Doctrine of God

Panentheism: Too Strong or Too Weak

1) The “in God” question is the whole debate

Panentheism lives or dies on what “in God” means. The phrase is doing all the work, but it’s usually left undefined—so it can function like a rhetorical bridge from omnipresence to panentheism without anyone noticing the added metaphysics.

But “in” is not a single relation. It can mean very different things:

  • (a) Dependence / sustaining: creatures exist only because God causes and sustains them.
  • (b) Presence / knowledge / power: God is immediately present to all things as knower and governor.
  • (c) Part–whole: the world is literally a proper part of God.
  • (d) Constitution: the world is made of God as its metaphysical “stuff.”
  • (e) Mode: the world is a way God manifests or modifies Himself.

The first two are just classical theism. The last three are where panentheism becomes distinctive—but they also generate severe problems (divine composition, collapse of Creator–creature distinction, and the internalization of finitude/evil into God).

So before anyone claims “omnipresence entails panentheism,” the first question must be:

What relation does “in” name—dependence/presence, or part/constitution/mode?

Until that’s answered, “everything is in God” is too vague to evaluate. It can mean something perfectly orthodox (creaturely dependence on God), or it can mean something that collapses into monism.

The “in God” tri-lemma

Once “in God” is defined, panentheism runs into a hard tri-lemma. There are only a few live options for what “in” can mean, and each has a cost.

(1) Constitutive “in”: God is the substance/metaphysical “stuff” of everything

If “in God” is constitutive, then creation is “in” God the way properties are in a subject, or the way an effect is “in” its material cause. In other words, the world is not merely related to God—it is made out of God.

That has two direct consequences:

A) The Creator–creature distinction stops being a difference in kind.
If God is the constitutive substrate of creatures, then creatures are not “other-than-God” in the strong sense. They become God “in a certain form” or God “under certain modifications.” That is the structural core of pantheism: everything that exists is, at bottom, divine being.

You can still say “God transcends the world,” but ontologically you have made the creature a mode/derivative of God’s own being.

B) Creaturely determinations become divine determinations (in the relevant respect).
Constitution is not merely an “external” relation. If the world is constituted by God as its stuff, then what is true of the world’s being is true of the divine being as constituting that world.

But the world has determinations like finitude, change/temporality, impotence (lack), and moral disorder (privation/evil in creatures). If the world is literally “made of God,” then these determinations are “in” God—not merely as known, but as ingredients of what the constituted thing is. The model pulls creaturely limitation into the divine being as the very basis from which creatures exist.

If my mind and God’s mind are literally one, then my beliefs—Islam, Hinduism, atheism, whatever—are all ‘divine thoughts’ in the same mind. But then falsehood becomes unintelligible: either all rival religions are true (which refutes Christianity’s exclusivity), or God’s mind contains error/contradiction (which denies divine perfection), or else our minds are not identical to God’s mind (restoring the Creator–creature distinction).

If ‘God’ is simply identical to the world, then ‘God exists’ reduces to ‘the universe exists.’ You haven’t posited a transcendent personal Creator; you’ve just renamed nature. That’s why pantheism tends to collapse into atheism in practice: it removes the very features that make theism theism—Creator/creature distinction, divine agency, revelation, moral authority, and worship—and replaces them with the world plus religious vocabulary.

(2) Part–whole “in”: the world is a proper part of God

If “in God” is part–whole, then the world is literally a component of God’s total actuality.

That entails divine composition for a simple reason:

A) Wholes include their parts as parts.
If X is a whole composed of parts, then X’s concrete actuality includes those parts. Remove a part and the whole changes (or ceases to be that whole). That is what “part” means.

So if the world is part of God, God’s concrete being includes the world. This immediately pressures doctrines like aseity (God depends on nothing), simplicity (no composition), and immutability (no internal change).

B) Creaturely change becomes internal to God.
The world changes. If the world is a part of God, then something internal to God changes. That is not merely “God has relations to changing things.” It is “God includes a changing component.” Panentheists sometimes respond by positing an “unchanging pole” and a “changing pole,” but that is simply a concession of composition in God: a composite deity with a mutable aspect.

C) Creaturely defect becomes internal to God (the opposites problem).
The world contains defect, disorder, and evil (at least as privation/corruption). If the world is part of God, then those defects are internal to God’s total reality. That yields a deity whose being includes the world’s defects, not merely a God who knows and governs defect from without.

Once you deny simplicity, you must answer: what explains the unity of the parts? There are only a few options, and all are bad:

A) The parts are unified by something else (a principle, law, or structure)

Then God depends on that unifying principle. That’s exactly what you were gesturing at with “abstracta”: God becomes conditioned by a more basic metaphysical framework.

B) The parts unify themselves “brutely”

Then God is no longer ultimate rationally; God’s unity is an unexplained accident. You don’t get the God who is self-explaining and the ground of being; you get a brute aggregate. Divine Platonism in which the true God are the uncreated forms that make God what he is.

C) The “parts” are internal tensions (good/evil, finite/infinite) held together

Then you’ve basically made contradiction or duality a feature of deity. At that point, “God” no longer functions as the source of coherent truth, goodness, or rational order.

And here’s the creation angle you’re reaching for: if the world is a part of God, then creation from nothing becomes incoherent. It starts looking like emanation: God produces the world out of Himself (or by rearranging Himself). That blurs the Creator–creature boundary and drifts toward pantheism or monism.

3) If immutability is lost, God’s character stops being a stable foundation

If God undergoes real internal change—especially if the world is part of God and the world changes—then God’s own actuality changes with it.

Then the obvious question is:

  • Why think God’s character is permanently trustworthy?
  • Why assume His goodness won’t be altered?
  • Why assume His promises won’t become obsolete if His internal states shift?

If God can “gain” or “lose” qualities over time, the ground of assurance collapses. The problem isn’t merely “God has emotions” or “God responds”—classical theism can affirm relational changes in God’s dealings and actual in his condescension. The problem is intrinsic change in God’s being.

And once intrinsic change is allowed, you don’t have a principled reason that God’s moral and epistemic reliability is unchangeable. A God who can become defective (even in principle) is not the rock of covenant faithfulness.

4) The “idealism” escape hatch doesn’t solve it

Some will try: “Fine, everything is mental—so the world is ‘in God’s mind’.”

But that doesn’t automatically solve the core issue, because you still have to clarify:

  • Is “mind” here a category God exemplifies (so God is one instance of mentality)?
  • If so, then God is being placed under a broader genus (“mentality”), which is another form of dependence.
  • Or is “mind” analogical and unique to God? Then you’re back to saying “in” is merely relational/causal—i.e., closer to classical theism.

Either idealism collapses into a new dependence (God under the category “mental”), or it becomes a verbal rebranding of classical theism.

(3) Weaker “in”: dependence, omnipresence, sustaining presence

If “in God” means something weaker—creaturely dependence, God’s omnipresence, or His continual sustaining of all things—then you have not reached panentheism at all. You have simply restated classical theism in richer language: everything is from God, upheld by God, and never outside His knowledge and power, while remaining genuinely other than God.

Two key distinctions show why:

A) Causal dependence ≠ constitution.
To say “X depends on God” is to say God is the cause and sustainer of X—not that X is a piece of God or made out of God. Classical theism has always affirmed this (creation and conservation).

B) Omnipresence ≠ containment.
To say “God is present to all things” is to say God is immediately active and aware everywhere—not that the world is inside God as a part or as His substance. Presence is a relation; containment/constitution is an ontology.

So if “in God” is cashed out as dependence/presence, it collapses into classical theism with “in God” functioning as a vivid metaphor.

The New Golden Rule

Some might argue at this stage is to hold a “rule” like this:

God is not X ⇒ God is not present where X is.

But that rule confuses two totally different relations:

  • Non-identity: God ≠ X (Creator–creature distinction).
  • Absence: God is not present to/at/with X.

Those are not the same thing. In ordinary experience, non-identity never implies absence. If it did, it would generate absurdities even within creation:

  • I’m not identical to my chair ⇒ therefore I can’t be present where my chair is. (False.)
  • This cup isn’t identical to this table ⇒ therefore it can’t be on the table. (False.)

So the inference “non-identity ⇒ absence” isn’t logic—it’s a category mistake.

Classical theism holds that God is present to all things as sustainer, knower, and governor—without being spatially extended, located like a body, or identical with the created order. Divine “presence” is therefore not a claim about God’s occupying physical space, but about His immediate causal and cognitive relation to everything that exists. Spatial language (“here/there”) is used analogically: it expresses the universality and immediacy of God’s presence-to creation, not a divine “location” within the world (behind Saturn).

If someone insists on the principle,

God is not X ⇒ God is not present where X is,

the first question is: what is the scope of this rule?

(A) If it’s universal (it applies to God as well)

Then it’s simply false as an inference. Non-identity does not entail absence. “Not identical to X” is a claim about what something is; “not present to X” is a claim about a relation. One does not follow from the other.

So even if you universalize the rule, it still doesn’t yield panentheism—it yields a category mistake.

(B) If it’s creature-bound (a rule within creation)

Then it can’t be used to draw conclusions about God at all. A principle that governs created objects and their relations doesn’t automatically apply to divine presence, which is precisely what’s in dispute.

Either way, the rule can’t do the metaphysical work it’s being asked to do.

If you keep your rule (“God not X ⇒ not present where X is”) and you also want omnipresence, you don’t get panentheism. You get pantheism.

Because the world is everywhere the world is. And you’re saying: if God isn’t identical to the world, then God can’t be present where the world is. But omnipresence says God is present where the world is. So on your rule, God can’t be “not the world.” That forces God = world.

So your principle doesn’t land you at “the world is in God.” It lands you at “God just is the world.”

Even if I grant everything you want about omnipresence, you still haven’t earned panentheism—because you’re quietly swapping meanings of “in.”

Being present to X is not the same thing as X being in God (as a part, as God’s “stuff,” or as a mode of God).

That’s the whole trick. You act like:

  • “God is present to all things”
  • therefore “all things are in God”

But that inference only works if you sneak in a stronger “in” than you’re admitting.

The “space” analogy doesn’t save the move

When I say spatial language is analogical, I’m not saying “space is divine” or “space is a property of God,” or “everything is literally inside God like a container.”

I’m saying: space is a creaturely way of picturing immediacy and universality.
God isn’t “located” like a body. But He is immediately present to every place and creature as sustainer and governor.

So “God is present everywhere” doesn’t mean “the universe is a region inside God.” It means: nothing exists outside God’s direct causal and cognitive reach.

Here’s the fork you can’t avoid

If your “in God” is:

  • just dependence/presence → then congrats, you’ve restated classical theism.
  • stronger than that (part/constitution/mode) → then you’re back in the collapse problem: divine composition, pantheism-ish monism, or the “opposites inside God” issue.

So pick one:
Is ‘in God’ just “dependent on God / present to God”? Or is it ontological (part/constitution/mode)?
Because only the first follows from omnipresence, and the second is where the theological train goes off the rails.

Creation ex nihilo vs “out of God” (emanation)

Here’s what people don’t always realize: once you say the world is in God in any ontological way (part of God, made of God, a mode of God), you’ve basically traded creation for emanation.

Because “creation ex nihilo” isn’t just “God makes stuff.” It’s a boundary line:

  • God is the source of the world
  • but God is not the material of the world

If the world is God’s substance, or God’s proper part, then what are you really saying?

God didn’t create the world “from nothing.”
God produced the world from Himself — out of His own being.

That’s emanation like. The world becomes a kind of divine overflow, divine self-expression, divine modification—whatever label you slap on it, the direction is the same: from God as material.

And that’s where the Creator–creature distinction starts evaporating. Because now “creature” doesn’t mean “a distinct order of being brought into existence by God.” It means “God in creaturely form,” or “a slice/phase of the divine.”

Also: once creation is “out of God,” you now have to answer stuff you didn’t have to answer before:

  • If the world is out of God, is it necessary (like God) or contingent (like creation)?
  • If contingent, how can God-stuff be contingent?
  • If necessary, you just lost divine freedom and the world becomes eternal/necessary with God.

And the big one:

If the world is out of God, then what even is the difference between God and the world, other than a word game?

So yeah — if you want “in God” to be more than dependence/presence, you’re quietly giving up ex nihilo and sliding into emanation/monism. If the world is literally in God as part/stuff/mode, then creation isn’t ex nihilo anymore—it’s “from God,” which collapses the Creator–creature line.

The opposites problem: finitude/evil “in God” without contradiction or illusion

Even if you try to say, “Okay fine, the world is in God somehow,” you immediately ask:

How do the world’s opposites exist ‘in God’ without blowing up God?

Because the world is full of things that are the opposite of what God is supposed to be:

  • God is infinite → creatures are finite
  • God is immutable/eternal → creatures change and decay
  • God is omnipotent → creatures are weak and dependent
  • God is morally perfect → creatures are morally disordered (sin, corruption, evil)

So if the world is “in God” in a strong sense (part/stuff/mode), you’ve got three options and none of them are good:

(1) Contradiction: God includes opposites in Himself

Then God is the bearer of finitude and infinity, holiness and corruption, perfection and defect. That’s not “mystery,” that’s incoherence. You’ve turned God into an internally conflicted composite.

(2) Illusion: the distinctions aren’t real

This is the common monist move: the world’s defects aren’t really defects, finitude isn’t really finitude, evil isn’t really evil—it’s all appearance. But Christianity can’t live there. Sin becomes misperception, not rebellion; salvation becomes enlightenment, not atonement. Okay—whence comes the illusion? If it’s in God, then God includes error/defect. If it’s not in God, you just reintroduced a real Creator–creature difference. And if you say it’s ‘unreal,’ then it can’t explain the appearance you’re trying to account for.

(3) Two kinds of being: Creator and creature

This is basically the classical theist answer: finitude, change, and evil aren’t “in God” as constituents. They’re in creatures. God knows them and governs them, but they don’t become ingredients in God’s own life.

And notice: once you pick (3), you’ve backed away from the strong “everything is in God” claim and moved back toward classical theism: God present-to all things, not composed of all things.

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