I’d never heard of “panentheism”—until today. I’d previously heard of pantheism, which is clearly unbiblical, but some aspects of panentheism sounds biblical. What are your thoughts? — C.M.
This term can be biblical, if properly freighted—otherwise it can mislead, and even veer on the side of New Age. The fundamental point is God's immanence and his transcendence. These are, respectively, terms scholars used to indicate his presence (or omnipresence) and his otherness, loftiness, and distance from us. For a nice explanation, see the article by Christopher Watkin.
I thought Wikipedia’s entry on panentheism was quite good, so I have adapted that article for you, correcting some minor errors:
Panentheism ("all in God”) from the Greek πᾶν, pân, ‘all’, ἐν, en, ‘in’ and Θεός, theós, ‘God’) is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 (after reviewing Hindu scripture) to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.
In panentheism, the universal spirit is present everywhere, which at the same time “transcends” all things created. Whilst pantheism asserts that “all is God,” panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe. Some versions of panentheism suggest that the universe is nothing more than the manifestation of God. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God, like in the Kabbalistic concept of Tzimtzum, or with the Sufi concept of Wahdat al-wujud. Much of Hindu thought is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.
