Panentheism and the Classical God-World Relationship: A Systems-Oriented Approach

Abstract

Panentheism has become a familiar term in contemporary christian systematic theology and philosophy, for it is widely believed to be an appropriate way to overcome the alleged dualism found in the classical god-world relationship. but what is meant by the term panentheism, and how does it work so as to avoid becoming still another form of pantheism or cosmic monism? in 2004 Philip clayton and the late Arthur Peacocke published a set of papers on the topic of panentheism that came from a conference in england on that topic in 2001.1 yet, while there were certain broad affinities in approach and content among many of the papers, none of them used precisely the same conceptual model for analysis of the concept. As one of the participants niels henrik gregersen commented, “The concept of panentheism is not stable in itself. The little word ‘in’ is the hinge of it all. There may be as many panentheisms as there are ways of qualifying the world’s being ‘in god.’”2 in this article, i attempt an explanation of the term on the basis of what i call systems theory. As i explain in the next section of this article, i have in mind with the term system a somewhat modified understanding of what Alfred north Whitehead meant by the category of society in his master work Process and Reality.3 That is, a system is a corporate or socially organized reality whose ultimate constituents are momentary self-constituting subjects of experience (actual entities).4 but, perhaps more strongly than Whitehead himself, i claim that societies/systems are more than simply the sum of their interrelated actual entities from moment to moment. They are specifically social or corporate realities, enduring ontological totalities greater than the sum of their parts or members.5 System rather than Aristotelian substance is for me the first category