Panentheism across the World's Traditions

Loriliai Biernacki and Philip Clayton offer a collection of groundbreaking new essays on panentheism. Not to be confused with pantheism--the ancient Greek notion that God is everywhere, an animistic force in rocks and trees--panentheism suggests that God is both in the world, immanent, and also beyond the confines of mere matter, transcendent. One of the fundamental premises in this book is that panentheism, despite being unlabeled until the nineteenth century, is not merely a modern Western invention. The contributors examine a number of the world's established and ancient religious traditions--Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, among others--to draw out the panentheistic dimensions of these traditions and the possibilities they suggest. Panentheism is not simply an esoteric, potentially heretical, and habitually mystical vision of the world's great religious pasts; it persists today with a proper name and a lineage. As this volume demonstrates, a new paradigm is emerging in modern panentheism, one eminently suited to a world view that can no longer shake off the realities of our evolving species and our evolving technological world. Panentheism's enticingly heretical vision of the relationship between the divine and matter has historically been denied a serious place in scholarship. As Panentheism across the World's Traditions shows, the dynamism between matter and spirit that panentheism offers has had a profound influence in the modern world.

Loriliai Biernacki is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Philip Clayton is Dean of Faculty at the Claremont School of Theology and Provost of Claremont Lincoln University.