Sand Dancer
Crazy Cat Lady
I'm curious what type of church panentheists attend.
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Primarily a UU church as well as a Hindu Temple with the deities & architecture in both South and North Indian styles
(depending on how you define "panentheist", that is)
No, it would be a comment on the definition of "panentheism" itself, since different people have different versions of what the term even means. If you mean to say that panentheism is "God in all, or all in God" as the etymology of the word suggests, then Orthodoxy is very, very much panentheistic, and Scripture itself supports panentheism. But if panentheism means that the universe is a part of God, then no, we're not panentheistic.Is that 'depending' a comment on your church?
How prevalent/do you define panentheism in the Orthodox faith?
You should read Sallie McFague -- The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. She both agrees and disagrees with what you've said here. She asserts that the world is God's body -- that is, that creation ex nihilo is not the case, but that the stuff of creation is, at its base, the stuff of God. Yet, she avoids pantheism. I think she's more incarnational in her theology than you present here.No, it would be a comment on the definition of "panentheism" itself, since different people have different versions of what the term even means. If you mean to say that panentheism is "God in all, or all in God" as the etymology of the word suggests, then Orthodoxy is very, very much panentheistic, and Scripture itself supports panentheism. But if panentheism means that the universe is a part of God, then no, we're not panentheistic.
We do hold in Orthodox Christianity (as you know) that the creation is not the Creator, and that the universe was made out of nothing (not out of a part of God). Yet God's Energies pervade the universe, and without His constant sustaining of everything in the universe, it would no longer exist. God is closer to us than our own hearts, and as St. Paul said in Acts 17:28, "in Him we live, move and have our being."
Perhaps so. So, Sallie essentially says that, at its base, the stuff of creation is the Divine Essence? Or is it the Divine Energies?You should read Sallie McFague -- The Body of God: An Ecological Theology. She both agrees and disagrees with what you've said here. She asserts that the world is God's body -- that is, that creation ex nihilo is not the case, but that the stuff of creation is, at its base, the stuff of God. Yet, she avoids pantheism. I think she's more incarnational in her theology than you present here.
I get that. But McFague would answer that it's not creation ex nihilo because God existed. She cites a scientific law which states that matter merely changes form. I'd have to read the book again, but I seem to remember that she doesn't differentiate much between matter and energy.Perhaps so. So, Sallie essentially says that, at its base, the stuff of creation is the Divine Essence? Or is it the Divine Energies?
Orthodoxy, because of its full OT canon (if you include all the OT books and don't take any out), has Scripture that addresses creation ex nihilo. 2 Maccabees 7:28 says the following: I beg you, my child, to look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognise that God did not make them out of things that existed.
Shepherd of Hermas, while apocryphal, was considered by many to be legit Scripture. This work states even more clearly, God, who dwells in the heavens, and made out of nothing the things that exist (Vision 1.1)
These two are big parts of the reason that Orthodoxy (along with most denominations of Christianity) has always held to creation ex nihilo, as opposed to saying that the universe was made of something that already existed. Another big reason is the almost universal witness of the Fathers.