God is in Nature

You can feel the sacred permeating the cosmos.

God the Creator has placed beauty within nature. Most people experience awe at the beauty of nature. Whether it be a sunset over the ocean, majestic mountain view, or campfire dancing against the night, the magnificence of the natural world enchants us. This enchantment runs so deep that some people experience nature itself as holy. American naturalist John Muir writes:

Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields. . . . This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed.

The beauty of nature overwhelms Muir, to the point that he deems it divine. For him, natural beauty is not merely a pleasing arrangement of objects; it is an expression of God. Serving God-in-nature, Muir campaigned to protect America’s wilderness, eventually inspiring Teddy Roosevelt to establish America’s national park system.

Tragically, although Muir’s experience of God in nature was beautiful and produced beneficial change, the weight of the Christian tradition would deem it heretical. Traditional, dualistic Christianity insists that God is above the world (transcendent), not within it (immanent). The tradition worries that, if some people experience matter as holy, they will lose their sense of a personal God.

Traditional Christian theology denies the presence of God within the universe. Scholars of religion call the limitation of God to nature pantheism. Pantheism is constructed from the Greek roots pan (all) and theos (God): all is God. According to pantheists, the material universe is sacred, but there is no transcendent Creator in heaven. Prominent atheist Daniel Dennett observes:

Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm’s “Being greater than which nothing can be conceived,” it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.

Dennett’s vision appeals to atheists because it denies deity but preserves awe. It avoids the constraints of stifling religion, while celebrating science as aesthetic pleasure. Unbound from God, we are fascinated by nature. And in that fascination, we find new meaning and purpose.

This (non)religious, pantheistic vision is so attractive that traditional monotheists feel compelled to argue against it. Fearful that recognizing the divinity of nature will result in the elimination of God, these dualistic theists, who emphasize the Creator-creation distinction, exclude God from nature. They insist that God is utterly transcendent and in no way immanent, beyond but not within. Anglican theologian N. T. Wright sounds the alarm:

Biblical theology [makes] the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming the goodness of the other. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good; but it was not itself divine. . . . Collapsing this distinction means taking a large step toward pantheism.

For Wright, the divine presence within matter threatens to annihilate the divine presence in heaven. This concern is legitimate, as we have seen with Dennett’s declaration that nature is sacred but impersonal. Pantheism also risks decaying into mere materialism, the firm belief in matter’s existence coupled with a denial of all religious realities.

But Wright doesn’t merely critique pantheism; he also implicitly critiques panentheism. Panentheism is constructed from the Greek roots: pan (all)—en (in)—theos (God). All is in God, even as God exceeds that all. Thus, panentheism is the belief that God emanates the universe from God’s very own being, such that the universe participates in divinity. Panentheism recognizes nature as sacred, while also preserving the personal God of theism.

God is the soul of the universe. But how can God reside in the cosmos while also exceeding it? Panentheist theologians have objected that classical, dualistic theism divides the world (matter) from God (spirit), thereby dimming the brilliance of creation. As a correction, they assert the presence of God within the world through a soul-body analogy: God is the soul of the universe, just as the universe is the body of God. The soul-body analogy allows us to sense God within the universe even as God exceeds the universe, just as the soul resides within the body even as it exceeds the body.

In the passage above, “God” refers to either God the Sustainer (Abba) or God the Trinity, or both. Since Abba’s openness to Christ and Spirit is perfect, Abba’s soul is Trinitarian—living, open, and dynamic. Abba bears primary responsibility for creating and sustaining the universe, but Abba’s support thereof is inherently Trinitarian.

The soul-body analogy articulates our experience of God as both immanent and transcendent, both within and beyond. It ascribes the holiness of the universe to a source beyond, thereby celebrating the divinity of all reality, while preserving the personhood of God.

The soul-body analogy also implies that God feels the universe, just as we feel our own bodies. God the Sustainer (Abba), God the Participant (Jesus), and God the Celebrant (The Holy Spirit Sophia) are all God the Open, affected by creation just as creation is effected by God. Therefore, the divine sustenance of the universe is a continuous process that permeates the very being of God, rendering it the becoming of God.

The Bible warrants panentheism. We find warrant for panentheism in scripture. Even as the Hebrews visualized God on a heavenly throne, they were careful not to limit God’s presence to that throne. The Chronicler proclaims: “Who can build a house for God, whom heaven itself, even the highest heavens, cannot contain?” (2 Chronicles 2:6).

Not only does God’s personality fill the universe, God’s very being fills it as well. God is within all things, even as God exceeds all things. The book of Sirach states: “It is by God’s plan that each of these fulfills its own purpose; by the word of YHWH, they are held together. No matter how much we say, our words are inadequate. In the end, God is everything” (Sirach 43:26–28).

And in the Christian Scriptures, the apostle Paul takes up this sentiment multiple times: “Who has given God anything to deserve something in return? For all things are from God and through God and for God” (Romans 11:36); “There is one God and Creator of all, who is over all, who works through all and is within all” (Ephesians 4:6); “In [God] we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In Paul’s view, God is in all things, but not contained within them; and separate from all things, but not isolated from them.

Cosmic beauty comes from our cosmic God. From a Trinitarian perspective, the act of creation, which is continuous, includes all three persons: the Bible describes the cosmos as created through Christ, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and in whom all things hold together (Colossians 1:15–20). Likewise, the Hebrew Scriptures describe Wisdom, whom Christians would later identify with the Holy Spirit, as a manifestation of God, pervading all things, and more active than all active things (Wisdom 7:22b–25 DRA).

In this Trinitarian view, the Sustainer creates through both Christ and Spirit, so we find the imprint of the relational Trinity on our relational universe and within our relational selves. There is beauty in relatedness, especially loving relatedness. And we can see this beauty, whether it be a sunset over the ocean, majestic mountain view, or a campfire dancing against the night. When we are so enchanted, let no one deny that the experience of beauty is an experience of God. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 71-75)

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For further reading, please see:

Ali, Mukhtar. “Islam and the Unity of Being.” In Nondualism: An Interreligious Exploration, edited by Jon Paul Sydnor and Anthony J. Watson. Maryland: Lexington, 2023.

Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

McFague, Sallie. Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1987.

Stetson, Lee. The Wild Muir: Twenty-Two of John Muir's Greatest Adventures. San Francisco: Yosemite Conservancy, 2013.

Ramanuja. Vedarthasamgraha. Translated by S.S. Raghavachar. Madras: Vedanta, 1956.

Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2008.