Well, these are two different propositions.
I would say the basic proposition of panentheism is that it is a modification of pantheism. That's how it came about, it seems to me? Since then, there have been various theories.
The latter (that change in the universe reflects or is reflected in change in God) seems to me to be a problem of thinking time operates linearly for everyone in the multiverse, including God. I think that is faulty philosophizing, based in limitations of the human perspective.
I agree. The basic issue, it seems to me, is that it presupposes a contiguity between Creator and creation, some order of co-essentiality, which therefore supposes that each conditions the other.
There is no "real" separation of God from everything (that does not mean there is no God beyond everything, but that nothing exists outside of God, which means that everything's divine connection and essence is intrinsic to it, but by virtue of this being within Being).
I don't agree. If there is a God beyond everything, and the God beyond everything lacks for nothing, then there certainly is a
distinction between God and everything (else) because everything (else) possesses none of the qualities that God does.
This brings us back to contiguity: A divine
connection with everything, which I read as God's Immanence in creation, does not presuppose a divine
essence of everything. If everything is intrinsically divine, then how can it not know its own divinity, if a marker of the divine is that which lacks for nothing, and is subject to not condition nor determination?
That God is immanently present in and to things does not adequately infer the assumption that things are divine by essence and nature — in fact I read it as quite the opposite — by being immanent presupposes a
distinction of essence and nature — that the apprehending nature perceives something other than itself.
Separation is a whole other issue, to do with the ontology of freedom.
So, the idea of intrinsic divine nature becomes a bit odd altogether, as it is grounded in this idea of false separation of God from everything else (and the Western categorical dichotomy of nature vs. supernatural).
I disagree. I think you're reading too much into nature v supernature. One could define nature as that which is accessible to the senses, and the supernatural as that which is accessible to the intellect.
And I think you're inferring too much by inferring 'separation' to a theist doctrine. It's certainly not in the Latin or Greek mode of thinking. Nor does not separation infer contiguity. So I'm afraid I think the idea of separation is false, if you're assuming that's what the Christian West thinks.
I think God is the prime mover - that God is the evolution and change, not that God evolves or changes.
I'm not sure. Does that render the individual as non-participant? God is the cause of evolution and change, the calling ... but is does not change.
One of the major distinctions between Catholic/Orthodox and Protestant theologies is the idea of individual freedom, responsibility and participation. It's a given in Catholic/Orthodox theology that the 'yes' of the individual is paramount; without that yes there is no love, only obligation; no free act, only predetermination; the individual will is not-participant, and immaterial, and eventually freedom is reduced to nothing. (This is the basis of C/O Marian theology, by the way, which its critics refute without understanding.)
So God is the cause of change, but God is passive in the sense that God works by invitation, not by coercion. Man is free at any point to say 'No' and cease to participate in the divine life.
One thing to realise is theosis, divinisation, is not something that happens as the end result of a good and ascetic life ... it is an ongoing process from the very start, and proceeds by degree, but not, as you point out above, in a strictly linear manner (linearism is itself an artificial concept with few referrants in nature, I rather spirals ... )
So from the very beginning one participate in the Divine Life, or not, by degree; some along the interface, as it were, some heading deeper in, others ever further away ...
That is, I embrace a paradox in which God simultaneously evolves/changes through the divine essence unfolding in manifest reality (creation, the multiverse, whatever you want to call it) but that everything that ever was, is, and will be also has always existed within God.
Sorry, but I think that paradox derives from contradictory axioms, rather than the Mystery of the Divine Nature.
From the vantage point of me as a human being, as a living being, I can see myself changing and the divine within me unfolding.
But that's you ... in fact in many ways its very Christian, as 'we' are not divine, but the divine indwells in us.
What 'unfolds' does not evolve, nor change, as a flower unfolds, the unfolding is in fact a revealing, and again I would say that this process is ongoing, a stripping away of veils, and the world and its contents, and all its being, is a veil ...
Thomas
