Home Forums Blogs Articles Photos Videos Contact FAQ

Pandeism - Recent usage

Pandeism - Recent usage: Encyclopedia II - Pandeism - Recent usage

Pandeism: Encyclopedia II - Pandeism - Recent usage

Pandeism - Recent usage

Today, a small number of philosophers and religious scholars use this term in essays, blogs and internet forums to describe various belief systems. Some of these uses are etymologically disjunctive, as they ascribe a meaning to the term that does not reflect the roots of what is an obvious portmanteau within a well defined family of similar terms. The term most closely resembles a splicing together of the Latin root 'pan' (meaning 'all'), as it is used in pantheism fused to the word deism, itself originally derived from the Latin deus, meaning God, but which was later adopted by the Deist movement, and came to have the meaning ascribed by its members. Such a term may describe a pantheistic deism — a system in which a Creator God designed the universe and initiated its creation, but is now one with the universe, and therefore nonresponsive. Conversely, the term may describe a deistic pantheism, in which a God that has always been pantheistic has ceased a previously active interection with the universe.

Pandeism - Usage as a restatement of another concept

The term has been used in some instances as a restatement of pantheism (the concept that God and the universe are one) or panendeism (the concept that God both is the universe, and transcends the universe). For example, Frances E. Peters mentions the term in his 1967 Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, suggesting a meaning by contrasting it with another concept:

What appeared here, at the center ot the Pythagorean tradition in philosophy, is another view of psyche that seems to owe little or nothing to the pan-vitalism or pan-deism (see theion) that is the legacy of the Milesians. ^[8]

In 1997, Pastor Bob Burridge[9] of the Genevan Institute for Reformed Studies[10] wrote in the following essay titled God Is Not the Author of Sin, apparently identifying pandeism as either a refinement of or a subset of pantheism:

All the actions of created intelligences are not merely the actions of God. He has created a universe of beings which are said to act freely and responsibly as the proximate causes of their own moral actions. When individuals do evil things it is not God the Creator and Preserver acting. If God was the proximate cause of every act it would make all events to be "God in motion". That is nothing less than pantheism, "or more exactly, pandeism." The Creator is distinct from his creation. The reality of secondary causes is what separates Christian theism from pandeism.[11]

Similarly, a 1995 news article quotes Jim Garvin a Vietnam vet who became a Trappist monk in the Holy Cross Abbey[12] of Berryville, Virginia who describes his current spiritual position as "'pandeism' or 'pan-en-deism,' something very close to the Native American concept of the all- pervading Great Spirit..."^[13]

Natalia Kita,[14] who describes herself as "an ordained minister through several free-thinking churches"[15] classifies her beliefs as "transcendental pandeism," a phrase to which she assigns the following meaning:

God not only is, always was, and always will be the universe, but that the Universe is contained within God, and God transcends that which we know as the Universe. I also believe that all living beings contain the knowledge/wisdom of God/the Universe within them, if only they open their minds to it. I view God not so much as a being, but as a force of pure spirit and energy, containing all the knowledge/wisdom there is, and sharing it with all.

This use of the term appears to be consonant with panentheism, but with some minor variations with respect to the relationship between God and the individual.

Pandeism - Usage as a distinct concept

Others have specified that it is a concept distinct from pantheism, and have used it instead to describe a universe which combines elements of pantheism (for example, that God and the universe are one) and deism (for example, that a creator God created a self-regulating universe, but subsequently ceased to actively intervene in its operations).

The closest notable ideology to the latter usage was authored by Baruch Spinoza, who envisioned a universe that was one with God, and in which the course of the universe had nevertheless been predetermined by God. A point of critique in a piece discussing the Christian Origins of U.S. states:

The labeling of Spinoza's philosophy as "pantheism" by the Church was meant more as an invective and indictment than a true analysis of his writings. It was really a variant of Deism -- a "pandeism," if I may. Theism, however, posits something very different. Theism believes that nature was not God, but created BY God. That God is a completely independent sentient and cognitive Being, and that God interacts with his "children" on a personal level (e.g., The Bible).

This assertion is echoed by "Cristorly" (the pseudonym of Orlando Alcántara, a Dominican poet and theologian), who characterizes the pantheistic God as transcendent, while the pandeistic God is merely continuous with Creation:

God is inmanent, trascendent and holistic. That is Pantheism, not Pandeism. Pantheism is right, because we are speaking about a personal, individual, trascendent God. Pandeism (like Spinoza's) is not right, due to the fact that is not a trascendent God, a God beyond Creation. [16]

Cristorly has developed a "Theognosis" of Omnientheism, which integrates six concepts - Theism, Deism, Panentheism, Panendeism, Pandeism, and Pantheism - into a coherent corpus or canon. Cristorly describes his definitions as "discretional," meaning that each can only be understood in the context of all the rest. Cristorly asserts:

The terms Theism, Pantheism, and Panentheism have their root in Greek, which is a Biblical language, and therefore it is correct. In a discretionary way we assume that these terms present the idea of a personal, individual God. However, the terms Deism, Pandeism, and Panendeism have their root in Latin, which is not a Biblical language, and therefore it is not correct. These terms present the idea of God like synonymous of Energy or Cosmic Force, because God is not personal here, He is not individual.

Within this grouping, the meanings of the terms hinge on their categorization of the "transcendence, immanence, and holism of God". With respect to Pandeism, he notes, "we see that Energy or Cosmic Force in Pandeism is immanent and holistic, but it is not transcendent."[17]

The following excerpt from a discussion of a painting by Spanish artist Orlando Cordero offers the same conceptual distinction between pantheism and pandeism. The author used the words "pandeísta" and "pandeísmo" in the Spanish version, which were translated by the author into "pandeist" and "pandeism", respectively. The comparison suggests that pandeism is a system with a cold, impersonal God, while pantheism presents a warm and experiential God:

His vision is pandeist, and it had to be pantheist. In order to get a pantheist painting, it is necessary to have Christ as pennant, footpath, and lighthouse. Pandeism is impersonal like in the present canvas, in which man, nature and word integrate themselves; whereas pantheism is a personal Christ-like experience of every day. Here there is signal-like materiality for the making of other paintings. [18]

Pandeism - Notes

^ The person Higgins refers to as "Pandion" here is more commonly known as Aegeas - the husband of Medea and father of Medus; Aegeas was himself the son of Pandion II, and Higgins reference clearly equated Aegeas with the lineage of his father.
^ Anacalypsis, pg. 439.
^ Anacalypsis, pg. 443.
^ Oahspe Bible, pg. 874.
^ Francis E. Peters, Greek Philosophical Terms: A Historical Lexicon, p. 169 (NYU Press 1967).
^ Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, November 11, 1995, B-10.