Panentheism

The word was coined in the nineteenth century by the German philosopher Karl Krause, and means "all in God" (pan + en + theos). Panentheists hold that the universe exists inside God the way a thought exists inside a mind: the mind includes the thought, is affected by the thought, but is not exhausted by the thought and remains what it is whether or not the thought occurs.

Panentheism is appealing to theologians who find classical theism too remote and pantheism too deflationary. It keeps the idea that God transcends the universe (against pantheism) while making God responsive to and affected by what happens in the universe (against the classical doctrine of divine impassibility). Process theology — developed by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne in the twentieth century — is the best-known systematic panentheism. Process theologians argue that God grows and learns with the universe, that creation is an ongoing collaboration, and that God's power is persuasive rather than coercive.

Feminist theology, liberation theology, and much of contemporary Christian philosophy have moved in panentheist directions, often quietly, because classical theism's omnipotent and unchangeable God is hard to reconcile with lived religious experience and with the problem of evil. A God who suffers with creation (as panentheism allows) is easier to love than a God who watches impassively from outside.

From a philosophical standpoint, panentheism trades some of classical theism's coherence problems (how does an immutable God relate to a changing world?) for new ones (if the universe is part of God, does God's perfection depend on contingent facts?). It is also, from a naturalistic perspective, the hardest version of theism to distinguish from a secular awe at the natural world.