I need to reread this, and thank you for writing it, but I am immediately reminded of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s discussion of “God as Creator” in chapter 3 of The Orthodox Way. There is a lot of the same language about God being present even at the atomic level. They call this Panentheism which I think is an apt descriptor of the Orthodox view of God. You might find more purchase in this perspective of the Christian God than the “rational even unto death” cyborg that the Catholics sometimes create
Was a literal Genesis creation story ever the consensus in 19th century Germany? I haven’t seen much investment in YEC outside some heinous Protestant camps.
Nope, nowhere in Europe. By 1820s the idea of a global flood was abandoned and by 1850s estimates of the age of the Earth were upwards 40 million years. What's funny is that nearly everyone was at first very accepting of this, but around the 1920s there was a widespread Christian backlash against scientific materialism. You see this in America's Butler Act/Scopes trial especially
Neo-Platonicism wasn't monist at all, neither was most Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy as the likes of Heraclius, Thales, etc never denied the existence of the supernatural and the spiritual (non-material). Both Plato and the Neo-Platonics believed that everything emanates from The One (God), but they never taught that The One and the Universe were the same thing. They were more accurately described as Panentheists rather than Pantheists.
Hell, even Spinoza rejected being called a Pantheist as even he (who rejected Orthodox Judaism, Biblical History and any notion of an afterlife) thought Pantheism was stupid on logical and scientific grounds and could more accurately be called a Panendeist.
Yes there's several subcategories of this, but as it pertains to distinguishing it from theism, "monism" has been used for all of these in both history & (then) contemporary academia simply because they all are fundamentally non-dualist.
I need to reread this, and thank you for writing it, but I am immediately reminded of Fr. Seraphim Rose’s discussion of “God as Creator” in chapter 3 of The Orthodox Way. There is a lot of the same language about God being present even at the atomic level. They call this Panentheism which I think is an apt descriptor of the Orthodox view of God. You might find more purchase in this perspective of the Christian God than the “rational even unto death” cyborg that the Catholics sometimes create
Was a literal Genesis creation story ever the consensus in 19th century Germany? I haven’t seen much investment in YEC outside some heinous Protestant camps.
Nope, nowhere in Europe. By 1820s the idea of a global flood was abandoned and by 1850s estimates of the age of the Earth were upwards 40 million years. What's funny is that nearly everyone was at first very accepting of this, but around the 1920s there was a widespread Christian backlash against scientific materialism. You see this in America's Butler Act/Scopes trial especially
Neo-Platonicism wasn't monist at all, neither was most Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophy as the likes of Heraclius, Thales, etc never denied the existence of the supernatural and the spiritual (non-material). Both Plato and the Neo-Platonics believed that everything emanates from The One (God), but they never taught that The One and the Universe were the same thing. They were more accurately described as Panentheists rather than Pantheists.
Hell, even Spinoza rejected being called a Pantheist as even he (who rejected Orthodox Judaism, Biblical History and any notion of an afterlife) thought Pantheism was stupid on logical and scientific grounds and could more accurately be called a Panendeist.
Yes there's several subcategories of this, but as it pertains to distinguishing it from theism, "monism" has been used for all of these in both history & (then) contemporary academia simply because they all are fundamentally non-dualist.