This is a good article. I have two potential dubia. I am first uncertain about defining the categories first and trying to fit the texts into them; that seems to me like putting the cart before the horse, and like it might lead us to read the data for the sake of the theory rather than to abstract the comprehensive taxonomy from the texts themselves. This is an important methodological question because in certain cases the distinction between pantheism and panentheism, as Uwe Meixner argued, breaks down: το παν is not τα πάντα (sorry, I’m typing on a cellphone that does not speak polytonic Greek), and identification of God with the All is common to both even if what it is to be God exceeds what it is to be the world. That’s clear, for instance, in Sankara and Advaita, where brahman saguna is qualitatively infinite and manifests in a quantitatively infinite creation, such that in darshanas like Vedanta and Yoga as well as in more popular bhakti it is more appropriate to speak of the God-worlds relationship than the God-world relationship. The true identity of the atman of all things with brahman does not, as Anantanand Rambachan has argued, undermine the world in its multiplicity but sustains it. Second, I observe that in some of the authors you mention there is already a kind of layered metaphysics in which aboriginal and eschatological monism bookends a more temporary, provisional dualism in the exitus and reditus of all things from and back to God. This also makes the constructed categories somewhat suspect. That strikes me as the right way to read Eriugena, for example, but it is definitely the right way to read Paul, who repurposes Aratus’ Phaenomena I.5 and the pantaenpasin principle it enunciates in the context of apocalyptic eschatology, where God will become “all in all” at the submission of all things to Christ (1 Cor 15:28). The pantheistic or panentheistic (or to use Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s word, simply the pantheological) conclusion would be that end and beginning must form an inclusio; and this is of course also the logic of, say, the whole concept of creatio ex nihilo to begin with, that if God is One without a second, the sole originating principle of things, then there is no repository of eternally pre-existing matter but only his own powers of emanation by which to create the world(s).
Thanks for your thoughtful remark. The taxonomy I’m exploring is not my invention; it’s rather standard in philosophy of religion (see note 2). As for whether it is deficient, I agree it has shortcomings. That is, after all, the point of my article — identifying and correcting one of those deficiencies by expanding the three options to four. I would also agree that there is a danger of distorting some positions in the history of ideas by limiting their categorization to a set of options that do not accurately represent the spectrum of positions — again, the point of this article.
To use the example I’m focused on in this piece, the Eastern Church fathers are sometimes labeled “panentheist,” given their belief, as per the doctrine of deification, that the energies of God are communicable to creatures. As I say in the opening, such a categorization is understandable, given the options offered by the taxonomy, but there are insurmountable differences between the Eastern Church fathers and panentheism. And yet, the alternative labels of "pantheism" and "theism" are equally problematic for reasons I will explain as the article develops. Hence, there is a need to expand the taxonomy, lest we distort the Eastern fathers by way of this label — again, the point of this article.
Now, having said this, I do not oppose taxonomies. They tend to arise out of real patterns in the history of ideas. There is, of course, risk of a feedback loop: If the history of ideas gives rise to a taxonomy, but the taxonomy is deficient and yet becomes the preferred means of reading history, the taxonomy can then distort that history. But the solution, I think, is not to dispense with taxonomies, but to apply them critically, as opposed to uncritically. This has already happened once with the taxonomy in question. The distinction between pantheism and theism was normative well before the term “panentheism” was introduced. Notice, by way of example, that Charles Hodge, writing in 1871, still utilizes a pantheism-theism dichotomy when discussion Hegel in his Systematic Theology, though Hegel scholars today (e.g., Peter Hodgson) place Hegel under the panentheist label. Niels Henrik Gregersen attributes the origins of this third category to Karl Krause, but it appears in Schelling before Krause, as Philip Clayton has noted. Regardless of the term's origins, however, the third term was added precisely because philosophers of religion and metaphysicians noticed important differences between the monism of the pantheists and the dualism of the now-labeled panentheists. Such embodies the critical use of taxonomies that I would advocate, and I am here suggesting one further critical correction to this particular taxonomy.
Now, it sounds like you, too, have a concern about the present taxonomy. However, the deficiency you notice is different than the one I’m focused on here. To wit, you see forms of pantheism, noted in your comment, that transition from monism to dualism and then back again. Hence, the broad category of pantheism is itself problematic when considering these philosophies (which is inclusive of religion, in my use of this term). I admit that I do not see this as a deficiency per se. For when it comes to monism, there already exists the distinction between static and dynamic monism, which accounts for the nuance you've identified.
These two types of monism, when wrestling with the question of substance, come to a common conclusion: True generation and true 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 captured in the name “monism,” this view suggests that being itself is one. Hence, all that exists is 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 substance itself is one and constant, 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.
To put aside the God question, 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)" (Gorgias, On Nature or on the Non-Existent, §71, in Sextus Empiricius, Adv. Math. 7.65ff.). 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)" (Parmenide of Elea, DK 28A28).
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.” (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).
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, such as the kinds you note and to which we could add the Stoics, there is an insistence that the introduction of differentiating qualities brings about real difference — hence what you referred to as the monism to dualism and back phenomenon. But even in the case of the latter, the real distinctions are not new substances in the proper sense of an expansion of the quantity of the underlying "stuff" of reality. Beneath it all is still the divine substance only.
In this light, I do not think it is a mistake to lump both positions under the pantheism label. Rather, I would simply advocate noting the sub-categories of static and dynamic monism. And, for the record, I do think these sub-categories are important. So as I move toward the final draft of this article, I will likely note this distinction — an addition for which you can take credit!
Thanks for the reply! I'm excited to see what you do with the topic. It's a hot one right now, for a variety of reasons, some philosophical/theological, some scientific, and some pop-cultural. My training is in religious studies and classics rather than philosophy per se, so it's certainly true that I don't have the same command of the secondary taxonomy as you do. The dynamic monism that you describe strikes me, at this juncture, as the appropriate way to read the Stoic influences on the New Testament and the Stoicized Middle and Neoplatonic contexts in which Early Christian philosophy developed through to the early middle ages. It also seems to me that the God-world(s) relationship only has so many options that do not hamper the divine infinity while still making sense of the way in which it can be the case that, as the Lukan Paul says (quoting Epimenides, a hair's breadth away from quoting Aratus, possibly an allusion to the Aratus reference in 1 Cor 15:28): "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
I appreciate your enthusiasm to see me tackle this topic. I hope your remain enthusiastic after seeing where I go with it. (Ha!) To no surprise, given the introduction of this article, I do not believe the Eastern fathers are panentheists of the dynamic monism brand. I won't offer spoilers; the article will explain why. And because the key metaphysical nuances behind the why are rooted in the New Testament, I do tend to reject the Stoic reading of Luke / Paul. I do not deny that Paul is playing with a Stoic notion of teleology and providence in the passage, given his audience. But I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this utilization of his hearers' worldview that he is advocating the whole of Stoic substance metaphysics. You can see if you're persuaded by the time I finish the article.
I’ll read your argument with an open mind! I confess that for me, the historical scholarship on the influence of Stoicism on the NT and the Middle Platonists is fairly decisive, but I try to be, as Lewis was, endlessly countersuggestible, so I look forward to future installments.
This is a good article. I have two potential dubia. I am first uncertain about defining the categories first and trying to fit the texts into them; that seems to me like putting the cart before the horse, and like it might lead us to read the data for the sake of the theory rather than to abstract the comprehensive taxonomy from the texts themselves. This is an important methodological question because in certain cases the distinction between pantheism and panentheism, as Uwe Meixner argued, breaks down: το παν is not τα πάντα (sorry, I’m typing on a cellphone that does not speak polytonic Greek), and identification of God with the All is common to both even if what it is to be God exceeds what it is to be the world. That’s clear, for instance, in Sankara and Advaita, where brahman saguna is qualitatively infinite and manifests in a quantitatively infinite creation, such that in darshanas like Vedanta and Yoga as well as in more popular bhakti it is more appropriate to speak of the God-worlds relationship than the God-world relationship. The true identity of the atman of all things with brahman does not, as Anantanand Rambachan has argued, undermine the world in its multiplicity but sustains it. Second, I observe that in some of the authors you mention there is already a kind of layered metaphysics in which aboriginal and eschatological monism bookends a more temporary, provisional dualism in the exitus and reditus of all things from and back to God. This also makes the constructed categories somewhat suspect. That strikes me as the right way to read Eriugena, for example, but it is definitely the right way to read Paul, who repurposes Aratus’ Phaenomena I.5 and the pantaenpasin principle it enunciates in the context of apocalyptic eschatology, where God will become “all in all” at the submission of all things to Christ (1 Cor 15:28). The pantheistic or panentheistic (or to use Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s word, simply the pantheological) conclusion would be that end and beginning must form an inclusio; and this is of course also the logic of, say, the whole concept of creatio ex nihilo to begin with, that if God is One without a second, the sole originating principle of things, then there is no repository of eternally pre-existing matter but only his own powers of emanation by which to create the world(s).
David:
Thanks for your thoughtful remark. The taxonomy I’m exploring is not my invention; it’s rather standard in philosophy of religion (see note 2). As for whether it is deficient, I agree it has shortcomings. That is, after all, the point of my article — identifying and correcting one of those deficiencies by expanding the three options to four. I would also agree that there is a danger of distorting some positions in the history of ideas by limiting their categorization to a set of options that do not accurately represent the spectrum of positions — again, the point of this article.
To use the example I’m focused on in this piece, the Eastern Church fathers are sometimes labeled “panentheist,” given their belief, as per the doctrine of deification, that the energies of God are communicable to creatures. As I say in the opening, such a categorization is understandable, given the options offered by the taxonomy, but there are insurmountable differences between the Eastern Church fathers and panentheism. And yet, the alternative labels of "pantheism" and "theism" are equally problematic for reasons I will explain as the article develops. Hence, there is a need to expand the taxonomy, lest we distort the Eastern fathers by way of this label — again, the point of this article.
Now, having said this, I do not oppose taxonomies. They tend to arise out of real patterns in the history of ideas. There is, of course, risk of a feedback loop: If the history of ideas gives rise to a taxonomy, but the taxonomy is deficient and yet becomes the preferred means of reading history, the taxonomy can then distort that history. But the solution, I think, is not to dispense with taxonomies, but to apply them critically, as opposed to uncritically. This has already happened once with the taxonomy in question. The distinction between pantheism and theism was normative well before the term “panentheism” was introduced. Notice, by way of example, that Charles Hodge, writing in 1871, still utilizes a pantheism-theism dichotomy when discussion Hegel in his Systematic Theology, though Hegel scholars today (e.g., Peter Hodgson) place Hegel under the panentheist label. Niels Henrik Gregersen attributes the origins of this third category to Karl Krause, but it appears in Schelling before Krause, as Philip Clayton has noted. Regardless of the term's origins, however, the third term was added precisely because philosophers of religion and metaphysicians noticed important differences between the monism of the pantheists and the dualism of the now-labeled panentheists. Such embodies the critical use of taxonomies that I would advocate, and I am here suggesting one further critical correction to this particular taxonomy.
Now, it sounds like you, too, have a concern about the present taxonomy. However, the deficiency you notice is different than the one I’m focused on here. To wit, you see forms of pantheism, noted in your comment, that transition from monism to dualism and then back again. Hence, the broad category of pantheism is itself problematic when considering these philosophies (which is inclusive of religion, in my use of this term). I admit that I do not see this as a deficiency per se. For when it comes to monism, there already exists the distinction between static and dynamic monism, which accounts for the nuance you've identified.
These two types of monism, when wrestling with the question of substance, come to a common conclusion: True generation and true 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 captured in the name “monism,” this view suggests that being itself is one. Hence, all that exists is 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 substance itself is one and constant, 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.
To put aside the God question, 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)" (Gorgias, On Nature or on the Non-Existent, §71, in Sextus Empiricius, Adv. Math. 7.65ff.). 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)" (Parmenide of Elea, DK 28A28).
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.” (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).
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, such as the kinds you note and to which we could add the Stoics, there is an insistence that the introduction of differentiating qualities brings about real difference — hence what you referred to as the monism to dualism and back phenomenon. But even in the case of the latter, the real distinctions are not new substances in the proper sense of an expansion of the quantity of the underlying "stuff" of reality. Beneath it all is still the divine substance only.
In this light, I do not think it is a mistake to lump both positions under the pantheism label. Rather, I would simply advocate noting the sub-categories of static and dynamic monism. And, for the record, I do think these sub-categories are important. So as I move toward the final draft of this article, I will likely note this distinction — an addition for which you can take credit!
Thanks again for your thoughtful remark.
Thanks for the reply! I'm excited to see what you do with the topic. It's a hot one right now, for a variety of reasons, some philosophical/theological, some scientific, and some pop-cultural. My training is in religious studies and classics rather than philosophy per se, so it's certainly true that I don't have the same command of the secondary taxonomy as you do. The dynamic monism that you describe strikes me, at this juncture, as the appropriate way to read the Stoic influences on the New Testament and the Stoicized Middle and Neoplatonic contexts in which Early Christian philosophy developed through to the early middle ages. It also seems to me that the God-world(s) relationship only has so many options that do not hamper the divine infinity while still making sense of the way in which it can be the case that, as the Lukan Paul says (quoting Epimenides, a hair's breadth away from quoting Aratus, possibly an allusion to the Aratus reference in 1 Cor 15:28): "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).
I appreciate your enthusiasm to see me tackle this topic. I hope your remain enthusiastic after seeing where I go with it. (Ha!) To no surprise, given the introduction of this article, I do not believe the Eastern fathers are panentheists of the dynamic monism brand. I won't offer spoilers; the article will explain why. And because the key metaphysical nuances behind the why are rooted in the New Testament, I do tend to reject the Stoic reading of Luke / Paul. I do not deny that Paul is playing with a Stoic notion of teleology and providence in the passage, given his audience. But I think it would be a mistake to conclude from this utilization of his hearers' worldview that he is advocating the whole of Stoic substance metaphysics. You can see if you're persuaded by the time I finish the article.
I’ll read your argument with an open mind! I confess that for me, the historical scholarship on the influence of Stoicism on the NT and the Middle Platonists is fairly decisive, but I try to be, as Lewis was, endlessly countersuggestible, so I look forward to future installments.