Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters (2018), one of the most exciting recent works in the philosophy of religion, queers the history of western religious thought by challenging centuries of anxious rejections of “pantheism”—the identification of world and divinity. Pantheologies explores the liberatory potential of a “pluralist pantheism” blurring long-hallowed distinctions in religion, philosophy and science, exposing the gendered and racialized assumptions structuring canonical views of the world and its meanings. Rubenstein’s investigations bring into spirited conversation Baruch Spinoza and Donna Haraway, Giordano Bruno and William James, Lynn Margulis and Albert Einstein, Amerindian perspectivalism and Paul Tillich, the “new animism” and the prodigiously boundary-transgressing figure of Pan. In this single-text class we work our way through Rubenstein’s rich and multifaceted argument, following up references and extending her insights in our own thought and work.
Today we dove into the book itself, discussing the introductory chapter where Rubenstein maps out her project. Students had written thoughtful responses online beforehand, which gave us much to work with. What's meant by pantheism, how is it different from panentheism and atheism, why has it been so vociferously criticized throughout western intellectual history, and what are the practical implications of Rubenstein's "pluralist" pantheism? These are lofty questions and the chapter we read is just an introduction; we'll get deeper into all of these in the coming weeks. Our modus operandi is to spend a week reading a chapter and another week researching some of its important sources and interlocutors - for this opening section teams will be exploring Grace Jantzen, whose argument for pantheism as a form of feminist theology is one of Rubenstein's inspirations; William James, source of the idea of "pluralist" pantheism; a book about the sinister racial underpinnings of the pantheism of the 19th century "American renaissance"; and the figure of Pan.
Today's most interesting discussion, however, came from a student's surprise that Rubenstein of all people still "capitalizes the word 'God'." Who'd have thought there was so much to be said about God vs god (vs G-d), its connection to divinity or Divinity, sacred or Sacred, Earth or earth? (I reminded the class that this was a very modern English problem; there is no capitalization in many languages, and in English even a few centuries ago all nouns were capitalized, as they still are in German.) Rubenstein prefers the word divinity for the very reasons the student was surprised, but from Jantzen took the lesson that the metaphysical and ethical implications of the notion of a transcendent male God make this a term which needs to be reclaimed and revalued; left alone, as seen in many garden variety atheisms, it lives on, unquestioned as the only possible thing divinity could be. But if it's a bad description of what divinity is, mired in human limitations and cultural biases, pantheistic unpacking may be God's work!
An interesting tangent to this discussion was what pronouns to use for divinity. (In recent years we've all thought a lot about pronouns and their powers and dangers - though in the human context.) I told how I'd at one point started using "His" instead of "his," knowing it to be a kind of theological coming-out. Now, like many do, I use "God's" - human understandings of gender should have no place here - but it feels a little contrived. Better Wil Gafney's gloriously unwieldy she, he, they, One who is three, seven, twelve, many? Rubenstein, not working within biblical tradition, challenges us to stare down all conceptions of “humanoid” divinity. Maybe it would be better to use the plural "their"? ("Their"?) There may be occasions for the impersonal "its," too. But also, depending on your kind of pantheism, "my" and "our." Head spins ahead!