In the monistic pantheism of the Stoics, the substance of nature is the substance of God, and I can agree with that in the sense that nature evolves to Godhood. But nature itself is not God as the Stoics and pantheists suggested, since we evolve to Godhood in nature. I can see how God could almost be thought of as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood since the Spirit-Will is inside nature activating the material world, which helps create and sustain the world, but Godhood is what the Spirit-Will seeks by activating material life to evolve to Godhood, so the Spirit-Will cannot be God.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Theological materialism rather than monistic pantheism
In the monistic pantheism of the Stoics, the substance of nature is the substance of God, and I can agree with that in the sense that nature evolves to Godhood. But nature itself is not God as the Stoics and pantheists suggested, since we evolve to Godhood in nature. I can see how God could almost be thought of as the Spirit-Will-To-Godhood since the Spirit-Will is inside nature activating the material world, which helps create and sustain the world, but Godhood is what the Spirit-Will seeks by activating material life to evolve to Godhood, so the Spirit-Will cannot be God.
The Divine can be found in nature, even as the Pagans suggested,
but the Divine culminates in or is found at the zenith of our evolution to Godhood in nature, yet not in a
transcendent God outside of nature, even as we do affirm the God-Within
or the Father-Within of traditional religion, experienced within the mind-soul of man, which is a
symbolic-experience of real Godhood attained in material and
supermaterial evolution, and not a transcendence beyond material or supermaterial life. In this sense the Divine is only immanent and not transcendent
other than as the dynamic of higher evolution transcending past lower evolution as we evolve to higher beings.
Is the Spirit-Will identified with
"reason" as the Stoics believed? The Spirit-Will activates material life
toward the evolution of reason as a tool to help in our evolution to
Godhood, so in this sense reason is secondary to the Spirit-Will,
and reason isn't the Spirit-Will or God. However, Godhood
once attained would have the highest level of reason and truth
possible in the cosmos... This view of nature and the substance of nature leads to theological materialism rather than monistic pantheism.
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