"On Orthodox Panentheism" Revisited

The return of my commitment to philosophical writing was happily marked earlier this year by the acceptance for publication at Religious Studies of a short essay I wrote, “On Orthodox Panentheism.” The goal of the paper was to explicate a picture of the God-world relation which is both Orthodox (in big- and little- ‘o’ senses) and distinctively panentheistic, where “panentheism” is commonly defined as a view where God is “in” the world, and the world is “in” God, but where God is still transcendent of the world. It is a view which is supposed to be distinctively between popular versions of theism and pantheism.[^1]

In addition to being my first publication as an “Independent Scholar,” it also turned out to be my first paper with a published response. Fr. James Dominic Rooney has recently had accepted for publication, also in Religious Studies, a rebuttal called “‘Orthodox panentheism' is neither orthodox nor coherent.” As you might guess, he wasn’t a fan of the view. However, Rooney has done me a genuine favor insofar as he (probably unfairly--to both of us) lumps my views together with David Bentley Hart's, and thus includes phrases like "[w]hat differentiates these attempts from those of Carey and Hart..." and "[t]he important distinction that unites [his understanding of the Church Fathers] against Carey, Hart, et al..." Being put together with DBH in an academic journal, even in a polemical context, is a lifetime achievement.

Anyway, I am currently working on a response to his response, and thought I’d use this venue as a place to share some bits and pieces of the draft as I work. In particular, for those who might be interested in some of the details of the view without going through the (still very short) original paper, what follows is my brief summary of the view in my response. (The original paper can be found here.)

In “On Orthodox Panentheism” I try to present a conception of the God-world relation which (a) is more intimate than the folk conception one tends to find in theistic religions, where God is thought of as a distinct person more or less like us (except better and powerful and without a body), and yet (b) safeguards God’s absolute transcendence and avoids collapsing into a simplistic version of pantheism where God and the world are simply identical. This conception is inspired by the writings of important Church Fathers from the Greek-speaking “Eastern” tradition of Christianity, and tries to capture the idea that God really is immanent in all things while yet being utterly unique. Thus, I call it “Orthodox Panentheism”—it is meant to be Orthodox in being based on various strands in the mainstream (especially distinctively “Eastern Orthodox”) Christian tradition, as well as a version of panentheism insofar as it straddles the line between thinking of God as just another being alongside the universe and thinking of God and the universe as being one and the same thing.

I am not the first person to suggest such a view, and not even the first to do so from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. But for many philosophers, the statement of such a view seems intolerably vague. Even if we grant that the claim that God is in all things, or all things are in God, is spread throughout the tradition, that doesn’t yet amount to a distinctive metaphysical picture. What does it mean, exactly, to say that God is in all things and all things are in God? In what sense are these claims to be understood? I try to make this at least a little bit more clear.

In the original paper, I introduce the view by way of a quick overview of a certain Platonic metaphysical inheritance in thinking about the forms or essences of things. For now I will just jump to the pinnacles of Byzantine thinking on creation and note two foundational (for me) claims:  St. Maximus the Confessor says that “In himself, God is not known; insofar, however, as he is origin and end of all things, he is the simplicity of the simple, the life of the living, the superessential essence of essences and finally the fulfillment of all that is good.” St. Gregory Palamas says that “God both is and is said to be the nature of all things, in so far as all things partake of him and subsist by means of this participation…In this sense he is the Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms as the Author of form, the Wisdom of the wise and, simply, the All of all things.”

However, St. Gregory in particular also insists on making a distinction between God’s essence, i.e., God as he is in himself, and God’s energies, i.e., God as he reveals himself in his creative activity. This distinction is meant to help secure both knowledge of, and participation in, God. Following the earlier Cappadocian Fathers, St. Gregory believes the divine essence is incomprehensible and unknowable. He also, like them, conceives of salvation in large part as theosis, or deification: our becoming God-like through our participation in God. But if God is by nature unknowable, how can we worship or speak truly of him? And if God is simple essence only, how can we participate in him without being absorbed into the Godhead?

The answer to both questions for St. Gregory Palamas is to be found in the divine energy or activity (“activity” being a common translation of the Greek energeia). We know God through his activity of and within creation, and we also participate in this divine activity in a more and more complete way as we are perfected. But God’s activities are not, like our activities, disconnected and imperfect expressions of a changeable nature performed within time. They are rather perfect “uncreated” expressions of the essence, and the primary referents for all that can be truly said of God. Thus, in a real sense, “each divine power and each energy is God himself.” Thus, to participate in God’s energies/activities is to participate in God himself, but not in a way that makes one literally part of the Godhead. One does not come to share in God’s essence, but in God’s self-expression, if I may put it that way. The deified person is not God by nature, but God by grace (as St. Maximus puts it).

My suggestion, in trying to describe a coherent and informative version of Orthodox panentheism, was to combine these two sets of ideas together.  On the one hand, we have the claim that God is the simplicity of the simple, the superessential Essence of essences, the Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms.  On the other, we have the distinction between God’s unknowable and imparticipable essence and his participable energies, in which he is nevertheless wholly present. When we put these together, we arrive at the possible view that God is in all things in the (more) precise sense that his creative activities/energies constitute the forms of things, and it is by participation in these energies (and thus God himself) that beings receive their being. God is “in us” as actively making and constituting us as what we are; we are “in God” in that we participate in his creative energy, which just is God in his mode of being ad extra.

This is the view I called “Orthodox Panentheism.” It seems to me a distinctive approach to the God-world relation which is genuinely orthodox, deserves to be called a form of panentheism, and yet is not simply a vague statement of the idea that God and the world are somehow reciprocally “in” one another.

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[1] I’m not sure myself whether it is a helpful label or not, since (a) most philosophical theistic traditions are probably rightly considered panentheistic given the common definition, and (b) most philosophical traditions commonly considered “pantheistic” don’t actually simply identify God and the world, and are also probably best considered panentheistic given the common definition. But that is a discussion for another time. In the paper, I say that the distinction can still be helpful insofar as folk conceptions of theism and pantheism diverge from philosophical traditions (and insofar as much of mainstream theistic analytic philosophy of religion also diverges from the philosophical tradition of classical theism).