On God-World Relations: Are the Eastern Church Fathers Panentheists? (Part 1 of 6)

Theological Letters

For a change of pace, I thought I would post sections of a journal article on which I’m currently working as it develops. As the Introduction explains, some contemporary Orthodox writers have suggested that the Eastern Church fathers are panentheists. While the claim is understandable, given the standard taxonomy of God-world relations (i.e., pantheism, panentheism, theism), I think the more accurate conclusion is that the taxonomy fails to account for the position of the Eastern fathers; hence the taxonomy itself requires expansion. Such is the case I will be making in this article. I invite readers to watch as this piece unfolds over the coming weeks. Please subscribe and support my work!

UPDATE: I had an excellent exchange with one reader in the comments, which prompted an addition to the section on pantheism, laying out the difference between static and dynamic monism. These revisions were made on June 12, 2022.

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BEYOND PANENTHEISM

GOD-WORLD RELATIONS IN THE EASTERN CHURCH FATHERS

Nathan A. Jacobs

Vanderbilt Divinity School

A common taxonomy for God-world relations, as concerns the question of substance,¹ is the following trichotomy: (1) God and world are the same substance; (2) God and world are distinct substances; or (3) God and world share a common substance, but either God or world (soft disjunctive) are more than this common substance. Option (1) is the monist position of pantheism; option (2) is the substance dualism of theism; and option (3) is the via media of panentheism.²

Working within this taxonomy, some contemporary writers have placed the position of the Eastern Church fathers under (3), since the Eastern fathers believe that something of the divine nature is communicable to creatures.³ While the claim is understandable, given the above options, there are significant and important differences between panentheism and the Eastern patristic view. In what follows, I will argue that the above taxonomy is unable to account for the position of the Eastern Church fathers and thus requires expansion.

This essay consists of two parts. In part I, I expound on the above taxonomy in order to flesh out the nuances and boundary lines of the existing trichotomy in its historical representatives. In part II, I turn my attention to the Eastern Church fathers in order to show why all three of the above labels are problematic for their view. In the end, I conclude that a fourth position is required if the taxonomy is to adequately account for the position of the Eastern fathers on God-world relations.

Part I. The Taxonomy of God-World Substance

Prior to delving into the historical specifics of pantheism, theism, and panentheism, a word should be said concerning the above qualification, namely, this taxonomy of God-world relations concerns the question of substance. This qualification is why I exclude certain -isms from the taxonomy.

Deism, for example, certainly represents a position on God-world relations. Yet, deism is not a position on God-world substance relations. Rather, deism concerns the question of divine intervention in the world: Does God reveal himself to creatures in extraordinary ways that go beyond his self-revelation in nature and reason? Does God ever intervene in the world, suspending the ordinary course of physical laws, producing a miracle?⁴ Standard labels commonly place the affirmative reply under the heading “theism” and the negative reply under “deism.”⁵ However, nothing about deism commits the deist to a specific stance on the God-world substance question. To demonstrate the point, consider pantheism. If we grant that the Stoics are pantheists, as I will argue in §1a below, then the Stoics are pantheists who reject deism. For, while Stoicism is a “natural religion”—being based on the revelation of God in reason and nature—the Stoics believe in signs and divination, which can only be labeled “special revelation.”⁶ Yet, such is not true of all pantheists. Spinoza is certainly a pantheist, but he just as certainly rejects special revelation and miracles.⁷ Spinoza is therefore a pantheist deist. The respective examples of Stoicism and Spinozism, then, demonstrate that pantheism is compatible with either the acceptance or rejection of deism. And similar examples could be offered from the ranks of theism and panentheism. In short, deism is a question about divine activity in the world, not a question about how the substance of God and the substance of world relate.⁸ Hence, I exclude it from the present investigation. 

I will also exclude from this investigation -isms concerning the number of divine subjects. Monotheism, polytheism, henotheism, and Trinitarianism do not concern the God-world substance question as such. Of course, these -isms often weigh in on the substance question. The Arian dispute, which prompted the council of Nicea in 325 AD, was a dispute concerning divine substance—specifically whether the “Son of God” bore divine or created substance. Moreover, interesting questions emerge in poly- or henotheism, especially those that, like Vishishtadvaita Hinduism, admit a God-world substance distinction and thus face questions about whether “the gods” fall to the God side of this divide, since Brahman is undifferentiated divinity while the gods are differentiated. Interesting as such questions are, these positions are not, strictly speaking, differentiated by their respective stances on the God-world substance question. Hence, like deism, they should be treated separately from the God-world substance taxonomy.  

Finally, a word should be said about atheism and pandeism. These two -isms do overlap with the substance question. Atheism, ironically enough, is a logical subset of the theist position on substance: God and world substances are absolutely distinct (“no p is q” and “no q is p”). Of course, contrary to the theist, the atheist concludes that one of these substances lacks existence. Insofar as I am here interested in positions that presume that God exists, I will exclude the atheist position, though I acknowledge it is a position on the topic. As for pandeism, this is a rather new position. Pandeism asserts that God produced the world out of his own substance, but this production brought an end to his existence as God. In short, God splinters into our cosmic debris, and this distribution of divine substance brings an end to God as God, giving way to our world.⁹ Because this theory has yet to receive much scholarly traction, I will say little more about it than that the theory exists. For our purposes, the theory amounts to a peculiar form of dynamic monism (discussed below) and thus pantheism: God and world are the same substance, each representing different states of a common substance. 

With these preliminary remarks in hand, I turn to the main positions on the God-world substance question, namely, pantheism, theism, and panentheism.

1a. Pantheism

Pantheism, in the basic sense, holds that God and world are the same substance. Hence, “all is God,” from pan (all) and theos (God). As such, pantheism is a brand of monism, according to which all that exists is one—namely, God—despite the apparent diversity of substance in our cosmos.

In religion proper, pantheism is primarily associated with Hinduism. The view appears in the Chandogya Upanishad, dated between the 8th and the 6th century BC, where we find the story of a man who sets before a boy a series of clay objects, asking the boy what each object is. Though the boy names a diversity of things based on the shape of the clay, the lesson is that difference is in the name only; every object presented is clay.¹⁰ So, in the same way, the apparent diversity of things in our world is no more than a difference in name. All are one, and that one is Brahman.

In the Rig-Veda, we find a mythic retelling of creation, which further clarifies the view. In the beginning is Brahman, undifferentiated divinity in the shape of a “person” (purusha). Brahman becomes self-aware, and with this awareness comes the understanding that he is alone. The awareness is followed by fear, but seeing there is no other one to fear, this fear gives way to longing for another person. Brahman thus becomes two, husband and wife. Yet, this second person hides herself from the first by taking on a different form, but her husband pursues her, taking on the same form. So she retreats again into another form, and again, he follows. So the retreat and pursuit continues, until the whole chain of being emerges.¹¹ How literally this story is intended to be is unclear, but it captures the same point as the clay figures: Difference is only an appearance, beneath which is only one substance, Brahman. Or in the words of the Svetasvatara Upanishad, “He is the one God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the Self within all beings, watching over all works, dwelling in all beings, the witness, the perceiver, the only one; free from qualities.”¹² 

Adi Sankara (ca. 788-820 AD) offers some of the clearest articulations of Hindu pantheism. His description of Brahman is similar to classical attributions of God in Western thought—all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal. Such attributions, Sankara suggests, are tacitly in the meaning of the word, “Brahman,” which is “from the root brih ‘to be great,’ [from which] we at once understand that eternal purity, and so on, belong to Brahman.”¹³ Equally familiar is Sankara’s suggestion that Brahman is the ground of being. Yet, unlike Western theists, Sankara means something stronger than creaturely dependence upon a Creator. Instead, this means that Brahman is “the Self of every one.”¹⁴ Sankara says the apparent distinctions within the cosmos are a fiction produced by ignorance.¹⁵ He compares it to a man in the dark mistaking a piece of rope for a snake or a dreamer who never suspects his perceptions are perceptions only.¹⁶ Awakening from the dream of ignorance requires that one “grasp the truth that there is only one universal Self.”¹⁷ Sankara writes, 

For as long as the individual soul does not free itself from Nescience in the form of duality … and does not rise to the knowledge of the Self, whose nature is unchangeable, eternal Cognition—which expresses itself in the form ‘I am Brahman’—so long it remains the individual soul. But when, discarding the aggregate of body, sense-organs and mind, it arrives … at the knowledge that it is not itself that aggregate, that it does not form part of transmigratory existence, but is the True, the Real, the Self …; then knowing itself to be of the nature of unchangeable, eternal Cognition, it life is itself above the avin conceit of being one with this body, and itself becomes the Self, whose nature is unchanging, eternal Cognition.¹⁸

The view is overtly pantheistic. Difference is an illusion of ignorance, and when this ignorance is displaced, it reveals that all is one divine substance, namely, Brahman. 

Before moving on, a word should be said about two different types of monism, namely, static versus dynamic monism. When wrestling with the question of substance, both static and dynamic monism come to a common conclusion: True generation and corruption, in the sense of something emerging from or returning to nothing, is impossible. Hence, substance must be everlasting, neither coming to be nor ceasing to be. Moreover, as the name “monism” indicates, the monist concludes that all is one — everything that exists is of the one everlasting substance. Static monism concludes from this that number, plurality, difference, time, motion, and the rest are illusory. Dynamic monism, by contrast, suggests that, while there is only one substance, the modes by which this substance changes do in fact bring about real difference, even if the difference is not a new substance in the sense of a quantitative expansion of what is.

Putting aside the question of God, for the moment, we can see the two camps in the ancient Greeks by contrasting the Eleatics with the Atomists. The Eleatics advocated static monism, concluding that change, number, and the like are illusory. Gorgias, the Greek sophist, paradies the point in a passage preserved by Sextus Empiricus: “[W]hat is cannot be generated. For if it has come into being, it must have done so either out of what is or out of what is not. But it has not come from what is; for if it is a being, it has not come into being but already is (ei gar on estin, ou gegonen all estin ēdē).”¹⁹ Or to quote Parmenides, “anything other than what is is not, and what is not is nothing, so that which is is one (to para to on ouk on. To ouk on ouden. En ara to on).”²⁰

The atomists, by contrast, admitted that there is only one substance, which is neither generated nor destroyed, namely, the atom. Yet, they still wanted to acknowledge something real about the phenomenon of atomic rearrangement that produces diverse beings. Aristotle summarizes the view:

Leucippus and his associate Democritus declare the full and the empty to be the elements, calling the former “what-is” (to on) and the other “what-is-not” (to mē on). Of these, the one, “what-is,” is full and solid, the other, “what-is-not,” is empty and rare…. These are the material causes of existing things…. They declare that the differences are the causes of the rest. Moreover, they say that the differences are three: shape, arrangement, and position. For they say that what-is differs only in “rhythm,” “touching” and “turning” — and of these “rhythm” is shape, “touching” is arrangement, and “turning” is position. For A differs from N in shape, AN from NA in arrangement, and Z from N in position.²¹

Pantheism is indeed a form of monism. It holds that there is only one substance, God, and from this substance arises all other substances. In some forms of pantheism, the conclusion is that number and difference and the like are illusions. In other forms, there is an insistence that the introduction of differentiating qualities brings about real difference. Some brands of Hindu pantheism, such as described by Sankara, fall to the static monism, according to which the many is an illusion. Yet, not all brands of Hinduism take this position. Vishishtadvaita Hinduism develops in ways that insists on drawing a distinction between God and world, arguing that the doctrines of Samsara and Moksha become incoherent otherwise. Thus, while Hinduism is consistently pantheistic, whether the resulting monism is static or dynamic varies within this tradition.

In philosophical literature, the theory of pantheism appears amongst the earliest of the pagan philosophers, and it tends toward dynamic monism. The pre-Socratics, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, sought a unifying principle common to all things: What is the one that unites the many? These earliest solutions tended toward elemental answers: Perhaps there is one governing element that produces the other elements, and then these basic elements together produce the things of our world. Aristotle summarizes,

Of the first philosophers, then, most thought that the principles which were of the nature of matter were the only principles of all things. That of which all things are consists, the first from which they come to be, the last into which they are resolved (the substance, remaining, but changing in its modifications), this they say is the element and this is the principle of things, and therefore they think nothing is either generated or destroyed, since this sort of entity is always conserved, as we say Socrates neither comes to be absolutely when he comes to be beautiful or musical, nor ceases to be when he loses these characteristics, because the substratum, Socrates himself, remains.²²

According to both Aristotle and Theophrastos, Thales (ca. 624-546 BC) was the first to offer a solution of this kind.²³ He posits that the first principle is water. Aristotle speculates why—the nourishment of all things is moist; seeds have a moist nature; Thales believed the earth rests on water.²⁴ We could add the obvious point that water can be solid, liquid, or gas. Since the theory posits that generation and destruction are just modifications, not beginnings or ends, water’s capacity to exist in various states makes it an ideal candidate.²⁵ Thales also ascribes to water divine mind and power, so we might expect him to conclude that water is God. However, Thales stops short of this, drawing a distinction between water and the divinity within it.²⁶ Why he does so is unclear, but whatever the reason, the distinction excludes him from the annals of pantheism. Yet, his proposal set the stage for the pantheist alternative.

The pantheist proposal comes from Anaximenes (ca. 585-25 BC), an associate, and perhaps student, of Anaximander, who had posited that the first principle is Apeiron (“boundless,” “infinite,” or “uncircumscribed”).²⁷ Anaximenes represents a synthesis of the theories of Thales and Anaximander. He couples the theory of the boundless with a specific, seemingly boundless element, namely, air. Anaximenes writes, “Air differs in essence in accordance with its rarity or density. When it is thinned it becomes fire, while when it is condensed it becomes wind, then cloud, when still more condensed it becomes water, then earth, then stones. Everything else comes from these.”²⁸ Like Thales, Anaximenes identifies an element as the first principle of all things, identifies a mechanism by which it metamorphosizes, and thereby concludes that generation and destruction is nothing more than a change in state. Yet, unlike Thales, who differentiates the first element from the divinity within it, Anaximenes says, “air is a god,” utterly without measure, infinite, and ever in motion.²⁹ The result is monism: The whole of the cosmos subsists within an infinite aerial expanse, and though the beings within this space appear to constitute interruptions within this aerial infinity, they are in fact alternate modes of being of this one element; thus, nothing truly comes to be or ceases to be, since generation and destruction are just modifications in the original, infinite substance. And because Anaximenes insists that aēr is God, the view is pantheistic: The eternal principle in which all things exist, of which they are made, and to which they return is God.

Though Anaximenes’ theory may seem primitive, a more sophisticated version of the theory appears in the Stoics. Admittedly, it is difficult to determine whether the Stoics are pantheists or panentheists, but I think the evidence favors pantheism. Diogenes Laertius suggests that the Stoics use the word kosmos in three ways: “of god himself, the peculiarly qualified individual consisting of all substance, who is indestructible and ingenerable, since he is the manufacturer (demiourgos) of the world-order; they also describe the world-order (diakosmēsis) as ‘world’ and thirdly, what is composed out of both.”³⁰ For our purposes, two points are noteworthy about this statement. The first is that Diogenes says plainly that the Stoics use the term kosmos for God. The second, more subtle point is his use of the term “peculiar qualified individual.” As Dirk Baltzly points out, this term is Aristotelian, and it refers to “a substance in the Aristotelian sense—an individual thing, like you or me. Such qualified individuals are contrasted with mere collections like pile of sand or flocks of sheep.”³¹ The point is crucial. The Stoics see God as an individual in the true sense, not as a nominal composite, and the substance of which this divine individual is composed is the cosmos. The demiourgos doctrine, on this reading, is that God crafts all creatures, but he does so by producing them from his very substance, the way a body produces cells. This certainly pantheism. 

Now, the counter evidence to this reading is that some ancient writers, such as Alexander Aphrodisias, suggest that the Stoics differentiate God from matter. In other words, like Thales, there is a difference between matter, which God uses to manufacture the world, and the divinity within it. The former is passive, being acted upon, while the latter is the active principle that forms matter into the things of our world. Alexander writes, “God is mixed with matter, pervading all of it and so shaping it, structuring it, and making it into the world.”³² If accurate, this would indicate a distinction between the active principle of nature, God, and the passive principle, matter, which God enters, animates, and orders. However, two considerations must be kept in mind. First, the Stoics believed that all things, including God, are corporeal. God and other spirits are differentiated from more concrete entities by mere density—ethereal versus gross matter.³³ Second, as Baltzly points out, for the Stoics, distinction—including the distinction between God and matter—is based on qualities. Yet, if we read the Stoics as holding that God creates the world using pre-existent, qualityless matter, we must charge them with an incoherence: God and matter are distinct before the formation of the world; yet, pre-existent matter has no qualities by which to distinguish it from God.³⁴ 

In this light, the more likely interpretation of the Stoics on pre-existent matter is that God and matter are different aspects of the same individual. As Baltzly explains, “matter is not subject to generation or destruction. But at the conflagration, the reason or commanding faculty (hēgemonikon) of god is described as existing alone. Matter must nonetheless be present even when only the commanding faculty of god exists alone, else it would have to be generated in the next world-cycle.”³⁵ In other words, the Stoics reject the idea that matter can be generated or destroyed, and yet, they insist that God exists alone prior to the creation of all things. Since the Stoics reject creation out of nothing, matter must exist prior to creation as an aspect of God, undifferentiated from him because it has yet to receive qualities that would distinguish it from God. Such a reading is fits the Stoic belief that God is corporeal and is the only way to make sense of their doctrines. The result is a pantheism similar to Anaximenes: A single substance underlies all things, but that substance undergoes changes in qualities, which produce the variations of our cosmos. Hence, difference, generation, and destruction are really only qualitative changes in the one original substance, God. 

As noted above, the pantheism of the pre-Socratics and of the Stoics tends toward dynamic monism, holding that the qualitative changes in divine substance really do produce things distinct from God (the many), even though the substratum beneath these things is the one eternal substance, God himself (the One). Now, amongst the ancient philosophers, we do find instances of static monism. The Eleatic school (i.e., Parmenides, Melissus, and Zeno), already discussed, advocates static monism — all being is one, and the many is an illusion. Yet, it is not clear that this brand of monism is an example of pantheism. For the theology of the Eleatics is unclear. That is to say, it is unclear whether the Eleatics believe that the One Being is God. If they do in fact believe this, as Thomas Whittaker has argued, then their static monism is indeed yet another example of pantheism amongst the ancient philosophers.³⁶

Examples of pantheism amongst the medievals is much more rare, given the dominance of Judeo-Christianity, which tends toward theism, especially in its Latin context. Hence, when the view reared its head, it faced considerable opposition. Common examples of so-called pantheism amongst medieval figures, such as John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 800–77 AD), as well Meister Eckhart (ca. 1260–1328 AD) and Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64 AD) whom he influenced, have greater affinity with NeoPlatonism, which, as we will see, examples panentheism, not pantheism.³⁷ A few examples do exist, namely, Amaury of Bène, David of Dinant, and Amalric of Bena. What differentiates the pantheists from the panentheists in this period is whether they advocate two principles or one. Both agree that God is the form of all things, a claim found in both Eriugena and Amaury, to take two representatives. Where they differ is whether prime matter in which this form manifests is also God. Eriugena differentiates God from matter, while Amaury identifies God with prime matter. The former position is dualistic and thus panentheistic (i.e., part of creation is God, but another part of creation, matter, is not God), while the latter position is monistic and thus pantheistic.³⁸

The modern resurgence of pantheism is clearest in the work Baruch de Spinoza (1632-77). Spinoza’s case for pantheism is an extension of his ontological argument for the existence of God. The case parallels a point we find in G. W. Leibniz. Using the Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) (i.e., everything has a reason for being so, and that reason must be sufficient),³⁹ Leibniz builds a case for the existence of God and his Principle of the Best. Concisely summarized, contingencies, by definition, point outside themselves for explanation and thus fail to satisfy PSR. If we trace a contingency (e.g., my existence) to another contingency (e.g., my parents’ union), we are no closer to satisfying PSR, since the reason identified requires its own reason. To avoid an infinite regress of insufficient reasons, contingencies must terminate in something necessary—that is, an existential truth that contains within itself the reason for its existence. The only thing that satisfies the criterion, argues Leibniz, is God. Yet, merely appealing to God does not in itself satisfy PSR, since we must still answer why God brought about the present set of contingencies as opposed to a different set. Enter Leibniz’s Principle of the Best. Given the divine attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence, it follows from the idea of God that God knows the best, wills the best, and can bring about the best. Hence, our set of contingencies exist because they best.⁴⁰ In his Ethics, Spinoza makes a similar point, but his case moves in a different direction, advocating pantheism and the jettisoning of contingency altogether.

Spinoza’s case begins with an examination of substance as such, which ends in the conclusion that God is the only substance, and all things subsist in him. The argument begins with a series of definitions and axioms, which then unfold to reveal the entailments. The argument is cumbersome, and space does not permit a detailed treatment. But the basic contours are these. Spinoza draws a distinction between substance proper and modes of being. The primary trait of substance, he argues, is that it exists. Hence, a true substance is something “whose concept does not require the concept of another” or exists “in itself.”⁴¹ This sets a basic division between that which exists and that which subsists in another. The former is substance, while the latter he calls an affection of substance.⁴² From these basic distinctions, the argument unfolds. Because substance is conceptually insulated, existing in itself rather than subsisting in another, it follows that no substance can be contingent. For, as Leibniz shows, contingencies are never conceptually closed systems; they entail that on which they are contingent.⁴³ For this reason, Spinoza concludes that no substance can be contingent, since substance excludes existential dependence. Spinoza carries the point still further, however, arguing that such conceptual insulation also requires that any substance is infinite. For finitude, he argues, is being limited another, which entails conceptual dependence of the finite on something else.⁴⁴ Hence, “finite substance” is a contradiction in terms.⁴⁵ The end result of Spinoza’s line of reasoning is that there is only one infinite, self-existent substance—God—and all other things are not in fact substances but affections, subsisting within the one divine substance.

Although the specifics of pantheism differ from ancient through modern, they share a common trait. They commit to monism, concluding that the apparent plurality of our world is traceable to a single substance, and this one substance is ultimately God.

To be continued in Part 2 (coming soon)…

1. The emphasis here on substance is important, insofar as God-world relations can be organized by other emphases, such as the question of miracles. I discuss this point at the outset of section 1.

2. This taxonomy is more or less standard in texts dealing with God-world substance relations. See, e.g., Philosophers Speak of God, eds. Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); John W. Cooper, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers, from Plato to the Present (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006); George D. Shollenberger, God and His Coexistent Relations: Scientific Advances of the Little Gods from Pantheism through Deism, Theism, and Atheism to Panentheism (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2014); Paul Harrison, Elements of Pantheism: A Spirituality of Nature and the Universe, 3rd edition (Element Books, 2013), ch. 1, to name just a few.

3. Kallistos Ware, “God Immanent yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies according to Saint Gregory Palamas,” in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, eds. Philip Clayton and Arthur Peacocke (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2004), 157-68.

4. While the question of divine revelation and the question of miracles may appear to be two distinct questions, Modern philosophy has typically treated the question of special revelation as a subset of the question of miracles. For such special revelation would, in fact, constitute a miracle. See Nathan A. Jacobs, “The Revelation of God, East and West,” Journal of Open Theology, section I.

5. See, e.g., A. W. Wood, “Kant’s Deism,” in Kant’s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered, ed. P. J. Rossi and M. W. Wreen (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991), 7, along with my comments on this in “Can the New Wave of Kant Scholarship Baptize Kant’s Deism? No,” Philosophia Christi 19:1 (2017): 139-40.

6. See, e.g., Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, II.7-12; and Dirk Baltzly, “Stoic Pantheism,” Sophia 42, no. 2 (Oct 2003): 10-20.

7. Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ch. 12, in Spinoza Opera, ed. Carl Gebhardt, 5 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winters, 1925-87), III.159.

8. It is precisely because deism can be paired with any of the three positions on God-world substance that “theism” is a poor term for advocacy of special revelation and miracles. For this lends to the confusion that the discussion about revelation and miracles hinges on the pantheist-theist-panentheist dispute over substance. It may be advisable to reintroduce more nuanced distinctions that do not lend to this sort of confusion. Some options emerge by considering terms used in Kant’s day, such as naturalist, rationalist, and supernaturalist. On the meaning of such terms in Kant’s context, see Chris L. Firestone and Nathan A. Jacobs, In Defense of Kant’s “Religion” (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008), ch. 8. I would personally recommend a threefold genus distinction on matters of revelation of atheist (= no revelation is possible because God does not exist), deist (= no revelation is possible because it is unbecoming of God), and supernaturalist (= revelation is possible, if not probable or certain, but its extent and purpose is disputed).

9. See Pandeism: An Anthology, eds. Knujon Mapson (Winchester, UK: iff Books, 2017).

10. Chandogya Upanishad, 6.1-2, 9-11.

11. Rig-Veda, 10.129; see also Upanishad, 1.4.11-7.

12. Svetasvatara Upanishad, 6.11.

13. The Sacred Books of the East, trans. George Thibaut, ed. F. Max Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1890), §154.

14. The Sacred Books of the East, §154.

15. The Sacred Books of the East, §§155 and 163.

16. The Sacred Books of the East, §§167 and 174.

17. The Sacred Books of the East, §159.

18. The Sacred Books of the East, §164.

19. Gorgias, On Nature or on the Non-Existent, §71, in Sextus Empiricius, Adv. Math. 7.65ff.

20. Parmenide of Elea, Fragment 28A28, in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edition (Berlin, 1951). Hereafter, the Diels/Kranz collection will be cited as “DK.” Citations of pre-Socratic fragments refer to the standard numerations.

21. Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1.4 985b4-20; see also Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics, 28.4-26; and Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Philosophers, 9.30

22. Aristotle, Metaphysics, A1, 983b6.

23. Aristotle, Metaphysics, A1, 983b18-27; and DK 11 A12 and B1.

24. DK 11 A12 and A14.

25. Cf. DK 11 A12(b).

26. DK 11 A23; Simplicius, On Aristotle, On the Soul, 31, 21-26.

27. DK 12 A9; 12 B1.

28. DK 13 A5.

29. DK 22 A7; 25 B2; and 23 A10. These same passages reveal that Anaximenes believed that the gods and the soul are also air. The step from the element to the spiritual is not surprising, given the close connection between Greek terminology for “air” (aēr) and “breath” (psychē or pneuma), on the one hand, and “soul” (psychē) and “spirit” (pneuma), on the other.

30. DL VII.137 = LS 44F.

31. Dirk Baltzly, “Stoic Pantheism,” Sophia 42, no. 2 (Oct 2003), 5. Cf. Simplicius, in Cat. 214, 24-27 (=LS 28M).

32. Alexander Aphrodisias, On Mixture 225, 102 = LS 46H.

33. Cf. Cicero, De natura deorum, 1.40 (L 268); Chrysippus in Cicero, De natura deorum, 1.39-41 (L 268); Zeno in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philsoophers, 7.148-49 (L 185); Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio pro Christianis, 22.5 (PG 6:935c-942a); Origen, Commentaria in Evangelium Joannis, 13.21 (431c-436a); Contra Celsum, 1.21; 3.75 (PG 114:695c-698b; 1017a-1020b); Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 1.11 (PG 8:747b-752d). See also Keimpe Algra, “Stoic Theology,” p. 167; Jacques Brunschwig, “Stoic Metaphysics,” pp. 210-211; and A. A. Long, “Stoicism in the Philosophical Tradition,” pp. 371-373, all three in The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, ed. Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

34. Baltzly, “Stoic Pantheism,” 9-10.

35. Baltzly, “Stoic Pantheism,” 10.

36. See Thomas Whittaker, “A Note on the Eleatics,” Mind 33:132 (Oct., 1924), 428-432; and Priests, Philosophers and Prophets (A & C Black, 1911), ch. 3.

37. On the theistic-pantheistic tensions in Eriugena that give rise to the interpretive challenge, see Frederick Copleston, A History of Philosophy, vol. 2 (Image Books, 1985), 135. On pantheism as a misunderstanding of Eriugena, see Étienne Gilson, History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 116–117. For non-pantheistic readings of Mesiter Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa, see, e.g., “A Hair’s Breath from Pantheism: Meister Eckhart’s God-Centered Spirituality,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 37:2 (June 1994): 263-74; and Matthew T. Gaetano, “Nicholas of Cusa and Pantheism in Early Modern Catholic Theology,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, eds. Simon J. G. Burton, Joshua Hollman, and Eric M. Parker (Brill, 2019), 199-228.

38. On Amaury of Bène’s pantheism, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I.3.8. On Eriugena’s view of matter, see Dermot Moran, “Time, Space and Matter in the Periphyseon: An Examination of Eriugena’s Understanding of the Physical World,” in At the Heart of the Real, ed. F. O’Rourke (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1992).

39. E.g., Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols. (Berlin, 1875-90), 7.355.

40. On the connection between the existence of God and PSR, see Die philosophischen Schriften, 7.302–3, and on the principle of the best, see 6.448, 614–16.

41. Spinoza, Ethics, D3.

42. Spinoza, Ethics, D5.

43. Spinoza, Ethics, A7.

44. Spinoza, Ethics, D2.

45. Spinoza, Ethics, D3; and P7.