Panentheism: Why matter Matters

In our modern age, we are often haunted by a "disenchanted" world: A cosmos where matter is viewed as mere mechanical "stuff" and God is reimagined as a distant watchmaker who has long since retreated from his creation. This theological poverty, which often drifts into a "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," leaves many feeling spiritually homeless in a universe that seems indifferent to our existence. However, the ancient Christian worldview offers a far more vibrant and "thick" description of reality. By returning to the conviction that the Infinite Creator is not just "out there" but "in here," upholding every atom by the power of the Spirit, we find ourselves standing on holy ground. As the Apostle Paul reminded the philosophers of Athens, God is the one in whom "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

The thoughts presented here are an invitation to move beyond the shallow waters of modern nominalism and dive into the deep pool of Panentheism, Theosis, and Sacraments. We will explore how the ancient Church understood salvation not as a legal transaction in a heavenly courtroom, but as a transfiguring union with God: A process where we become, as the Apostle Peter wrote, "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4). We will see how the physical world, far from being a distraction from the spiritual life, is actually the primary laboratory of God's presence, where humble elements like bread, wine, and water become the conduits of Divine energy. Drawing on the insights of thinkers like St. Athanasius, who famously argued that "God became human so that humans might become divine", we find that matter is not a prison for the soul but a "theophany", a visible showing of God’s invisible glory.

As we navigate the crucial distinction between a God who is separate from creation and a God who is distinct within it, we begin to see that the physical universe is the perfect vessel for Divine self-expression. Matter matters because it is the medium through which the infinite Creator relates to the finite creature, a truth that reaches its breathtaking climax in the person of Jesus Christ. For the curious mind seeking a faith that is both intellectually rigorous and deeply embodied, it becomes evident that panentheism is a logical corollary which naturally flows from the Trinity and Incarnation.

Searching for a Christian Worldview which truly supports the Incarnation

Recently, an online friend asked what are some aspects of modern Christian worldviews which would be different from, and deficient compared to, ancient Christian worldviews prior to 385 CE. I think I could sum it up with the ideas of Panentheism, Theosis, and Sacraments. Although those are terms that came to describe pre-385 beliefs, they were coined or used after 385.

Panentheism is the lively sense that we live and move and exist within God’s life, so that the Infinite Triune Creator fills and transcends the finite creation. Most modern Protestants assume that God is somehow separate from creation, trending often toward “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” over time. In this modern "Deistic" map, God is viewed as a distant watchmaker or an absentee landlord who winds up the universe and then retreats to a far-off heaven. This creates a massive chasm between the sacred and the secular, where God might "see" everything we do, and might even "visit" our world through an occasional miracle, but the material world itself is seen as fundamentally empty of Divine presence. To get to us through the hostile matter of the world, God has to punch God's hand into our universe every now and then to remind us God is still in heaven! Yet, God's presence is never constant, just his knowledge: He sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!

True panentheism, however, suggests a more intimate reality: God is not a character in the story of the universe, but its Author. And yet, like an artist’s relationship to their work, God is also the very ink and paper on which the story is written. As the Apostle Paul declared to the philosophers in Athens, God is the one in whom "we live and move and have our being". The Creator is not just "out there" but "in here," upholding every atom by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Theosis flows from this. It is the idea that salvation is to become by grace what Christ is by nature: Full and complete union with God, such that we are filled fully with God while still having a distinct sense of self. Many modern Christians— inspired from Catholic Augustinian and Protestant Reformed roots— instead teach that salvation is more of a judicial declaration that we are forgiven and considered not guilty through Christ. In this "judicial" model, salvation is a legal transaction that happens in a heavenly courtroom, but it does not really change us inwardly, or lead us to actually be infilled by God. It leaves the human person as a "whitewashed tomb": Clean on the outside by decree, but still decaying on the inside.

In contrast, the ancient vision of Theosis is a radical process of transformation and healing "from the inside out". It is rooted in the conviction of St. Athanasius, who proclaimed that "God became human so that humans might become divine". This is not about usurping God’s place, but about being caught up in the "divine dance" (or perichoresis) of the Trinity, where we are transfigured by God’s own light, love, and life.

And the means by which Christ accomplishes Theosis in us is through Sacraments: Ritual and action which focuses the universal presence of Christ to be experienced here and now. Most Protestants do not have a lively sense that sacraments really “do” anything. They are just bare signifiers for theological ideas: Mental reminders of a past event or an abstract doctrine. Now, there are parts of this that are not accurate for certain Protestant traditions. And most Protestant traditions have sought to find workarounds to append onto their nominalistic quasi-deist worldviews. For instance, both the doctrine of “sanctification” for the Reformed and “baptism in the Spirit” for charismatics are attempts to fill the void left by ignoring Theosis. But they can never fully duplicate this idea because their fundamental worldview is not panentheistic or sacramental. It is like trying to weld wings onto a station wagon to make it fly: It can never be truly successful or coherent or organic.

Sacraments are not just symbols; they are the "visible signs of invisible grace". When we participate in the Eucharist or Baptism, we aren't just thinking about Jesus; we are having a direct, sacramental encounter with the living Christ through the medium of matter. Matter— water, bread, wine, and even our own bodies— becomes the conductor for Divine energy. The wings of sacraments and theosis sprout organically the Incarnation which is possible due to Panentheism. It is the only truly Christian worldview that allows us to soar with Christ.

The poverty of many modern worldviews is that they so separate the Creator from the creation that matter becomes hostile to God's presence, not a suitable home for the Incarnate God. My support for Panentheism, Theosis, and Sacraments flows from the Incarnation. Not the other way around. The Incarnation is the most important event in all of History, and all reality inheres in and revolves around the Incarnation.

If matter were truly separate from God, then God could never have become flesh in the person of Jesus. But because the world is already "full of God's glory," as the prophet Isaiah saw, the material world is the perfect vessel for God’s ultimate self-expression. Jesus is "Myth Made Fact," the moment when the Author of the story becomes a character in his own play to show us what "humanity fully alive" truly looks like. In Christ, matter and spirit are not enemies. They are perfectly united, proving once and for all that matter matters.

Panentheism shows why matter Matters

Another online friend chimed in to clarify. They said:

“You say: 'Panentheism is the lively sense that we live and move and exist within God’s life, so that the Infinite Triune Creator fills and transcends the finite creation.' and many modern Christians 'assume that God is somehow separate from creation.' Your description of 'panentheism' is slightly different from my dictionary which says panentheism is: 'the doctrine that God includes the world as a part though not the whole of his being'; is your definition compatible? Or would you distinguish your sense from the dictionary? In short, do you believe that God is not separate from creation?”

I would say that the Dictionary is probably a good place to start but a bad place to end in trying to understand theology, since it is not written by or for theology (or philosophy or science or any specialized academic subject). For any specialized subject, it’s best to view the Dictionary as a diving board to enter into the deep pool of the subject being studied, rather than a complete definition of the subject. That said, I would say the definition is aiming toward the same place:

“God includes the world as a part.” This refers to Divine immanence in which God fills and flows through all of creation by the Holy Spirit. You can think of Scriptures here like St. Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus, where he quotes the Greek poets to affirm that in God “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). We see this again in the letter to the Ephesians, which describes Christ as “the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23), and speaks of “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6). This immanence suggests that God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as St. Augustine himself once mused (even though his theology was used by others to move away from this idea!).

“Though not the whole of his being.” This refers to Divine transcendence, in which God is beyond all realities and categories, and cannot be contained or limited by any other thing. Again, look up passages on transcendence. The Bible insists that not even the “highest heaven cannot contain” God (1 Kings 8:27), that God “dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16), and that God’s ways and thoughts are as far above ours “as the heavens are higher than the earth” (Isaiah 55:8-9). God is the horizon that always recedes; no matter how much we know of God, there is an infinite "more" that remains a mystery.

Pan-en-theism literally means “All-in-God” in Greek, and should be differentiated from “Pan-theism” (God is everything). With Pantheism, God is the Cosmos and no more, and all Nature is God. God is only immanent, not transcendent, and thus God is the impersonal energy at work in all things, no more responsive to you than electricity is. To the pantheist, the universe is a closed system of divinity: There is no "Thou" to whom the "I" can speak.

Pan-en-theism asserts God is both immanent and transcendent, never separate from creation, but not contained by creation either. God is personal and responsive, and can act and relate to us. God is not a Being alongside other beings— not just the biggest object in the room— but God is the very Being that causes all other beings to exist. As thinkers like Paul Tillich or David Bentley Hart might suggest, God is the "Ground of Being" or "Ultimate Reality," and all other realities exist within God.

This is why matter Matters, and why inert "stuff" has meaning and value. In a world where God is separate, matter is just "lumber": Dead, mechanical material to be used and discarded. But in a panentheistic world, matter is "theophany": A showing or revealing of God. As God says seven times in the first Creation poem of Genesis 1: Creation is "Good." It is a suitable and fitting kind of reality for the infinite God to relate to other finite selves, and reveal all the Divine potential within Godself in a universe of actual beings.

As Scripture says, “the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isaiah 6:3). If the world is full of God's glory, then the physical world is not a distraction from the spiritual life. It is the laboratory of our spiritual life. Thus material creation is a fitting place for God to become incarnate. Matter matters. Creation is Good. Because God is in all things, everything we touch is, in some sense, "holy ground."

Distinct But Not Separate: Creation as God’s Body

My friend then asked a follow-up, probing the nuances of our vocabulary:

“I think we may be stumbling over the word 'separate'; a better word might be, 'distinct' or 'not the same being as'? Panentheism was distinguished from orthodox Christianity insofar as (my thomistic catholic professors and texts taught) creation is distinct from, not the same as, God. The being of creation is made by God, and exists by participation in his being, but is not the same being as God, even as a part or an aspect. God is in the world as omnipresent, as its metaphysical foundation, as actively loving each part and the whole of creation, and as longing for communion with creation— but that movement toward communion itself implies a difference between Creator and creature— a 'separation' you might say.”

To which I reply: One frequently finds this kind of critique of Panentheism from Augustinian and Thomistic Catholics, as well as Reformed and Evangelical Protestants. I was both Reformed (4 point, Amyraldian) and Evangelical, as well as Charismatic. I also learned and read from Systematic Theologies (Calvin, Berkof, Geisler, Packer, Grudem, Erickson, Ott, Kreeft) the same distinction you named using pretty much the same verbal formula.

However, as I engaged more deeply with the broader Christian tradition, I began to see the limitations of this "separate-but-participating" model. Then I read the Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marion (God Without Being), followed by other classical Christian thinkers who rejected “Ontotheology,” including Anglican philosopher Keith Ward, Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware, and the American theologian David Bentley Hart. If you want to explore the intellectual scaffolding of this view, I suggest looking into these key works:

• Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: A critique of viewing God as just another "being" within the reach of human metaphysics.

• Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way: A beautiful introduction to the Eastern view of the divine energies and theosis.

• David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss: A rigorous philosophical defense of classical theism that aligns with panentheistic immanence.

• Keith Ward, God – a Guide for the Perplexed as well as Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine. This is a modern Anglican perspective on God’s relationship to the world.

I also found, as I was teaching Scripture and Theology to college prep students, how impossible it became to teach the "separate-but-participating" idea as you phrased it. I used very similar verbal formulations and I found that as I pushed on the walls of that idea, they didn't hold. It is incoherent, and really leads to one of three conclusions. Let me explain.

You start with the concession that perhaps "distinct" is better than "separate" to describe God and the world. I would agree. My body has organs that are distinct from the rest of me, yet are part of me. I do not have organs that are separate from me: Except for my tonsils, which were removed at age five. St. Paul uses this very analogy in 1 Corinthians 12, describing how the many members form one body, and we are the extended body of God Incarnate. This kind of claim really only makes sense if all of creation is the extended Body of God in a real way (and not just as a verbal metaphor). If we apply this to the cosmos, we see a reality where distinction does not require a vacuum between the parts and the Whole.

Then you say: “creation is distinct from, not the same as, God. The being of creation is made by God, and exists by participation in his being, but is not the same being as God, even as a part or an aspect.” This is actually a contradiction:

Option 1: If God is the Being that upholds all beings, then all beings are part of God and in God. As Colossians 1:17 says of Christ, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” If things hold together in Him, they cannot be outside or separate from Him. 

Option 2: If creation is distinct to the point of being separate, not the same as God, then God cannot be the Being that upholds all beings. God is transcendent and outside of creation, but not within creation. God may “see” what is in creation, and "jab his hand into" creation to do some miracles from time to time, but creation is separate from God, and has a separate self-subsistent existence from the being that is God.

Yet, both Option 1 and Option 2 cannot be true at the same time. God is either truly and really in all of creation, or God is not. This contradiction can lead to at least three resolutions:

Resolution 1: Ontotheology in which God is a Super Being: In this resolution, God is a Super Being alongside all other beings as the biggest, most powerful, most intelligent member of the set of all beings. All beings rely on something outside of themselves to actually exist: So God as Supreme Being and all lesser beings must participate in a larger level of Reality, which is Being itself. In which case God is demoted to "a god" and is derivative from a Source of Being which encompasses both God and cosmos. This results in a kind of monolatry where we worship god because he is so powerful and smart, but not because god is the Source of all Reality. This Ontothology may fit well with Latter Day Saint metaphysics, but it does not make sense of the idea of God in classical Christian theology. This is a very simplified version of the critique of “Onto-Theology” listed above.

Resolution 2: The Dualistic trend toward Deism: We opt for a kind of dualism. God by creating the world has imbued it with a power to exist which is now independent from Godself. God is still the Being of all beings, transcendent and beyond all, but has delegated “being making power” to something separate from Godself. God said “Let there be!” and spawned a cosmos separate from Godself. Again, in this situation, God can “see” all and occasionally interrupt natural laws to invade and do a miracle. But God is intruding into the realm of self-subsistent matter from the outside, realm of materiality that is antithetical and hostile to the realm of spirit. This extreme transcendence and rejection of immanence leads over time to questioning and then rejecting miracles, making the “God of the gaps” ever more distant and Deistic until God disappears altogether. Sure, current theologians may champion God as an interventionist Outsider, but their intellectual children will pick up their breadcrumbs and follow them to Deism then Atheism. This story happens in Protestantism over and over for the last 500 years.

Resolution 3: True Divine Immanence-in-Transcendence in Panentheism: We can insist on true Divine Immanence and say that creation is distinct within God but never separate from God. God is Being itself, and not just a Big Being alongside other beings. God is the Being that makes all other beings be, because God is upholding their existence within Godself at all times in all places. We might even ask: Is it possible to exist as a being without being upheld by Existence itself? How could one exist without Existence? If "God" is the name we give to Existence, to Being itself, then God is the only possible reality that can hold all beings in Being, and all existence in Existence. We do not need to posit a separate over-arching category of "Being" which God shares in along with all other beings. Instead, we insist that God is that Ultimate Reality in which all other realities inhere, subsist, and exist 

In this view, the material world is the perfect vessel for Divine action to occur because it is always occurring in and through the material world. Thus matter becomes a fully suitable medium within which God becomes uniquely Incarnate in Jesus. This third path preserves the Biblical witness that God is "all in all" while maintaining that the Creator is not merely the sum of the parts. It allows us to love the world as God's handiwork without confusing the sculpture with the Sculptor, yet recognizing the Sculptor's DNA in every stroke of the chisel.

Trinitarianism as the Christian logic and grammar of panentheism

Thus, panentheism is a logical corollary which naturally flows from the Trinity and Incarnation. It is not an "add-on" to Christian faith, but rather the internal logic of how we understand a God who is both entirely beyond us and entirely within us.

What makes Jesus unique— if we are all distinct embodiments of God— is that the same eternal Self of God chooses to become the finite Self of Jesus, whereas all other selves come into being at a certain point in the temporal process, and grow to become aware of themselves in God. This is the radical claim of the Hypostatic Union: In Christ, the Divine and the human are united without confusion or change in one Person, one Self. Think of it as the difference between a writer imagining distinct characters in themselves, versus imagining themselves as a character in the story they are writing. While the "characters" (you and I) exist because the Author thinks of us, the "Incarnate Character" (Jesus) is the Author appearing in the flesh to share the weight of the narrative from the inside.

This of course requires that immanence is balanced by transcendence. If God is only immanent Being (as in pantheism) then there is no outside reflective viewpoint for God to understand Godself as distinct from the cosmos that forms God’s “Body”. For God to be personal, as a Self we can relate to and love as a distinct person from ourselves, there must be transcendence: Godself beyond the set of all beings within Godself. Or to use logical terms: God as the Set of all sets, the Set that contains all other sets in Set-self. As St. Thomas Aquinas argued, God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens— subsistent Being itself— which means God must be "other" than the world, while directly upholding the world, in order to be the Source of the world.

Thus we get to one way of understanding the Trinity, in which the Trinity is the grammar of how we talk about a God who is transcendent and immanent and personal. There are other ways of unpacking the Trinity which are equally valid: God as Community in Unity, God as Thinker Thinking Thought, God Three Dimensions of One God, etc. But here we will focus on God as Three Relations within One Reality. I prefer "Relation" as my translation of hypostasis, (as in God as Three Hypostases in One Ousia). But "Aspect" or "Person" is fine too. 

The Relation of the Trinity that is transcendent— over all and beyond all— is “Our Father who art in Heaven,” the unoriginate Source and the "depth" of the Divine life that no eye can see. This Fatherhood is defined by an absolute transcendence; He is the "Father of lights" in whom there is "no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17). We see this reflected in the Psalmist’s praise of the One who is "high above all nations... who is seated on high, who looks far down on the heavens and the earth" (Psalm 113:4-6). This Divine Fatherhood is the cosmic archetype, the ultimate source from which "every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Ephesians 3:14-15), yet He remains the "High and Lofty One who inhabits eternity" (Isaiah 57:15). In this Relation, we encounter the Father as the mystical "Divine Darkness"—the silent, infinite abyss of Love from which the Word is eternally generated and the Spirit eternally proceeds.

The Relation of the Trinity that is immanent—in all and through all—is the Spirit, the Ruach, the Pneuma, the Breath of God that fills and animates all beings at all times just as our breath makes alive our bodies at all times. As we read in the Psalms, "When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground" (Psalm 104:30). This divine animation is personal and pervasive; as Job realized, "The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life" (Job 33:4). She is the Mother who births and actualizes Creation within the womb of Godself, which is the Cosmos.

As the Book of Wisdom beautifully asserts, "Your imperishable spirit is in all things" (Wisdom 12:1) and "the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world" (Wisdom 1:7). The Spirit is the "God-with-us" in the very fabric of our biology and the vastness of the stars, the One of whom the Psalmist famously asks, "Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there" (Psalm 139:7-8). She is the sustaining energy ensuring that no part of the material world is ever truly forsaken or empty of the Divine.

Finally, the Relation of the Trinity that is Personal— with us and for us— is the Son, the Logos, the Word, Message, Pattern, and Purpose of God. He is the full Self-expression of God, the very Mind of God, containing all possibilities and all worlds, out of which God actualizes these possibilities in a world of space and time and process. As the prologue of John’s Gospel tells us, "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word was God... All things came into being through him and apart from him nothing came into being" (John 1:1-18). The Father wills to create out of Love, the Spirit is the personal energy of creation, and the Son/Logos is the Pattern that creation is structured from. 

And when the time was right, the Logos becomes incarnate, embodied as a character in his own story, to show what the Pattern and Archetype is of humanity fully alive and fully aware of their union with God. The Infinite Divine Self who is the Message of God and Mind of God— who has been communicating God to creation at all times and in all places— becomes a finite human self at a certain time and a certain place. Jesus is God made human, Creator entering creation, Being become a being, Infinite within the finite, the Invisible seen as visible. What distinguishes him from all other persons— who are ALSO members of himself— is that he is the Infinite and Eternal Divine Self who becomes a finite and temporal human self. In distinction, we are finite and temporal selves slowing becoming aware that the Divine Self dwells in us and upholds us directly and intimately.

Thus, in the Incarnation of the Logos, we don’t just find a religious anecdote; we find the cosmic blueprint for all of reality. Matter is not a crude prison for the soul or an accidental byproduct of a distant Creator; it is the sacred temple of the Spirit, the very stage upon which the Divine Play unfolds. As St. Irenaeus famously noted, "The glory of God is humanity fully alive": And this life is only possible because we are already, by grace, "participants in the divine nature" (2Peter 1:4).

To be "in God" is not to be erased or absorbed into a faceless monad; it is to have our unique, material humanity finally, vibrantly, and eternally fulfilled. Because God is in all things and all things are in God, we can finally stop looking away from the world to find the sacred and start looking through it. Matter doesn’t just matter: It radiates the Divine Glory of the Trinity.