In the famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo there is the memorable scene of the creator God extending his finger to the outstretched hand of the newly formed Adam. The imagery makes clear that Adam is a creation of God, not an extension of him. Creator and creation are distinct.
That is the clear understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview. In contrast to Eastern religions, where God is seen as everything (pantheism), or in everything (panentheism), the biblical teaching is that there is an eternal, personal and infinite God who is not to be confused with his creation.
For millennia the West was based on the monotheistic religions which viewed creation as the finite result of an infinite God, while the East has been shaped by monism (the belief that all is one) and pantheism. But recently these two opposing worldviews have experienced a massive crossover.
There are various reasons why East and West have lost their distinctive differences, and become so entwined. I here wish to focus on just one area. Western popular culture and the entertainment industry have done much to promote the pantheistic worldview and New Age spirituality.
Whether it be popular films such as the Star Wars series, or bestselling New Age tomes such as The Secret by Rhonda Byrne or A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, on all sides the West is being inundated with Eastern thinking and New Age concepts.
The most recent and most spectacular example of this is the runaway hit film, Avatar. It is a classic example of the pantheistic worldview, dressed up to suit modern Western tastes. It is thus quite a part of the New Age revolution which has conquered so much of the West over the past few decades.
Part of the reason why the New Age appeals so much to Westerners is that it offers the Eastern religious system but without much of its more demanding religious and ethical emphases. People are free to choose in the New Age spirituality what they like, and little or no demands are made on them.
Many of the people today who tinker with the East are really just imbibing in the New Age smorgasbord. They pick and choose those aspects which they like, and leave those which they dont. It is all very Western really, fitting our consumerist lifestyle. Thus Eastern thoughts and concepts have very much become a part of Western life.
And films like Avatar are in many ways just a reflection of this. Instead of a creator God who stands outside of us, and places expectations and demands upon us, in the new Easternised spiritualities of the West, people are free to call the shots and determine what is right and wrong, true and false.
Indeed, they get to be God. That is the real attraction of the New Age worldview. Instead of a transcendent God with whom we must do business, and bow to, we in fact are all a part of the divine already. We just need to realise that we are already God, that we are already divine.
And sadly, many Christians have bought into this explicitly non-Christian worldview as well. Many Christians seem to think they can simultaneously hold to Christianity while dabbling in New Age beliefs and practices. I have spoken to many such persons.
Indeed, how many Christians would have gone to a film like Avatar and left it all agog, without even being aware of how in so many ways it is promoting a decidedly non-biblical point of view. Of course many people have warned about how this new paganism is creeping into the churches.
Peter Jones of Westminster Seminary, for example, has written numerous volumes on these dangers. Readers should consult The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back: An Old Heresy for the New Age (P&R, 1992); Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (WinePress, 1997); Pagans in the Pews (Regal, 2001); and Capturing the Pagan Mind (Broadman & Holman, 2003).
Earlier C.S. Lewis had warned about the dangers of pantheistic thinking. In the 1950s he had penned these words: I freely admit that, believing both, I have stressed the transcendence of God more than His immanence. I thought, and I think, that the present situation demands this. I see around me no danger of Deism but much of an immoral, naive and sentimental pantheism. I have often found that it was in fact the chief obstacle to conversion.
Indeed, it is biblical Christianity which provides the right mix between divine transcendence and divine immanence. God is wholly other and separate from us (his transcendence) and yet he chose to become one with us in the incarnation, and he dwells with those who seek to follow him (his immanence).
There is no possibility in the biblical worldview of confusing who we are and who God is. Indeed, just today I read a great line in the third and final volume of John Goldingays magisterial Old Testament Theology. He says this: The difference between God and us is that God never thinks he is us.
Exactly so. But the tendency amongst so many Westerners influenced by pantheism, Eastern thought and the New Age movement is to think we are God. That type of thinking runs counter to the entire biblical belief system. We are doubly alienated from God: first, by creation, and secondly, by sin. The first renders us finite; the second renders us fallen.
Both these obstacles must be overcome, and we cannot do the overcoming ourselves. It is God who has taken the initiative here, becoming incarnate so that we might become (in the right sense of the word) partakers of the divine nature. And of course to get right with God, we must come to him on his terms, not our own.
But for those who want to call the shots, who want to pretend they are already divine, the Christian answer will never do. Lewis again had all this rightly explained a half century ago. Writing in his classic 1947 volume, Miracles, he wrote that pantheism is in fact the permanent natural bent of the human mind.
Why so? It is so congenial to unregenerate man because it simply means what man says about God, and not what God does about man. In biblical Christianity God is sovereign and we are not. No wonder people prefer pantheism. As Peter Kreeft rightly noted,
Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as a man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheists God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance. If He were the truth, then we could really say that all the Christian images-of kingship were a historical accident of which our religion ought to be cleansed.
Ever since our first parents fell, people have been looking for a way to get back to God, but on their own terms. The way of the cross is simply too hard and too demanding for many. But a worldview which tells us we are already God, well, that is something most people can readily sign up for.
But it is a false path to salvation. There is only one path whereby we can get right with God, and that path goes through a hill with a cross on it, and it goes through a person, Jesus Christ. The masses may marvel at the God-is-everything philosophy of a film like Avatar, but only those who have come to an end of themselves will realise that reunion with God is something that God decides and God lays out the specs for.
We either bow the knee to him and his designated means of becoming reunited with him, or we devise our own paths. But Jesus made it clear that there is only one path. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (Matt 7:14).
Philosophies like the New Age, and films like Avatar readily appeal to us. They allow us the right to set the boundaries and determine the rules. They assume mankind is already alive and part of the divine. Biblical Christianity, by contrast, assumes that we are all spiritually dead and alienated from God. That is why Christ came not to tell us we are already part of the divine, but to show us how to flee the wrath to come, and how to become who we were truly meant to be.
[1485 words]
Follow this link:
Pantheism and Biblical Christianity Bill Muehlenbergs ...
- Shiv Khera and the Ultimate Value Test | MorungExpress ... - Morung Express - December 3rd, 2023 [December 3rd, 2023]
- 'She was startled by what the angel said and tried to figure out what ... - America: The Jesuit Review - September 21st, 2023 [September 21st, 2023]
- Religion in India - Wikipedia - December 26th, 2022 [December 26th, 2022]
- Ethics (Spinoza book) - Wikipedia - December 18th, 2022 [December 18th, 2022]
- Scientific Pantheism: Frequently Asked Questions - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Pantheism - Conservapedia - October 25th, 2022 [October 25th, 2022]
- Themes in Avatar - Wikipedia - October 25th, 2022 [October 25th, 2022]
- Theism - Wikipedia - October 25th, 2022 [October 25th, 2022]
- Animism - Wikipedia - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- What Was So Incredible About the Incredible String Band? - PopMatters - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Religious and philosophical views of Albert Einstein - Wikipedia - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- God's Omnipresence: A Reassuring Reality to Rejoice In - TGC Africa - The Gospel Coalition Africa - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Avatar Is Back, and It Still Looks Like Damanhur - Bitter Winter - September 29th, 2022 [September 29th, 2022]
- PART 3 GOD'S ABUNDANT LIFE - Block Island Times - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- New York Botanical Garden In Three Hours: Here's What To See - TheTravel - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- Reconciliation Pope And Paganism - Nation World News - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Only God could join us to God Catholic Outlook - Catholic Outlook - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Only God Could Join Us to God - Commonweal - September 3rd, 2022 [September 3rd, 2022]
- Back to school: dogs, AP classes and alarm clocks. What Colorado students are looking forward to this school year and what they want changed -... - August 25th, 2022 [August 25th, 2022]
- The Organization | [Deck Recipes] July 31st, 2022 - YGOrganization - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Thinking of the Old Catholics and the Union of Utrecht - Patheos - July 25th, 2022 [July 25th, 2022]
- Speaking the Roots - The Shillong Times - July 25th, 2022 [July 25th, 2022]
- Basic beliefs of Scientific Pantheism World Pantheism - July 9th, 2022 [July 9th, 2022]
- Plural Like the Universe - City Journal - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- Seeing Peter Obi through prisms of his younger brother The Sun Nigeria - Daily Sun - June 11th, 2022 [June 11th, 2022]
- From Gnosticism to Marxism: The Spirit of Antichrist in Movement - OnePeterFive - June 11th, 2022 [June 11th, 2022]
- World Pantheism Revering the Universe, Caring for Nature, Celebrating ... - June 5th, 2022 [June 5th, 2022]
- The R&S Pantheism Thread - City-Data - June 5th, 2022 [June 5th, 2022]
- Mary Beth Edelson Celebrated the Goddess Within - Hyperallergic - June 5th, 2022 [June 5th, 2022]
- The Organization | [Deck Recipes] May 26th, 2022 - YGOrganization - May 27th, 2022 [May 27th, 2022]
- Who Is Defending and Who Is Criticizing the Nine Years of Francis's Pontificate? (2) - FSSPX.News - May 3rd, 2022 [May 3rd, 2022]
- Girls performance in maths starting to add up to boys, says UNESCO - Modern Diplomacy - May 3rd, 2022 [May 3rd, 2022]
- Declaring the glory of God - The Robesonian - April 6th, 2022 [April 6th, 2022]
- Hen Kai Pan is a comic that finds a bleak but beautiful poetry in humanitys end - The A.V. Club - March 27th, 2022 [March 27th, 2022]
- Ideology of Pakistan and beyond - Chitral News - March 27th, 2022 [March 27th, 2022]
- Universal Directives of Quran: Introducing 'The Quran Speaks to You' - Kashmir Observer - March 27th, 2022 [March 27th, 2022]
- The Organization | [Deck Recipes] March 25th, 2022 - YGOrganization - March 27th, 2022 [March 27th, 2022]
- Homage in rock to Bodhisattva - Sunday Observer - March 17th, 2022 [March 17th, 2022]
- How can God be everywhere? - Journal Review - March 17th, 2022 [March 17th, 2022]
- Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia - February 28th, 2022 [February 28th, 2022]
- New free book from Cambridge Press: Pantheism - Religion ... - February 28th, 2022 [February 28th, 2022]
- When This Jewish Musician Visited a Church During Benediction, He Never Expected This to Happen - National Catholic Register - February 19th, 2022 [February 19th, 2022]
- Hymn Notes: All Creatures of Our God and King - Longview News-Journal - January 27th, 2022 [January 27th, 2022]
- His Blood Cries Out From the Ground!: Climate Change And Moral Corruption - Patheos - January 9th, 2022 [January 9th, 2022]
- Respect for the Body: A Response to Archbishop Jackels - National Catholic Register - November 19th, 2021 [November 19th, 2021]
- AFRICA - "It is on the old mat that we sit and weave the new one": Cop 26, for a return to the sacred - Agenzia Fides - November 9th, 2021 [November 9th, 2021]
- BANGLADESH Rising number of baptised among tribal people in Rajshahi - AsiaNews - October 19th, 2021 [October 19th, 2021]
- Did Einstein Believe in God? - bethinking.org - October 17th, 2021 [October 17th, 2021]
- Three Decades Later, This Classic Book About the New Age Is More Relevant Than Ever - National Catholic Register - October 1st, 2021 [October 1st, 2021]
- Book of a Lifetime: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - The Independent - September 26th, 2021 [September 26th, 2021]
- Meditation Isnt Mere Therapy Its a Living Relationship With Almighty God - National Catholic Register - September 4th, 2021 [September 4th, 2021]
- Is Everything That Exists Part of God? (Pantheism) - August 28th, 2021 [August 28th, 2021]
- Home - Universal Pantheist Society - August 28th, 2021 [August 28th, 2021]
- 8 Major Worldviews (Part 1) | CrossExamined.org by Brian ... - August 26th, 2021 [August 26th, 2021]
- You shall have no other gods, including 'trivial' ones - The B.C. Catholic - August 26th, 2021 [August 26th, 2021]
- Religion Is Far Too Complex to Have a Single Evolution Story - Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence - August 6th, 2021 [August 6th, 2021]
- Is the Enlightenment Still a Foundation for Working-Class Liberation? - LA Progressive - August 6th, 2021 [August 6th, 2021]
- The Revival of Stoicism - VICE - July 5th, 2021 [July 5th, 2021]
- Jane Goodall Meets the God Hypothesis - Discovery Institute - May 27th, 2021 [May 27th, 2021]
- Parramatta Laity Make Their Voices Heard in Dispute With Their Bishop - National Catholic Register - May 14th, 2021 [May 14th, 2021]
- Matthew Wong Ink Works, Never Before Exhibited, Will Alight in New York - ARTnews - April 19th, 2021 [April 19th, 2021]
- Double Blind by Edward St Aubyn review in pursuit of knowledge - The Guardian - March 31st, 2021 [March 31st, 2021]
- How to Sound Like a Catholic When You Talk About Ashes and Death - National Catholic Register - February 25th, 2021 [February 25th, 2021]
- The consolation of philosophy during Covid darkness - Offaly Express - February 25th, 2021 [February 25th, 2021]
- What Is This 'QAnon' Thing They're Talking About? - Calbuzz - February 21st, 2021 [February 21st, 2021]
- Manifestations of Higher Meaning: On Dana Gioia's The Catholic Writer Today and Studying with Miss Bishop - Los Angeles Review of Books -... - February 10th, 2021 [February 10th, 2021]
- Arts Pantheon - The Daily Star - January 17th, 2021 [January 17th, 2021]
- Christmas and the birth of truth on earth - TheCable - January 1st, 2021 [January 1st, 2021]
- Pantheism | Definition of Pantheism by Merriam-Webster - November 29th, 2020 [November 29th, 2020]
- No writer was better suited to chronicle the Depression than John Steinbeck - Spectator.co.uk - November 29th, 2020 [November 29th, 2020]
- A world of mysticism and spirituality - Times of Malta - November 29th, 2020 [November 29th, 2020]
- WHAT IS 'SPIRITUALITY OF PLACE'? | Bret Thoman - Patheos - November 29th, 2020 [November 29th, 2020]
- Do Not Offend the Gods: 8 SFF Books Featuring Deities - tor.com - October 7th, 2020 [October 7th, 2020]
- Religion, Non-Reductive and Saturated, Gains Respect in Post-Modern Academic World - Patheos - May 29th, 2020 [May 29th, 2020]
- What's the difference between pandemic and epidemic? - ChicagoNow - March 31st, 2020 [March 31st, 2020]
- Porfiry Ivanov: what Stalin said the main freak of the USSR - International Law Lawyer News - March 24th, 2020 [March 24th, 2020]
- World Pantheism Revering the Universe, Caring for Nature ... - March 5th, 2020 [March 5th, 2020]
- Freeman Dyson: The Passing of an Iconoclastic Physicist - Discovery Institute - March 5th, 2020 [March 5th, 2020]
- Pantheism | Britannica - February 27th, 2020 [February 27th, 2020]
- Dan McCaslin: Nature and Shallowing the Mind - Noozhawk - January 28th, 2020 [January 28th, 2020]