so anon are you saying-----that you like the natural world being included in the god concept…
A God that is at least also immanent. A not uncommon belief before the Abrahamists got going, though it’s on a comeback.
Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) “all”; ἐν (en) “in”; and θεός (theós) “God”; “all-in-God”) is a belief system which posits that God exists, interpenetrates every part of nature and timelessly extends beyond it.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panentheism
How close are we getting here to Spinoza? IMHO, he was able to unite natural and supernatural into a whole. 2nd century C. E. Gnostics attempted this fusion early on.
There’s a difference, I think, between all things being in God and God being in all things. I would say that the first is true insofar as we all exist within the context of God’s grace. God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, and this will never change. (God gifted us with life and in the end our life will return to God.)
However God is not in all things. Not necessarily. God will not be in all things, I don’t think, until the end times when we have given our lives over to God and are in communion with God’s will. So if we use panentheism to describe God’s being all in all, you could say I’m more of an eschatological panentheist.
To test the heart of man. Heart is a metaphor for mind.
One of the methods of testing the functionality of the human mind is through metaphor. At the foundation of language is a convention of names. This means that something has to be in a common environment to assign a word any real meaning.
One can use metaphor to test this. We can say that “God” is “Truth”. Now, since the mind functions through the artific of language, truth is the only power it can ever know. Therefore, do we realize what we are, or do we go off into delusional explanations of a meaningless word?
The only way to demonstrate that there is one and only one God, is a text that addresses what man is. It is the only such text. It tests the heart of man, from start to finish.
So you don’t think Spinoza got it right? If there is nothing in the physical that can extend into the spiritual, then all those who need schizmatic affirmations about God win. Results of that have always produced a Mulligan stew of belief and a them VS us mentality. “Anything we say about God is a lie.”–Meister Eckhart.
I’m no Spinoza expert so I don’t want to say whether he got it right or not. I’ll let you draw from what I say what my opinion might be on the matter.
I think I hear what you’re saying though about a separation between physical and spiritual and this tendency toward “us and them” thinking. (If such a separation was the case, what could we ever say about God or spirit? Whatever we did say would be tantamount to a lie, or at least a stab in the dark. And feuding would result if we took ourselves too seriously.)
Maybe I could put it this way then: While I would separate the physical from the spiritual I would also suggest that their union is precisely what we call life. You know, God breathing into the dust and the result being Adam?
The two remain separate, or separable, but nevertheless unified or unifiable as a lifeform. I would further suggest that this union established at our conception gives us access to both the physical and spiritual domains in our lives, which is to say the ability to speak of/for God without it being a stab in the dark.
To clarify though, I would say that speaking of/for God is a second order “channeling” of the spirit. The union of dust and spirit at conception is the first order, or what I called before our being in God. Our communion with God’s will/word/nature in our lives is the second order, or what I called God being in us.
Hey al,
I guess we could classify the word panentheism in the same category as the word trinity. Both are an attempt to explain God. And both fall short … as all human conceptions of God do.
Not omnipresent then?
That’s an interesting way of thinking. Or of think notting, as you say, “I don’t think.”
So you’re a far seeing panentheist? a seer? a visionary? Of God, in the future, being in all and transcending all … at the same time. God is multifarious ; the nameless one with many names.
Hey, there’s all kinds of ways of seeing God. Yours is as good as any…
No. In the original sense that God is the origin of all life, yes, God is there, or God has left God’s mark on all things, but in the present sense that God is there right now, no, that is not always the case. The crucifixion alone should be enough to teach us that. (“Why have You abandoned me?”)
No. Not all human conceptions of God fall short. Job teaches us that. The conceptions of Job’s friends were false but Job’s was true. Job’s conception of God did not fall short one bit.
When I say that though I mostly mean that when Job spoke or acted, it was as if God Himself was there speaking and acting. Job was Godlike. He spoke and acted truly, or just as God would have if God was there. (If you can speak and act truly for God then your conception of God, whatever it is, must be quite full.)
I’m just a reader of Scripture. It’s all there, I’m just trying to understand it. Part of it though, I am convinced, is that God will only be all in all when each of us speaks and acts truly of God. This is a second order event (following the event of our conception) and is by no means determined. It is up to us. It is our calling as humankind to image God.
It’s recorded that, after Henry David Thoreau read Spinoza he told Waldo Emerson, “According to Spinoza, God is in the Jakes (shit house).”
So did Spinoza get it right?
I am not religious. I have no understanding of what that means.
I started this way, If such a thing as a God exists, then whatever it is, it can be found–just like anything else.
In other words, perception determines conception–just like anything else.
During my investigations with Lucid Dreaming, I was taught. And, because of certain events in my life, I became, by Biblical definition, a prophet–but not a prophet sent. All things in time. It is not something one should talk about in sane company–this is because to do so means I would be speaking at cross purposes. All they know of “God” is mythology, what I learned, I learned first hand.
And so, I find it odd that people treat religion, or faith, or whatever they choose to call it, as something they can choose. A preferred mythology, a preferred interpretation of mystic writings.
I learned that dreams are linguistically based, however, it is an advanced form of linguistic usage. Being such, ground work on linguistics has to be done. People have no faith in language today, because they cannot figure it out. Mankind is mentally weak because he is a young species.
If one wants to understand the Judeo-Christian Scripture, then I would suggest going to the source and learning. It is called Lucid Dreaming. It is not easy. It is not flattering. And one will be pushed to the limit. What will be tested is one’s resolve to understand and think in truth.
Now if one is comfortable with their mythology, fine, but as for me, it has always been a challenge.
In some of my work, I quote from a number of places that it is written in the text that it is sealed to man’s understanding, I have never used this one;
Isaiah 8:16 Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.
One learns in many places in the text, over and over again, the Book is sealed, from cover to cover, until man learns judgment.
Do I know anything about those principles? Have I learned anything at all? Judge for yourself. That is why I put I Am Principles of Self Realization online.
Man is mind, and the Book is about the human development of that mind.
It is written that someday not one will teach another about “God” that men shall learn from “God”. Is this possible? I can say, at least for myself, yes, very much so. A grammar book is wanting, I would say–one that demonstrates that there is no difference between thinking in truth, speaking in truth, be it to one’s self, their fellow man, or with the “Gods”.
Don’t mislead.
“Heart” is a metaphor for passion.
“Bread” for knowledge.
Well, for you half a mind just might be as good as it gets. A house divided against itself, cannot stand.
Have you ever read Plato’s Phaedrus? I won’t say it is about mental integrity, that would be obvious.
Lady A.,
Please take time to read Spinoza’s “Ethics”, not Wickipedia.
The actual position Christians thinkers have clung to for 2000 years is that God is both immanent and transcendent. We don’t have to see God ass being outside of Time or reduce him to the laws of phsyics. that is dependent upon one’s concept of time.
The quasi Berkeley idea that God is the mind that thinks the universe (proto pan psychcism) doesn’t have that problem from the outset becuase God is beyond creation and intimately involved in it.
I recently read a book on precisely this subject. One of my favorite parts of that showed decentralization is from the Old Testament where when Moses asks God His name in the burning bush. God’s reply was “I am who am”. To myself and the author of that book this means that God replied I am everything that exists, throughout all time and space there is nothing else but God and that which flows from Him.
Interesting posts, jam & Meta. Thanks.
Thanks for the comeback Anon. That book I mentioned is titled “My Heart is on the Left Side”. The author claims to have completely destroyed monotheism because it is centrallized by definition. He writes that monotheism as we know it means God as the “One”. And what can be more limiting than the unit one. It begun with knowing God as the sun god, another visual cue to the unit one. He writes that one as a unit limits God in two ways. First every unit has an outer limit to what it can contain. But secondly and this is really far out, any unit has an inner limit at center. The fact that God has no center means that his persona is everywhere and unlimited by any dimensions or time.
Found the book at Amazon, here. Sounds interesting! Though I wish there were more description, perhaps a review or two…