God in Four Diagrams

May 14, 2008

i just started reading Stuart Kauffman’s book Reinventing the Sacred, in which he makes the case that God is an emergent phenomenon or at least a handy metaphor for a set of emergent phenomena. He seems to think this idea is exciting and new, and it might be in a scientific context.

Few people understand the varieties of visions of God. There are lots of ways to imagine what God is and how God relates to the world we live in. Here are four basic concepts. This isn’t all of them by any means, but these four ways of thinking about God come close to being Atomic — that is, other concepts are combinations of these four.

I’ll go into detail at a later date, but for now let’s just do an overview.

1. The “Org Chart God”

I have fancy words for all of the others, but try as I might I couldn’t find a theologian-approved term for this one. But this is the concept of God most of us are familiar with. We were probably exposed to the idea in childhood Bible camp or run-ins with Christian Conservatives.

God created Nature and controls nature. God is in charge of it but is not subject to it. Therefore, God is described by many “omni” words. Omnipresent, because God is everywhere). Omniscient (because God knows everything. Omnipotent (because God can command all of Nature). Omnibenevolent, because God created the concept of goodness and therefore whatever God does is therefore good (by definition).

Read more about the Org Chart God.

Panenthesim

Panentheism is the notion that God contains nature, but also superceeds it. The natural world, in other words, is a part of God — the part of God we can see, study, touch, and interact with.

Liberal monotheists often arrive at something like panentheism because it helps reconcile scientific knowledge and spiritual thinking. Rather than God being separate and unknowable, God is present in everything because — at least from the standpoint of humans, who have to live in nature — God is nature. But God is also not limited by nature, because God is more than just the natural world. And since God permeates all beings, you cannot separate yourself from God or say that someone else is not a child, or part, of God.

But it also significantly weakens claims to the omnis and raises some interesting and disturbing questions. If God gave us stewardship over the natural world, does that mean people can affect God by affecting nature?

It seems like a very small change, but the theological and cosmological ramifications are extraordinary.

Pantheism

Pantheists do not make a distinction between God and Nature. You cannot throw a rock without hitting God; in fact, you cannot throw a rock without throwing God. Or, at least, part of God.

Equating God with Nature is obviously a radical restriction on divine power. God does not watch over or control nature, so God is no longer viewed as supernatural. Instead, God is the complete expression of the natural.

Most of the omnis clearly no longer apply at this point, although such a God is by definition omnipresent.

Polytheism

Polytheism is a belief in many gods, and their relationship to nature may change depending on the tradition or god. Here I’ve illustrated some Gods as existing inside of nature, some as outside of it, and some as being able to operate in both areas.

Polytheisms do not generally consider any of the “omnis” as applying to their gods. The gods may be very powerful — able to affect weather or do things that violate our understanding of the laws of nature — but they are most decidedly not perfect. As a result, polytheistic theology is obviously radically different from Fundamentalist “Org Chart God” concepts.

Other blends

Concepts of God are based on guesswork, intuition, and personal experience, and as such there are many variations on the above. Hinduism, for example, is both Panentheist and polytheist: the Hindu Brahman encloses and superceeds Nature, including all the other gods.

And there are other modes of religious thought which can cross these boundaries. Animism (the belief that all things have spiritual existence) can find itself in all four of these modes of activity, as can deism (the belief that God exists, but does not interfere).

Nevertheless, these four represent the basic assumptions most religions make about God — when they talk about God at all — and understanding them is central to understanding religious beliefs, assumptions, and moralities other than your own.

Later

In the next several weeks, I’ll post some thoughts on each of these notions of God, what some of the ramifications of them are, and how they’ve all found expression in the modern world.

Posted in Religion