Pantheistic Christianity

[The Sum of Awe]

I've heard Christians say (possibly the Bible says too) that God is everywhere... (omnipresence).

My preacher (when I used to be Fundamental Christian) said we live with God each day, that God is all around us, that you will find the evidence of God if you look around... Same with nature.

God always exists... Nature isn't only relevant to earth, it is also space. The universe could go on for an eternity and could have always existed (as a singularity).

So Christians can possibly be pantheists, amiright?

 

[Straw Dog]

I've heard Christians say (possibly the Bible says too) that God is everywhere... (omnipresence).

My preacher (when I used to be Fundamental Christian) said we live with God each day, that God is all around us, that you will find the evidence of God if you look around... Same with nature.

God always exists... Nature isn't only relevant to earth, it is also space. The universe could go on for an eternity and could have always existed (as a singularity).

So Christians can possibly be pantheists, amiright?

I would say most definitely. I wrote a paper once comparing Christianity and Taoism. As official religions, they're obviously very different. Whenever you just focus on the words attributed to both Laozi and Jesus they seem to be talking about very similar things albeit utilizing different cultural symbols to express it. Whether or not either of them actually existed historically is a different discussion. Taoism is obviously a pantheistic tradition and it seems very plausible that a Christian pantheism can also be formulated.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

What do you mean by pantheism? If you mean that Nature is somehow co-terminus with God, or, at least, not dependent on Him for its existence and is somehow divine in itself, then I would think a person could not be, properly speaking, both a pantheist and a Christian.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

What do you mean by pantheism? If you mean that Nature is somehow co-terminus with God, or, at least, not dependent on Him for its existence and is somehow divine in itself, then I would think a person could not be, properly speaking, both a pantheist and a Christian.

Why not?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

It's contrary to the Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of haven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

While I would say creation exists within God, constructed on the pattern of His own inner life, Christians have always confessed that the entire universe, both "what is seen and unseen", depends entirely on God's willing it into existence and willing to keep it so. It can not be divine.

 

[SageTree]

Within the contents of the theology, this is always how I visioned and the roll I figured God, The Holy Spirit played. What you're saying doesn't sound foreign to me. As I've come along in life I've dropped the ideas of dualist ideas of existence.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

It's contrary to the Creed:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of haven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.

Nature cannot create nature?

While I would say creation exists within God, constructed on the pattern of His own inner life, Christians have always confessed that the entire universe, both "what is seen and unseen", depends entirely on God's willing it into existence and willing to keep it so. It can not be divine.

What if nature could chose whether it exists or not? Possibly?

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

If God and nature are co-eternal and co-divine, then either there is no God or there is no nature.

In Christianity, God is Triune. What is begotten of the Father, relative to Him and coming from Him-the "root" of the Godhead, so to speak, is the Son . Yet both the Father and the Son are co-equal, co-eternal. God does beget, very God of very God.

I sometimes think some pantheists have a conception of the universe not unlike our conception of the Son. Yet, for Christians, creation is patterned on the Son, created after the image of the Son, yet according to finitude.

It has been said that we are panentheits. That is to say "all is in God" rather than all is God.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

If God and nature are co-eternal and co-divine, then either there is no God or there is no nature.

Or that both exist but as the same thing.

 

[Jordan St. Francis]

It's fine if you believe that, but its not really Christianity.

 

[Warren Clark]

What do you mean by pantheism? If you mean that Nature is somehow co-terminus with God, or, at least, not dependent on Him for its existence and is somehow divine in itself, then I would think a person could not be, properly speaking, both a pantheist and a Christian.

I think he means that God is Nature. God is everything, everywhere. etc.

 

[The Sum of Awe]

It's fine if you believe that, but its not really Christianity.

But what about the sayings I gave (what my minister told me when I was a Christian) that many Christians say, they still rest in the OP... Couldn't they lead to Pantheism?

 

[blackout]

If God is seperate from 'his' creation
(and "above" 'his' creation)
as mainstream christianity puts forth,
then 'he' cannot also BE 'his' creation,
and 'his' creation cannot also BE 'him'.

 

[beenie]

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[*Deleted*]

I think it means that the Sacred is both immanent as well as transcendent. It appears to me the Bible points to this. If the Holy Spirit is "among us, around us, etc---ie, on EARTH) that sounds pretty immanent to me.