Theological confusion

[Captain Scarlet]

Heard a radio broadcast today where a theolgian (can't recall their name) claimed that "god does not exist, he is existence.". What does that mean? It seems impossibly incoherent and formally invalid. Sounds like newage mumbo jumbo.

[Paul the Human]

Sounds like that 'Godhead' dude that got banned a few weeks back. He claimed that all of existence was simply a 'manifestation of god'. God didn't create the universe... he is the universe.

[DeistPaladin]

Sounds like that 'Godhead' dude that got banned a few weeks back. He claimed that all of existence was simply a 'manifestation of god'. God didn't create the universe... he is the universe.

And this is different from pantheism how?

[Minimalist]

What does that mean?

As usual.

[Paul the Human]

And this is different from pantheism how?

By being Panentheism (note the similar, yet different spelling. Heheh).

[DeistPaladin]

And this is different from pantheism how?

By being Panentheism (note the similar, yet different spelling. Heheh).

I thought panentheism was the idea that God was the universe and also transcended it. In other words, the universe was a part of God but not the whole.

Either way, it's hardly Christian. It would seem such a philosophy would preclude either the existence of Satan (for demons would also be part of God) or the "fall" of humanity.

[The Omnissiunt One]

Basically, saying 'God is existence' is no different in practice from atheism. Nor is pantheism, nor, to a large extent, is deism. Only when it affects your morality, your political views, your approach to science and reason, your routine, your diet, your love life and so forth is it any different in practice. That's why all non-theists are essentially the same, in my view, even if we squabble a bit about metaphysics and burden of proof. Let us unite!

[Entropist]

Heard a radio broadcast today where a theolgian (can't recall their name) claimed that "god does not exist, he is existence.". What does that mean? It seems impossibly incoherent and formally invalid. Sounds like newage mumbo jumbo.

Its just word games. But it isn't new, but quite old, and in the West, has its roots in Neo-Platonism (especially Plotinus' Enneads). Pseudo-Dionysius (a pseudonymous writer, possibly a Syrian monk) adapted Plotinus' notion of "The One" for his own Christian purposes. A lot of other Christian theologians and mystics ran with it (Maximus the Confessor, Gregory of Nyssa, and later Eckhart, the anonymously-written Cloud of Unknowing, and up to the 20th century with theologians like Paul Tillich).

It is usually connected to what is known as the "apophatic method" or "via negativa," where a Yahweh is understood by what he is not: He is not good, but rather "beyond goodness (and evil)" and also "beyond existence (and non-existence)." This is similar to how the Dao de Jing describes the Dao (particularly in chapter 1).

Pseudo-Dionysius' "The Mystical Theology" is a brief document that sums this all up in a few brief chapters.

All of this is ultimately a verbal slight-of-hand however. The idea runs something like this (this is a paraphrase of Tillich in his Systematic Theology, vol. 1): Yahweh is "the ground of all being"-- existence came into being because of him. As a consequence, Yahweh precedes the categories of "existence" and "non-existence." Therefore Yahweh is not a "being among beings" like a chair or a rock or a planet-- rather he is "beyond being" and so in that sense, Yahweh does not exist. And so to argue for or against the existence of this god is missing the point. Its sort of like metaphysical one-upmanship.

---

For the theologians I mentioned above, they would have fallen under a theological category called "pantheism" which is similar to, but identical to, pantheism:

Briefly put, in pantheism, "God is the whole"; in panentheism, "The whole is in God." This means that the Universe in the first formulation is practically the Whole itself, but in the second the universe and God are not ontologically equivalent. In panentheism, God is not necessarily viewed as the creator or demiurge, but the eternal animating force behind the universe, some versions positing the universe as nothing more than the manifest part of God. In some forms of panentheism, the cosmos exists within God, who in turn "pervades" or is "in" the cosmos. While pantheism asserts that God and the universe are coextensive, panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe and some forms hold that the universe is contained within God.[2] Hinduism is highly characterized by Panentheism and Pantheism[3].

In other words, more sophistry.

[Rhizomorph13]

Heard a radio broadcast today where a theolgian (can't recall their name) claimed that "god does not exist, he is existence.". What does that mean? It seems impossibly incoherent and formally invalid. Sounds like newage mumbo jumbo.

Bolding mine

I don't know, I saw a video that a guy made of a double rainbow (all the way!). What does that mean?

Rhizo

[theophilus]

Heard a radio broadcast today where a theolgian (can't recall their name) claimed that "god does not exist, he is existence.". What does that mean? It seems impossibly incoherent and formally invalid. Sounds like newage mumbo jumbo.

A lot of statements which seem meaningless when quoted in isolation can make perfect sense when you know the entire context in which they were made. Did you listen to the entire broadcast to find out what it meant?