A CONTINUATION OF MY LAST POST

FROM THE PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT, STANFORD UNIVERSITY. Here, and elsewhere on the Web, there are lots of new and fun ideas to explore.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panentheism/

History of the word 'panentheism' (which has the same meaning as unitheism) I concocted the term to avoid the confusion with pantheism. G0D IS spirituality and BEING, not a being, or entity. G0D, in totality, is that which interpenetrates matter, but is not confined to it.)

UNITHEISM--is now in Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitheism

Although Panentheism (unitheism) lacked a clear label in philosophical and religious reflection about God until Karl Krause's (1781–1832) creation of the term in the Eighteenth century (Gregersen 2004, 28), various advocates and critics of panentheism find evidence of incipient or implicit forms of panentheism present in religious thought as early as 1300 BCE.

The Rev. Charles Hartshorne, an Episcopalian minister, was the first to discovers the first indication of panentheistic themes in Ikhnaton (1375–1358 BCE), the Egyptian pharaoh often considered the first monotheist. [Hartshorne was a student and friend of A.N. Whitehead. He simplified his mentor's rather complex ideas about process philosophy and theology--ideas all worth doing a search on, today.]

In his poetic description of the sun god, Ikhnaton avoids both the separation of God from the world that will characterize theism and the identification of God with the world that will characterize pantheism (Hartshorne 1953, 29–30). Early Vedantic thought, as well as some modern Indian thought, implies panentheism in non-Advaita forms that understand non-dualism as inclusive of differences.

Although there are texts referring to Brahman as contracted and identical to Brahman, other texts speak of Brahman as expanded. In these texts, the perfect includes and surpasses the total of imperfect things as an appropriation of the imperfect. Although not the dominant interpretation of the Upanishads, multiple intimations of panentheism are present in the Upanishads (Whittemore 1988, 33, 41–44).

The Rev. Hartshorne finds additional religious concepts of God that hold the unchanging and the changing together in a way that allows for the development and significance of the non-divine in Lao-Tse (fourth century BCE) and in the Judeo-Christian scriptures (1953, 32-38).


G~O~D--Now & ForeverIS:Nature, Nurture & PNEUMA-ture, Thanks to Warren Farr&ME AT www.unitheist.org