I’m bringing back a post I had written a while back just because I like the subject thought it might stir some to deeper thought.

In studying about the distinction between ‘Pantheism’ and ‘Panentheism’ I came across a variety of definitions of which one is a kind of hardcore definition that goes something like this:
Panentheism (from Greek words: pan=all, en=in and Theos=God; “God-in-all”) is the view that God is immanent within all Creation or that God is the animating force behind the universe.
Pantheism means that the univere is all God or that God contains the universe inside himself.

I tended to lean towards the first mainly because I thought that most of my Christian friends rejected Pantheism outright and I had heard much preaching in the past about the evils of Pantheism, although I never fully understood exactly why. Then I found out there was an alternative view (Panentheism) which appeared more acceptable both to myself and to some of my old friends and preachers, not that it really matters anymore or at least in the same way that it used to.

And then I discovered the there are at least a couple of other distinctions or definitions concerning Panentheism itself, not to confuse the matter further, of course. On the one hand we have the Orthodox Christian (Eastern) and Oriental Orthodox Churches which call panentheism the relationship between the Uncreated (God, who is omnipotent, eternal, and constant) and His Creation that bears surface similarities with the panentheism described above but maintains a critical distinction, specifically, they teach that God is not the “stage magician god” who only shows up when performing miracles or the “watchmaker God” of the Western European Enlightenment. They also say that God is not merely necessary to have created the universe, but that His active presence is necessary in some way for every bit of creation, from smallest to greatest, to continue to exist at all. That is, God’s energies maintain all things and all beings, even if those beings have explicitly rejected Him. His love is such that he will not withdraw his presence, which would be the ultimate form of slaughter, not merely imposing death but ending existence, altogether. By this token, the entirety of creation is sanctified, and thus no part of creation can be considered innately evil except as a result, direct or indirect, of the ‘Fall of man” or similar active rebellion against God. It thus maintains an ontological gulf between the created and the Uncreated. Creation is not “part of” God, and God is still distinct from creation; however, God is “within” all creation, thus the parsing of the word is “pan-entheism” (God indwells in all things) and not “panen-theism” (all things are within/part of God but God is more than the sum of all things).

Okay. Now you’ve lost me. Will someone please explain to me how anything (even God) can be “more than the sum of all things”. This seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. “The sum of” means the totality of all that is which, it would seem, should include God. How is it that he/she/it? is excluded from the “all” of “all things”?
Okay, I realize that I have now ‘objectified’ God and made him a ‘thing’, a part of the objective world/universe as we know it and thus answered my own question. If God is not ‘transcendent’ from the world of normal apparent reality (Jim Dollar’s phrase), then what exactly is ‘God’? Okay, again, I realize that this one is probably unanswerable and is part of the ”mystery” we must all embrace but darn if it doesn’t bug the you know what out of me!

Well, now that I’ve totally confused myself and probably some others let’s see how many students of theology there are out there who’ve thought about such things. Any input is welcome. Thanks.