12 Sermon Illustrations on Pantheism

In speaking of pantheism, Bishop Thomson says, "If God is matter, and matter is God, then, surely, we may add with Pascal, 'It is no matter whether there be any God at all.'"

A new theology of ecology is being developed that sees the universe as our womb. The creation mandate in Genesis is seen as harmful. Father Thomas Berry is a key leader, and says the creation is God’s “primary revelation,” not the Bible. He sees evolution as a spiritual as well as material process. He feels Christians err in over-emphasizing personal redemption.

“The crucial issue, however, is not tolerance of other faiths. Where the Bible enjoins man to live in covenant with a transcendent God, Berry emphasizes a new covenant with his creation. Moreover, unlike the Book of Genesis, which is designed to desacralize nature, Berry’s new cosmology resacralizes the natural world and imposes certain values on its human offspring.

“It is one thing to rediscover the goodness of creation, quite another to regard the process of evolution as God’s primary word to man. To derive moral standards from the cosmos is to suppose that whatever has evolved is good - or would be, if humankind behaved itself toward other species. But Berry’s theory of the self-regulating universe does not take into account the existence of moral evil, despite the evidence in the world around him. The human species has no doubt sinned against the environment, but it has also sinned against itself - and God - which is why stories of redemption still possess power, even in an ecological age.”

Scientists are getting religion. At least that's the way it appears, based on several books on the market today. But the religion they're promoting is not Christianity; instead, it's a revival of age-old pantheism.

Take In the Beginning, by astrophysicist John Gribbin. Gribbin starts with a theory known as the Gaia hypothesis, which proposes that Earth is alive -- that Earth itself is a living, self-regulating system.

But Gribbin takes that idea a step further: He claims that the entire universe is alive. He suggests that black holes are baby universes, which grow up and give birth to other baby universes, in an endless process of evolution.

Where will the process end? In another new book, Equations of Eternity, astrophysicist David Darling gives a startling answer: The universe is evolving into a cosmic mind. As Darling puts it, the universe is becoming its own god.

But all this talk about "god" doesn't mean scientists are turning to Christianity. Gribbin states quite clearly that he rejects the idea of a transcendent Creator. In his words, "As for God, cosmology ... has no need of that hypothesis."

Instead, what we're seeing is a revival of an earlier science that many people thought was discredited. The idea that the universe is evolving up to god has roots in eighteenth-century Romanticism. Many biologists of that period believed that matter is made up of living molecules and that the entire universe is evolving up a great Chain of Being to divinity.

You see, the idea of evolution did not originate with Charles Darwin, who lived a century later; instead it began with the Romantic idea of spiritual evolution. Romantic biologists believed in a universal Life Force unfolding from simple to complex forms under a cosmic Law of Development.

Today the leaders of scientific orthodoxy would prefer to forget that period of history. They insist that "true" science must be completely materialistic. They're the authors of your children's textbooks, which often dismiss any spiritual beliefs.

But we ought to teach our kids to call their bluff. Real science has never stayed within the narrow bounds of philosophical materialism -- neither during its historical development nor today, judging by the titles hitting bookstore shelves.

Are scientists getting religion?

The truth is that science has always encompassed widely diverse philosophies of nature -- from the Christian teaching of creation (held by most of the early scientists) to Romantic pantheism to scientific materialism or naturalism. For a true picture of the rich diversity within science, read The Soul of Science by Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton.

What this means is that Christians need to get busy developing apologetics for the whole range of beliefs permeating our culture and claiming scientific support -- not only scientific materialism but also pantheistic spiritualism. The Soul of Science can help you in your own families and churches to prepare to meet the challenges posed in the name of science.

Scientists may be getting religion, but you and I need to ask what kind of religion. Holding a false religion is just as dangerous as holding no religion at all.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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In the book "Megatrends 2000", authors Naisbitt and Aburdene outlined trends they anticipated would be transformational for the future. Among their calculations was the New Age movement, which in 1990 was quickly gaining momentum. They wrote: “In turbulent times, in times of great change, people head for the two extremes: fundamentalism and personal, spiritual experience... With no membership lists or even a coherent philosophy or dogma, it is difficult to define or measure the unorganized New Age movement. But in every major U.S. and European city, thousands who seek insight and personal growth cluster around a metaphysical bookstore, a spiritual teacher, or an education center.”(1) This is all the more an accurate picture for today.

While New Age seekers may not share a cohesive focus or an organizational center, there are certainly consistent and underlying tenets of thought among them. The movement is syncretistic, in that it incorporates any number of spiritual and religious ideologies at one time, but it is consistently monistic and pantheistic. New Age seekers are informed by the belief that all of reality is essentially one. Thus, everything is divine, including themselves; for if all is one, and there are no distinctions, then all is God. Or, in the words of Shirley Maclaine, “I am God, because all energy is plugged in to the same source.... We are individualized reflections of the God source. God is us and we are God.”(2)

Seven hundred years earlier, medieval Christian mystic Julian of Norwich spoke in what some may consider a similar tone: “[O]ur substance is our Father, God almighty... [O]ur substance is whole in each person of the Trinity, who is one God.”(3) Early Christian mystics are known for their fervent seeking and spiritual awareness of the oneness of life. Thus, there are certainly similar melodies to be found within the songs of Christian mysticism and the growing chorus of New Age spirituality. But so there are marked differences among them.

Within its historical context, mysticism, like many other Christian movements, was an expression of faith in response to faithless times. In this regard, New Age seekers are not entirely different. Some New Age seeking is, I think, a legitimate reaction to the comfortable and shallow religious life we find within our society. But as New Age seekers long for the depth and freedom to believe in everything, the result is contrary to what they seek. Their theology and spirituality are entirely segregated. The quest for illumination is a quest that can begin and end anywhere; thus, they find neither depth, nor freedom. On the contrary, Julian of Norwich and other early Christian mystics sought an authentic experience of faith as a result of an already dynamic understanding of that faith. Their theology in and of itself is what LED THEM to spirituality.

For the Christian today, illumination still begins with Light itself, God unobscured, though incomprehensible, revealed through the glory of the Son. Starting with light and standing upon truth, the Christian begins his journey as a seeker knowing there is one who hears his prayers. There is a source for all illumination, and He is light of the world.

New Age seekers would perhaps be helped to know there is a great tradition of seeking within Christianity, a tradition that began with the recognition that we could not fix what is wrong, and a tradition that continues because there is one who can. The human heart is ever-seeking, showing the longing of a soul to be known. In the words of Julian of Norwich, “We shall never cease wanting and longing until we possess Him in fullness and joy... The more clearly the soul sees the Blessed Face by grace and love, the more it longs to see it in its fullness.” For the Christian seeker, communion with God is far more than self-discovery or personal freedom; it is theology that has become doxology, which in turn becomes life.

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1. J. Naisbitt and P. Aburdene, MEGATRENDS 2000: TEN NEW DIRECTIONS TRANSFORMING OUR LIVES (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1990), 11.

2. Shirley Maclaine, DANCING IN THE LIGHT (New York: Bantam Doubleday, 1991), 339.

3. Julian of Norwich, SHOWINGS, edited and translated by James Walsh in “The Classics of Western Spirituality” (New York: Paulish Press, 1978), 129.

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Copyright © 2007 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer told The Daily Caller in a recent interview that he doesn’t believe in God in the traditional sense. But while he doesn’t describe himself as an atheist, the popular commentator said that he has a “complicated notion of the deity.”

“There was once a philosopher who said, ‘I don’t believe in God, but I fear him greatly.’ That’s about where I am,” he told the outlet. “I’ve had a fairly difficult and complicated notion of the deity.”

Krauthammer added that Albert Einstein’s concept of God most resonates with him. He said that Einstein’s idea was “a recognition and an awe before the mystery of the order and beauty of the universe, which would imply that there is something very mysterious and very awesome — awe-inspiring — about the universe.”

This is certainly very different from the theological views expressed by mainstream faith groups, which generally have specific and codified interpretations of both God and creation.

Krauthammer drove home the point that he believes life’s complexities are vast and that he is ill-equipped to definitively know what’s out there.

“I feel the way that I think Newton once said. I feel like a snail on the side of a great ocean and the idea that I can understand a notion like God or humans can as if we’re expecting a snail to understand the motion of the tides through calculus and physics,” he said.

Krauthammer added, “That’s not possible. So I see the same kind of intellectual gap in the capacity of humans to understand in any deep sense about theology of God as for a snail to figure out how the tides work.”

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer told The Daily Caller in a recent interview that he doesn’t believe in God in the traditional sense. But while he doesn’t describe himself as an atheist, the popular commentator said that he has a “complicated notion of the deity.”

“There was once a philosopher who said, ‘I don’t believe in God, but I fear him greatly.’ That’s about where I am,” he told the outlet. “I’ve had a fairly difficult and complicated notion of the deity.”

Krauthammer added that Albert Einstein’s concept of God most resonates with him. He said that Einstein’s idea was “a recognition and an awe before the mystery of the order and beauty of the universe, which would imply that there is something very mysterious and very awesome — awe-inspiring — about the universe.”

This is certainly very different from the theological views expressed by mainstream faith groups, which generally have specific and codified interpretations of both God and creation.

Krauthammer drove home the point that he believes life’s complexities are vast and that he is ill-equipped to definitively know what’s out there.

“I feel the way that I think Newton once said. I feel like a snail on the side of a great ocean and the idea that I can understand a notion like God or humans can as if we’re expecting a snail to understand the motion of the tides through calculus and physics,” he said.

Krauthammer added, “That’s not possible. So I see the same kind of intellectual gap in the capacity of humans to understand in any deep sense about theology of God as for a snail to figure out how the tides work.”