“Anton hein” wrote:

Er… I am the co-publisher of Apologetics Index – a web site that encourages independent research. …. The site, which includes over 10,000 pages, needs lots of work to further expand entries – including the one on panentheism: http://www.apologeticsindex.org/p00.html#panentheism

Mark responded:

It may be better to look at a broader philosophic definition of than that on on your page.

For example ….from http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/philvws.htm (*I do not subscribe to this version of panentheism …this is just to show you some of the many problems encountered when speaking of a philosophical term like panentheism …and whose particular version of it!)

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Charles Hartshorne’s Panentheist View If the puzzles associated with the traditional conception of God cannot somehow be removed, the traditional view will clash with the Compatibility Principle, whose main point is to rule out inconsistent beliefs. Some philosophers of religion believe that most of these puzzles are insoluble, and so they have sought a different conception of God that can avoid the puzzles. One of the most important contemporary philosophers to try this approach is Charles Hartshorne.

You might be attracted to Hartshorne’s view if you find that the idea of a mind existing completely independent of a body makes no sense to you. For Hartshorne, God is both immanent and transcendent. That is to say, God’s divine mind is present in the physical universe as a whole but also transcends or surpasses it. Hartshorne’s view is that the universe is in God, or as it is sometimes called, “panentheism” (from Greek pan (all) + en (in) + theos (god)).

How does God’s mind inhabit the universe? Perhaps an analogy to the way a life principle works in our bodies will help. Suppose all the cells, fluids, etc. from a living human body were first detached from one another and gathered in a heap somewhere. This heap would contain exactly the materials which were found earlier in the living human body. What, then, made the difference? Clearly, the difference was the way in which the component cells, fluids, etc. were put together into a dynamic unity. Let’s call this extra thing the “structure” of the whole. It’s important to realize that in living beings this structure is rule-governed and in human beings this structure (which makes us what we are) is partly intelligent. There’s no question here of the structure’s existing without the parts–if this structure is the human life principle, it is not going to survive the death of the body. (At least this is Hartshorne’s view.)

For Hartshorne, God’s mind is the structure and principle governing the whole physical universe. Since Hartshorne does not believe that the universe can have an end, he also believes that the universe and God have always existed.)

But Hartshorne’s God also has a transcendent aspect. His mind transcends the material universe and is not entirely bound by it.

Hartshorne’s God has a peculiar kind of qualified omniscience. God’s mind perfectly knows what is happening and has happened. It knows all about the present and the past. But, contrary to what both versions of the Traditional View hold, God does not know all about the future.

Hartshorne rejects complete divine knowledge of the future for two connected reasons: (1) The future is not yet entirely determined, according to him; so how could anyone have complete knowledge of it? (2) God’s mind is not the ultimate source of all decisions: beings other than God, such as you and I, make choices independent of God’s plans. (If we couldn’t do this, Hartshorne believes, our actions would not be free and we would never be responsible for them.) Now, if God does not entirely make the future, He cannot be entirely sure what it will be.

Because his God is not entirely omniscient, Hartshorne’s view is not subject to puzzle (A) concerning omniscience and moral responsibility. Nor is it subject to puzzle (B) concerning omnipotent creation and moral responsibility. Hartshorne’s God is not omnipotent. Since human beings at least are free centers of choice partly independent of God’s plans and designs, some things we do are beyond His power to force or prevent. He is therefore not as powerful a deity as some people might think they can conceive.

Hartshorne would nevertheless say that his God is the most powerful being really conceivable. If we try to conceive one more powerful, he would claim, we end up with something like the traditional philosophical view. This traditional view produces the puzzles we discussed (and which Hartshorne believes it cannot solve). Therefore, on his view, the traditional view is ultimately incoherent.

Hartshorne’s view does not seem to be subject to the puzzle (D) concerning evil and the goodness of God. If some things that happen are not the result of His will, there’s no contradiction in admitting that some things are imperfect or evil. One does not have to say that things which seem bad are only apparently so, or are only so from our imperfect point of view.

Far from holding that we do not influence God, Hartshorne claims that we influence Him in a very important way. Since He is omniscient about the past, but not about the future, He will learn what we have done when we have done it (but not, at least not in detail, before). Therefore our deeds are, as it were, etched in His memory. In fact, this is our immortality according to Hartshorne: we don’t survive death as individuals, but our good and bad deeds are preserved forever in divine memory. They are not forgotten.)

Hartshorne is influenced by the scientific notion that nature operates according to general principles or laws. Thus he does not claim that God may temporarily abolish a natural law so that somebody may perform a miracle, only to reinstate the natural law afterwards. But the laws of nature now in effect are not the only laws that nature might have; another set of natural laws might also be coherent. Hartshorne believes that God, whose mind is the ultimate guarantee of the coherence of nature, might change the natural laws if He thought that He could improve the cosmos that way. (Note how Hartshorne’s belief in God corresponds to an optimism about the future of the cosmos.)

It might be objected that since Hartshorne’s God is partially embodied in physical matter, there is a good chance that he is materially if not morally corruptible, and that possibility would not fit well with common conceptions of divine perfection. The dominant philosophical conception avoids this problem when it holds that God is incorruptible because He is immaterial, bodiless. But a defender of Hartshorne’s view might argue that a partially immanent God can be incorruptible too. Beings are corruptible generally because they are subject to influences from outside. Individuals do not seduce themselves with money or sexual favors–these are influences coming from others. But nothing is outside of Hartshorne’s God; for the whole physical universe, including our bodies, is His body.

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