Christian Pantheism

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Jan 5, 1905

Christian Pantheism

THERE is really no such thing as Christian pantheism, but we use the expression to designate that philosophy which is the outgrowth of the effort to interpret the Christian religion in harmony with the pantheistic tendencies of modern science. One of the latest developments of this false philosophy is the interpretation given, in a recently published book, to the Bible doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which is called the doctrine “of divine immanence.” The author attempts to show the harmony between the doctrine of the Spirit and the scientific doctrine of evolution in the following declarations:—

The evolutionary hypothesis provides us with “a principle that is essentially religious,” for it is based upon the existence of a “Cosmic Force” or “Power,” which, so far as we can see, is omnipresent. It is resident in all events. It is immanent in all departments of life and experience. It is self-consistent in its working. It appears to be future-regarding and purposeful in a large and comprehensive sense. Its methods seem to be rational in that, as soon as discovered, they issue a direct and immediate challenge to the human intellect. All this is only to say that the principle whose working we term evolution is a personal power. This has always been the claim of religion. It will become, I believe, no less really the assertion of science; for science, with an ever-increasing certainty, proclaims the doctrine of one universal principle of being, life, and development. It is impatient of any theory which would separate effect from cause, or remove the principle of life and development out of the universe in which the manifestation of its powers appears, or make the processes of its powers fundamentally irrational.

We turn to the Christian religion to inquire if there be any corresponding principle of power, immanent, resident, future-regarding, purposeful, and rational, working by means of imperfect instruments upon obdurate material for the attainment of large ends by means of a process of development. I believe that we find it in the often-misunderstood and generally neglected doctrine of the Spirit.

In order to get the full meaning of this quotation it may be necessary to clothe some of the statements in more simple forms of expression. We may summarize the positions taken somewhat as follows: the evolutionary hypothesis recognizes a Cosmic Force or Power. This is really the god of science, although it is not so stated. This god of science is omnipresent and immanent. This is the technical form of expression to convey the thought more familiar to us in the claim that God is in everything, the tree, the grass, the flower, etc. This god of science is a personal god, according to the scientific definition of personality, “a personal power,” but must not be assigned to any dwelling-place outside the actual phenomena of things and events. The god of science is Force or Causation, and there can be no place either in thought or in fact for such a god apart from observable effects. Such a god can not make himself known either by a written or a spoken revelation, but only by working as a Force in things or events. Man must become acquainted with this god of science through observation, and not through a written revelation. The apparatus of the laboratory and the latest text-book of science will take the place of prayer and the Bible in this scientific religion of evolution.

In order to make the connection between this conception of an essentially religious Power and the Bible doctrine of the Holy Spirit it is necessary to reduce the Spirit to a “principle of power, immanent, resident, future-regarding, purposeful, and rational.” The author declares this principle to be “a doctrine of universal religious application.” Of course this teaching either ignores entirely, or at best places wholly in the background, the idea of the actual being of God.

It is asserted in favor of this doctrine that “it exalts reason into its true place as a chief agent in revelation,” and in its application it brings about some “new harmonies of revelation,” such as “the fact that the source and ground of all knowledge is one, and that every increase in knowledge is a revelation; discovery and revelation being but different terms for different aspects of the same experience.”

Evidently recognizing himself that this kind of harmony between science and the Bible really nullifies the whole Biblical revelation of the being of Jehovah, and substitutes in its place the pantheistic conception of an immanent Power, the author further says:—

Objection will be made that the endeavor thus to co-ordinate our thinking upon religion and science looks in the direction of pantheism; but it has already been noted that while pantheism as commonly understood practically denies personality, the doctrine of a resident and executive spiritual power [the conception of God in everything] makes personality fundamental.

The difference, however, between this modern pantheism of the West and the older pantheism of the East is simply in appearance, and not in fact. They are one in principle. They both acknowledge the personality of the Power working in things and events, but this is in no sense the Christian belief in God as a personal being. They are both philosophical perversions of the mystery of being of that eternal God who is actually found in one place in a sense in which he is not found in any other place, and yet is everywhere present by his Spirit. This scientific interpretation of God seems to make him very near, but really dissipates him into space, and renders it impossible for us to find him. “A personal power” does not hear and answer prayer.

But why is it worth our while to give any attention whatsoever to this pantheistic philosophy?—Because error is now being clothed in garments of light, in the very terms and phrases of Christianity, and we must learn to look beneath the surface before we can be sure of the real character of much of the professedly religious teaching of our time. Especially is this true of any teaching which emphasizes one of the multiform phases of the pantheistic doctrine of God in everything, in all men, in all things, and in all events; a God who is everywhere in general, and nowhere in particular. This is that snare of the last days which is being set in the path of the unwary. It exalts reason as in reality above revelation, and man as above God. The god of science has no right to be regarded the same as the God of the Bible. The religion of evolution is not the religion of the Bible. Pantheism is not Christianity.