Pantheism (God or Nature)

• published: 07 Nov 2014
• views: 173

Professor Robert Merrihew Adams discusses three questions: First, what Pantheism is or might be. Second, whether traditional theistic beliefs have metaphysical implications that fit some form of Pantheism. And third, if such implications were accepted, how it would be reasonable to characterize the relation between God and world. Now, in understanding pantheism, one can either start with the idea of God and understand everything finite (i.e. the universe) as some part of God; or one can start with the universe itself as the great unity, and then go on to identify it with God. Thus, one side is theistic, where everything becomes part of God, the other side atheistic, where God gets swallowed up in the unity of the world or universe. Professor Adams approaches pantheism from the theistic side, arguing that this idea of pantheism does not necessarily rule out a personal conception of God in the way traditional pantheism was thought to.