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The Ultimate of Pantheism

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Apr 5, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 14.

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The Ultimate of Pantheism

By William Ambrose Spicer

It is truly said that pantheism is “the religion of human nature.” It is the thread idea running “fine as the lotus fiber” through all false religions. It is the philosophy of self-exaltation, and its ultimate is to put self in the place of God.
Thus Satan’s rebellion in heaven began. “I will be like the Most High,” was Lucifer’s boast. Sin came into our world when man listened to the tempter’s words, “Ye shall be as God.” The papacy was but the development of the religion of self-exaltation by which man sets himself forth as God.
It was against this pantheistic philosophy that the apostles warned the church. Men had changed the truth into a lie. They had put the creature for the Creator. And all in an effort to find out God by searching. The heathen philosophy was an apparently devout effort to find the revelation of God in nature and in man. The apostles spoke of the “vain imaginations” of these philosophers, of their science “falsely so called,” and the gospel was in constant and uncompromising warfare against all these “reasonings,” and “every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God.” 2 Cor. 10:5.
The climax of self-exaltation is reached in the ultimate of the pantheistic teaching. Its teachers often stop short of putting the conclusion into words, as the claims of the system are so bold and daring. Professor Max Muller compliments the Hindu writers thus:—
“What I admire in Indian philosophers is that they never try to deceive us as to their principles and the consequences of their theories.”
That is, they boldly state the logical conclusion of their argument. So it comes that, as one Hindu writer says, if the Vedanta “is the one philosophy which dares to call man God himself, and not merely the son of God, or his servant.” In the Hindu system the “great sentences” are: “Tat twam asi” (Thou art that), and “Brahmasmi” and (I am Brahma). When the student has mastered the philosophy of Hinduism, he can intelligently speak the great sentences.
This pantheistic philosophy in our day has been spreading through Western lands. Men endeavor to find a basis for it in the writings of the very apostles who warned believers against it. We are told by Peter that this had begun even in apostolic days. Followers of the heathen philosophy within the church had wrested the words of the apostle Paul to their own destruction. Even so now the words of inspiration are perverted by pantheistic interpretations and given a meaning exactly contrary to their true sense and teaching. Some years ago Professor Muller, the translator of the Hindu sacred books, wrote:—
We also speak without hesitation of our body as the temple of God, and of the voice of God within us, nay, we repeat with St. Paul that we live, and move, and have our being in God; yet we shrink from adopting the plain and simple language of the Upanishads that the self of God and man is the same. . . . After all, there is some of the Indian leaven left in us, however unwilling we may be to confess it.
That leaven has been working powerfully in recent times, giving to Scripture phrases a mystical turn, and bringing in the very teachings of ancient heathenism as new and wonderful light. And there is less and less of shrinking from the logical conclusion of the pantheistic philosophy.
From the theory of God himself in all things, and that “God and nature are one” (as we saw stated in a health journal not long since), it is not many steps to the “great sentences” of the Hindu system. The Hindu sages conceived the revelation of Brahma closest in man. One was to see God by looking at nature, and at man, but most closely by looking at self. The Bhagavad Gita teaches:—
The man whose mind is endued with this devotion, and looketh on all things alike, beholdeth the Supreme Soul in all things, and all things in the Supreme Soul.
Most of all, he sees this in himself; for if the mind wanders, “he should subdue it, bring it back, and place it on the self.” They assumed to see God by looking at themselves.
It is the idea of the new pantheism. Thus Ralph Waldo Trine, author of “In Tune with the Infinite,” says:—
All is He since He is all. . . . And if all, then each individual, you and I, must be a vital part of that all. . . . Man is God incarnate. Humanity, therefore, can not be very far from being next to godliness. . . . The moment, however, we recognize our divinity, our higher, our God-selves, and the fact that we are the saviors of our fellow men, we become saviors, and stand and move in the midst of a majesty and beauty and power that proclaims us as such.
It is the same philosophy that has worked through millennia of heathenism, served up in beautiful language for Christians, again to cause those who know God to become vain in their imaginations and to plunge into old-time darkness while still talking and speculating concerning the revelation of God, and professing larger and higher views of him.
One Unitarian expositor of the new theology says:—
We do not deny that Jesus was a son of God, and thus divine. . . . Wherever we see goodness, we see the face of God. Thus the narrow and exclusive idea of Jesus’ deity is outgrown. . . . Every noble biography . . . makes us believe in the deity of manhood. . . . Religion is wherever God is. But God is wherever man is. God is in the face and at the heart of man.
Thus the new teaching, like the old, deifies self. In the ancient heathen tradition, the shrine of the goddess at Sais bore the inscription, “No mortal hath yet uncovered my veil.” One daring worshiper at last determined that the deed should be done. He succeeded,— . . . “he lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais, But what did he see?—He saw, wonder of wonders, himself!”
Pantheistic philosophy, and that is the philosophy of all heathenism, is self-worship. Professing to be wisdom, it is but foolishness. Human reason becomes unbalanced with vanity, topples over, and we see puny man trying to take the place of God. The theory flatters men to-day, as of old, with the idea that greatness and divinity lie within, and the powers within are to be awakened and developed. Men are to become christs and saviors.
“Ye shall not surely die,” said the serpent. “Ye shall be as gods.” However variously the new philosophy may speak of death, the logic of the system abolishes it. Dr. Stockwell, who frankly avows the pantheistic nature of the modern view of religion, sums it up as follows:—
We see ourselves amid a measureless, infinite ocean of throbbing, pulsating, thrilling, vital energy. . . . As we look out into the ether (space), we see God. . . . This view leaves no room whatever, in the whole universe, for death or dead matter. Death is dead. It is illusion. There is absolutely nothing but life anywhere. We can not escape it if we would. The only question for us to decide is as to the form of life we shall have.
Just so Hindu philosophy argued thousands of years ago. The same mysticism was abroad in early Christian times. Now old controversies are being revived, and new and old are commingling. The most subtle errors of ancient heathenism are reappearing. Behind it all is one great deceiver, shaping the philosophy to meet all minds, even to deceive if possible the very elect. And through it all runs the thread of self-exaltation. Christian Science is but one form of this religion of human nature; but on the title-page of their text-book is a message which may well stand for the universal philosophy of rebellion and self-exaltation:—
“I, I, I itself, I, The inside and outside, the what and the why, The when and the where, the low and the high, All I, I, I itself, I.”
Just the opposite is the burden of the advent message, “Fear God, and give glory to him.” The issue is joined. The last phases of error are sweeping over the world, leavening Christendom with the spiritualistic and pantheistic ideas that have made heathenism what we find it to-day. To meet Satan’s last move God has developed the third angel’s message, and has committed that message to the Seventh-day Adventist people. Let us hold to it, and publish it in all the earth.
W. A. S.