Problems of Metaphysics

Cosmological-Theological Problem

The Relationship of the Pantheistic Concept of the Divine to Religion

In the preceding section, an attempt was made to delineate the relationship between the pantheistic view of the world and the scientific understanding of nature. I shall now append this discourse with an examination of its relation to religion. Can pantheism be reconciled with religion, meaning the internal sentiment of religiosity, rather than any specific dogma or ecclesiastical doctrine?

The answer to this question presupposes an agreement regarding the essence of religion. Therefore, I will begin with a few words on this subject. Religion is not knowledge; there exists knowledge about religion, the history of religion, and the philosophy of religion, but none of these constitutes religion itself. Religion is not merely an activity; there are actions that manifest religion, acts of worship, but these do not encompass the entirety of religion. The essence of religion resides in a particular disposition of the soul; two aspects emerge from it, two moods of feeling: I shall name them humility and trust, fear of God and hope in God.

Humility is the sensation of smallness before the great, of the finite before the infinite. One finds oneself placed amid the infinite, surrounded by it on all sides, and carried by it. Around one extends the infinity of space and things, while one’s own existence is but a vanishing point within it. Likewise, before and behind, the infinite stretches in time towards eternity; one’s life signifies a fleeting moment. The existence of a human being is but a triviality in the immeasurable universe—such is the nature of humanity. And because this relationship is consciously acknowledged, one possesses religion. An animal does not have religion because it lacks self-awareness and does not grasp its relationship to reality; it passively experiences life, unaware of it as a whole. In humans, alongside self-consciousness and awareness of the world, emerges a feeling of one’s own smallness, insignificance, and transience. Rising from darkness into the sunlight, one lives dependent on a multitude of contingencies of the cosmic cycle, existing for just a moment, only to be cast back into the darkness of oblivion by death. This perspective recurs in every religious poetry; nowhere is it expressed more multifacetedly and poignantly than in the poetry of the Old Testament. However, it is not absent among the Greeks, often resonating in Homer and the tragedians: generations of humanity are akin to the leaves of the forest.

This constitutes one aspect of the religious mood of feeling; Schleiermacher identifies it as the unconditional feeling of dependence.

The other aspect is trust, the assurance that the infinite is not only great beyond all bounds and omnipotent but also wholly good, such that I can acknowledge it and confidently entrust to it all that I hold dear. This essence constitutes the core of religious faith. In religion, faith does not signify a belief that is a lesser certainty than knowledge or probability (as we, too, may use the term); religious faith signifies the immediate confidence of the soul that the real arises from the good, that all that transpires is ultimately for the best, for my best. This faith does not rest on theoretical inquiries or proofs; it emanates not from reason but from will. As the apostle says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” thus establishing practical certainty rooted not in observation and cognition but in hope and volition.

We utilize this word in other instances as well. A mother believes in her child. Her son may wander down the right path or the wrong one; others may lose faith, asserting that he will amount to nothing. Yet the mother firmly believes: he will find his way back. She has no grounds for this; she cannot prove it to the doubter, for instance, through deeper psychological understanding of his being; she believes not through reason but through her heart; her faith is intertwined with her life, which is why she cannot part with it. So too does a person believe in their people. They witness actions they disapprove of, falsehoods, deceit, hypocrisy, brazen arrogance, and vulgarity, even among those who do not consider themselves part of the common folk. Nevertheless, they do not lose faith; this is not the essence of the people, but an alien growth upon their nature; ultimately, they believe that they are still a sincere, decent, truthful, and loyal people, destined to expel the trivial and the vile from their essence. They cannot prove this through statistics or history; they believe not with reason but with heart, essence, and will. Without this faith, they would despair in themselves, their endeavors, and their lives. They could not bear existence if they felt themselves to be the only sensitive heart amid a sea of deceivers, and thus they believe in their people.

Religious faith belongs to this same order. It too is rooted not in reason but in the essence of humanity and its will. Its content can be expressed—in the most general terms—as the assurance that the reality of which I find myself a part possesses a rational, good meaning that I can acknowledge; that the world and fate are not a collection of blind, aimless contingencies but are governed by the idea of the good, God, who is all-encompassing and wholly good. This assurance already takes a rudimentary form in the most primitive idolatry—an assurance that in reality or above it exist forces of goodness capable of diverting evil and ushering in the favorable and beneficial. In the faith of the gods among great historical peoples, it assumes a more perfected form: the gods, spiritual and benevolent beings, hold the course of the world and human destiny in their hands, resolutely safeguarding what is right and good. This assurance reaches its ultimate form in the belief in an omnipotent Providence, without whose will nothing occurs, and by whose will all that transpires is directed toward the good. This faith pertains primarily to one’s own life and its immediate surroundings: nothing can befall it that ought not to serve its benefit; even misfortune and sorrow are not meant for harm but for punishment and testing on the path to the good; thereafter, this faith necessarily expands to broader realms. For my people, good and seemingly bad occurrences happen alike; yet faith asserts that need and defeat are not intended for its destruction but for its salvation; only in need do its strengths and virtues unfold, while defeat leads to reflection on its true and authentic being. And so it is with all humanity: ultimately, all its fates are paths toward a great purpose, toward the fulfillment of its divine destiny; the Kingdom of God, in the words of Christian faith, is the goal; its realization is the very content of world history. Thus, the content of faith in God—in the most general formula—can be expressed as follows: reality is not only hospitable to the highest goods of humanity, but it is predisposed toward them; the world is governed not by blind and external necessity, but by an internal, teleological necessity; the natural order of the universe is a moral order. Atheism, therefore, would constitute not a denial of provability but of the validity of this faith; it would be a dogmatic assertion: there is no moral order, only a natural one.

This faith is not a theoretical understanding; it does not arise from teleological proofs, whether in the domain of history or the life experience of an individual; it rests fundamentally not on arguments but on practical necessity: it renders life bearable, particularly in the face of suffering. An animal passively and senselessly endures all that happens to it; a human being, capable of forming thoughts about things and life, liberates themselves from the weight of sorrow and even greater burdens of fear by attributing meaning to fate. They would be incapable of bearing their life if they had to view the world as some monstrous mechanism and themselves as mere toys of blind forces.

Christianity has no doubt that this belief cannot be proved but can only be embraced in faith. Sacred Scripture states in hundreds of passages: God’s ways are not our ways; His judgments are unsearchable; this means that if we were granted the power to shape fate and the course of the world, we (even the most insightful and benevolent among us) would arrange matters in hundreds of instances quite differently than they exist in reality. It often seems to us that the blind course of nature intrudes into our lives in a disruptive manner, apathetically obstructing their higher purposes; we believe that the course of history frequently tilts the balance toward the negative. In some cases, we later judge otherwise; through experience, we learn that what initially appeared harmful ultimately results in a favorable turn of events; from these experiences, faith arises, recalling them readily to counteract the impression of present misfortunes. Yet it does not believe that it can derive theoretically satisfying proof from them. The contrary experience, that need and calamity can also internally poison and desolate life, or that apparent happiness can lead both peoples and individuals to ruin—often irreparable—would constantly serve as ready counter-evidence against any attempts at theodicy, should it presume to claim the status of a theory.

Faith, however, remains undaunted by this objection. It invokes the limitations of human knowledge: God’s thoughts transcend our own. In all circumstances, for the believer, one truth remains certain: for those who love God, all things must serve for their good. This conviction does not abandon him, even amidst the collapse of all earthly hopes. The intellect stands by, unable to comprehend this. It does not dispute; it clearly perceives the inherent uncertainty of any judgment concerning what is good or evil for humanity or a nation. It refrains, doubts, and remains silent. Faith, on the other hand, advances boldly; it requires no proof, being impervious to doubt, and rests in the will and essence of the believer: reality must be such that I, along with all that is highest and dearest to me, can exist within it.

Such is, in broad strokes, the essence of religious faith. In actuality, it does not manifest in this abstract form but rather in concrete embodiments. Through the vivid representations and symbols of historical religions, in the sensually transcendent construction of the otherworldly through imagination, faith becomes comprehensible and communicable, and it is only in this way that it becomes a true object of belief. Primarily, it becomes accessible to art and poetry, those authentic mediators of the ineffable and the incomprehensible.

Indeed, with this, faith also becomes approachable to reflective thought. As the latter endeavors to conceive the nature of the otherworldly life and its relation to the present, doctrine arises; and when the religious community embraces the content of doctrine in obligatory formulations, dogmas or creeds are born. Thus it happened with the religion of Jesus; introduced into the philosophizing world of Hellenism, it assumed a form that could lead to the misunderstanding that Christianity is essentially a teaching which, like philosophy, possesses theoretical merit and can, and must, be comprehended by reason.

In truth, this is not what is intended. The church’s confession—as expressed in the most general formula of the creeds—aims not to convey a rational understanding but rather the practical assurance in which the community of Christ perceives itself as one. If in the first article it professes faith in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth, it signifies not a theoretical knowledge supposedly yielded by scientific inquiry but rather an immediate confidence that the world is not a product of chance or the devil, as some believe, but of God and directed towards God, the All-Good. And if in the second article Christianity professes faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, it seeks to express only its direct assurance that God has manifested Himself in flesh in Jesus, that in Him the Almighty and All-Good presents Himself in His essence as He can appear in the guise of a human son: a man who seeks nothing for himself, who does good to all, who expects no gratitude, who bears the most bitter and disgraceful suffering without hatred or curses—this is God, God in the form of man. “To be good,” says Savonarola, “is to do good and endure evil and to sustain it to the end.” Similarly, the third article expresses only the practical assurance that humanity is called to the Kingdom of God, to eternal communion with the blessed and their bliss, and that as long as human hearts beat on earth, the Spirit of God will be active and alive in the community of all true disciples of Christ.

Thus, the faith of Christianity is not a philosophical system, nor a theological dogma, nor even a spectral remnant of old superstition, but rather an immediate and vibrant confidence of the heart in the existence of the Good and its significance in reality. This faith can exist in the present just as it did in the times of Luther or Augustine or the apostles themselves, who beheld Jesus with their own eyes. If the belief of Christianity were based on various opinions and theoretical positions, those who claim it has long since died would be right: beliefs and positions do not endure for so long.

Now we return to our question—can such faith coexist with the previously outlined monistic conception of the structure of reality? I believe it is compatible in every respect. Perhaps practical faith in the good is compatible with any cosmological perspective; at the very least, it is an unquestionable fact that even those who identify with metaphysics or materialism hold an unconditional belief in the future of humanity and its progress in justice and truth. They would then need to reconcile this belief with their metaphysics by asserting: atoms have randomly formed and arranged themselves precisely so as to mechanically realize the highest good—which, indeed, remains a somewhat unexpected outcome. Such a belief aligns more closely, one might argue, with a philosophy that sees reality as developing with an internal, teleological necessity of Universal Life. Pantheism is not a religion but a cosmological hypothesis seeking to convey the general impression that reality imparts upon the thinking individual. However, it would not be unjust to state that a faith that perceives in the All-Effective the All-Good finds in it an image that meets it halfway.

Theological critics of philosophy, it is true, usually adopt a different viewpoint on this matter; they tend to assert that only one conception of the world is compatible with religion, namely, the theistic conception that posits God as a being distinct from the world; that pantheism is supposedly no less contrary to religion than atomism; that what it calls God is not God at all but rather nature or the universe, and that when Spinoza states, “Deus sive Natura,” it is merely an abuse of the name of God. It is alleged that God possesses personality, whereas nature or the universe does not; thus a firm boundary is established: a dualistic philosophy that does not conceive of God as a distinct being is contrary to religion.

It is fitting to commence our examination here with Socratic preliminary questioning: what does personality mean? Is it not true that we attribute it primarily to humans; that it is not inherent in animals or inanimate objects? It is the form of human inner life. We might roughly define it as self-conscious and rational thought and will.

The question now arises: does the Inner Life of the One also take on this form? We shall respond: we do not claim to provide an exhaustive definition of the inner nature of the All-Effective; that would be as futile an endeavor as if a worm attempted to provide definitions regarding the form and content of human spiritual life. However, we can assert, with some justification, that the distinction between human inner life and divine life must, in every case, be profound and significant—so profound that there can be no homogeneity between them. Neither the will nor the thought of the One—if we can indeed speak of His will and thought—can be grasped through the categories of our existence.

As for the will, it has its origins in our impulses and desires, commensurate with the condition of a limited and needy being. A rational will is nothing other than a certain kind of self-regulation of impulses through reason. To the One, we cannot ascribe such functions; being devoid of need, it possesses no desires, and thus does not possess will in the human sense. Furthermore, outside of itself, there exist no objects toward which such a will might be directed. Theologians express this by attributing to God a state of perfect contentment. Similarly, God cannot be ascribed activity in the sense that is applicable to humanity. Theologians ascribe to Him, as an active being, omnipotence. Yet the activity of an omnipotent being differs from our own not only in extent but also in kind. For our activity, the opposition between intention and execution, goal and means, is essential; we first form a conception of something that does not yet exist, and then, as if outsmarting things that exist independently of us, we compel them to serve our purposes. In God, the desire and the execution must coincide: He thinks, and it comes to pass; reality is His volitional and existent thought, or, in the words of Spinoza, it is the unfolding of His actuosae essentiae. The same holds true for the moral attributes of humanity: they cannot be transferred to God; there can be no talk of obligations or virtues when applied to the divine. Self-control, moderation, and courage presuppose desire and fear; justice and goodwill presuppose self-restraint and the sacrifice of one’s own inclinations. In order to be merciful and kind, as humans are, God must become human.

The same applies to the intellectual aspect. Our knowledge originates from the senses. Based on perceptions, we form concepts, the significance of which lies solely in their encapsulation of contemplative representations. Even regarding our own essence, we acquire knowledge in no other way. Another essential feature of our thinking is the opposition of I and non-I; our self-consciousness is linked to the distinction between the self and the external world. None of this pertains to the One. Theologians attribute omniscience to God. They have not overlooked that omniscience differs from our knowledge not only in scope but also in nature: the thought of God, as scholastic philosophy asserts, is not discursive, proceeding through concepts, but intuitive; yet this intuition is not like our contemplative knowledge, which is bound by space and time: God perceives all things at once, as present, past, and future. Clearly, we have no conception of such knowledge or consciousness; human knowledge has its boundaries stripped away, but this simultaneously removes any specificity. Intuitive understanding remains an empty schema that we are unable to fill.

If, in accordance with this, it is impossible to ascribe to God the form of human inner life, then it would also be impossible to attribute to Him personality in the sense that we apply it to people. The difficulty is resolved only if we strip this concept of all human limitations; however, in doing so, we also remove all content from it.

Everyone would agree with this were it not for the fear that God would lose some of His dignity if deprived of the predicate of a personal being; then, it would seem, He would only be referred to as an impersonal being, placing Him among entities lower than humans.

But this apprehension is unfounded. Pantheism, as understood here, does not seek to deprive God of anything or deny Him anything other than human limitation. It considers the definition of God through the concept of personality to be unattainable solely because this concept is too narrow for the infinite fullness and depth of His being. However, to assuage this concern, pantheism could designate God as a super-personal being—not to define His essence but to indicate that it seeks the essence of God in a direction that elevates rather than diminishes human spiritual life. It might also add: if anyone wishes to call God a personal being in this sense, it sees no obstacle to that. Since human spiritual life is the highest and most significant thing we know, we can conceive of God only through the human being in its most exalted form. When art attempts to depict God, it renders Him in the corporeal image of a human, not presuming that God truly possesses a human form but because the noble aspect of humanity represents the most elevated and significant corporeal image for us. In precisely the same sense, we may ascribe to God the spiritual image we honor in the best and greatest of men. When we speak of His holiness, wisdom, goodness, and bliss, these are symbolic expressions that do not define His essence in concepts like that of a human being but rather hint at the direction in which we seek to understand Him.

This represents a possible and inevitable anthropomorphism of every religion. We know no spirit apart from the earthly human spirit; therefore, we envision God in similar terms—not because He is inherently such, but because our representations do not extend beyond what we experience. Thus, this anthropomorphism necessarily goes further; every nation attributes to God an image that aligns with its perceptions of goodness and beauty, dignity and holiness. As Goethe expresses:

In the inner life, there is also a universe, From this arises the praiseworthy custom of nations, That each names that which is best known to him As God, his God.

He bestows upon Him heaven and earth, Fears Him and, as far as possible, loves Him.

In such symbolic anthropomorphism, philosophical thought and religious faith extend their hands to one another. Knowledge does not protest against this; emerging from its own premises toward the concept of the All-Unity, which it cannot define in content, it allows the poetically creative spirit of the people, or the religious genius, to create accessible representations and images for us instead. Conversely, religious faith is far from considering its symbols as scientific concepts; they represent something infinitely higher and more significant than scientific notions and formulas—so much higher as God is above human thought and understanding. The discord between philosophy and religion ignites only when either philosophy seeks to exclude faith, asserting that the concepts of science encompass and exhaust all reality, regarding those symbols as mere childlike dreams devoid of value, or valuable only to a populace incapable of conceptual thought. Or when religion, or rather the ecclesiastical community, begins to present its symbols as concepts, and its dogmas as truths accessible to scientific proof, demanding from all thinkers, under the threat of being labeled heretics or atheists, that they engage in this same confusion. In both cases, a deadly animosity arises. Reason revolts against faith that claims to be the only true science. The soul and imagination rebel against a philosophy that leaves no room for faith and poetry. Conversely, faith, unwilling to be anything but faith, and philosophy, which acknowledges the limits of human knowledge, can always coexist alongside one another. Each individual, according to their personal predisposition or education, may lean more towards one side or the other, just as they may be more gifted or have greater interest in either exploration and science or in art and poetry; yet everyone can and should cultivate a sense and awareness of both aspects of spiritual life. This perspective was paved by Kant during the last significant turn of time. Schleiermacher introduced it into theology. I shall return to this, but I cannot refrain from citing here a passage from his speeches on religion. Schleiermacher discusses the possibility of reconciling philosophical pantheism with religious faith, stating: if the pantheist does not conceive of God as a personality, this may be grounded in "the humble awareness of the limitations of personal consciousness in general and particularly also in relation to personality." Whether one thinks of God personally or not primarily depends on the direction of one's imagination; indeed, ultimately both types of representation are not so far apart, "only one must not mentally import death (the inert state of being) into one, while from the other one must strive with all one's might to eliminate mental boundaries." He adds that anyone who insists on considering piety as dependent on the acknowledgment of the representation of God's personality has too narrow a worldview in the realm of piety; even the most profound works of the most diligent defenders of his own faith should remain foreign to him. Schleiermacher here refers to mystics.

The usual concepts through which the debate on theism and pantheism is conducted are those of transcendence and immanence; theism teaches of God's transcendence, while pantheism speaks of God's immanence in the world. To characterize the view expressed above in these terms, I would say: immanence and transcendence are not mutually exclusive opposites. Theism cannot exclude God's immanence in the world; if God is the creator and sustainer of all things, then His power within those things imparts reality to them at every given moment. On the other hand, philosophical pantheism does not exclude transcendence: God and nature do not merely coincide. This pertains primarily to the quantitative aspect; the nature visible to us is finite, while God is infinite; nature vanishes within Him, but He does not vanish within it; the world known to our cosmology is but a drop in the ocean of reality. This also applies to the qualitative aspect; the essence of things, as it presents itself to us, cannot be entirely alien to God; yet God's essence is infinite, and it cannot be exhausted by the definitions of reality that we perceive, whether body and spirit, extension and thought—or however we might label the most general qualities of reality. Therefore, God is transcendent to the extent that His infinite essence infinitely surpasses the reality granted to us. It would be idolatrous to suppose that the essence of God dissolves within the given nature and essence of creation. Moreover, philosophical pantheism is generally more distant from such idolatry than theism, which, abstractly defining God's essence by the attributes of human nature, often reveals a questionable inclination toward false immanence.

"Well," a supporter of the old orthodoxy might say, "all this sounds nice and wonderful; listening to it, everything seems tolerable; yet nonetheless, it is not so." What religious sentiment demands is a God with whom it can enter into a personal relationship. Such a relationship is possible if God stands outside and above the world as a personal separate being; it is impossible with the All-Unity or All-Acting. Furthermore, what religious sentiment demands is a God who feels alongside His creations, listens to their prayers, shows compassion in their needs, and stands as a close helper to them. This is possible for a God who stands above the natural course of things as the governor of the world; however, the Spinozan substance does not listen to prayers nor performs miracles.

As for the first point, we would have to reiterate what was just said in examining the question: Is God Himself a personal being? A personal relationship is, first and foremost, a relationship as it exists between distinct individuals—a relationship in which there is a mutual exchange of thoughts, feelings, and actions. No one, not even the boldest anthropomorphism, would dare assert that such a relationship could exist between a human and God; nor would anyone have the courage to say that there exists such a relationship as that between parents and children, between friends and neighbors.

However, we cannot, without forcing the language, use this word in a broader sense. The relationship of an individual to their people is likely to be considered personal rather than impersonal; in any case, it holds immense significance for their feelings and thoughts, for their actions and life. The strongest impulses arise from this connection; for the sake of their people, the hero works and fights; in the belief that it will serve to their benefit and honor, the political martyr willingly endures scorn and persecution. The poet anticipates understanding and a joyful response from their people, and if their words resonate in the soul of the nation, they know and feel it. In a similar, albeit more nebulous, sense, we can describe the personal relationship of the pious individual to God. They lead their life in honor of God; indeed, how could any good deed or pure, beautiful life not serve in honor of God? The crusader sees himself as a champion of God, the missionary as a worker in the construction of His kingdom; he is assured of God’s goodwill—how could he not find in this consciousness strength, comfort, and bliss?

Yet the God of pantheism does not possess feelings; how can there be talk of goodwill in a senseless All-One? But should the All-One or the All-Unity (perhaps there are those who find difficulty in pantheism primarily because it is indifferent to grammatical gender more than they find permissible) not be conceived as insensate? I think pantheistic philosophy need not acquiesce to this notion—if God is reality as the singular, self-sustaining inner life, then everything occurring at any point in reality must hold significance for God, as a moment of His essence. True, it would be cautious to refrain from attributing human feelings to God, yet it must equally guard against denying Him anything at all. Spinoza speaks of the love and bliss of God, not implying that human emotional states occur in God in the same manner, but rather positing that what occurs in individual beings must be embedded within the essence of the infinite from which they originate. Could He who created the eye be incapable of seeing, or He who created the ear be incapable of hearing? Thus, we might say: could He who created feeling not also feel? Yet here, as in the phrases “seeing and hearing,” the term “feeling” is not used in its literal sense. These expressions are not rendered meaningless by this: they serve as designations holding the value of symbols for the ineffable and unexpressible. The Scriptures convey this thought: God dwells in light which no one can penetrate. Natural theology presumes to comprehend God through human thought; it speaks of God much as one might speak of a colleague whose thoughts are fully understood and explored. The relationship of the pious to God rests not on understanding but on faith.

But how, it is said, does it stand with the hearing of prayers and the performing of miracles? It is here that we approach the very essence of religion. The burdened soul seeks a helper to avert the evils posed by the natural course of events. Yet, only God, standing above the natural course of things, can accomplish this, not a God manifesting within it.

I believe Spinoza would respond to such an objection roughly thus: in any case, these are the soul's needs, and his philosophy does not encourage expecting their satisfaction from God. He does not dare to think that expressing a desire could effect any changes in the natural course of things. While prayer, as an internal phenomenon within the soul, may have some effect on one’s spiritual life, he does not consider it likely that it could, for example, divert lightning or a bullet from their paths or, like the prayer of Elijah, bring fire down from heaven.

In truth, the matter here is not one of evaluation and interpretation, but of factual reality: can prayers serve as an effective means to bring about changes in the natural course of events, whether consistently or only occasionally? By a priori means, we cannot resolve this either for or against the efficacy of prayer. Thus, a resolution could only be achieved through empirical methods, perhaps through experiments akin to those performed by the prophet Elijah before the priests of Baal, or possibly by statistical methods. One might conceive of something like the following: would a correlation not emerge between the frequency of harm from storms and the inclination toward that transcendent form of protection, which indeed varies by region; do large cities not experience it more often than villages? Or might one not demonstrate such influences on other phenomena, such as hailstorms, livestock mortality, etc., in fields and livestock under varying circumstances? Or, after private and communal prayers for protection against diseases and death, against epidemics and inflation have become less frequent, has there not been a corresponding increase in the latter and a corresponding decrease in average life expectancy? I do not think the demand for such evidence would find any favor, perhaps already the mere mention of its possibility would be seen by some as a desecration—a sign that faith does not rest upon investigation and observation but precedes them, resolving to avoid any testing through experience.

However, there is certainly no doubt that this faith is rapidly retreating. Initially, we find it widespread everywhere; this is undoubtedly one of the oldest and most universal religious beliefs of humankind, that the recitation of certain formulas and the performance of certain actions serve to avert evil and achieve good; yet, as knowledge of things has expanded, this faith has receded. In the world of European peoples, this retreat has been noticeable since the advent of modern scientific inquiry. As meteorology clarified the phenomena of the heavens, and physiology and pathology elucidated the phenomena of bodily life, natural means of protection and salvation have increasingly supplanted supernatural means. We cannot strictly prove that natural causality has no exceptions or gaps, but we have gradually grown accustomed to presuming it.

Yes, finally, we have no reason to be dissatisfied with this. While it may be harsh in individual cases that the natural course of events is relentless, overall, we could scarcely wish for regularity to yield to caprice. If the desires expressed in prayer could move mountains, halt the sun, or summon rain and sunshine, bringing forth life and death, we would gain nothing from it. Reality directs us toward knowledge and labor, and this is also consistent with our nature. Such power over things we could trust unreservedly only to a will that entirely merges with the will of God. Yet, such a will desires nothing other than what God desires, and indeed, this is what occurs.

It is evident that Christianity does not encourage the inclination of man to achieve, through supernatural means, those results he cannot attain by natural ones. The essence of Christianity lies in diverting the heart from earthly goods and turning it toward heavenly and eternal ones. Jesus bequeaths to His disciples not earthly happiness and prosperity, but peace with God and in God. Their prayer corresponds to this; in its orientation toward internal spiritual goods, it signifies, in fact, the end of the old magical prayer, which originally arose from the needs and helplessness of the sensual person. Its premise is this: your heavenly Father knows what you need; and its conclusion is: Thy will be done, not mine. Its aim is not the subjugation of the natural course of things through supernatural means but the taming of one’s own heart, which, through obstinacy and despair, cannot reconcile itself with its fate and submit to it.

However, — the subsequent objection arises — pantheism, by equating God with reality, annihilates that quality of God which alone constitutes His divinity: absolute goodness and bliss. I cannot and must not venerate reality or believe in it as it presents itself to me in empirical data. The world, as it exists, is entirely unworthy of reverence; the insignificant and the evil exist in it just as the good does. Pantheism erases the distinction between good and evil; it posits all that is real as divine, as an expression of the All-One, thereby obliterating the concept of God.

I would contend: this is a misunderstanding. The pantheistic view of the world does not obligate us to honor and regard as perfect and divine everything that occurs. Certainly, it assumes that nothing real is alien to God; yet the essence of God Himself remains transcendent. All that is transitory — as we might say along with Goethe — is merely a semblance. But not every semblance is comprehensible to you. Therefore, you select what you understand and perceive in it the revelation of the divine essence; all else you leave aside.

Let us consider a contrasting example. You regard your nation with feelings of reverence. You sang in your youth and still sing: I have devoted myself, both in heart and deed, to live and die for my homeland. But what is this homeland, this nation, to which you dedicate your very self, your strength, and your life? Is it the aggregate of individuals you know and with whom you interact? Are they the people you encounter in daily transactions, with whom you conduct business or hold some office? Certainly not; you pay indifference to most of them, and some even anger you. Or is it that closer circle with which you are more intimately connected—your acquaintances, good friends, colleagues, and superiors? One might hope that among them, you would find a few whom you respect and value; yet, when speaking of them, you likely recognize certain deficiencies that they possess concerning perfection; and to live and die for them — no, you fundamentally understand not this. Nevertheless, the feeling with which you sing your song is utterly sincere. Where, then, is this nation? It resides in the heart of your mother, in the language she taught you, in your song that penetrates your heart, in the face of your child, in the fidelity of a friend, in the love of a woman; it gazes at you even from the blue eyes of a strange child playing at the roadside; it dwells in every word of teaching and wisdom imparted to you by your faithful teacher, in the memory of your deceased loved ones, in the images of those great individuals whose examples have uplifted you, whose thoughts have enriched you: it is itself the image you have created for yourself, the ideal being, the features of which you have borrowed from the most cherished, the best, and the noblest that you have encountered. And thus you declare, setting all else aside: this is my nation, that which it truly is, wherein its true essence is manifested, inexhaustible, as the infinite riches and depths remain concealed from me.

And in precisely the same way do you relate to reality in general. That which in nature and history moves you most profoundly and brings you the greatest happiness, you embrace in a single image and say: here is the true essence, the deepest meaning and content of reality. You gaze upon the setting sun and revel in its light; you inhale the spring air and feel the pulse of nature; you witness the emerging greenery and the countless beings moving harmoniously, you behold the mountains and the sea, the sky and the eternal stars, and you declare: this is the creation of God! You read the works of great poets and prophets from all times and peoples, you strive to contemplate their thoughts and embrace their eternal images, and you sense in them the breath of the Spirit of God. You listen to the Gospel, delve into the words and life of Jesus, you experience the stories of His suffering and death, and you exclaim with the centurion: truly, this was a righteous man and the Son of God. Here the meaning of life is revealed to you, the significance of things; this is what reality exists for and why it is.

Admittedly, alongside this also exists another reality, insignificant, banal, evil. Beside Jesus stands the arrogance and hatred of the scribes, the smug self-satisfaction of the Pharisees, the shameful obsequiousness of the procurator, who panders to the masses, the bloodthirstiness of a blinded populace, the baseness of the traitor, and the weakness of the renouncer; all of this exists, and it is equally real. Nevertheless, you assert: this is not essential in this historical event; what is essential is the life and death of the innocent and righteous one; this is the great event that moves the world, while all else is merely incidental and a means necessary for its realization and expression, not an integral part or fragment of it.

Of course, this is a matter of personal volition. To those who do not feel this way, you cannot provide proof. To someone who asserts that Malchus the slave or the crowing rooster are equally real, that there is no distinction justifying the preference of one over the other, you cannot compel. It is not reason that establishes this distinction, but the heart; for reason regards all that is real as equally real; the distinction between the important and the trivial, the essential and the accidental is not made by the intellect, but by the will. The heart tells you what is properly and truly real among the infinite plenitude of the actual. Were someone utterly devoid of heart, merely a pure intellect, everything would seem equally significant, or rather, all would appear equally meaningless. This occurs with one who has lost their heart, who has emptied their soul — this happens to the sated individual.

Thus, the distinction of a cosmological conception that someone has formed regarding the origin and structure of reality does not fundamentally produce any difference in this regard; the pantheist, just as the theist, will make a choice regarding what they find to embody their own meaning or the true essence of things, and they will do so guided not by cosmological speculations, but by that immediate engagement that things evoke within their souls. Theist holds no other grounds for their decisions. If the latter judges based on the Bible, it ultimately occurs based on the significance that the book and its content hold for them. And if they accept the ecclesiastical interpretation of things, the authority of the Church rests upon its representation to them as a form of life that is absolutely significant historically.

Yet one might think that in constructing these things, theism possesses an advantage. Pantheism must derive from its All-One both the good and the evil, thus rendering the standing of God in relation to good and evil again questionable. Theism so separates God from the world that it frees Him from the deficiencies of empirical reality.

Certainly; yet such liberation is purchased at a singular cost: the cost of dualism. If one allows for two fundamental principles, then, indeed, one can attribute responsibility for all evil to the malign principle, to matter, or to the devil, while preserving the other principle as the foundation for all that is good and favorable. However, as is well known, ecclesiastical doctrine has not wished to pay this price. Thus, theism, even in this regard, holds no decisive advantage over pantheism. If God created all things from nothing, then they are and remain His creation; and any attempts to deflect the imperfections of this world onto something else are futile; the intellect will never find satisfaction in them. Wherever one might seek the primal cause of evil and malice, whether in the free will of humans or in fallen angels, the intellect will always step further and inquire into the cause of that first cause; and once a human or angel has a reason for their existence, they will also seek in it the cause of their nature, finding it approximately alongside Jacob Boehme in the dark primal foundation, in God, or with Leibniz — in the metaphysical boundary of His creative power.

It can be more readily asserted that for pantheism, the construction of these facts is more manageable. It may either declare, alongside Spinoza, that reality and perfection are univocal concepts, dismissing any apparent incongruence as mere accidents of our notions of good and evil, perfect and imperfect; or, adopting the perspective of evolutionary pantheism, it can characterize the process of reality’s development as a progressive and perfecting self-realization of the idea, wherein the perfect is found at the end rather than at the beginning. Whatever merit these constructions may possess, they lack the offensiveness inherent in the notion that an omnipotent and all-seeing will has arbitrarily brought this world into existence as absolutely good, only for it to be subsequently so marred by an utterly capricious fall of a single creation that it must be regarded as the domain of the devil.

When Auycilius Vanini once articulated a view reiterated by John Stuart Mill in his posthumous essays on religion—namely, that God desires all people to attain bliss, while the devil wishes for their destruction—he pointed out that since all nonbelievers, all heretics, are perished individuals, and that among the members of the Church, all those who die in mortal sin and in opposition to the Church are likewise lost, the result is that the will of the devil is enacted to an overwhelmingly terrifying degree. When he expressed this, he was burned at the stake—a mode of argumentation that neither satisfies reason nor soothes the heart.

I cannot assert that the considerations just outlined regarding pantheistic theodicy offer us definitive answers, yet they possess a certain soothing quality. Moreover, theistic attempts at theodicy have ultimately followed similar paths: discussions regarding the ineffectiveness of evil or belief in the ultimate restoration of all things lead precisely to the same conclusion.