And That Which Has Been Done...

Usually my posts seem apropos of something. Why did I mention Augustine and Emergent Hipsters?

Well...

A couple of school chums and I were having a casual conversation about God and such, when in response to something one of them had said, I said, "Oh, pantheism." And in unison they said "No, its panentheism." I never heard of panentheism. Pantheism I knew.

Pantheism is the idea that God and everything are the same. If you take the sum of everything, and put it in a big pile, there's God. Does that seem to glib? Okay, sorry-
Pantheism literally means "everything god." It is used in reference to systems wherein God and Nature, or more clearly, God and the Entirety of the Universe are identical. God is the substance of all creation. So here's a part of God, this is a part of God- I just made another little part of God re-manifest - and again- now part of God is an X, now a J, over there a piece of dog food, there a fly, here some cheese, a piece of tortilla, high fructose corn syrup, a 2x4, tar paper, laminate flooring, the potassium in my brain causing electrical impulses, asbestos, water vapor, poop, some cancer, cat hair, bubbles.

I happen to think the universe is the universe and God is God. I think God's presence is not bound up in matter though God is present in creation. So matter changes but God doesn't ((bleeep blop blorb)) even though God causes the motion and effects we see. ((steam whistle sound, lights blinking)).

Panentheism sounded made up. But everything is made up at some point so I bit.

"What's panentheism?" I asked. (Now that's a pretty bold move on my part- most of the time you don't want to reveal what you don't know to other students- especially students from other programs. It makes it seem like they know more than you.)

Well, what my classmates were trying to explain to me is the presence of God in everything that allows us to seek God apart from dogma, the limits of our traditions, etc... Panentheism means God is in everything. Only they explained it as pantheism. They had just learned about panentheism which is why they could jinx each other with the "No, its panentheism" bit, but not explain it as such.

No thanks to them, I later discovered one Sallie McFague coined the term to say "Everything that is, is in God and God is in all things and yet God is not identical to the universe, for the universe is dependent on God in a way that God is not dependent on the universe."

Well, welcome to the conversation these millennia later. Don't feel bad- I do that all the time. It's cool.

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