God’s omnipresence in the world: on possible meanings of ‘en’ in panentheism

Abstract

Panenetheism is the claim that God and the cosmos are intimately interrelated , with the cosmos being in God and God being in the cosmos. What does this exactly mean? The aim of this paper is to address this question by sheding light on four possible models of God-world-inter-relatedness. Being critical of those models, which understand maximal immanence in a literal, spatial sense, the paper argues in favor of a model, which cashes out immanence in terms of divine activity. God is, where God acts. Since God acts upon all of creation everywhere and anytime, God is omnipresent to it at all times. Thus, the proposal is to read the 'en' in 'panetheism' in an 'agential sense': God is in the cosmos by creating and sustaining it and the cosmos is in God by constantly being within the sphere of divine activity.

Nature's Powers and God's Energies

“…I begin with an affirmation of panentheism, which as Gasser puts it, provides “a passage between the Scylla of a strict ontological divide between God and cosmos on the one hand, and the Charybdis of God and cosmos collapsing into one. Finding such a passage depends on how to spell out the ‘en’ in panentheism” (2019, 44). After exploring several models for explaining in what sense God is present in the world, Gasser favors a view of immanence “in terms of divine activity: God is there, where God acts.…”

Seeing God. Thomas Aquinas on Divine Presence in the World

“…Panentheistic vision should be a »golden mean« between traditional theism, which stresses the plurality of accidental beings and divine transcendence, and pantheism, which emphasizes, like Spinoza, monism and the immanence of God in the world. So, it is not pantheism, where God is identical with the nature (Deus sive natura), but that the world is like a body of God or a sponge, soaked in God (Gasser 2018).…”