Epictetus stressed that inner freedom is to be attained through submission to providence, and rigorous detachment from everything not in our power.

Stoicism

The philosophy got its name from the Stoa Poikile, a hall in Athens where it was first formulated around 300 BC by Zeno of Citium. All of Zeno's writings are lost. The philosophy was developed by Cleanthes (331-232) and Chrysippus (280-207), who organized it into a system. Marcus Aurelius based his views in part on the later version, which was developed by the freed slave Epictetus (55-135). The Stoics were the first thoroughgoing pantheists: God is the universe, the universe is God. The wise and virtuous learns one's place in the scheme. According to Stoic Ethics, the goal of human existence is to live consistently with Nature, which means "consistently with Reason."

What is Pantheism?

Pantheism holds that the cosmos, taken or conceived of as a whole, is synonymous with the theological principle of God. The Cosmos is divine, and the earth sacred.

Pantheists do not propose belief in a deity; rather, they hold nature itself as a creative presence. Pantheism reconciles science and religion through ecology leading to strong environmental awareness.

Pantheists believe in Divine Immanence. To the Pantheist, divinity does not transcend reality; it surrounds, and is within it. All share divinity. This leads the pantheist to personal ethics of tolerance and understanding.

Is Pantheism Atheistic?

Like "atheism" the term "pantheism" was used in the eighteenth century as a term of "theological abuse," and it often still is abused (Tapper 1987). A.H. Armstrong says the term "pantheism" is a "large, vague term of theological abuse," (Armstrong 1976: 187). With some exceptions, pantheism is non-theistic, but it is not atheistic. It is a form of non-theistic monotheism, or even non-personal theism. It is the belief in one God, a God identical to the all-inclusive unity, but pantheists generally do not believe God is a person or anything like a person. The fact that pantheism clearly is not atheistic, and is an explicit denial of atheism, is disputed by its critics. The primary reason for equating pantheism with atheism is the assumption that belief in any kind of "God" must be belief in a personal God, because God must be a person.

In his non-pantheistic phase, Coleridge claimed that "every thing God, and no God, are identical positions" (McFarland 1969: 228). Owen (1971:69-70) says, "if 'God' (theos) is identical with the Universe (to pan) it is merely another name for the Universe. It is therefore bereft of any distinctive meaning; so that pantheism is equivalent to atheism." Similarly, Schopenhauer (1951: 40) said that "to call the world 'God' is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word 'world'." The charge that pantheism is atheistic is as old as pantheism itself. Christopher Rowe (1980: 54-5) says, "When Cicero's Velleius describes Speusippus' pantheism as an attempt to 'root out the notion of gods from our minds', he is echoing a charge that was commonly made against the pantheism of the earlier Greek natural philosophers ... like Anaximander or Heraclitus. These tended to be identified as atheists in the popular mind; and indeed Plato himself implies a similar view ... the opponents who classify them as atheists are in reality attacking them for undermining traditional beliefs about the gods-or, to borrow a phrase from the indictment against Socrates, 'for not believing in the gods the city believes in'.

At most, what Schopenhauer, Coleridge, Owen etc. can show, and all that they probably intend, is that the pantheistic Unity can be explained in terms that would either eliminate the notion of deity from pantheism altogether, or that it is incoherent. They want to show that believing in a pantheistic God is a convoluted and confused way of believing in something that can adequately be described apart from any notion of deity-and in this they are mistaken.

Worship and Prayer

Worship and prayer are not suitable to pantheism. It has often been claimed by theists and atheists that pantheistic worship (e.g. worshipping the Unity) is idolatrous. It is worshipping a false god. Unlike the theist or atheist, however, the pantheist believes a divine Unity exists--a kind of god. So pantheists, if they do worship the Unity, reject the idea that they are worshipping a false god. What is wrong with pantheistic worship is not that it is idolatrous, but something more basic having to do with both the nature of worship and Unity. Even if the Unity exists, worshipping it would not be proper pantheistic practice.

Pantheistic worship might naively be thought to be a kind of self-worship; worshipping something of which one is a part or identified with. This too is a mistake. As we have seen, pantheism is not the view that "everything that exists," including oneself, is god; and it is not the view that every particular thing or person is equally god. If worship is not acceptable religious practice for pantheists, it is for reasons other than that such practice involves adoring and venerating (i.e. worshipping) oneself. Worship and prayer are not consonant with pantheism. Like "evil" and "salvation," they are connected to the theistic world-view that pantheists reject. Therefore, except in a highly derivative sense (i.e., derivative from theism) worship and prayer are types of practice that are not acceptable to pantheists. Devotion to the universe, artistic expression, nature observation, etc., are not types of worship as theistically understood--though they may be ways of respecting, honouring, and revering.

What makes worship and prayer inappropriate for the pantheist is not the lack of ontological separation from the Unity that theism claims God has from the world. If there is a sense in which pantheists are ontologically, or in other ways, distinct from the divine Unity, worship and prayer are still inappropriate. If a necessary condition of worship is that it has to be in some significant sense "other regarding," then worship would not on that account be inappropriate to pantheism. What makes it unsuitable is that worship, and especially prayer, are basically directed at "persons" or at a being with personal characteristics separate and superior to oneself. Whether one's reasons for worship are petitionary or devotional is irrelevant; and so is one's motivation--whether a Freudian way of coping with guilt, or a rationally based sense of duty.

Objects of worship are not oneself, and perhaps not even ontologically distinct from oneself as theism claims, but they are generally taken to be conscious, personal and superior.

Given the nature and goal of worship, objects of worship must have a personal character. It might be thought uninteresting to show that the pantheistic Unity should not, on conceptual grounds, be worshiped. That may be right. The implications of this result, however, are anything but insignificant. For the pantheist, the practical consequences of worship and prayer being unavailable as forms of religious practice are enormous.

In the theistic view, worship and prayer are practically synonymous with religious practice. And, even in theoretically non-theistic religious traditions such as Buddhism and Taoism, worship and prayer are frequent if not prevalent. Yet, the pantheist is faced with the problem of finding a way to practice pantheism that is consistent with the finding that worship and prayer make sense only in a theistic context. As a result, one of the defining and most noticeable characteristics of pantheism will be the type of practice it takes up. The practices involved, whatever they are, will be different not only from those in theistic traditions, but also from those in non-theistic ones in which theistic practice is so much a part.

Copyright © Marc V. Mulay All Rights Reserved

Marc V. Mulay is a father, husband, jazz/rock/fusion/funk 'n blues guitarist, composer, poet, writer, former salesman, stockbroker, flyer,...and yes, practitioner of Stoicism.