The Evolution of Religious Thought and Ethical Perspectives

Brendan Graham Dempsey and I sat down with Philip Goff to discuss all things "pan": panmatheism, panentheism, pangentheism, panpsychism... oh, and Christianity!

Philip describes how he arrived at panpsychism: after initially embracing physicalism and even flirting with illusionism, he came to feel that reducing the mind to physical processes was incoherent. Turning to thinkers like Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and Galen Strawson, Philip concluded that some form of panpsychism—granting a fundamental place to consciousness throughout nature—offered the best solution to the mind-body problem. He also explains his subsequent journey into Christianity, linking it to philosophical considerations such as the fine-tuning argument, though emphasizing that his theistic turn happened quite separately from his acceptance of panpsychism. Nevertheless, he now finds the two views mutually illuminating.

From there, Brendan connects Philip’s views to “Metamodern” spirituality, which incorporates traditional religious insight while avoiding dogmatism. He adocates for his emergentist understanding of the divine as in some sense identical to the developing capacities of human consciousness.

Whitehead argued that religion must come to embrace change with the same spirit as does science. Any attempt to revise, reform, or revolutionize traditional interpretations will, of course, be considered heretical by conservative religious communities and church hierarchies. Yet on my reading, revelation is ongoing, and part of what the rise of modern natural science requires of us is a recognition that revelation is not solely a function of scripture but also of our knowledge of the evolving universe itself—the book of nature. I put forward a participatory vision where human beings have become empowered to seek ever deeper understanding of the world rather than merely inheriting Aristotle’s or Aquinas’s views (etc.).

The rise of modern science led to a more humanist orientation, increasing secularity, and eventually a conception of science itself as supposedly free of any theological roots. But if you look at the history of the development of science, you find a background assumption of a rational Creator who designed a world intelligible to our rational souls. Without that theological backdrop—which the earliest modern scientists took for granted—this notion of a rational, lawful cosmos amenable to scientific investigation might never have occurred to them. Whitehead argues similarly (see Science and the Modern World), contrasting Europe with Chinese civilization, which was more technologically advanced than Europe in the Medieval period but did not give rise to modern science in the same way, perhaps for want of European Christendom’s unique theological assumptions.

It can be unsettling for contemporary atheist scientists to learn that a mechanistic universe grew from a Deistic idea of a God who designed a world of laws from the outside. Bringing in a more panpsychist view challenges the supremacy of one divine designer and gestures toward a more Neoplatonic cosmogony, where divine power is “stepped down” through various levels of deities (or angelic hierarchies), each performing a unique function in communicating the divine intent. In this more panpsychist vision, organisms have their own internal purposiveness and do not need to be designed from without. As an inheritor of Whitehead’s thought, I welcome Philip’s idea of a God with limited power. Process theologians like John Cobb also emphasize a Biblical basis for the view of a God who is not “Almighty” in the traditional sense of omnipotent but might be better described as “all-nourishing” (a better translation of אֵל שַׁדַּי/El Shaddai)—suggesting that patriarchal scriptural translations have often overshadowed more relational or nurturing images of God.

I use a couple of other terms to convey this evolutionary, processual understanding of the Divine, such as “pangentheism,” emphasizing that God becomes ever more incarnate in and as the cosmos, even as the cosmos and human beings strive to become more divine. I appreciate Teilhard de Chardin for describing incarnation not as a one-time event in the person of Jesus but as the very process of cosmogenesis. Teilhard can lean too much toward an overly teleological view culminating in an Omega Point, so I prefer Whitehead’s more open-ended notion of a creative lure drawing creation into deeper communion. In Whitehead’s theology, God is never finished creating; God suffers alongside creatures in order to become more fully divine. Similar ideas appear in Carl Jung’s reading of The Book of Job, where Yahweh is portrayed as initially unconscious and immature, vulnerable to Satan’s dare: “But stretch out Your hand and strike everything [Job] has, and he will surely curse You to Your face” (Job 1:11, paraphrased). Yahweh succumbs to his own Satanic shadow, torturing Job in an attempt to prove his mightiness. The plain immorality of Yahweh’s behavior functions to elevate Job (who remains faithful despite it all) morally above God, thus requiring the Incarnation so as to integrate the shadow material represented by Satan’s temptation (thus it is not just Eve who succumbs to Satan’s temptation, but Yahweh, too).

My own process theology draws heavily on the concept of participation, which originates in Plato’s methexis, but is transformed by thinkers like Schelling, who granted the human a co-creative role rather than casting us as mere copies of eternal forms. In Whitehead’s scheme, God has both a primordial and a consequent nature. The primordial side relates to the universe’s tendency toward harmony rather than total chaos, offering an “ideal lure” to every creature. This ideal does not determine our choices but provides a sense of contrast and possibility. The consequent nature of God responds to our need for atonement and communion, saving what beauty can be salvaged from the wreckage of history. Whitehead suggests that the power of God is the worship God inspires—meaning God can only work through the human hearts (and other creaturely activities) who lovingly respond to the divine ideal. It is not a vision of a God outside the universe but of an internal transcendence, accessible in every moment of creative decision.

I also mention Descartes’s insight that simply knowing our own finitude implies some innate sense of an infinite perfection, a phenomenological hint at the existence of God. While Descartes bears criticism for other reasons, I see value in his observation that an idea of the infinite could not simply originate in a finite mind. More broadly, biblical languages—such as the plural sense of Elohim—illustrate the multiplicity in Divinity, and thinkers like Teilhard de Chardin offer images of how “unity differentiates,” leading to ever deeper personalization of individuals in collective communion. We do not lose our individuality as we unite with the divine; rather, we experience an enhanced relationality. This relational ontology is also mirrored by the Trinity, where Love is amplified through the interplay of distinct persons.

Ultimately, for me, all these threads come together to suggest that a vibrant, open-ended process—at once cosmological, psychological, and theological—is central to understanding the divine presence in a way that invites us to participate in body and in spirit in the continual renewal of the world.