Pantheism Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===19th century=== ====Growing influence==== During the beginning of the 19th century, pantheism was the viewpoint of many leading writers and philosophers, attracting figures such as [[William Wordsworth]] and [[Samuel Coleridge]] in Britain; [[Johann Gottlieb Fichte]], Schelling and Hegel in Germany; [[Knut Hamsun]] in Norway; and [[Walt Whitman]], [[Ralph Waldo Emerson]] and [[Henry David Thoreau]] in the United States. Seen as a growing threat by the Vatican, in 1864 it was formally condemned by [[Pope Pius IX]] in the ''[[Syllabus of Errors]]''.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Pope BI. Pius IX|title=Syllabus of Errors 1.1|url=http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Pius09/p9syll.htm|website=Papal Encyclicals Online|access-date=28 July 2017|date=9 June 1862}}</ref> A letter written in 1886 by [[William Herndon (lawyer)|William Herndon]], [[Abraham Lincoln]]'s law partner, was sold at auction for US$30,000 in 2011.<ref name=Letter>{{cite web|title=Sold – Herndon's Revelations on Lincoln's Religion|url=http://www.raabcollection.com/abraham-lincoln-autograph/Abraham-Lincoln-Autograph-Religion/|publisher=Raab Collection|access-date=5 June 2012|first=William|last=Herndon|format=Excerpt and review|date=4 February 1866}}</ref> In it, Herndon writes of the U.S. President's [[Abraham Lincoln and religion|evolving religious views]], which included pantheism. {{blockquote|"Mr. Lincoln's religion is too well known to me to allow of even a shadow of a doubt; he is or was a Theist and a Rationalist, denying all extraordinary – supernatural inspiration or revelation. At one time in his life, to say the least, he was an elevated Pantheist, doubting the immortality of the soul as the Christian world understands that term. He believed that the soul lost its identity and was immortal as a force. Subsequent to this he rose to the belief of a God, and this is all the change he ever underwent."<ref name=Letter /><ref name=Lincoln>{{cite news|last=Adams|first=Guy|title='Pantheist' Lincoln would be unelectable today|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pantheist-lincoln-would-be-unelectable-today-2269024.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pantheist-lincoln-would-be-unelectable-today-2269024.html |archive-date=24 May 2022 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|access-date=5 June 2012|newspaper=The Independent|date=17 April 2011|location=Los Angeles}}</ref>}} The subject is understandably controversial, but the content of the letter is consistent with Lincoln's fairly lukewarm approach to organized religion.<ref name=Lincoln /> ====Comparison with non-Christian religions==== Some 19th-century theologians thought that various pre-Christian religions and philosophies were pantheistic. They thought Pantheism was similar to ancient Hinduism<ref name=Worman/>{{rp|pp. 618}} philosophy of [[Advaita]] (non-dualism) to the extent that the 19th-century German Sanskritist [[Theodore Goldstücker]] remarked that Spinoza's thought was "... a western system of philosophy which occupies a foremost rank amongst the philosophies of all nations and ages, and which is so exact a representation of the ideas of the [[Vedanta]], that we might have suspected its founder to have borrowed the fundamental principles of his system from the Hindus."<ref>Literary Remains of the Late Professor Theodore Goldstucker, W. H. Allen, 1879. p. 32.</ref> 19th-century European theologians also considered Ancient Egyptian religion to contain pantheistic elements and pointed to Egyptian philosophy as a source of Greek Pantheism.<ref name=Worman/>{{rp|pp. 618–620}} The latter included some of the [[Presocratics]], such as [[Heraclitus]] and [[Anaximander]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Thilly |first=Frank |title=Pantheism |encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Part 18 |editor-last=Hastings |editor-first=James |publisher=Kessinger Publishing |date=2003 |orig-year=1908 |page=614 |isbn=9780766136953}}</ref> The [[Stoics]] were pantheists, beginning with [[Zeno of Citium]] and culminating in the emperor-philosopher [[Marcus Aurelius]]. During the pre-Christian Roman Empire, [[Stoicism]] was one of the three dominant schools of philosophy, along with [[Epicureanism]] and [[Neoplatonism]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Armstrong|first=AH|title=The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy|year=1967|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978052104-0549|pages=57, 60, 161, 186, 222}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=McLynn|first=Frank|title=Marcus Aurelius: A Life|year=2010|publisher=Da Capo Press|isbn=9780306819162|page=232}}</ref> The early [[Daoism|Taoism]] of [[Laozi]] and [[Zhuang Zhou|Zhuangzi]] is also sometimes considered pantheistic, although it could be more similar to [[Panentheism]].<ref name="ReferenceA"/> [[Cheondoism]], which arose in the [[Joseon]] Dynasty of Korea, and [[Won Buddhism]] are also considered pantheistic. The [[Realist Society of Canada]] believes that the consciousness of the self-aware universe is reality, which is an alternative view of Pantheism.<ref>{{cite web |title=About Realism |publisher=The Realist Society of Canada |url=http://www.realistsocietyofcanada.com/ |access-date=5 February 2022}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page