Who is God?
Part 5: Does God add anything to creation?
There are also links with ideas of pantheism and panentheism. With classic theism, God is that being who exists outside of, or apart from, creation. With such a God, you could switch the universe off and on again, and God would not be fundamentally affected in himself. With pantheism, God is understood as some sort of divine spirit that pervades creation. It is NOT saying that God is simply the same as creation, for God’s existence is adding something to creation that it would lack if there was just a material universe. However, God is completely contained within the universe, and it might be possible to argue that in some ways God IS simply the same as creation. I think a lot of Hindu thought veers in this direction. It produces a profound reverence for life, and enables a spirituality that holds life as supremely precious (as opposed, say, to a materialist, mechanistic view of the universe as simply made of stuff that is available for us to exploit). Pantheism could be thought of as simply declaring that creation IS divine. Whether we are still saying that God is adding something to creation, I’m not sure, but if we weren’t, it wouldn’t matter anymore for we are now conceiving of creation itself as deserving of the holy reverence that theists reserve for God. I think that panentheism is a view that attempts to combine theism with pantheism with the view that there is definitely a something extra existing in creation, which is God (whereas our thoughts on pantheism led us into doubt on this point), but God is still to be found entirely within creation.
For countless millions of people, this clearly counts as a completely satisfying conception of God, empowering a deeply religious life. For a theist like myself, it raises questions about whether we are still really believing in God, and whether this is truly different from secularism (though I have admitted to the attraction of the idea of a secular religion). However, we began with the severe difficulties that the theist view of God as an independent person raises, and we have certainly found a way here to continue believing in God, though now conceived as a spiritual force that either exists within creation (panentheism) or as a spiritual force that is synonymous with creation (pantheism – perhaps?).
Spiritual Devotion 