IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
I am just curious.
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How many gods do panentheists believe in?
- Thread starter IsmailaGodHasHeard
- Start date
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
Interestingly, you can find panentheists within just about all religions. You can read about Christian panentheism on Wiki:
Panentheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Panentheism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
I do disagree with panentheism because how can Satan be a part of God when God is good and Satan is evil?
Fair enough, but I have never understood how Satan or evil can exist if God created everything. For anything to be separate, I would assume that it would have to exist independently of God and of course, I believe that God is the Origin or origins, the Cause of all causes.
I know that there are Christians who see Satan as essentially an agent of God, but I'm not too familiar with the reasoning used.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Because a real god would be beyond our notions of "good" and "evil".
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
One thing that I have found to be helpful is Romans 9. Here is the link. Romans 9 NASB - Solicitude for Israel I am telling the - Bible Gateway
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
I guess that is true. His ways are higher than our ways.
Me Myself
Back to my username
Because in panentheism God is both the evil and the bad.
Being that things that are evil are so because they harm others, evil is just a way in which God is masochistic with himself, because he is both the aggressor and the victim
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
Agree to disagree? I cannot debate you in this section. Maybe we can take this to another section. I do not want to break the rules.
Me Myself
Back to my username
It´s cool. Just proposing a hyphothetical solution to panentheism from the quesiotn you asked as in how both good and evil can be part of God.
I beleive in this solution I put naturally, nad understood you wouldn´t and are just asking, but as you say, agree to disagree
IsmailaGodHasHeard
Well-Known Member
It´s cool. Just proposing a hyphothetical solution to panentheism from the quesiotn you asked as in how both good and evil can be part of God.
I beleive in this solution I put naturally, nad understood you wouldn´t and are just asking, but as you say, agree to disagree
Thank you.
GabrielWithoutWings
Well-Known Member
All things are part of God. If there is something not a part of God then God is not omnipresent or omnipotent.
It's the same reason I don't believe in eternal Hell. If Hell was eternal, then there is a state of permanence where God has no authority. If all things flow from God, all things flow back to God. Apocatastasis.
Satan may not even be a fallen angel. He may be God's darker side that was cast off before the beginning.
It's an easy work-around.
Storm
ThrUU the Looking Glass
Not necessarily. I believe in a sort of divine multiverse with an unknown number. That said, I only concern myself with the One.Just the One
Gaura Priya
IRL
I think the one thingt that comes along side by side with panentheism, at least from what I've seen in many different religions, is the the idea of universal reconciliation, or universalism. Every living being will eventually attain to God's presence.
If one were to see panentheism in the Christian sense, the Devil becomes an advocate to temporarily punish those who have done evil. He would be seen in the Hindu tradition as the personification of both Maya-devi and Yamaraja, the demigod of death.
Otherwise, I can not believe that Jehovah would ever have some personage powerful enough to 'mislead' people, because it takes God's power away from Himself.
If one were to see panentheism in the Christian sense, the Devil becomes an advocate to temporarily punish those who have done evil. He would be seen in the Hindu tradition as the personification of both Maya-devi and Yamaraja, the demigod of death.
Otherwise, I can not believe that Jehovah would ever have some personage powerful enough to 'mislead' people, because it takes God's power away from Himself.
St Giordano Bruno
Well-Known Member
I was researching into it some 20 years ago before I settled on pantheism. From what I recall from that book I read many years ago panentheists believe the universe is like the torso and limbs of God and the brain and head with its brain of God is something unseen to us, but there is only the one head. They subscribe more to an intelligent universe which I find hard to come to terms with. If a panentheism believes in more than one God I think it would go without saying they believe in more than one universe all with their constituent universe representing that particular God's body with his unseen head in control and all those universes acting independently from each other.
How is that explained in Pantheism then?
God pervades and transcends all. We see with our limited consciousness. For example, even the worst of the worst... Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, Satan (I dont think any dharmic religion believes in Satan)...
Outwardly their actions and physical forms do great evil, yet their jiva, living being, soul, is pervaded by God. It's hard to grasp, but even your worst enemy, a person you hate with a passion has the spirit of God within them.
To say namaste, pranam, vanakkam is to say "I bow to you (because the spirit of God is within you)". I wrestle with this myself because I have a sister-in-law I hate with a passion. She has been nothing but trouble since the day she was born. But I have to keep in mind it's only her physical form and her actions in this world that are "evil". She is still pervaded by God, and is part of the Absolute.
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Sylvan
Unrepentant goofer duster
In my opinion the "god that created the universe" is a god we will never know or perceive (until we pass the body perhaps), and will one day be best described by physicists. There are literally existing independently intelligent gods and spirits which "partake" of or are "part and parcel" to various natural or perhaps even primordial cosmic phenomena, but their appearance to us is through an epiphenomena of the "noosphere", and their true nature and number is indeterminate. Many, such as a certain popular Semetic storm/mountain god, like to pretend they created the universe and sometimes claim they are the only "real" god. It makes for a good story and their usefulness to the tribes they coexisted with depended on the wonder of children and proofs of their power to men. Often in the form of military victories. This was a useful fiction for a time. Now, I would argue, it is more parasitic. But that's neither here nor there.
So to answer your question in my opinion their nature and number are indeterminate. I work with 3-7 usually, sometimes more in aggregate.
They are certainly not the only gods nor did they create the universe or claim to. Although apparently some of their ancestors are in a lineage which partook of the memory of such events.
So to answer your question in my opinion their nature and number are indeterminate. I work with 3-7 usually, sometimes more in aggregate.
They are certainly not the only gods nor did they create the universe or claim to. Although apparently some of their ancestors are in a lineage which partook of the memory of such events.
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