Saisset, Pantheism, 148—“An imperfect God, yet perfection arising from imperfection.”Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 1:13—“Pantheism applies to God a principle of growth and imperfection, which belongs only to the finite.” Calderwood, Moral Philos., 245—“Its first requisite is moment, or movement, which it assumes, but does not account for.” Caro's sarcasm applies here: “Your God is not yet made—he is in process of manufacture.” See H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 25. Pantheism is practical atheism, for impersonal spirit is only blind and necessary force. Angelus Silesius: “Wir beten ‘Es gescheh, mein Herr und Gott, dein Wille’; Und sieh', Er hat nicht Will'—Er ist ein ew'ge Stille”—which Max Müller translates as follows: “We pray, ‘O Lord our God, Do thou thy holy Will’; and see! God has no will; He is at peace and still.”Angelus Silesius consistently makes God dependent for self-consciousness on man: “I know that God cannot live An instant without me; He must give up the ghost, If I should cease to be.” Seth, Hegelianism and Personality: “Hegelianism destroys both God and man. It reduces man to an object of the universal Thinker, and leaves this universal Thinker without any true personality.” Pantheism is a game of solitaire, in which God plays both sides.
2. Its assumed unity of substance is not only without proof, but it directly contradicts our intuitive judgments. These testify that we are not parts and particles of God, but distinct personal subsistences.
Martineau, Essays, 1:158—“Even for immanency, there must be something wherein to dwell, and for life, something whereon to act.” Many systems of monism contradict consciousness; they confound harmony between two with absorption in one. “In Scripture we never find the universe called τὸ πᾶν, for this suggests the idea of a self-contained unity: we have everywhere τὰ πάντα instead.” The Bible recognizes the element of truth in pantheism—God is “through all”; also the element of truth in mysticism—God is “in you all”; but it adds the element of transcendence which both these fail to recognize—God is “above all” (Eph. 4:6). See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Orig. of Christianity, 539. G. D. B. Pepper: “He who is over all and in all is yet distinct from all. If one is over a thing, he is not that very thing which he is over. If one is in something, he must be distinct from that something. And so the universe, over which and in which God is, must be thought of as something distinct from God. The creation cannot be identical with God, or a mere form of God.” We add, however, that it may be a manifestation of God and dependent upon God, as our thoughts and acts are manifestations of our mind and will and dependent upon our mind and will, yet are not themselves our mind and will.
Pope wrote: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is and God the soul.” But Case, Physical Realism, 193, replies: “Not so. Nature is to God as works are to a man; and as man's works are not his body, so neither is nature the body of God.” Matthew Arnold, On Heine's Grave: “What are we all but a mood, A single mood of the life Of the Being in whom we exist, Who alone is all things in one?” Hovey, Studies, 51—“Scripture recognizes the element of truth in pantheism, but it also teaches the existence of a world of things, animate and inanimate, in distinction from God. It represents men as prone to worship the creature more than the Creator. It describes them as sinners worthy of death … moral agents. … It no more thinks of men as being literally parts of God, than it thinks of children as being parts of their parents, or subjects as being parts of their king.” A. J. F. Behrends: “The true doctrine lies between the two extremes of a crass dualism which makes God and the world two self-contained entities, and a substantial monism in which the universe has only a phenomenal existence. There is no identity of substance nor division of the divine substance. The universe is eternally dependent, the product of the divine Word, not simply manufactured. Creation is primarily a spiritual act.” Prof. George M. Forbes: “Matter exists in subordinate dependence upon God; spirit in coördinate dependence upon God. The body of Christ was Christ externalized, made manifest to sense-perception. In apprehending matter, I am apprehending the mind and will of God. This is the highest sort of reality. Neither matter nor finite spirits, then, are mere phenomena.”
3. It assigns no sufficient cause for that fact of the universe which is highest in rank, and therefore most needs explanation, namely, the existence of personal intelligences. A substance which is itself unconscious, and under the law of necessity, cannot produce beings who are self-conscious and free.
Gess, Foundations of our Faith, 36—“Animal instinct, and the spirit of a nation working out its language, might furnish analogies, if they produced personalities as their result, but not otherwise. Nor were these tendencies self-originated, but received from an external source.” McCosh, Intuitions, 215, 393, and Christianity and Positivism, 180. Seth, Freedom as an Ethical Postulate, 47—“If man is an ‘imperium in imperio,’ not a person, but only an aspect or expression of the universe or God, then he cannot be free. Man may be depersonalized either into nature or into God. Through the conception of our own personality we reach that of God. To resolve our personality into that of God would be to negate the divine greatness itself by invalidating the conception through which it was reached.” Bradley, Appearance and Reality, 551, is more ambiguous: “The positive relation of every appearance as an adjective to Reality; and the presence of Reality among its appearances in different degrees and with diverse values; this double truth we have found to be the centre of philosophy.” He protests against both “an empty transcendence” and “a shallow pantheism.” Hegelian immanence and knowledge, he asserts, identified God and man. But God is more than man or man's thought. He is spirit and life—best understood from the human self, with its thoughts, feelings, volitions. Immanence needs to be qualified by transcendence. “God is not God till he has become all-in-all, and a God which is all-in-all is not the God of religion. God is an aspect, and that must mean but an appearance of the Absolute.”Bradley's Absolute, therefore, is not so much personal as super-personal; to which we reply with Jackson, James Martineau, 416—“Higher than personality is lower; beyond it is regression from its height. From the equator we may travel northward, gaining ever higher and higher latitudes; but, if ever the pole is reached, pressing on from thence will be descending into lower latitudes, not gaining higher. … Do I say, I am a pantheist? Then, ipso facto, I deny pantheism; for, in the very assertion of the Ego, I imply all else as objective to me.”
4. It therefore contradicts the affirmations of our moral and religious natures by denying man's freedom and responsibility; by making God to include in himself all evil as well as all good; and by precluding all prayer, worship, and hope of immortality.
Conscience is the eternal witness against pantheism. Conscience witnesses to our freedom and responsibility, and declares that moral distinctions are not illusory. Renouf, Hibbert Lect., 234—“It is only out of condescension to popular language that pantheistic systems can recognize the notions of right and wrong, of iniquity and sin. If everything really emanates from God, there can be no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers who have been led to pantheistic views have vainly endeavored to harmonize these views with what we understand by the notion of sin or moral evil. The great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled 'Ethica'; but for real ethics we might as profitably consult the Elements of Euclid.” Hodge, System. Theology, 1:299–330—“Pantheism is fatalistic. On this theory, duty = pleasure; right = might; sin = good in the making. Satan, as well as Gabriel, is a self-development of God. The practical effects of pantheism upon popular morals and life, wherever it has prevailed, as in Buddhist India and China, demonstrate its falsehood.” See also Dove, Logic of the Christian Faith, 118; Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 202; Bib. Sac., Oct. 1867:603–615; Dix, Pantheism, Introd., 12. On the fact of sin as refuting the pantheistic theory, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernat., 140–164.
Wordsworth: “Look up to heaven! the industrious sun Already half his course hath run; He cannot halt or go astray; But our immortal spirits may.” President John H. Harris; “You never ask a cyclone's opinion of the ten commandments.” Bowne, Philos. of Theism, 245—“Pantheism makes man an automaton. But how can an automaton have duties?” Principles of Ethics, 18—“Ethics is defined as the science of conduct, and the conventions of language are relied upon to cover up the fact that there is no ‘conduct’ in the case. If man be a proper automaton, we might as well speak of the conduct of the