Panentheism

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Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν "everything" and ἐν θεῷ "in God") is a term coined by Karl Christian Friedrich Krause in 1828 , which describes the conception "that the one in itself and through itself is also the all". Later authors use the term to denote a conception according to which "God is immanent in the world and at the same time transcendent to it, insofar as the world itself is God immanent, in God, encompassed by God".

Pantheism and panentheism

The starting point of Krause's word coining is a certain understanding of Spinozism , which summarizes Spinoza's thinking in the formula Deus sive Natura and sees in it the direct identity of God and nature. Since the beginning of the 18th century, this conception of the identity of God and nature has been called pantheism . In contrast, panentheism is intended to express that the world is contained in God, but that God is thought more comprehensively than that. God and world are therefore expressly not identical here. Panentheism stands in the middle between pantheism (immanence of God in the world) and theism (transcendence of God to the world).

In addition to Krause, representatives of theistic late idealism such as Immanuel Hermann Fichte also used the term. From there he penetrated the history of philosophy of the 19th century; Wilhelm Windelband, for example, uses it to describe the positions that Johann Gottfried Herder took primarily in his book God . In more recent philosophical-historical works, the distinction between the terms pantheism and panentheism is hardly used any more, as it is based on an inappropriately abbreviation of Spinoza's teaching - at least since Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi's writings On the teaching of Spinoza and From the divine things and their revelation for understanding of the term "pantheism" is relevant. The Historical Dictionary of Philosophy only uses the expression with regard to Krause. In contrast, the term has become more widespread in theology and is still in use there, in the Anglo-Saxon area even more than in the German-speaking area, especially in process theology .

The term is still occasionally used in religious studies and is often used in an apologetic sense to distinguish it from pantheism, which is viewed as theologically problematic.

See also

literature

  • Philip Clayton , Arthur Peacocke (Eds.): In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being , William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI 2004. ( Google Books )

Web links

Wiktionary: Panentheism  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Christian Friedrich Krause: Lectures on the system of philosophy . Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Göttingen 1828, p. 256.
  2. ↑ Rudolf Eisler , Karl Roretz: Dictionary of philosophical terms . Historically and source-wise edited by Rudolf Eisler. Continued and completed by Karl Roretz. 4., completely reworked. Aufl. Mittler, Berlin 1929, p. 370.
  3. ^ A b David Bell: Spinoza in Germany from 1670 to the Age of Goethe (=  Bithell Series of Dissertations.  7). Institute of Germanic Studies, London 1984, pp. 113f.
  4. ↑ Ulrich Dierse, Winfried Schröder : Article Pantheism. In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Vol. 7, Basel 1989, pp. 59-63.
  5. ↑ Winfried Schröder : Article Panentheism (Krause). In: Historical Dictionary of Philosophy. Vol. 7, Basel 1989, p. 48.
  6. ↑ Cf. John Macquarrie: Art. Panentheism. In: Theological Real Encyclopedia . Vol. 25. de Gruyter, Berlin [u. a.], 2000, pp. 611-615.
  7. ↑ John Culp:  Panentheism. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
  8. ↑ Cf. Elisabeth Hamacher: Gershom Scholem and the general history of religion. de Gruyter, Berlin [a. a.] 1999, p. 268.