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Single Idea 7256

[filed under theme 28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 2. Pantheism ]

Full Idea

Everyone in Utopia agrees that the Supreme Being (which they call Mythras) is identical with Nature.

Gist of Idea

In Utopia, the Supreme Being is identical with Nature

Source

Thomas More (Utopia [1516], Bk 2)

Book Ref

More,Thomas: 'Utopia', ed/tr. Turner,Paul [Penguin 1965], p.118


A Reaction

This sounds remarkably like full-blown Spinozean pantheism, though it should be interpreted with caution. It certainly seems to show that pantheism was a possibility in the minds of late medieval religious thinkers.


The 12 ideas with the same theme [view that God and nature are identical]:

Earth, food, fire, sun are all forms of Brahman [Anon (Upan)]
Antisthenes says there is only one god, which is nature [Antisthenes (I), by Cicero]
The cosmos and heavens are the substance of god [Zeno of Citium, by Diog. Laertius]
Stoics say god is matter, or an inseparable quality of it, or is the power within it [Stoic school, by Chalcidius]
Everything existing proceeds from divinity, and is within divinity [Porphyry]
In Utopia, the Supreme Being is identical with Nature [More,T]
That God is the substance of all things is an ill-reputed doctrine [Leibniz on Spinoza]
Everything is in God, and nothing exists or is thinkable without God [Spinoza]
God is the efficient cause of essences, as well as of existences [Spinoza]
The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God [Spinoza]
To say that nature or the one universal substance is God is a pernicious doctrine [Leibniz]
Pantheism destroys the distinction between good and evil [Kierkegaard]