Metaphysically-speaking: monotheism just-is pantheism - and the differences are matters of superstructure: of doctrines, dogmas, attitudes, practices etc.
Because if one God made every-thing, then God is everything.
This happened (probably) because Jesus Christ's actual work and teaching was swiftly embedded-into pre-existing, Greek-Roman-descended "Platonic" philosophy that itself had Indian-Hindu roots; and is the likely reason why so-many self-identified ortho-trad Christians, past and present, have so-easily slid into de facto pantheism.
Orthodox-traditional Christian theology tried to distinguish its Omni-God from pantheism by emphasizing the Hebrew tradition of monotheism, with a personal creator God. But because this was a monotheism it left no space for a divine Jesus Christ - which is why Jesus the Son had to be conflated with God the Father in the paradoxes of Athanasian Trinity dogma.
(i.e. The historical Jesus of Nazareth could not be affirmed to be essential to salvation, except by assimilating Jesus into the Omni-God of the Father.)
And, this assimilation of Jesus with the Father, restored Hebrew monotheism (and also metaphysically united ortho-trad Christianity with the yet-to-happen Islam) - and thereby pantheism...
Orthodox-traditional theology is stuck with this metaphysical incoherence - of trying to assert the essential role of Jesus in context of a monotheistic-pantheistic reality; and there is no way out of it given the assumptions - except by deceptions of obfuscation through abstraction, complexity, and the declaration of incomprehensible "mystery".
11 comments:
The ortho-trads couldn't care less about Jesus. To them its all about his mother Mary. I suppose they also inherited Quan Yin from Buddhism.
@EO - I think you are missing my point: it is not about "caring" it is about fundamental metaphysical assumptions.
Plenty of other-trad people *care* strongly about Jesus, in a personal way. And IMO veneration of Mary has been, historically, mostly A Good Thing; altough it has near zero scriptural basis.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2025/12/mercy-versus-justice-and-mary-mother-of.html
My point is that in philosophical terms, monotheism-pantheism has no essential place for either of these; tending always to confuse, undermine, and weaken faith - even down to our present paltry level in The West.
"Because if one God made every-thing, then God is everything." I don't see why.
As for mystery...I've said this before, but you're not going to get away from mystery however you cut it. You seem to be positing a universe of eternally pre-existing beings. I'm not sure what makes one of these beings God-- that doesn't actually make sense to me- but how is it that these eternally pre-existing beings exist? It seems to be a brute fact, or a mystery.
Bede Griffiths said an interesting thing about the Hindu concept of advaita (n-dva-ita, non-twoness) which may be relevant here. It is commonly held to mean pantheism, the view that God and the universe are one and the same. Griffiths held that it actually means monism as opposed to dualism, and cited the principle of classical theology that God and the universe are not two things. "Deus et mundus non faciunt numerum", they are not a two-member set {God, Universe}.
On this view your point might be true but not an argument against the Omni-God.
@Mal - Put it another way around: If there is no thing that was not made by God; then God made every thing from Himself.
About mystery. It makes a difference where the mystery is located. When the most fundamental definition (upon which everything else is built) is posited to be a mystery, inexplicable - well, that strikes me as a problem.
The difficulty of satisfactorily explaining the nature of Jesus was the first major and permanent schism in the history of the church (the monophysite controversy, which led to the Oriental Orthodox breaking away, and its descendents still constitute many of the Orthodox church in many parts of the world). Then it led to the Great Schism of c1000 AD. I would also suggest that it probably led to Islam.
So it really was/is a problem.
@ Philip - By my understanding, that does not make a difference to the metaphysical argument - indeed monism and monotheism are more obviously the same thing.
Clearly any one-word definition is a kind of place-holder term for a more complex concept, which will vary between individuals and groups etc. But such points need not affect the basic point being made, and do not here IMO.
“Because if one God made every-thing, then God is everything.”
This bit caught my attention as not necessarily true. Using an Arklean approach, to understand this use of ‘made’. We are comfortable describing a business being made, created by an entrepreneur, when what they have done is assemble all manner of different beings and resources and put them together in a way that creates something new and then we say that they made the business. Just as a youngster on the beach makes a sandcastle by gathering materials persuading their younger brother to help, fetching water, stones. We don’t then conclude that the sandcastle is the boy or the business is the entrepreneur or part of them?
But this does still raise the question of how come all that stuff and beings was sitting there ready for God to work with?
So was the creation a putting together of pre-existing beings and stuff that was all just lying around, or did he have to make the stuff as well?
I wouldn’t tell the boy on the beach he didn’t make the sandcastle because he didn’t make the sand or his brother helper.
@Colin - That is why I said and referenced that the Omni-God is also stated to have made everything from nothing (ex nihilo). That metaphysical assumption is what means that if everything is made by God then everything is God.
But does an Omni god really have to make everything, and be everything? Why couldn’t He just start with chaotic stuff and beings everywhere and transform them by introducing love as a new possible organising principle? (And the expression of this interpersonal organising principle as family?). He can still be one god and all powerful?
It doesn’t seem necessary to me to conclude that everything he made was with himself.
@Colin - The Omni/ Ex Nihilo God is dogma for Orthodox and Roman Catholics, Anglicans and Nonconformists - you might ask Them why they have both Omni and Ex Nihilo united in the same concept. I think there are pretty good reasons why it is difficult to have one without the other, but I don't see it as my job to make that argument.
"Why couldn’t He just start with chaotic stuff and beings everywhere and transform them by introducing love as a new possible organising principle? (And the expression of this interpersonal organising principle as family?). He can still be one god and all powerful?"
Because if something existed before God, He obviously isn't the creator of everything and his power is conditioned or contingent on something outside Himself.
"It doesn’t seem necessary to me to conclude that everything he made was with himself."
I agree. He created ex nihilo.
Post a Comment