James Dominic argues in response to a previous article by me that the view according to which God is the formal cause of creatures is unorthodox and ultimately incoherent. This is because it involves either making God a part of creatures, or dividing God into finite parts, both of which, he claims, lead to contradictions with traditional Christian claims. However, Rooney both misunderstands central parts of my presentation, and fails to make his case.

Jeremiah Carey presents a version of panentheism which he attributes to Gregory Palamas, as well as other Greek patristic thinkers. The Greek tradition, he alleges, is more open to panentheistic metaphysics than the Latin. Palamas, for instance, hold that God's energies are participable, even if God's essence is not. Carey uses Palamas' metaphysics to sketch an account on which divine energies are the forms of created substances, and argues that it is open to Orthodox Christians to affirm that God is in all things as their formal cause. I argue that Carey's reading is premised on a superficial examination of the patristic literature. More importantly, Palamas' metaphysics is opposed to that of Carey, since Palamas' distinction aims to uphold the view that created persons are only contingent participants in God. On this, Palamas and the Latins are in complete accord. In conclusion, I propose that panentheistic metaphysics begins from a false dilemma.

This paper looks first at the scope of religious experience, offering some representative examples of phenomena that typically give rise to spiritual experiences. This leads on a consideration of the phenomenology of such experiences – the particular way in which they present themselves to the conscious subject. Lastly, the paper tackles the vexed question of the source of such experiences, and suggests that this is best understood in terms of a (certain kind of) theistic framework.

Panentheism is the position that the world is in some sense ‘in’ God, and God ‘in’ the world, without the world being identical to God. Thus, it tries, like what I call mainstream theism and against pantheism, to protect the transcendence of God, while giving greater emphasis to his immanence in creation than the former. I aim to explicate an approach that I call Orthodox Panentheism. The word ‘orthodox’ is to be read in two ways. First, the picture is derived from the writings of some of the most important figures in Eastern Christian thought, so that it is Orthodox in the ‘big “O” sense’. Second, I hope to show that it is a legitimate Christian picture of the God–world relation which is both distinctive and worthy of being called ‘panentheism’ – an orthodox panentheism in the ‘little “o” sense’.

Karl Christian Friedrich Krause (1781–1832) left for posterity an impressive and astonishingly contemporary corpus of philosophical creativity. Not only does it cover numerous topics of theoretical and practical philosophy, from a panentheistic-cosmopolitan point of view, but, in terms of the history of philosophy, it may be seen as one of the first works from a European pen which also appreciates the Indian roots of European thinking in their systematic importance. It combines them with Platonic metaphysics and Kant's transcendental philosophy to form a system of philosophy that is truly intercultural. In what follows, Krause's fundamental argument for panentheism is presented before it is argued that Krause's panentheism entails a cosmopolitan theory of human society according to which it is a postulate of practical reason to realize a cosmopolitan global league of humanity.

This article outlines and defends an ‘Integral Advaitic’ theodicy that takes its bearings from the thought of three modern Indian mystics: Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. Their Integral Advaitic theodicy has two key dimensions: a doctrine of spiritual evolution and a panentheistic metaphysics. God has created this world as an arena for our moral and spiritual evolution in which evil and suffering are as necessary as good. The doctrine of spiritual evolution presupposes karma, rebirth, and universal salvation. The doctrines of karma and rebirth shift moral responsibility for evil from God to His creatures by explaining all instances of evil and suffering as the karmic consequence of their own past deeds, either in this life or in a previous life. The doctrine of universal salvation also has important theodical implications: the various finite evils of this life are outweighed by the infinite good of salvation that awaits us all. After outlining this Integral Advaitic theodicy, I address some of the main objections to it and then argue that it has a number of comparative advantages over John Hick's well-known ‘soul-making’ theodicy.

Since Augustine, western medieval thinkers have largely identified ‘simplicity’ as the most fundamental feature of the divine nature. Although the western tradition of thinking about God has often been regarded as relatively continuous, I will demonstrate in this paper that a separate line of thought developed amongst early thirteenth-century Franciscan thinkers. This new tradition stressed God's immensity or infinity. In doing so, I will argue, it instigated a fundamental shift in the way of conceiving the nature of God that holds profound promise for reconciling factions in systematic theology today, particularly between classical theists and panentheists.

Against a background of increasing concern over climate change and other instances of ecological degradation, this paper aims to explore two ideas in the thought of Anglican theologian and biochemist Arthur Peacocke in relation to their ecotheological promise. First, Peacocke’s understanding of ‘emergence’ affirms the diversity of the created world and makes possible the understanding of Jesus Christ as the emergence of a new reality; these concepts resonate with the value given to biodiversity in ecological thought. Second, the idea that God expresses Godself through the material world in the process of creation, together with an emphasis on the biophysical composition of Jesus Christ, allows a high claim to be made for matter which resonates with an ecological affirmation of the value of the natural world. By asserting the prevalence of diversity and the value of matter, Peacocke’s thought provides a theological framework which coheres with an ecological ethos.

Jonathan Edwards had some strange ideas. He was an idealist like Berkeley. He denied that the world persists through time, claiming that it is continuously created out of nothing by God moment-by-moment. He also denied creaturely causal action in his doctrine of occasionalism. Moreover, he thought that the world is the necessary output of the essential creativity of the deity, embracing the idea that this is the best possible world. Often these views are not reported in popular accounts of his work, though they are widely known in the scholarly community. But is his position theologically orthodox? This article argues that he is faced with an Edwardsian Dilemma: Either he must admit that his theology proper implies that God is not metaphysically simple, or he must embrace pantheism. Neither horn seems particularly attractive. Of the two, the second seems less appealing than the first. Nevertheless, it looks as if the logic of his position presses in this direction. His idealism and Neoplatonic conception of God's necessary emanation of the world imply panentheism. When coupled with his doctrine of divine simplicity, it looks as if his position could be pressed in a pantheist direction. However, if he opts for the first horn, he must deny the doctrine of divine simplicity, which he endorses in a range of works. If God is simple, then it looks as if all his ideas imply one another and the divine essence. Yet the world is an emanation of divine ideas, which Edwards believes God constantly ‘communicates’. Suppose with Edwards that the world is an ordered series of divine ideas. Then it looks as if they must imply each other and the divine nature as well, given divine simplicity. Clearly this is intolerable, as far as orthodoxy goes. One option is for the Edwardsian to revise divine simplicity, so that God is merely a metaphysical simple like a soul. Then he may have distinct states and properties. However, in addition to this revision one would need to amend Edwards’ occasionalism because it provides an apparently insuperable problem of evil for his metaphysics. Thus, revising the first horn involves more than a little tinkering with the deep structures of Edwards’ thought. However, I argue that this is what the Edwardsian must do if she wants to hold onto a broadly orthodox Edwardsian view on these matters.

On the one hand, arguably, I am neither this nor that. Arguably, neither is God this or that – so, am I God? Otherwise it seems that I must be this and God must be that. On the other hand, the being of the universe is not something of which I could plausibly be construed as the ultimate cause. That is God's creative act. Because I do not create the universe, I am not God. So I am God and I am not God. Here's a solution: God is One but also Three, I am but one.