Catholic Church and Pandeism

Relations between the Catholic Church and Pandeism have historically largely been critical, with the Church having an openly hostile view on Deism (one aspect of Pandeism), and condemning the early pandeistic thought of John Scotus Eriugena as heretical, and finding the similar elements of Giordano Bruno grounds for his execution.

Various Catholic thinkers have since generally disputed the theological premises of Pandeism, and its component elements of Pantheism and Deism, but some within the Church have also attempted to use Pandeism as an umbrella under which to bring other religions closer to Catholicism. More recently, Pope Francis has been accused by some Conservative Catholics of leading the Church towards a more pandeistic theology.

Early on

Eriugena

German Max Bernhard Weinstein examined the philosophy of 9th century Irish theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena, who proposed that "God has created the world out of his own being", and identifies this as a form of pandeism, noting in particular that Eriugena's vision of God was one which does not know what it is, and learns this through the process of existing as its creation.[1] In his great work, De divisione naturae (also called Periphyseon, probably completed around 867 AD), Eriugena proposed that the nature of the universe is divisible into four distinct classes:

Irish theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena's writings were condemned as heretical by the Church.
1 – that which creates and is not created;
2 – that which is created and creates;
3 – that which is created and does not create;
4 – that which neither is created nor creates.

The first stage is God as the ground or origin of all things; the second is the world of Platonic ideals or forms; the third is the wholly physical manifestation of our Universe, which "does not create"; the last is God as the final end or goal of all things, that into which the world of created things ultimately returns to completeness with the additional knowledge of having experienced this world. A contemporary statement of this idea is that: "Since God is not a being, he is therefore not intelligible... This means not only that we cannot understand him, but also that he cannot understand himself. Creation is a kind of divine effort by God to understand himself, to see himself in a mirror."[2]

De divisione naturae was condemned by a council at Sens by Honorius III (1225), who described it as "swarming with worms of heretical perversity," and by Pope Gregory XIII in 1585. In 1681, the long-lost work was found at Oxford University, and was immediately placed on the 'Index of Forbidden Books', a turn of events which likely actually spurred its popularity. Despite this result, the Catholic Encyclopedia noted of Eriugena that "there can be no doubt that he himself abhorred heresy, was disposed to treat the heretic with no small degree of harshness..., and all through his life believed himself an unswervingly loyal son of the Church."

Weinstein also found that thirteenth century Catholic thinker Bonaventure—who championed the Platonic doctrine that ideas do not exist in rerum natura, but as ideals exemplified by the Divine Being, according to which actual things were formed—showed strong pandeistic inclinations.[3] Of Papal legate Nicholas of Cusa, who wrote of the enfolding of creation in God and the unfolding of the divine human mind in creation, Weinstein wrote that he was, to a certain extent, a pandeist.[4]

Giordano Bruno

Weinstein found that pandeism was strongly expressed in the teachings of Giordano Bruno, who envisioned a deity which had no particular relation to one part of the infinite universe more than any other, and was immanent, as present on Earth as in the Heavens, subsuming in itself the multiplicity of existence.[5] This was reiterated by others including Discover editor Corey S. Powell, who wrote that Bruno's cosmology was "a tool for advancing an animist or Pandeist theology."[6][7]

The Venetian Inquisition had Bruno arrested on 22 May 1592. Among the numerous charges of blasphemy and heresy brought against him in Venice, based on Mocenigo's denunciation, was his belief in the plurality of worlds, as well as accusations of personal misconduct. Bruno defended himself skillfully, stressing the philosophical character of some of his positions, denying others and admitting that he had had doubts on some matters of dogma. The Roman Inquisition, however, asked for his transfer to Rome. After several months of argument, the Venetian authorities reluctantly consented and Bruno was sent to Rome in February 1593. After a seven year trial there, he was put to death.

Italian theologian Giordano Bruno was charged with heresy and burned at the stake for propounding what has been deemed by some commentators to be a pandeistic ideology.

During the seven years of his trial in Rome, Bruno was held in confinement, lastly in the Tower of Nona. Some important documents about the trial are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940.[8] The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology. Luigi Firpo speculates the charges made against Bruno by the Roman Inquisition were:[9]

Bruno defended himself as he had in Venice, insisting that he accepted the Church's dogmatic teachings, but trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular, he held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the Inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. On 20 January 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death. According to the correspondence of Gaspar Schopp of Breslau, he is said to have made a threatening gesture towards his judges and to have replied: Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam ("Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it").[10]

He was turned over to the secular authorities. On Ash Wednesday, 17 February 1600, in the Campo de' Fiori (a central Roman market square), with his "tongue imprisoned because of his wicked words". He was hung upside down naked before he was finally burned at the stake.[11][12] His ashes were thrown into the Tiber river. All of Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1603.

1800s

In the 1820s to 1830s, pandeism received some mention among Catholics in Italy. In 1834, publisher Giovanni Silvestri posthumously published a volume of sermons of Italian Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano; 1759–1829), who named pandeism as being among beliefs he condemned, railing against "Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Schismatics, Heretics, Pandeists, Deists, and troubled, restless spirits."[13] Nannetti further specifically criticized pandeism, declaring, "To you, fatal Pandeist! the laws that create nature are contingent and mutable, not another being in substance with forces driven by motions and developments."[14] Within a few years thereafter came the 1838 publication of an anonymous treatise, Il legato di un vecchio ai giovani della sua patria ("The Legacy of an Old Man to the Young People of his Country"), whose author, discussing the theory of religion presented by Giambattista Vico a century earlier, mused that when man first saw meteor showers, "his robust imagination recognized the effects as a cause, then deifying natural phenomena, he became a Pandeist, an instructor of Mythology, a priest, an Augur."[15] Neither Nannetti nor the 1838 author defines pandeism distinctly enough to cleanly distinguish it from pantheism, or possibly polytheism. But, again in 1838, another Catholic Italian, phrenologist Luigi Ferrarese in Memorie Riguardanti la Dottrina Frenologica ("Thoughts Regarding the Doctrine of Phrenology") critically described Victor Cousin's philosophy as a doctrine which "locates reason outside the human person, declaring man a fragment of God, introducing a sort of spiritual pandeism, absurd for us, and injurious to the Supreme Being."[16]

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) recounts Catholic opposition in this period to both the deistic and pantheistic elements of Pandeism. Of Deism, it said:

The deistical tendency passed through several more or less clearly defined phases. All the forces possible were mustered against its advance. Parliaments took cognizance of it. Some of the productions of the deists were publicly burnt. The bishops and clergy of the Establishment were strenuous in resisting it. For every pamphlet or book that a deist wrote, several "answers" were at once put before the public as antidotes. Bishops addressed pastoral letters to their dioceses warning the faithful of the danger. Woolston's "Moderator" provoked no less than five such pastorals from the Bishop of London. All that was ecclesiastically official and respectable was ranged in opposition to the movement, and the deists were held up to general detestation in the strongest terms.[17]

Of Pantheism, it said:

The Church has repeatedly condemned the errors of pantheism. Among the propositions censured in the Syllabus of Pius IX is that which declares: "There is no supreme, all-wise and all-provident Divine Being distinct from the universe; God is one with nature and therefore subject to change; He becomes God in man and the world; all things are God and have His substance; God is identical with the world, spirit with matter, necessity with freedom, truth with falsity, good with evil, justice with injustice" (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Ench.", 1701). And the Vatican Council anathematizes those who assert that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same, or that all things evolve from God's essence (ibid., 1803 sqq.).[18]

Later on

Charles Anselm Bolton states in a 1963 article, Beyond the Ecumenical: Pan-deism?[19] that he "first came upon this extension of ecumenism into pan-deism among some Roman Catholic scholars interested primarily in the 'reunion of the churches,' Roman, Orthodox, Anglican", and wondered, "what is the ultimate aim of the Curia in promoting the pan-deist movement."[19] Bolton noted the usefulness of this path in connection to the tendency toward Pandeism in Asia, stating that "to unite with Hindus and Buddhists, Christians should explore the hidden reality—the “ultimate reality,” the infinite, the absolute, the everlasting, the all-pervading spirit that marks the religious experience of the Orient."[19] The impact of this line of thought on Christianity was examined by Rousas John Rushdoony, who wrote in his 1971 The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy that “The position of Pope Paul came close to being a pan-Deism, and pan-Deism is the logical development of the virus of Hellenic thought,” and further that “a sincere idealist, implicitly pan-Deist in faith, deeply concerned with the problems of the world and of time, can be a Ghibelline pope, and Dante's Ghibellines have at last triumphed."[20] Theologian Bert B. Beach wrote in 1974 that "during the Vatican Council there was criticism from WCC Circles" to the effect that "ecumenism was being contaminated by “pan-Deist” and syncretistic tendencies."[21] In 2013, Catholic author Al Kresta observes that:

"New Age" cosmologies reject materialism, naturalism and physicalisma. They are commonly pantheistic or pandeistic. They frequently try to commandeer quantum physics and consciousness studies to illustrate their conception of the cosmos.[22]

Renegade priest Paul Kramer has deemed Pope Francis "a pandeist who does not believe in the transcendent God and Creator of Catholicism, but in the immanent ‘divine principle’ of Paganism, the life giving world soul (anima mundi) within the Universe", describing this as a creed "remarkably like a synthesis of the belief systems of Lord Shaftsbury (sic), Friedrich Schleiermacher, Benedict Spinoza, Auguste Compte, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin."[23]

References

  1. ↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Nature") (1910), page 283-84: "Johannes Scotus Erigena (um das 9. Jahrhundert in Irland geboren) läßt in einer seiner mehreren Ansichten alles von Gott emaniert sein. Gottes Klarheit, welche mit Recht auch Dunkelheit genannt wird, breite sich über alles aus. Die ungeformte Materie soll nur das Unendliche bedeuten, welches, da es formlos sei, alle Formen in sich enthalte. Gott hat die Welt aus seinem eigenen Wesen gebildet. Jedes Geschöpf ist eine Theophanie, ein Sichoffenbarmachen Gottes. Gott sei an sich vorhanden wie ein Gedanke im Menschen bestehe; er manifestiere sich in der Welt durch sich selbst, wie ein Gedanke, der sich denkt, sich selbst zur Erkenntnis komme. So sei Gott ohne die Welt absolut negativ. Es klingt wie eine Blasphemie, wenn gesagt wird, Gott wisse nicht, was er sei, und er werde erst geschaffen mit der Schöpfung, indem er sich in seiner Schöpfung offenbart, die Schöpfung so aus Nichts hervorbringend. Das ist auch fast so abstrakt wie die indische Tad-Anschauung. Freilich bleibt es bei diesem absoluten, und ja auch nicht zu durchdringenden, Pandeismus nicht. Wie der Indier muß Scotus Gott doch etwas zuschreiben, Willen, und die Geschöpfe sind dann Willensakte. Der Wille ist persönlich als Emanation Gottes (als Christus) gedacht, wie wohl auch die Ursachen (zusammengefaßt als Heiliger Geist), die Scotus von Gott ausgehen läßt, Emanationen sind, und die Wirkungen, die wieder von ihnen ausgehen, Emanationen ihrer selbst darstellen."
  2. ↑ Jeremiah Genest, John Scottus Eriugena: Life and Works (1998).
  3. ↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Nature") (1910), page 303: "Andere Ganz- oder Halbmystiker, wie den Alanus (gegen 1200), seinerzeit ein großes Kirchenlicht und für die unseligen Waldenser von verhängnisvoller Bedeutung, den Bonaventura (1221 im Kirchenstaate geboren), der eine Reise des Geistes zu Gott geschrieben hat und stark pandeistische Neigungen zeigt, den Franzosen Johann Gersan (zu Gersan bei Rheims 1363 geboren) usf., übergehen wir, es kommt Neues nicht zum Vorschein."
  4. ↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Nature") (1910), page 306: "Er ist bis zu einem gewissen Grade Pandeist. Gott schafft die Welt nur aus sich (de nullo alio creat, sed ex se); indem er alles umfaßt, entfaltet er alles aus sich, ohne doch sich dabei irgend zu verändern."
  5. ↑ Max Bernhard Weinstein, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Nature") (1910), page 321: "Also darf man vielleicht glauben, daß das ganze System eine Erhebung des Physischen aus seiner Natur in das Göttliche ist oder eine Durchstrahlung des Physischen durch das Göttliche; beides eine Art Pandeismus. Und so zeigt sich auch der Begriff Gottes von dem des Universums nicht getrennt; Gott ist naturierende Natur, Weltseele, Weltkraft. Da Bruno durchaus ablehnt, gegen die Religion zu lehren, so hat man solche Angaben wohl umgekehrt zu verstehen: Weltkraft, Welt seele, naturierende Natur, Universum sind in Gott. Gott ist Kraft der Welt kraft, Seele der Weltseele, Natur der Natur, Eins des Universums. Bruno spricht ja auch von mehreren Teilen der universellen Vernunft, des Urvermögens und der Urwirklichkeit. Und damit hängt zu sammen, daß für ihn die Welt unendlich ist und ohne Anfang und Ende; sie ist in demselben Sinne allumfassend wie Gott. Aber nicht ganz wie Gott. Gott sei in allem und im einzelnen allumfassend, die Welt jedoch wohl in allem, aber nicht im einzelnen, da sie Ja Teile in sich zuläßt."
  6. ↑ Corey S. Powell, "Defending Giordano Bruno: A Response from the Co-Writer of 'Cosmos'", Discover, March 13, 2014: "Bruno imagines all planets and stars having souls (part of what he means by them all having the same "composition"), and he uses his cosmology as a tool for advancing an animist or Pandeist theology."
  7. ↑ David Sessions, "How 'Cosmos' Bungles the History of Religion and Science", The Daily Beast, 03.23.14: "Bruno, for instance, was a 'pandeist', which is the belief that God had transformed himself into all matter and ceased to exist as a distinct entity in himself."
  8. ↑ "II Sommario del Processo di Giordano Bruno, con appendice di Documenti sull'eresia e l'inquisizione a Modena nel secolo XVI", edited by Angelo Mercati, in Studi e Testi, vol. 101.
  9. ↑ Luigi Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno, 1993.
  10. ↑ Discussed in Dorothea Waley Singer, Giordano Bruno, His Life and Thought, New York, 1950, ch. 7.
  11. ↑ Fitzgerald, Timothy (4 December 2007). Discourse on Civility and Barbarity. Oxford University Press. p. 239. ISBN 978-0-19-804103-0. Retrieved 11 May 2017.
  12. ↑ "Il Sommario del Processo di Giordano Bruno, con appendice di Documenti sull'eresia e l'inquisizione a Modena nel secolo XVI", edited by Angelo Mercati, in Studi e Testi, vol. 101; the precise terminology for the tool used to silence Bruno before burning is recorded as una morsa di legno, or "a vise of wood", and not an iron spike as sometimes claimed by other sources.
  13. ↑ Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano), in Sermons and Panegyrics of the Father Filippo Nani of Lojana, Giovanni Silvestri, publisher, 1834, p. 284, Sermon XVIII: Miracles: "Ma questa religione predestinta col taumaturgo segnale si trova ella nel mondo i' Dove? in qual gente? in qual lido? Nelle sinagoghe giudaiche, o nelle meschìte dell l'Asia? Nelle pagoda cinesi, o nella società di Ginevra? Giudei, Maomettani, Gentili, Scismatici, Eretici, Pandeisti, Deisti, geni torbidi, e inquieti." ("But this religion predestined by the thaumaturgist signal, where in the world is she? in which people? on which shores? In Jewish synagogues, or mosques of Asia? Pagoda in Chinese, or in society in Geneva? Jews, Muslims, Gentiles, Schismatics, Heretics, Pandeists, Deists, and troubled, restless spirits.")
  14. ↑ Padre Filippo Nannetti di Bibulano (aka il Filippo Nani, Padre da Lojano), in Sermons and Panegyrics of the Father Filippo Nani of Lojana, Giovanni Silvestri, publisher, 1834, p. 286, Sermon XVIII: Miracles: "A te, fatal Pandeista! le leggi della creata natura son contingenti e mutabili; non altro essendo in sostanza che moti e sviluppi di forze motrici."
  15. ↑ Il legato di un vecchio ai giovani della sua patria" ("The Legacy of an Old Man to the Young People of his Country"): "Il selvaggio Nomado ex lege arrestato nelle spelonche dallo spavento, e dall'ammirazione con l'imponente spettacolo delle meteore, per la prima volta rivolse sopra se stesso lo sguardo della debole ragione, conobbe un potere fuori di lui più colossale della sua erculea brutalità, e per la prima volta concepì un culto. La robusta immaginazione gli fe ravvisare gli effetti come causa, quindi deificando i fenomeni naturali divenne un Pandeista, un istitutore della Mitologia, un sacerdote, un Augure." ("The wild nomad (who lived outside the law) stopped in the caves with fear and admiration at the impressive meteor shower, for the first time saw that reason was powerless, experienced a most colossal power outside himself of his Herculean brutality, and for the first time he understood worship (or conceived of a cult). His robust imagination recognized the effects as a cause, then deifying natural phenomena, he became a Pandeist, an instructor of Mythology, a priest, an Augur.").
  16. ↑ Luigi Ferrarese (1838). Memorie risguardanti la dottrina frenologica (in Italian). p. 15. Dottrina, che pel suo idealismo poco circospetto, non solo la fede, ma la stessa ragione offende (il sistema di Kant): farebbe mestieri far aperto gli errori pericolosi, così alla Religione, come alla Morale, di quel psicologo franzese, il quale ha sedotte le menti (Cousin), con far osservare come la di lui filosofia intraprendente ed audace sforza le barriere della sacra Teologia, ponendo innanzi ad ogn'altra autorità la propria: profana i misteri, dichiarandoli in parte vacui di senso, ed in parte riducendoli a volgari allusioni, ed a prette metafore; costringe, come faceva osservare un dotto Critico, la rivelazione a cambiare il suo posto con quello del pensiero istintivo e dell' affermazione senza riflessione e colloca la ragione fuori della persona dell'uomo dichiarandolo un frammento di Dio, una spezie di pandeismo spirituale introducendo, assurdo per noi, ed al Supremo Ente ingiurioso, il quale reca onda grave alla libertà del medesimo, ec, ec.
  17. ↑ "Deism", The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913).
  18. ↑ "Pantheism", The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913).
  19. 1 2 3 Charles Anselm Bolton, "Beyond the Ecumenical: Pan-deism?", Christianity Today, 1963, page 21.
  20. ↑ Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy (1971 [2007]), Ch. VIII-7, p. 142-143.
  21. ↑ Bert Beverly Beach, Ecumenism: Boon Or Bane? (1974), p. 259 (quoting George H. Williams, Dimensions of Roman Catholic Ecumenism (1965), p. 31-32).
  22. ↑ Al Kresta, Dangers to the Faith: Recognizing Catholicism's 21st-Century Opponents, "Science and Warfare With Religion" (2013), p. 255-256, n. 30, ISBN 1592767257.
  23. ↑ Father Paul Kramer, "Jorge Bergoglio’s Religion — Freemasonry (Naturalism, Rationalism, Pandeism)", Biblical False Prophet (6 September 2016).

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