the first sin

[B]

In my interpretation of what I consider to be Christ within saying is
that the first sin we have ever committed was believing in the lie of
separation. As manifestations of Gods whole being made in Gods image
we overly indentified with the creation ..the variations of the
macrocosm in microcosm form. We started to compare...to see God -----

there and us -----> there and failed to see how we were still ONE in

a multitude of variety. In this belief..we were symbolically cast
out...we cast ourselves out and started ourselves on this long journey
back to our belief in our ONENESS. We e in the image of God..we create
by our minds...by our energies as does God. We can move mountains by
our faith..but most of us don't because we have believed in this
lie..that we are less..we are not part of God but away from or don't
have God within.
Our job is to see God in all...to see our faith in our Christs within
as what we truly are..at our deepest or Highest selves. Our job is to
seek out how we are alike..how we are unified...to think more on
this..than on the differences. We are to notice the differences as
just the beautiful variety of God and not compare each against one
another...as one less than another or one greater than. A Variety of
ONE...this is what we are...and what we have to realize is that Love
leads us to UNITY.
This is what I am told. As I have said many many times before..I
cannot prove that this voice is God..but I Know it in my heart and
soul...and it can be hard to explain until someone gets to that point
which they will eventually.
May you see Unity every day...may you see past the ego-Satan that
seeks to protect itself out of fear.
Blessings
Bren

[DKleinecke]

Post by B
In my interpretation of what I consider to be Christ within saying is
that the first sin we have ever committed was believing in the lie of
separation. As manifestations of Gods whole being made in Gods image
we overly indentified with the creation ..the variations of the
macrocosm in microcosm form. We started to compare...to see God ----->there and us -----> there and failed to see how we were still ONE in a multitude of variety.

I believe you just declared yourself a pantheist. There is nothing
wrong with being a pantheist. All the pantheists I have known were
splendid people. And so on.

The difficulty with pantheism seems to me to be that it is not
factually true.

In other words, what you call the lie of separation is not a lie. It
is a fact.

Of course, it all depends on what one means by "separation".

Consider what happens when one meditates and one experiences god. The
pantheistic tradition, and it has been very strong throughout history,
experiences god as an a overwhelming wave, a sea, an ocean of love.
And what I see when I look at the pantheist tradition is a wish to
return to the womb. As I see it, the god of the pantheists is a great
womb and the pantheist goal is to be incorporated once again in a
womb.

I believe that the pantheist tradition is a garden path and that god
indeed is separate from us. One measure of our separation is that god
is not in our physical space or time. But god is everywhere about us
in a non-physical sense. God is easy enough to contact and all kinds
of mystics do it constantly. I believe that they have reached the real
god when they feel contact with a divine person who is other than
themselves. Contact with god is immensely non-physical and it is
impossible to describe the experience by more than mere hints and
allegories. The only way to understand is to go make contact with god
for yourself.

Trying to understand all this by reading books - old or new - or
listening to preachers is futile and unproductive.

[B]

Post by DKleinecke

Post by B
In my interpretation of what I consider to be Christ within saying is
that the first sin we have ever committed was believing in the lie of
separation. As manifestations of Gods whole being made in Gods image
we overly indentified with the creation ..the variations of the
macrocosm in microcosm form. We started to compare...to see God ----->th=

ere and us -----> there and failed to see how we were still ONE in a multitu=
de of variety.

Post by DKleinecke
I believe you just declared yourself a pantheist.

B - No..I am a PanEntheist.

Blessings Bren

[DKleinecke]

Post by B
B - No..I am a PanEntheist.

I am aware of the word PanEntheist. I looked it up, for this post, in
Wikipedia and found more than I wanted to know.

Wikipedia says (in part)

Panentheism is essentially a unifying combination of theism (God is
the supreme being) and pantheism (God is everything). While pantheism
says that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims
that God is greater than the universe and that the universe is
contained within God. Panentheism holds that God is the =93supreme
affect and effect=94 of the universe.

Assuming this is an accurate statement of the position of
panentheist's beliefs I can understand it and work with it. To me,
and, I believe, many other people this definition makes panentheism a
specialized version of pantheism rather than an alternative to it. The
definition only seems to work because it adapts a restricted version
of what pantheism means.

I am unaware of any school of thought, not even Spinoza, that makes
God precisely equal to the physical universe (assuming that is the
sense of "coextensive" in the definition). In general, thought which
is usually called pantheistic, uses something like the body-soul
metaphor where the physical world is the body of God and what most of
us think of as God is the soul. (Anyone who is willing to claim to be
a pantheist is free to object to this description.)

But, from where I sit, that metaphor looks no different than what is
defined as panentheism.

Or conversely, how is panentheism different than conventional beliefs?
I believe that no religion these days holds that the physical world is
not God's. Even a stereotyped Manichee would argue that the physical
world is either God's or Satan's and it is his duty to make sure that
stays God's. They might not approve of the geometric metaphor involved
in "contained within God" but surely that is just an alternative
representation of the possessive "God's".

In the published literature my personal position is best presented by
Martin Buber in "Ich und Du". Perhaps the differences are all merely
matters of emphasis. Someone like myself emphasizes the aspect of God
that is "larger" than the physical world.

I think maybe I should change my notion of what "pantheism" is. I
perhaps should call what I used to call "pantheism" "panentheism" and
relegate "pantheism" to the world of fabulous monsters. I don't think
the change is needed - but if that is where the language is going I
guess I had better go along with it.

Sorry if I offended you.

[l***@hotmail.com]

Panentheism is the view that God=92s being includes and penetrates the
whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but (as
against pantheism) that His being is more than and not exhausted by
the universe. If pantheism is the belief that =93God is all, and all is
God,=94 then panentheism is the belief that =93God is in all, and all is
in God.=94 Thus panentheism presents itself as a balanced synthesis
between the extreme immanence of pantheism and the supposed extreme
transcendence of classical theism (roughly equated with deism by
Hartshorne).[Although Henry Nelson Wieman might be thought of as the
=93godfather=94 of process theology, it was Charles Hartshorne, once
professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, who
became the midtwentieth-century interpreter of Whitehead and thus
deserves to be designated the =93father of process theology.=94 ]

At the heart of Hartshorne=92s panentheism is the concept of cosmic
organism. The universe is not an organization of various substances
and living beings, but is one cosmic organism. This organismic
universe is characterized not only by mutual interactions of entities
of the temporal world, but also by mutual interactions between God and
the world. In one of his numerous comparisons between the universal
organism and the human body, Hartshorne affirms:

Quote: God=92s volition is related to the world as though every object
in it were to him a nerve-muscle, and his omniscience is related to it
as though every object were a muscle-nerve. A brain cell is for us, as
it were, a nerve-muscle and a muscle-nerve, in that its internal
motions respond to our thoughts, and our thoughts to its motions. If
there is a theological analogy, here is its locus. God has no separate
sense organs or muscles, because all parts of the world body directly
perform both functions for him. in this sense the world is God=92s body.
End Quote.
[Hartshorne, A Natural Theology for Our Time, p. 28]


That nothing or nobody exists outside of God is supported, in the
thinking of process theologians, by the biblical injunction to love
God totally and one=92s neighbor also. It is thought that loving God and
one=92s neighbor with all of one=92s interest is a downright contradiction
except on the assumption that there is nothing outside of or in
addition to God. In the context of cosmic organism, then, it is
understandable that Hartshorne speaks of God as =93cosmic wholeness,=94
=93universal love,=94 =93the unsurpassable one,=94 and =93the modally all-
inclusive or nonfragmentary being, surpassable only by Himself.=94

The concepts of panentheism and cosmic organism raise a number of
questions, including their relation to the personality of God and the
transcendence of God. However, process theologians press their view of
God as personal. For example, Griffin says that

Quote: some of the traditional perfections that classical theism
affirmed of God only in an equivocal way process theology can
attribute to God in a straight-forward way. One of these is the idea
of God as personal. In the ordinary understanding of this term, to be
personal is to be a conscious being. It is to respond to others with
feeling. It is to have a certain character or personality which is
reflected in different actions. It is to have a certain underlying
purpose in life in terms of which one actualizes himself in different
situations, responding now to this event, and now to that. And it is
to have freedom to choose how to carry out this underlying purpose.
Process theism can affirm all of these things whereas classical theism
could not, due to its ideas about God=92s impassibility, simplicity, and
immutability. End Quote
[Griffin, A Process Theology, p. 189]


Similarly, Griffin defends the process view of divine transcendence:

Quote: In the first place, God transcends the world in that he is not
merely the sum of its parts, nor merely an aspect=85of its parts, but is
a unique individual who experiences the world. In the second place,
God transcends the world in that he is an agent=85. In the third place,
God transcends the finite world in that he is not dependent upon it
for his existence=85. [although] he is dependent upon the world for part
of his actuality, the concrete experiences that he is having=85. [Thus
God has] a type of transcendence not shared by any other actuality.
End Quote
[p. 186]


On an added note, one must compare surrelativism to classical absolute
theism

Hartshorne speaks of the relativity of the all-surpassing God. In
fact, he asserts that =93God himself is a supreme relativist, his
absoluteness consisting in the ideally exhaustive way in which he
relativizes his evaluations to all factors in the concrete actual
world.=94 Since God includes the whole world in Himself, then He is more
complete than any individual who is less than the whole of the
process. God is unsurpassable by others, but since He is not infinite,
He is surpassable by Himself (this is the meaning of surrelativism).
God thus becomes merely infinite in what He could be. It is worth
noting that Hartshorne dedicated his book, A Natural Theology for Our
Time, to Fausto Sozzini et al., who =93envisaged the God finite and
infinite, each in suitable and clearly distinguishable respects.=94

It is clear, then, that in process theology the reality of God is
viewed not as the supreme Being but as the eminent form of becoming:
=93We may say something like this: God is a being whose versatility of
becoming is unlimited, whose potentialities of content embrace all
possibilities, whose sensitive responsiveness surpasses that of all
other individuals, actual or possible.=94

This was wonderfully told mythologically in Isaac Asimov's Foundation
sci-fi series in the title "Foundation's Edge" in his Gaia planet.

But none of this is the God of the Bible. In truth, panentheism is a
mysticism which leans on the Christian idea of God, but only
synthetically. It does not allow the Christian Scriptures to declare
God, but rather, like many subtle heresies, it mingles truth with
humanistic relativism and publishes it as not being new, but rather
being the true "kernel" of truth finally revealed. The best lies are
always those which holds up an external truth but internally disguises
the lie.

[Knuje]

Through Panentheism, Hartshorne sought to correct the errors of
mistranslated and misunderstood literalism and extension of God from
the Bible.... nowhere does the Bible characterise God as the modern
Christian philosophical vehicle of an infinitely powerful being
capable of any feat that is not logically impossible, spanning all
eternity, omnipresent, omniscient, knowing the whole of the future
before creating it.... the God of the Bible is ultimately one among
many, the one that triumphs over all the others and becomes as to
their power, but is never "omnipotent," as powerful as it is -- this
concept of the "all-perfect-in-all-ways God" was invented and built up
on in the third century AD onward, not from the Bible but from the
wishful thinking of Christian philosophers (and philosophers and
logicians have been tying themselves in knots ever since trying to
explain away the logical contradictions in this thinking)....

Hartshorne did the right thing, starting from the basis of logical
possibility and considering the variations - theism, deism, pantheism,
pandeism, polytheism, before finally settling on the logic of
panentheism.... he could have stayed at pandeism, actually, and done
away with the idea of a God who exceeds the Universe even as the
Universe exists (since the pandeistic God begins as a unique and
separate entity and then becomes the Universe, leaving nothing of
itself behind for the duration of the Universe), but Hartshorne felt
that "panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except
their arbitrary negations" (it is debatable, of course, whether the
"negations" of deism and pandeism are in truth "arbitrary"....

God should be viewed through the scope of logic first, faith
second.... to do any less is to deny the foremost gift of logic with
which our Universe is blessed!!