Panteism and Panenteism: a necessary Distinction
Autor: Lucas Santos | Publicado: 2012-04-27T20:28:00-03:00







    
    

         



Leonardo Boff


A radical and coherent cosmological vision holds that the 
ultimate subject of everything that happens is the universe itself. The 
universe causes the appearance of beings, complexities, biodiversity, 
consciousness, and the contents of that consciousness, of which we are a
 part.

Thus, before it arose as an idea in our heads, the reality of God was
 in the universe itself. Because the reality of God was in the universe,
 the idea of God could come forth in us. Starting from this concept, we 
can understand that God is inherent in the universe. God is mixed with 
all the processes, without being diluted by them. Better yet, God 
orients the arrow of time towards the formation of ever more complex and
 dynamic orders, (that, consequently, distance themselves from the 
equilibrium to seek new adaptations), that are filled with purpose. God 
appears, in the language of cross-cultural traditions, as the creative 
Spirit, and organizer of all that exists. God is mixed with all things, 
participating in their development, suffering with mass extinctions, 
feeling crucified with the impoverished, and happy with the advances 
towards more convergent and interrelated diversities, pointing towards 
an Omega end point.

God is present in the cosmos and the cosmos is present in God. The 
old theology expressed this mutual inter-penetration by the concept of 
«pericoresis» applied to the relationships between God and creation, and
 thereafter, to the Persons of the Divine Trinity. Modern theology has 
coined another expression, «panenteism» (in Greek: pan=all; en=in; 
theos=God). This is: God is in everything and everything is in God. This
 word was proposed by an Evangelical, Frederick Krause (l781-1832), who 
was fascinated by the divine splendor of the universe.

Panenteism must be clearly distinguished from panteism. Panteism (in 
Greek: pan = all; theos=God) affirms that all is God and God is all. It 
holds that God and the world are identical; that the world is not a 
creation of God, but the necessary mode of being of God. Panteism 
accepts no differentiation: heaven is God, the Earth is God, the rock is
 God and the human being is God. This lack of differentiation easily 
leads to indifference. All is God and God is all, consequently it makes 
no difference whether I concern myself for a girl abused in a bus of 
Rio, or about the Carnival, or the indigenous peoples facing extinction,
 or a law against homophobia. This is manifestly erroneous, because 
differences exist and persist.

Not all is God. Things are what they are: things. However, God is in 
things and things are of God, by reason of His act of creation. The 
creature always depends on God and without God the creature would return
 to the nothingness whence it came. God and the world are different, but
 they are neither separated nor closed, they are open one for the other.
 They are different so as to make possible mutual encounter and 
communion. Through it, transcendence and immanence, the contrasting 
categories of Greek origin, are left behind.
Immanence is this world, here. Transcendence is the world that is beyond
 this. Christianity, by the incarnation of God created a new category: 
transparence, that is the presence of the transcendence (God) within the
 immanence (world). When this happens, God and the world mutually make 
each other transparent. As Jesus said: \”who sees me, sees the Father\”.
 Teilhard de Chardin lived a moving spirituality of the transparence. In
 The Divine Milieu, an essay on the interior life, (Le milieu divin, 
162), he said: «the great mystery of Christianity is not the apparition,
 but the transparence of God in the universe. Not only the ray that 
emerges, but the ray that penetrates. Not the Epiphany but the 
Diaphaneity».

The universe in cosmogenesis invites us to live the experience that 
underlies panenteism: in every minimal manifestation of being, in every 
movement, in every expression of life we are in the presence and action 
of God. Embracing the world we embrace God. Those who are sensitive to 
the Sacred and to the Mystery pull God out of anonymity, and give the 
Divine a name. They celebrate the Divine with hymns, songs and rites, 
through which they express their experience of God. They are witness to 
what Paul said to the Greeks from Athens: “We live, we move, we exist in
 God.” (17, 28).



Por Leonardo Boff
Fonte: http://leonardoboff.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/panteism-and-panenteism-a-necessary-distinction/