Panentheism across World's Traditions. Edited by Loriliai Biernacki and Philip Clayton

Abstract

Panentheism, the model which advocates that all things are in the divine and the divine is in all things, remains a silenced, but by no means irrelevant, concept in Western religions (and religious studies in general) today. This impressive collection of scholars bring to the forefront the shared exploration of panentheism in various religious traditions, not to create some new syncretic master metanarrative but rather to show how one might gain from a panentheistic model of the divine–world relationship while remaining firmly rooted in his or her own religious tradition. In this volume, Judaism, Confucianism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and Islam are represented. Bradley Shavit Artson opens the volume with an essay affirming panentheism from a Jewish perspective. He insists that although panentheism certainly ought not to be the only lens through which to understand the God–world–person relationships in Jewish literature, it certainly serves as an emerging constructive lens to counter classical theistic claims and “is abundantly evident in Jewish sources and Jewish thought” (22). He does not intend to replace classical theism with panentheistic claims, but rather calls for a move beyond not only this dichotomy, but others (e.g., transcendence vs. immanence, objective vs. subjective, within time vs. beyond time, etc.). He writes, “instead of having to select one pole within a rigid dichotomy, God can be both within time and beyond time; God encompasses the cosmos, and transcends the cosmos” (19). Above all, he argues, panentheism provides greater permission to understand God as dynamic, engaged, becoming, acting in space and in genuine relation to the world, and not simply and solely other. Further, Artson seeks practical implications for adopting a panentheistic view. “Asking whether Judaism is panentheistic is not asking to link a worldview to an objective timeless object. Rather, it is asking the living community whether . . . the tool of panentheism allow[s] us to fashion an authentic Judaism that makes us more ethical, more compassionate, more joyous, grateful, loving, and inspired to serve” (22). Drawing on Bereshit Rabbaj, Artson suggests a good definition of panentheism is that “God is the place of the world, but the world is not God's place” (24). Further, “the Hebrew name for God, ‘Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I will be what I will be’” as “the God of the Torah is a God of becoming—dynamic, relating, embodied through covenant, creation and Torah itself” (25). Artson insists on recognizing that all of our theological cosmologies are but metaphors, whether classical, contemporary, or other. However, metaphors can be correct in revealing “something important we need to know about the world, about ourselves, and about our relationship to holiness” (24), and instead of dwelling on their literal truth value, we ought to “luxuriate in the metaphor” (30), for “panentheism and embodied metaphor mean we do not have to keep arguing about whose worldview is true or whose religion is superior” (32). Thus, panentheism, as an embodied metaphor, liberates the Jewish imagination from being imprisoned by idea that “the dominant philosophical tradition” must somehow be “an objective, necessary understanding of the outside world or of religious faithfulness” (33).