation of our Universe, which "does not create"; the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns to completeness with the additional knowledge of having experienced this world. A contemporary statement of this idea is that: "Since God is not a being, he is therefore not intelligible... This means not only that we cannot understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of divine effort by God to understand himself, to see himself in a mirror."[32] French journalist Jean-Jacques Gabut agreed, writing that "a certain pantheism, or rather pandeism, emerges from his work where Neo-Platonic inspiration perfectly complements the strict Christian orthodoxy."[33] Eriugena himself denied that he was a pantheist.[34]
Weinstein thought that thirteenth century Catholic thinker Bonaventure—who championed the Platonic doctrine that ideas do not exist in rerum natura, but as ideals exemplified by the Divine Being, according to which actual things were formed—showed strong pandeistic inclinations.[35] Bonaventure was of the Franciscan school created by Alexander of Hales and in speaking of the possibility of creation from eternity, declared that reason can demonstrate that the world was not created ab aeterno.[36] Of another Catholic, Nicholas of Cusa, who wrote of the enfolding of creation in God and the unfolding of the divine human mind in creation, Weinstein wrote that he was, to a certain extent, a pandeist.[37] He held a similar view of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, who had written A Cabbalistical Dialogue (Latin version first, 1677, in English 1682) placing matter and spirit on a continuum, and describing matter as a "coalition" of monads.[38]
Several historians and theologians, including Weinstein, found that pandeism was strongly expressed in the teachings of Giordano Bruno, who envisioned a deity which had no particular relation to one part of the infinite universe more than any other, and was immanent, as present on Earth as in the Heavens, subsuming in itself the multiplicity of existence.[39] This assessment of Bruno's theology was reiterated by others, including Discover editor Corey S. Powell, who wrote that Bruno's cosmology was "a tool for advancing an animist or Pandeist theology."[40][41][42] The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger notes that Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope, was in particular "critical of… [Bruno's] pandeism".[43]
Giordano Bruno, identified by several sources as a pandeistic thinker
In Italy, Pandeism was among the beliefs condemned by Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano; 1759–1829) in volumes of his sermons published posthumously in the 1830s.[45] Nannetti specifically criticized pandeism, declaring, "To you, fatal Pandeist! the laws that create nature are contingent and mutable, not another being in substance with forces driven by motions and developments."[46] In 1838, an anonymous treatise, Il legato di un vecchio ai giovani della sua patria ("The Legacy of an Old Man to the Young People of his Country"), was published, in which the author, discussing the theory of religion presented by Giambattista Vico a century earlier, speculated that when man first saw meteor showers, "his robust imagination recognized the effects as a cause, then deifying natural phenomena, he became a Pandeist, an instructor of Mythology, a priest, an Augur."[47] In the same year, phrenologistLuigi Ferrarese in Memorie Riguardanti la Dottrina Frenologica ("Thoughts Regarding the Doctrine of Phrenology") critically described Victor Cousin's philosophy as a doctrine which "locates reason outside the human person, declaring man a fragment of God, introducing a sort of spiritual pandeism, absurd for us, and injurious to the Supreme Being."[8]
Literary critic Hayden Carruth said of 18th century figure Alexander Pope that it was "Pope's rationalism and pandeism with which he wrote the greatest mock-epic in English literature"[48] According to American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia, "later Unitarian Christians (such as William Ellery Channing), transcendentalists (such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau), writers (such as Walt Whitman) and some pragmatists (such as William James) took a more pantheist or pandeist approach by rejecting views of God as separate from the world".[49] Walt Whitman has elsewhere been deemed "a skeptic and a pandeist."[50] Schick and Vaughn similarly associate the views of William James with pandeism.[18] The Belgian poet Robert Vivier wrote of the pandeism to be found in the works of Nineteenth Century novelist and poet Victor Hugo.[51] In the Nineteenth Century, poet Alfred Tennyson revealed that his "religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism".[52][53] Literature professor Harold Bloom wrote of Tennyson, that towards the end of his life Tennyson "declared himself agnostic and pan-deist and at one with the great heretics Giordano Bruno and Baruch Spinoza".[54]Charles Darwin has been described as having views that were "a good match for deism, or possibly for pandeism."[55]Friedrich Engels has also been described by historian Tristram Hunt as having pandeistic views.[56]
Some authors have pointed to pandeism as having a presence in the cultures of Asia. In 1833, religionist Godfrey Higgins theorized in his Anacalypsis that "Pandeism was a doctrine, which had been received both by Buddhists and Brahmins."[57] In 1896, historian Gustavo Uzielli described the world's population as influenced "by a superhuman idealism in Christianity, by an anti-human nihilism in Buddhism, and by an incipient but growing pandeism in Indian Brahmanism."[58] The following year, the Reverend Henry Grattan Guinness wrote critically that in India, "God is everything, and everything is God, and, therefore, everything may be adored. ... Her pan-deism is a pandemonium."[59] Twenty years earlier, the Peruvian scholar and historian Carlos Wiesse Portocarrero had written in an essay titled Philosophical Systems of India that in that country, "Metaphysics is pandeistic and degenerates into idealism."[60] More recently, Swiss thinker James B. Glattfelder has described the Hindu concept of lila as "akin to the concept of pandeism".[61] German political philosopher Jürgen Hartmann argued that Hindu pandeism has contributed to friction with monotheistic Islam.[62]
Pandeism (in Chinese, 泛自然神论)[63] was described by Wen Chi, in a Peking University lecture, as embodying "a major feature of Chinese philosophical thought", in that "there is a harmony between man and the divine, and they are equal."[64] Zhang Dao Kui (张道葵) of the China Three Gorges University proposed that the art of China's Three Gorges area is influenced by "a representation of the romantic essence that is created when integrating rugged simplicity with the natural beauty spoken about by pandeism."[65] Literary critic Wang Junkang (王俊康) has written that, in Chinese folk religion as conveyed in the early novels of noted folk writer Ye Mei (叶梅),[66] "the romantic spirit of Pandeism can be seen everywhere."[67] Wang Junkang additionally writes of Ye Mei's descriptions of "the worship of reproduction under Pandeism, as demonstrated in romantic songs sung by village people to show the strong impulse of vitality and humanity and the beauty of wildness."[68] It has been noted that author Shen Congwen has attributed a kind of hysteria that "afflicts those young girls who commit suicide by jumping into caves-"luodong" 落洞" to "the repressive local military culture that imposes strict sexual codes on women and to the influence of pan-deism among Miao people", since "for a nymphomaniac, jumping into a cave leads to the ultimate union with the god of the cave".[69] Weinstein similarly found the views of 17th century Japanese Neo-Confucian philosopher Yamazaki Ansai, who espoused a cosmology of universal mutual interconnectedness, to be especially consonant with pandeism.[70]
Western
In The Pilgrimage from Deism to Agnosticism, Moncure Daniel Conway stated that the term, "Pandeism" is "an unscholarly combination".[71] A critique of Pandeism similar to Conway's, as an 'unsightly' combination of Greek and Latin, was made in a review of Weinstein's discussion of Pandeism.[44] In 1905, a few years before Weinstein's extensive review was published, Ottmar Hegemann described the "New Catholicism" of Franz Mach as a form of pandeism.[72] A 1906 editorial by a Unitarian minister in the Chattanooga Daily Times stated that Jesus, "who in exultant faith said 'I and the Father are one,' was a Pandeist, a believer in the identification of the universe and all things contained therein with Deity."[73] Towards the beginning of World War I, an article in the Yale Sheffield Monthly published by the Yale UniversitySheffield Scientific School commented on speculation that the war "means the death of Christianity and an era of Pandeism or perhaps even the destruction of all which we call modern civilization and culture."[74] The following year, early 19th-century German philosopher Paul Friedrich Köhler wrote that Pantheism, Pandeism, Monism and Dualism all refer to the same God illuminated in different ways, and that whatever the label, the human soul emanates from this God. [75]
According to literary critic Martin Lüdke, early Twentieth-Century Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa expressed a pandeistic philosophy, especially in the writings made under the pseudonym of Alberto Caeiro.[76] Brazilian journalist and writer Otávio de Faria, and British scholar and translator of Portuguese fiction Giovanni Pontiero, among others, identified pandeism as an influence on the writings of mid-Twentieth-Century Brazilian poet Carlos Nejar.[77][78]
Pandeism was examined by theologian Charles Hartshorne, one of the chief disciples of process philosopherAlfred North Whitehead. In his process theology, an extension of Whitehead's work, Hartshorne preferred pandeism to pantheism, explaining that "it is not really the theos that is described".[79]:347 However, he specifically rejected pandeism early on, finding that a God who had "absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others" was "able consistently to embrace all that is positive in either deism or pandeism."[79]:348 Hartshorne accepted the label of panentheism for his beliefs, declaring that "panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations".[79]:348
Calvinist scholar Rousas John Rushdoony sharply criticized the Catholic Church in his 1971 The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy, writing, "The position of Pope Paul came close to being a pan-Deism, and pan-Deism is the logical development of the virus of Hellenic thought," and further that "a sincere idealist, implicitly pan-Deist in faith, deeply concerned with the problems of the world and of time, can be a Ghibelline pope, and Dante's Ghibellines have at last triumphed."[80]Adventist Theologian Bert B. Beach wrote in 1974 that "during the Vatican Council there was criticism from WCC Circles" to the effect that "ecumenism was being contaminated by "pan-Deist" and syncretistic tendencies."[81]
Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein was noted as having experimented with themes of pandeism in various of this works.
Science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein raised the idea of pandeism in several of his works. Literary critic Dan Schneider wrote of Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land that Jubal Harshaw's belief in his own free will, was one "which Mike, Jill, and the Fosterites misinterpret as a pandeistic urge, 'Thou art God!'"[82] Heinlein himself, in the "Aphorisms of Lazarus Long" from Time Enough for Love, wrote: "God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good—and is no sillier than any other theology."[83]
Pastor Bob Burridge of the Geneven Institute for Reformed Studies wrote that: "If God was the proximate cause of every act it would make all events to be "God in motion". That is nothing less than pantheism, or more exactly, pandeism."[86] Burridge rejects this model, observing that in Christianity, "The Creator is distinct from his creation. The reality of secondary causes is what separates Christian theism from pandeism."[86] Burridge argued that "calling God the author of sin demand[s] a pandeistic understanding of the universe effectively removing the reality of sin and moral law."[86]
If divine becoming were complete, God's kenosis--God's self-emptying for the sake of love--would be total. In this pandeistic view, nothing of God would remain separate and apart from what God would become. Any separate divine existence would be inconsistent with God's unreserved participation in the lives and fortunes of the actualized phenomena."[87]:67
Acknowledging that American philosopher William Rowe has raised "a powerful, evidential argument against ethical theism", Lane further contended that pandeism offers an escape from the evidential argument from evil (a.k.a. the "problem of evil"):
However, it does not count against pandeism. In pandeism, God is no superintending, heavenly power, capable of hourly intervention into earthly affairs. No longer existing "above", God cannot intervene from above and cannot be blamed for failing to do so. Instead God bears all suffering, whether the fawn's[88] or anyone else's. Even so, a skeptic might ask, "Why must there be so much suffering,? Why could not the world's design omit or modify the events that cause it?" In pandeism, the reason is clear: to remain unified, a world must convey information through transactions. Reliable conveyance requires relatively simple, uniform laws. Laws designed to skip around suffering-causing events or to alter their natural consequences (i.e., their consequences under simple laws) would need to be vastly complicated or (equivalently) to contain numerous exceptions.[87]:76–77
Social scientist Sal Restivo similarly deems pandeism to be a means to evade the problem of evil.[89]
Cartoonist and pundit Scott Adams has written two books on religion, God's Debris (2001), and The Religion War (2004),[90] of which God's Debris lays out a theory of pandeism, in which God blows itself up to see what will happen, which becomes the cause of our universe.[91] In God's Debris, Adams suggests that followers of theistic religions such as Christianity and Islam are inherently subconsciously aware that their religions are false, and that this awareness is reflected in their consistently acting like these religions, and their threats of damnation for sinners, are false. In a 2017 interview Adams said these books would be "his ultimate legacy."[92] In 2023, Adams announced in a pinned tweet that he had re-published the book for free for his subscribers, and would shortly publish an AI-voiced audiobook version.[93]
In 2010 German astrophysicist and popular scientist Harald Lesch observed in a debate on the role of faith in science:
Suppose we would find the all-encompassing law of nature, we are looking for so that finally we could assure proudly, the world is built up this way and no differently -- immediately it would create a new question: What is behind this law, why is the world set up just so? This leads us beyond the limits of science in the field of religion. As an expert, a physicist should respond: We do not know, we'll never know. Others would say that God authored this law, that created the universe. A Pandeist might say that the all-encompassing law is God."[94]
Alan Dawe's 2011 book The God Franchise, though mentioning pandeism in passing as one of numerous extant theological theories,[3] declines to adopt any "-ism" as encompassing his view, though Dawe's theory includes the human experience as being a temporarily segregated sliver of the experience of God. This aspect of the theology of pandeism (along with pantheism and panentheism) has been compared to the Biblical exhortation in Acts 17:28 that "In him we live and move and have our being,"[95] while the Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia had in 1975 described the religion of Babylon as "clearly a type of pan-deism formed from a synthesis of Christianity and paganism".[96] Another Christian theologian, Graham Ward, insists that "Attention to Christ and the Spirit delivers us from pantheism, pandeism, and process theology,"[97] and Catholic author Al Kresta observes that:
"New Age" cosmologies reject materialism, naturalism and physicalism. They are commonly pantheistic or pandeistic. They frequently try to commandeer quantum physics and consciousness studies to illustrate their conception of the cosmos.[98]
Also in 2011, in a study of Germany's Hesse region, German sociologist of religion and theologian Michael N. Ebertz and German television presenter and author Meinhard Schmidt-Degenhard concluded that "Six religious orientation types can be distinguished: "Christians" – "non-Christian theists" – "Cosmotheists" – "Deists, Pandeists and Polytheists" – "Atheists" – "Others"."[99] Pandeism has also been described as one of the "older spiritual and religious traditions" whose elements are incorporated into the New Age movement,[100] but also as among the handful of spiritual beliefs which are compatible with modern science. Neurologist Michael P. Remler associated pandeism with panpsychism, describing as radical the "pan-deist position that some "Consciousness" interacts with all matter".[101] Resurgence of interest in pandeism was such that by 2022, Dr. Gorazd Andrejč and Dr. Victoria Dos Santos, in their introduction to the MDPIReligions special issue, "Religion, Science and Technology in Pantheism, Animism and Paganism", wrote: "While pantheism and its 'cousins' (panentheism, pandeism) have experienced some vibrant development in this field in recent years, modern animist and pagan perspectives have had less critical attention in the same".[102]
Most recently pandeism has been described as one of the better possible theological models to encompass humankind's relationship with a future artificial intelligence.[103]
↑ Paul Bradley (2011). This Strange Eventful History: A Philosophy of Meaning. Algora Publishing. p.156. ISBN978-0-87586-876-9. Pandeism combines the concepts of Deism and Pantheism with a god who creates the universe and then becomes it.
1 2 Alan H. Dawe (2011). The God Franchise: A Theory of Everything. Life Magic Publishing (self-published). p.48. ISBN978-0-473-20114-2. Pandeism: This is the belief that God created the universe, is now one with it, and so, is no longer a separate conscious entity. This is a combination of pantheism (God is identical to the universe) and deism (God created the universe and then withdrew Himself).
↑ Ronald R. Zollinger (2010). "6". Mere Mormonism: Defense of Mormon Theology. ISBN978-1-46210-585-4. Pandeism. This is a kind of pantheism that incorporates a form of deism, holding that the universe is identical to God but also that God was previously a conscious and sentient force or entity that designed and created the universe.
1 2 Moritz Lazarus and Heymann Steinthal (1859). Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft[Journal of Social Psychology and Linguistics]. p.262.
↑ Dr. Santosh Kumar Nayak, "Language in Glocal Cultural Context", International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development, ISSN2456-6470, Volume 3, Issue 3, April 2019, p. 1276.
1 2 Gottfried Große (1787). Gaius Plinius Secundus: Naturgeschichte: mit erläuternden Anmerkungen. Johann Christian Hermann. p.165. Beym Plinius, den man, wo nicht Spinozisten, doch einen Pandeisten nennen konnte, ist Natur oder Gott kein von der Welt getrenntes oder abgesondertes Wesen. Seine Natur ist die ganze Schöpfung im Konkreto, und eben so scheint es mit seiner Gottheit beschaffen zu seyn." Translation: "In Pliny, whom one could call, if not a Spinozist, then perhaps a Pandeist, Nature is not a being divided off or separated from the world. His nature is the whole of creation, in concrete, and the same appears to be true also of his divinity.
1 2 Luigi Ferrarese (1838). Memorie risguardanti la dottrina frenologica. p.15. Dottrina, che pel suo idealismo poco circospetto, non solo la fede, ma la stessa ragione offende (il sistema di Kant): farebbe mestieri far aperto gli errori pericolosi, così alla Religione, come alla Morale, di quel psicologo franzese, il quale ha sedotte le menti (Cousin), con far osservare come la di lui filosofia intraprendente ed audace sforza le barriere della sacra Teologia, ponendo innanzi ad ogn'altra autorità la propria: profana i misteri, dichiarandoli in parte vacui di senso, ed in parte riducendoli a volgari allusioni, ed a prette metafore; costringe, come faceva osservare un dotto Critico, la rivelazione a cambiare il suo posto con quello del pensiero istintivo e dell' affermazione senza riflessione e colloca la ragione fuori della persona dell'uomo dichiarandolo un frammento di Dio, una spezie di pandeismo spirituale introducendo, assurdo per noi, ed al Supremo Ente ingiurioso, il quale reca onda grave alla libertà del medesimo, ec, ec.
↑ Christian Ferdinand Fleissbach (1849). Heilmittel gegen einen Krebsschaden der Deutschen Literatur: Erläuternde Bemerkungen. p.31. Pantheismus, Pantheistisch, n. Pandeismus, Pandeistisch. Gebildet aus dem Griech. πᾶν und θεός.)
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 227: "Wenn auch nur durch einen Buchstaben (d statt th), unterscheiden wir grundsätzlich Pandeismus vom Pantheismus."
↑ Jay Winter (2015). Behold the Frozen Sun. p.Chapter 12.
↑ José M. Lozano-Gotor, "Deism", Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions (Springer: 2013). "[Deism] takes different forms, for example, humanistic, scientific, Christian, spiritual deism, pandeism, and panendeism."
↑ Mikhail Epstein, Postatheism and the phenomenon of minimal religion in Russia, in Justin Beaumont, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Postsecularity (2018), p. 83, n. 3: "I refer here to monodeism as the default standard concept of deism, distinct from polydeism, pandeism, and spiritual deism."
1 2 Bruner, Michael S.; Davenport, John; Norwine, Jim (2013). "An Evolving Worldview: Culture-Shift in University Students". In Norwine, Jim (ed.). A World After Climate Change and Culture-Shift. Springer. p.46. ISBN978-94-007-7352-3. Some of us think that postmodernity represents a similar change of dominant worldviews, one which could turn out to be just as singular as modernity by being a stunning amalgam of James and Weber. If we are correct, then the changed attitudes, assumptions, and values might work together to change ways of life which in turn transform our geographies of mind and being, that is, both the actual physical landscapes and the mental valuescapes we inhabit. One increasingly common outcome of this ongoing transformation, itself a symptom perhaps of post-industrial secular societies, is the movement away from self-denial toward a denial of the supernatural. This development promises to fundamentally alter future geographies of mind and being by shifting the locus of causality from an exalted Godhead to the domain of Nature. How this Nature is ultimately defined has broad repercussions for the, at times, artificial distinction between religious and secular worldviews. For Levine (2011), "secularism is a positive, not a negative, condition, not a denial of the world of spirit and of religion, but an affirmation of the world we're living in now ... such a world is capable of bringing us to the condition of 'fullness' that religion has always promised" (Levine quoted in Wood 2011). For others, this "fullness" is present in more religious-oriented pantheistic or pandeistic belief systems with, in the latter case, the inclusion of God as the ever unfolding expression of a complex universe with an identifiable beginning but no teleological direction necessarily present.
1 2 Theodore Schick and Lewis Vaughn, Doing Philosophy: An Introduction Through Thought Experiments, 5th Edition (Springer, 2013), p. 506, Section 6.3, "Faith and Meaning: Believing the Unbelievable," subsection, "Thought Probe: James and Pandeism": "The view that the universe is not only God but also a person is called "pandeism." Do you agree with James that viewing the universe as a person would help give meaning to your life?"
↑ Dominic Montserrat, Akhenaten: History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt, Routledge 2000, ISBN0-415-18549-1, pp. 36ff.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 121.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 234-235.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 213.
1 2 Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 231.
1 2 Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 233–34.
↑ Andrew Gregory (2016). Anaximander: A Re-assessment. Bloomsbury. p.100. ISBN978-1-4725-0625-2. (Gregory defines a "pankubernist" as "someone who believes that everything steers").
↑ Guillermo Kerber, "Panentheism in Christian Ecotheology," Luca Valera, ed., Pantheism and Ecology: Cosmological, Philosophical, and Theological Perspectives (Springer Publishing, 2023), p. 219-220; ASIN: B0CJNC946L.
1 2 Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 283-84.
↑ O'Meara, John J., "Introduction", The Mind of Eriugena, (John J. O'Meara and Ludwig Bieler, eds.), Dublin: Irish University Press 1973.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 303.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 306.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 338.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 321.
↑ Daniel Cardó, Uwe Michael Lang, Cambridge Companion to Joseph Ratzinger (2023), p. 266.
1 2 Review of Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") in Emil Schürer, Adolf von Harnack, editors, Theologische Literaturzeitung ("Theological Literature Journal"), Volume 35, column 827 (1910): "Dem Verfasser hat anscheinend die Einteilung: religiöse, rationale und naturwissenschaftlich fundierte Weltanschauungen vorgeschwebt; er hat sie dann aber seinem Material gegenüber schwer durchführbar gefunden und durch die mitgeteilte ersetzt, die das Prinzip der Einteilung nur noch dunkel durchschimmern läßt. Damit hängt wohl auch das vom Verfasser gebildete unschöne griechisch-lateinische Mischwort des ,Pandeismus' zusammen. Nach S. 228 versteht er darunter im Unterschied von dem mehr metaphysisch gearteten Pantheismus einen ,gesteigerten und vereinheitlichten Animismus', also eine populäre Art religiöser Weltdeutung. Prhagt man lieh dies ein, so erstaunt man über die weite Ausdehnung, die dem Begriff in der Folge gegeben wird. Nach S. 284 ist Scotus Erigena ein ganzer, nach S. 300 Anselm von Canterbury ein ,halber Pandeist'; aber auch bei Nikolaus Cusanus und Giordano Bruno, ja selbst bei Mendelssohn und Lessing wird eine Art von Pandeismus gefunden (S. 306. 321. 346.)." Translation: "The author apparently intended to divide up religious, rational and scientifically based philosophies, but found his material overwhelming, resulting in an effort that can shine through the principle of classification only darkly. This probably is also the source of the unsightly Greek-Latin compound word, 'Pandeism.' At page 228, he understands the difference from the more metaphysical kind of pantheism, an enhanced unified animism that is a popular religious worldview. In remembering this borrowing, we were struck by the vast expanse given the term. According to page 284, Scotus Erigena is one entirely, at p. 300 Anselm of Canterbury is 'half Pandeist'; but also Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, and even in Mendelssohn and Lessing a kind of Pandeism is found (p. 306 321 346.)".
↑ Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano), in Sermons and Panegyrics of the Father Filippo Nani of Lojana, Giovanni Silvestri, publisher, 1834, p. 284, Sermon XVIII: Miracles: "Ma questa religione predestinta col taumaturgo segnale si trova ella nel mondo i' Dove? in qual gente? in qual lido? Nelle sinagoghe giudaiche, o nelle meschìte dell l'Asia? Nelle pagoda cinesi, o nella società di Ginevra? Giudei, Maomettani, Gentili, Scismatici, Eretici, Pandeisti, Deisti, geni torbidi, e inquieti." ("But this religion predestined by the thaumaturgist signal, where in the world is she? in which people? on which shores? In Jewish synagogues, or mosques of Asia? Pagoda in Chinese, or in society in Geneva? Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Schismatics, Heretics, Pandeists, Deists, and troubled, restless spirits.")
↑ Il legato di un vecchio ai giovani della sua patria (1838) ("The Legacy of an Old Man to the Young People of his Country"): "Il selvaggio Nomado ex lege arrestato nelle spelonche dallo spavento, e dall'ammirazione con l'imponente spettacolo delle meteore, per la prima volta rivolse sopra se stesso lo sguardo della debole ragione, conobbe un potere fuori di lui più colossale della sua erculea brutalità, e per la prima volta concepì un culto. La robusta immaginazione gli fe ravvisare gli effetti come causa, quindi deificando i fenomeni naturali divenne un Pandeista, un istitutore della Mitologia, un sacerdote, un Augure." ("The wild nomad (who lived outside the law) stopped in the caves with fear and admiration at the impressive meteor shower, for the first time saw that reason was powerless, experienced a most colossal power outside himself of his Herculean brutality, and for the first time he understood worship (or conceived of a cult). His robust imagination recognized the effects as a cause, then deifying natural phenomena, he became a Pandeist, an instructor of Mythology, a priest, an Augur.").
↑ Robert Vivier, "La Poésie de Victor Hugo", in fr:Académie Royale de Langue et de Littérature Françaises, BULLETIN TOME XXX-No. 3, Décembre 1952 pp. 203-214, p. 211: "Tout cela culmine dans le pandéisme affirmé éloquemment aux dernières pages de Dieu: «Il est éperdûment», et on ne peut rien en dire d'autre sans le diminuer mais cela on peut, on doit le dire et le redire indéfiniment."
↑ James B. Glattfelder, Information—Consciousness—Reality: How a New Understanding of the Universe Can Help Answer Age-Old Questions of Existence (2019), p. 534.
↑ Jürgen Hartmann (2014). Religion in der Politik: Judentum, Christentum, Islam[Religion in politics: Judaism, Christianity, Islam]. Springer. p.237. ISBN978-3-658-04731-3. Mochten die Muslime in der großen Stadt auch ihre geschlossenen kleinen Welten aufbauen, kam es doch immer wieder zu Reibungen mit der hinduistischen Mehrheitsgesellschaft: Kastensystem vs. Egalität der Muslime, Fleischverzehr der Muslime vs. Vegetarismus der Hindus, Monotheismus der Muslime vs. Pandeismus und Heiligenverehrung unter den Hindus." Translation: "They want to build up their closed little worlds in the great city of the Muslims, but they came again and again into friction with the Hindu majority society: caste system vs. egalitarianism of the Muslims, meat consumption of the Muslims vs. vegetarianism of Hindus, monotheism of the Muslims vs. Pandeism and veneration of saints among the Hindus.
↑ Definition of 泛自然神論 (泛自然神论, fànzìránshénlùn) from CEDICT, 1998: "pandeism, theological theory that God created the Universe and became one with it."
↑ 文池 (Wen Chi) (2002). 在北大听讲座: 思想的灵光[Lectures at Peking University: Thinking of Aura]. 新世界出版社. p.121. ISBN7-80005-650-3. 在这里,人与天是平等和谐的,这就是说,它是泛自然神论或是无神论的,这是中国人文思想的一大特色。" Translation: "Here, there is a harmony between man and the divine, and they are equal, that is to say, it is either Pandeism or atheism, which is a major feature of Chinese philosophical thought.
↑ 王俊康 (Wang Junkang) (2007). 叶梅研究专集[Ye Mei Special Collection]. 中央民族大学出版社. p.188. ISBN978-7-81108-315-6. 在叶梅的早期小说里那种泛自然神论的浪漫精神随处可见,其目的是在张扬人性, 张扬泛自然神论下人性的自由。" Translation: " In the early novels of Ye Mei the romantic spirit of Pandeism can be seen everywhere, aimed at advocating for humanity, advocating for individual human freedom under Pandeism.
↑ 王俊康 (Wang Junkang) (2007). 叶梅研究专集[Ye Mei Special Collection]. 中央民族大学出版社. p.177. ISBN978-7-81108-315-6. 在《撒忧的龙船河》里的撒忧文化, "撒忧"又叫"撒阳"、"撒野"、"撒尔嗬", 就是生长在泛自然神论文化下的生殖崇拜符号, 撒野现象就是指土家情歌中那些强烈的生命冲动和人性张扬中所表现出来的野性美。" Translation: "In "Spreading Worry on the Dragon Boat River", san yu, also known as san yang, san ye, and san er hu, are the words used to refer to the worship of reproduction under Pandeism, as demonstrated in romantic songs sung by village people to show the strong impulse of vitality and humanity and the beauty of wildness.
↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 235.
↑ Louis S. Hardin, '17, "The Chimerical Application of Machiavelli's Principles", Yale Sheffield Monthly, pp 461–465, Yale University, May 1915, p. 463: "Are we virtuous merely because we are restrained by the fetters of the law? We hear men prophecy that this war means the death of Christianity and an era of Pandeism or perhaps even the destruction of all which we call modern civilization and culture. We hear men predict that the ultimate result of the war will be a blessing to humanity."
↑ Paul Friedrich Köhler (1916). Kulturwege und Erkenntnisse: Eine kritische Umschau in den Problemen des religiösen und geistigen Lebens. p.193.
↑ Martin Lüdke, "Ein moderner Hüter der Dinge; Die Entdeckung des großen Portugiesen geht weiter: Fernando Pessoa hat in der Poesielberto Caeiros seinen Meister gesehen", ("A modern guardian of things; The discovery of the great Portuguese continues: Fernando Pessoa saw its master in the poetry of Alberto Caeiros"), Frankfurter Rundschau, August 18, 2004. "Caeiro unterläuft die Unterscheidung zwischen dem Schein und dem, was etwa "Denkerge-danken" hinter ihm ausmachen wollen. Die Dinge, wie er sie sieht, sind als was sie scheinen. Sein Pan-Deismus basiert auf einer Ding-Metaphysik, die in der modernen Dichtung des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts noch Schule machen sollte." Translation: "Caeiro interposes the distinction between the light and what "philosopher thoughts" want to constitute behind him. The things, as he sees them, are as they seem. His pandeism is based on a metaphysical thing, which should still become a school of thought under the modern seal of the twentieth century."
↑ Giovanni Pontiero (1983). Carlos Nejar, poeta e pensador. p.349. Otávio de Faria póde falar, com razão, de um pandeísmo de Carlos Nejar. Não uma poesia panteísta, mas pandeísta. Quero dizer, uma cosmogonia, um canto geral, um cancioneiro do humano e do divino. Mas o divino no humano". Translation: "Otávio de Faria spoke of the pandeism of Carlos Nejar. Not a pantheist poetry, but pandeist. I want to say, a cosmogony, one I sing generally, a chansonnier of the human being and the holy ghost. But the holy ghost in the human being.
↑ Otávio de Faria, "Pandeísmo em Carlos Nejar", in Última Hora, Rio de Janeiro, May 17, 1978. Quote: "Se Deus é tudo isso, envolve tudo, a palavra andorinha, a palavra poço o a palavra amor, é que Deus é muito grande, enorme, infinito; é Deus realmente e o pandeismo de Nejar é uma das mais fortes ideias poéticas que nos têm chegado do mundo da Poesia. E o que não pode esperar desse poeta, desse criador poético, que em pouco menos de vinte anos, já chegou a essa grande iluminação poética?" Translation: "If God is all, involves everything, swallows every word, the deep word, the word love, then God is very big, huge, infinite; and for a God really like this, the pandeism of Nejar is one of the strongest poetic ideas that we have reached in the world of poetry. And could you expect of this poet, this poetic creator, that in a little less than twenty years, he has arrived at this great poetic illumination?"
↑ Phil Jackson interviewed on religion by Michael Hirsley for the Chicago Tribune, "For Bulls coach, God is no game," April 27, 1990, Section 2, Page 8.
↑ Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, November 11, 1995, B-10.
↑ William Rowe used, as an example of needless suffering, a fawn horribly burned in a forest fire and unable to move, yet suffering for additional days before its death.
↑ Southwest Broadcasting SWR2 Aula – Manuscript service (Transcript of a conversation) "God plus Big Bang = X; Astrophysics and faith" Discussants: Professor Hans Küng and Professor Harald Lesch, Editor: Ralf Caspary, broadcast: Sunday, 16th May 2010 at 8.30 clock, SWR2 (Harald Lesch referencing 1970 Nobel Prize laureate Hannes Alfvén); Quote in the show "Gott plus Urknall" ("God plus Big Bang") (SWR2 Hall of 16/05/2010), at 1:32 secondsArchived 2015-01-03 at the Wayback Machine : "Nehmen wir einmal an, wir würden das allumfassende Gesetz der Natur finden, nach dem wir suchen, so dass wir schließlich voller Stolz versichern könnten, so und nicht anders ist die Welt aufgebaut – sofort entstünde eine neue Frage: Was steht hinter diesem Gesetz, warum ist die Welt gerade so aufgebaut? Dieses Warum führt uns über die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaft in den Bereich der Religion. Als Fachmann sollte ein Physiker antworten: Wir wissen es nicht, wir werden es niemals wissen. Andere würden sagen, dass Gott dieses Gesetz aufstellte, also das Universum schuf. Ein Pandeist würde vielleicht sagen, dass das allumfassende Gesetz eben Gott sei."
↑ Charles F. Pfeiffer; Howard Frederic Vos; John Ream (1975). Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia. Moody Press. p.190. ISBN0-8024-9697-0.
↑ Graham Ward (2016). How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I. Oxford University Press. p.313. ISBN978-0-19-929765-8. Attention to Christ and the Spirit delivers us from pantheism, pandeism, and process theology.
↑ Al Kresta, Dangers to the Faith: Recognizing Catholicism's 21st-Century Opponents, "Science and Warfare With Religion" (2013), p. 255-256, n. 30, ISBN1-59276-725-7.
↑ Henry Harrison Epps, Jr. (2012). End times Organizations, Doctrines and Beliefs. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. p.220. ISBN978-1-4775-1583-9. The New Age movement includes elements of older spiritual and religious traditions ranging from atheism and monotheism through classical pantheism, naturalistic pantheism, pandeism and panentheism to polytheism combined with science and Gaia philosophy; particularly archaeoastronomy, astronomy, ecology, environmentalism, the Gaia hypothesis, psychology, and physics.
↑ Michael P. Remler (2020). "3: Consciousness from the Interface". The Mechanisms, Metaphysics, and History of Consciousness in the World. First Edition Design. p.50. ISBN978-1-5069-0889-2. The real significance of the symbiosis becomes evident if one considers the radical pan-psych position that every piece of matter has a "psych" property or pan-deist position that some "Consciousness" interacts with all matter.
↑ Angela Volkov (October 14, 2020). "Artificial Intelligence: A Vengeful or Benevolent God?". Medium. The best we can hope for is that AI allows us to merge with it, giving rise to a Pandeism of sorts, wherein creator and creation meld into one.
↑ Harold Bloom, Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles: The Power of the Reader's Mind Over a Universe of Death, Yale University Press, October 2020, p. 373, ISBN0-300-24728-1: "When he died the laureate declared himself agnostic and pan-deist and at one with the great heretics Giordano Bruno (who was a Hermetist and burned alive by the Church) and Baruch Spinoza (who was excommunicated by the Jews)."
↑ Donaghy, James (12 September 2008). "The best of Bruce Parry". The Guardian. The Christian turned skeptical pan-deist turned reluctant atheist sees himself on a spiritual journey.
Deism is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge and asserts that empirical reason and observation of the natural world are exclusively logical, reliable, and sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the universe. More simply stated, Deism is the belief in the existence of God, solely based on rational thought without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority. Deism emphasizes the concept of natural theology—that is, God's existence is revealed through nature.
Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, poet, cosmological theorist and esotericist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended to include the then-novel Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets (exoplanets), and he raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could have no center.
Monism attributes oneness or singleness to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
Pantheism is the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to divinity or a supreme entity. The physical universe is thus understood as an immanent deity, still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time. The term pantheist designates one who holds both that everything constitutes a unity and that this unity is divine, consisting of an all-encompassing, manifested god or goddess. All astronomical objects are thence viewed as parts of a sole deity.
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. In common parlance, or when contrasted with deism, the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism —or gods found in polytheistic religions—or a belief in God or gods without the rejection of revelation as is characteristic of deism.
A personal god, or personal goddess, is a deity who can be related to as a person instead of as an impersonal force, such as the Absolute.
In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". Belief in the existence of at least one god is called theism.
In the history of religion and philosophy, deus otiosus is the belief in a creator God who has entirely withdrawn from governing the universe after creating it or is no longer involved in its daily operation. In Western philosophy the concept of deus otiosus has been associated with Deism since the 17th century, although not a core tenet as often thought.
Anacalypsis is a lengthy two-volume treatise written by religious historian Godfrey Higgins, and published after his death in 1836. The book was published in two quarto volumes numbering 1,436 pages, and contains meticulous references to hundreds of references. Initially printed as a limited edition of 200 copies, it was partially reprinted in 1878, and completely reprinted in a limited edition of 350 copies in 1927. In 1965, University Books, Inc. published 500 sets for the United States and 500 sets for the British Commonwealth with Publisher's Note and a Postface.
Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont was a Flemish alchemist and writer, the son of Jan Baptist van Helmont. He is now best known for his publication in the 1640s of his father's pioneer works on chemistry, which link the origins of the science to the study of alchemy.
Christian deism is a standpoint in the philosophy of religion stemming from Christianity and Deism. It refers to Deists who believe in the moral teachings—but not the divinity—of Jesus. Corbett and Corbett (1999) cite John Adams and Thomas Jefferson as exemplars.
The following outline is provided as an overview of, and topical guide to, theology.
Deism, the religious attitude typical of the Enlightenment, especially in France and England, holds that the only way the existence of God can be proven is to combine the application of reason with observation of the world. A Deist is defined as "One who believes in the existence of a God or Supreme Being but denies revealed religion, basing his belief on the light of nature and reason." Deism was often synonymous with so-called natural religion because its principles are drawn from nature and human reasoning. In contrast to Deism there are many cultural religions or revealed religions, such as Judaism, Trinitarian Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and others, which believe in supernatural intervention of God in the world; while Deism denies any supernatural intervention and emphasizes that the world is operated by natural laws of the Supreme Being.
Max Bernhard Weinstein was a German physicist and philosopher. He is best known as an opponent of Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and for having written a broad examination of various theological theories, including extensive discussion of pandeism.
The belief that God became the Universe is a theological doctrine that has been developed several times historically, and holds that the creator of the universe actually became the universe. Historically, for versions of this theory where God has ceased to exist or to act as a separate and conscious entity, some have used the term pandeism, which combines aspects of pantheism and deism, to refer to such a theology. A similar concept is panentheism, which has the creator become the universe only in part, but remain in some other part transcendent to it, as well. Hindu texts like the Mandukya Upanishad speak of the undivided one which became the universe.
Pandeism, a theological doctrine which combines aspects of pantheism into deism, and holds that the creator deity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate and conscious entity, has been noted by various authors to encompass many religious beliefs found in Asia, with examples primarily being drawn from India and China.
A number of Christian writers have examined the concept of pandeism, and these have generally found it to be inconsistent with core principles of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, condemned the Periphyseon of John Scotus Eriugena, later identified by physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein as presenting a pandeistic theology, as appearing to obscure the separation of God and creation. The Church similarly condemned elements of the thought of Giordano Bruno which Weinstein and others determined to be pandeistic.
Criticism of pandeism has been carried out in various ways by proponents of other theological models, particularly of atheism and theism. Proponents of Pandeism have themselves published collections containing criticism from various viewpoints, including those written from Christian, Jewish, Islamic, New Thought, and Atheist perspectives, as part of efforts to increase awareness and debate regarding Pandeism. At times, ideological foes have accused political and religious figures of secretly being Pandeists, as a means of casting aspersions on those accused.
Catholicism and Deism are two theologies that have opposed each other in matters of the role of God in the world. Deism is the philosophical belief which posits that although God exists as the uncaused First Cause, responsible for the creation of the universe, God does not interact directly with that subsequently created world. As deism is not organized, its adherents differ widely in important matters of belief, but all are in agreement in denying the significance of revelation in Christian Scripture and Tradition. Deists argue against Catholicism by either, only considering Scripture to be a helpful moral tool, or denying: its divine character, the infallibility of the Church and Traditions, and the validity of its evidence as a complete manifestation of the will of God. Deism is first considered to have manifested itself in England towards the latter end of the seventeenth century.
Otto Kirn was a German Lutheran theologian and university professor.
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