Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity,[1] or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God.[2] Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god.[3] Some Asian religions are considered to be pantheistically inclined.

Pantheism was popularised in the West as both a theology and philosophy based on the work of the 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza,[4]:p.7 whose book Ethics was an answer to Descartes' famous dualist theory that the body and spirit are separate.[5] Spinoza held the monist view that the two are the same, and monism is a fundamental part of his philosophy. He was described as a "God-intoxicated man," and used the word God to describe the unity of all substance.[5] Although the term pantheism was not coined until after his death, Spinoza is regarded as its most celebrated advocate.[6]

Pantheism is derived from the Greek pan (meaning "all") and Theos (meaning "God"). There are a variety of definitions of pantheism. Some consider it a theological and philosophical position concerning God.[4]:p.8

As a religious position, some describe pantheism as the polar opposite of atheism.[5] From this standpoint, pantheism is the view that everything is part of an all-encompassing, immanent God.[2] All forms of reality may then be considered either modes of that Being, or identical with it.[7] Some hold that pantheism is a non-religious philosophical position. To them, pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical.[8]

The first known use of the term pantheism was in Latin, by the English mathematician Joseph Raphson in his work De spatio reali, published in 1697.[9] In De spatio reali, Raphson begins with a distinction between atheistic panhylists (from the Greek roots pan, "all", and hyle, "matter"), who believe everything is matter, and pantheists who believe in a certain universal substance, material as well as intelligent, that fashions all things that exist out of its own essence.[10][11] Raphson found the universe to be immeasurable in respect to a human's capacity of understanding, and believed that humans would never be able to comprehend it.[12]

The Catholic church regarded pantheistic ideas as heresy.[13]Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who evangelized about an immanent and infinite God, was burned at the stake in 1600 by the Catholic Church. He has since become known as a celebrated pantheist and martyr of science.[14] Bruno influenced many later thinkers including Baruch Spinoza, whose Ethics, finished in 1675, was the major source from which pantheism spread.[15]

The term was first used in the English language by the Irish writer John Toland in his work of 1705 Socinianism Truly Stated, by a pantheist. Toland was influenced by both Spinoza and Bruno, and used the terms 'pantheist' and 'Spinozist' interchangeably.[16] In 1720 he wrote the Pantheisticon: or The Form of Celebrating the Socratic-Society in Latin, envisioning a pantheist society which believed, "all things in the world are one, and one is all in all things ... what is all in all things is God, eternal and immense, neither born nor ever to perish."[17][18] He clarified his idea of pantheism in a letter to Gottfried Leibniz in 1710 when he referred to "the pantheistic opinion of those who believe in no other eternal being but the universe".[19][20][21]

Although the term "pantheism" did not exist before the 17th century, various pre-Christian religions and philosophies can be regarded as pantheistic. Pantheism is similar to the ancient Hindu philosophy of Advaita (non-dualism) to the extent that the 19th-century German Sanskritist Theodore Goldstcker remarked that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the Vedanta, that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus."[22]

Others include some of the Presocratics, such as Heraclitus and Anaximander.[23] The Stoics were pantheists, beginning with Zeno of Citium and culminating in the emperor-philosopher Marcus Aurelius. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, Stoicism was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with Epicureanism and Neoplatonism.[24][25] The early Taoism of Lao Zi and Zhuangzi is also sometimes considered pantheistic.[21]

In 1785, a major controversy about Spinoza's philosophy between Friedrich Jacobi, a critic, and Moses Mendelssohn, a defender, known in German as the Pantheismus-Streit, helped to spread pantheism to many German thinkers in the late 18th and 19th centuries.[27]

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