Comparison of Wahdat al-Wujud and Pantheism with respect to God’s relation to the Universe (EN)

                Is God immanent in the universe or is He transcendent? Or is He both immanent and transcendent? What is His relation to the universe? Is wahdat al-wujud the same thing with pantheism? These are the questions commonly asked in the philosophy of religion.

                When we say God is transcendent meaning that He is beyond the universe, such philosophical views are called theism and deism. If we say God is immanent then we call it monism, materialism and pantheism. Lastly if we say God is both transcendent and immanent we call it panentheism and wahdat al-wujud.

                In theism, the relation of God with the universe is quite important. In this system, we have a transcendental God with many names and attributes creating and interfering with the universe by organizing and regulating it. On the other hand, we have a universe being created in a way that deems it to be dependent. In this system, God is active and operative hence the universe is affected and passive.

                In deism, God’s functions are performed once. He creates the universe and gives it a self-sufficient system so there is no need for Him to interfere with the universe again. Since God has implemented such a system that does not require his attention, he retreats and becomes transcendent. After this process of coming to be, God’s relation with the universe is complete. In such a system, the process of creation is finite and since God does not intervene with the universe further down the line, we cannot talk about a revelation, messenger, scripture nor a religion.

                In pantheism, God is seen as immanent instead of transcendental. The reason why the universe and the things in it come to life is found in said things. The creator and the creation meaning God and the universe are nested. We will talk about it in detail later.

                In monism, existence is degraded to an idea, spirit or a matter etc. Creation is compounded with the creator, similar to pantheism. According to Hegel, it’s an “Absolute Idea”, for Fichte it’s “The Self”, in materialist systems it’s the atom. Materialist monism degrades God into materialist principles like Haeckel did. Idealist monism degrades God into a spirit and idea like Hegel did. Spinoza’s pantheist monism degrades everything into an entangled God.

                In panentheism, everything is counted within God. The existence of God encircles the universe and it is immanent in the universe. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause comes up with this idea just to separate his ideas from pantheist systems. Pantheism states that everything is God or that God is everything. Yet, according to panentheism everything is within God. Panantheism accepts God to be both transcendent and immanent.

                Pantheism

                God is everything or everything is God.

                There are two types of pantheism.

1)      Acosmic Pantheism: God is the only reality. The universe has no reality nor a separated substance(ousia). The universe is just the summation of several manifestations and emanations. Spinoza asserts pantheism as such. In such a system, God is believed to be infinite and the eternal reality whereas the universe is definite and mortal and it ends up with God. It’s called acosmism in the literature of philosophy. In acosmism, the universe is in a condition of being an illusion for God.

2)      Pancosmic Pantheism: The universe is the only reality. God is the summation of entities.

Acosmic pantheism is oriented toward theism and pancosmic pantheism is oriented towards atheism. In acosmic pantheism, there is a theistic God understanding and faith in Him. In pancosmic pantheism, God is just a name in the unity of existence. Acosmic pantheism is metaphysical, and is a physical approach. There is just a conceptual difference between them.

                The reason why we cannot understand the concept of God and why it’s a reality of metaphysics is because of our understanding of Him being transcendent.  But for Spinoza it’s not similar to what we think. He accepts one reality which is the substance that removes the duality between God and the Universe and makes them identical. Such an understanding makes Spinoza the first consistent and steady pantheist.

                Conceptually, the naturalist ancient philosophy was the source of pantheism. The first monistic understanding came from Thales of Miletus. For Thales, the source of everything(Arkhe); was water. Everything comes from water and will turn into water. A similar approach can be found in Anaximander’s apeiron and Anaximenes’ air. They were followed by Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Bruno, Spinoza and other philosophers up until today, where there are different views on the subject. We will focus on Spinoza for now.

                Spinoza puts forward his understanding of God’s relation to the universe on the reliance of the substance. According to him “Substance is something that is in existence by itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. Existence belongs to the nature of substances. Existence belongs to the nature of substances. One substance cannot be produced by another substance.”(Ethics, Definitions 1.1- Propositions 1.7,5,6)

                Such a way of understanding is quite different from the Cartesian way of understanding regarding substance. For Descartes, there is God as the substance, causing Himself to exist. The spirit and matter are two different substances that are created by God. Spinoza removes such duality by consubstantiating substance and God as well as consubstantiating God and matter in his pantheist system.

                Spinoza states that “That thing is called free, which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone.”(Ethics, Definitions 1.7) As a result of it, “God does not act according to freedom of the will.”(Ethics, Proposition 1.32 Corollary 1.1) Because Spinoza does not qualify free will as the cause but necessary cause. “All things are predetermined by God, not through his free will or absolute fiat, but from the very nature of God or infinite power.”(Ethics, Appendix of Proposition 1.36)

                Substance/God that is immanent within the universe is just identical with the nature. There can be no substance except God and it cannot be conceived. Existence belongs to the nature of substances. Therefore, a being absolutely infinite-in other words, God necessarily exists.(Ethics, Proposition 1.7)

                Spinoza claims that everything is within God, and without God nothing can be.(Ethics, Proposition 1.15) All these spesifications make him an Acosmist Pantheist. There can be no cause which, either extrinsically or intrinsically, besides the perfection of his own nature, moves God to act. God is the sole free cause. For God alone exists by the sole necessity of his nature, and acts by the sole necessity of his own nature, therefore God is the sole free cause.(Ethics, Corollary 1.1-2)

                “The intellect in function, whether finite or infinite, as will, desire, love, &c., should be referred to passive nature and not to active nature.”(Ethics, Corollary 1.31) The existence, matter is just the expansion of the only reality which is the substance(God). Weber states that “Spinoza is neither an acosmist nor an atheist, but a cosmotheist or pantheist in the strict sense of the word; that is to say, his cosmos is God himself, and his God the cosmical substance.”(History of Philosophy, Spinoza, Theory of Substance)

                In Spinoza’s system, to be able to understand the theory of existence, first we need to understand the theory of attributes. Everything comes to existence as the expositions of attributes. “By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite-that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality.”(Ethics, Definitions 1.6) “The more reality or being a thing has, the greater the number of its attributes.”(Ethics, Propositions 1.9) Even if God has many attributes, a human mind can only comprehend two of them; thought(Pensée)/spirit and extension(Etendue)/matter. Thought and extension coexist in the essence of the substance. Spirit and matter was always thought as two different things among philosophers but for Spinoza they are just the appearance of the same substance. For him they are equal because they represent the same essence. Yet, Descartes values spirit over matter. Since every other thing comes to life by depending on these two things, they create integrity and become one in the substance. Therefore, everything comes to life within the substance, the substance comes to life within everything.

                Spinoza creates the relation of God with the universe in universal intellect(Al-‘Aql al-Kulli/God’s mind). According to him the truth and formal essence of things exist by representation in the intellect of God. “In God there is necessarily the idea not only of his essence, but also of all things which necessarily follow from his essence. The idea of God, from which an infinite number of things follow in infinite ways, can only be one.”(Ethics, Proposition 2.3-4) “God’s power is identical with his essence. Whatsoever we conceive to be in the power of God, necessarily exists. There is no cause from whose nature some effect does not follow.”(Ethics, Proposition 1.34-35-36) according to that “From the necessity of the divine nature must follow an infinite number of things in infinite ways-that is, all things which can fall within the sphere of infinite intellect.”(Ethics, Proposition 1.16)

                By matter(body) Spinoza means a mode which expresses in a certain determinate manner the essence of God, in so far considered as an extended thing. By thought he means the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing.(Ethics, Definitions 2.1-3)

                The universe and everything within the universe appears by necessity, as an outcome of the essence of God/Substance. God is neither a creator nor the universe is created. Objects are the visualization of God’s essence and reality. Such a mechanism gives us the idea that necessity is what rules the universe and again in such a system we cannot talk about independence, will, possibility, coincidence nor irregularity. According to Spinoza, it’s nonsense to assign a purpose to nature and it’s ignorance to see things unrelated and independent.

               The human mind, on the other hand is part of the infinite intellect of God. The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body.(Ethics, Propositions 2.13) Human spirit is the appearance of the idea, and the body is the form of change of the extension. Human spirit is a part of God’s infinite mind. That’s why the essence of the spirit is knowledge and idea. And its virtue is to know God.

                According to Spinoza, there is no absolute nor independent will in the spirit, but the human mind becomes more independent as it develops itself by thinking more. The divine will and the system of the universe that-by necessity- comes from the divine will can be understood better if the human mind, which is the extent of the idea, gets more independent. It is by such a process that the human mind gets involved in the substance.

                “He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions loves God, and so much the more in proportion as he more understands himself and his emotions. Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God.”(Ethics, Propositions 5.15-30)

                In such pantheist system; independence and will have the same meaning. Because what compels and what is compelled is the same in the essence.

                This system takes away all the responsibilities from human. If there is no will nor independence, we cannot talk about such values like religion, morals and law. There is no need for reward, punishment and responsibilities.

                Spinoza’s God is devoid of free will, subject to necessity, unconscious and purposeless. It might be acceptable for others of the Islamic view that such an understanding is not acceptable.

                Wahdat al-Wujud

                The theory of Wahdat al-Wujud is different from pantheism where God is immanent and is different from theism where God is transcendent. In Wahdat al-Wujud, God is immanent entitatively and transcendent in terms of names and attributes. Wahdat al-Wujud means the unity of beings/existence and Ibn Arabi was the first to talk about it in a systematic manner.

                Wahdat al-Wujud does not accept anything other than God himself in terms of reality. Every piece of existence is just an appearance or transfiguration of names and attributes of Divine Reality/God. God is the essence of the system. According to Ibn Arabi, existence(the universe) is ontologically one, which is the Absolute Oneness. It might be called the Infinite Substance, the Infinite Spirit or the Infinite Mind but there is only one reality, one body/being that is God’s body only. The universe does not have a body, only comes to existence with God’s body and only as appearing of His attributes. God is the only absolute existence and the universe comes to existence as possibly dependant on God.

                Ibn Arabi separates existence into two; pre-temporal and non-pre-temporal. “Existence from it is before-time and not before-time, which is in-time. Pre-temporal (azali) time is the existence of Allah by Himself, and non-pre-temporal-time is the existence of Allah by the forms of the immutable universe. It is called in-time because it manifests some parts to others. He is manifest to Himself by the forms of the universe, and so existence is perfected.”(Fusus al-Hikam, The Seal of the Wisdom of Sublimity in the Word of Musa (Moses), 12)

                By saying there is no body but God’s, Ibn Arabi does not mean that everything is God. The universe is just a transfiguration of God not His entity. Because Absolute Entity does not depend on condition nor provision. “All things are destructible except His Entity”(Al-Qur’an al-Kareem, 28:88)

                Ibn Arabi separates truth into 3 epistemologically. Firstly, the truth that appears in the universe and within the boundaries of sense and mind. Secondly, the truth that we cannot know directly but can know by reasoning. Such truth is accepted in theistic religions where God occurs in some type of imagination or beliefs where God fits into one’s heart. However, God does not fit into anything. Such an understanding is polytheistic for Ibn Arabi because it sounds as if it is restricting God. God has to be infinite and it’s only possible with being immanent and transcendent at the same time. Thirdly, the truth that is impossible to know or understand directly but reachable by its symptoms and with cognizance. That is the Divine Entity.

                The aforementioned entity cannot be known nor be describable. This indescribable entity is necessary, autochthonous and eternal, and does not propagate, disintegrate nor change. It’s called Absolute Entity and it does not have a figure, form nor limit. The Absolute Entity is absolute without any condition and reservation, free from any reservation even from the reservation of absoluteness. This extent, where God is free from all of His names and attributes is called Ahadiyya meaning there is nothing left but the entity of God. In this extent, the entity is free from any contradiction, equality, quantity and attribution. At the same time, this extent is when all contradictions are combined and the source of every quantity and attribution. This entity which is the source of oneness, is not a subject of worshipping. God is the subject of worshipping as the Lord.

                God has limitless names and attributes according to Ibn Arabi, but they can only be known within the things that they appear within. “They remain in their state in spite of the multiplicity of forms in existents, but the source is the same from the whole in the whole. The existence of multiplicity lies in the names which are the relationships, and they are nonexistent matters. There is only the source which is the Essence. He is High through Himself, not by any ascription to another.”( Fusus al-Hikam, The Seal of the Wisdom of Sanctification in the Word of Idris) God is not just an entity that is described by its external and internal attributes. Attributes are transfigurations that surround existence materially and spiritually. The universe appears to be God’s attributes. “So wherever you [might] turn, there is the presence of Allah.”(Al-Qur’an al-Kareem, 2:115)

                There lies favor, love and mercy in the source of creation. “When Allah - glory be to Him! - willed that the source of His most Beautiful Names - which are beyond enumeration - be seen (or you can equally say that He willed His source to be seen), He willed that they be seen in a microcosmic being which contained the entire matter, endowed with existence, and through which His secret was manifested to Him.”(Fusus al-Hikam, The Seal of Divine Wisdom in the Word of Adam) That was the purpose of creation.

                Some people say that Ibn Arabi considers God to be the same as the universe like pantheist did. But according to him, there are two types of entities; one is God who is affected and the other one is the universe which is affected by God, which are two different concepts. God is everything only in the appearance. They are not the same in terms of entity. God is excluded and free from that.(Futuhat al-Makkiyya, Chapter 205)

                Ibn Arabi accepts Gods names as a mirror in the universe. Everything in the universe appears in that mirror by their capacity. And the universe is summation of those appearances. The whole universe is managed by God and within God. He states that “Allah describes Himself with having management of this frame. He "directs the whole affair from the heaven," which is the height of the earth, "to earth," (32:5) which is the lowest of the low, because it is the lowest of all the elements.”(Fusus al-Hikam, The Seal of the Unique Wisdom in the Word of Muhammad) He doesn’t accept the fact that the universe is managed immanently, as like Spinoza claimed.

                According to Ibn Arabi, mind and senses are not great enough to understand the truth of this universe that recreated every other second. That was what Wahdat al-Wujud theoreticians claimed. They were able to achieve that signification with inspiration and observation. In today’s world, hard science also claims the same. The same claims apply for energy, movement, light etc. If we were to have different senses than we have today, we would understand the world differently, similar to how color does not make any sense to someone blind or how voice does not make any sense to someone who is deaf. In similar fashion, Wahdat al-Wujud does not make any sense to one who is not a person of inspiration and observation.

                What interconnects everything in this world and the principle of the whole appearance is love. What brings one close to his Lover is spiritual love in other words sufistic love. The purpose of this love to assimilate the Lover. What brings the seeker to “Fana Fillah” where the seeker annihilates in the essence of God is the spiritual love. The one who passes every stage of love becomes Al Insan al-Kamil meaning the complete person. So that, he embodies the universe with love. But is he free even with all the love?

                When it comes to free will, it’s hard to say that Ibn Arabi sides with free will. For him, the possible creature can only act according to Absolute Will.  We cannot talk about free will if there is God’s command. Besides that, Ibn Arabi gives people a freedom to choose alongside Absolute Will. In this part, a person is responsible for his actions and shapes his destiny by himself. Men choose whatever comes to them as a favor from their God. As a result of this, Ibn Arabi sees shirk(polytheism) as the worst cruelty and claims that infidels will suffer in hereafter for claiming their own desire as their god.

                Differences between pantheism and wahdat al-wujud

                In wahdat al-wujud, God is both immanent and transcendent. His entity is transcendent but His names and attributes are immanent. In other words, He is free from space and time. His immanence comes from creation by being the reason of creation that comes to life as manifestations of His names and attributes.  In pantheism, God is purely immanent. He is the immanent purpose of creation. In both scenarios (acosmism, pancosmism), God becomes the same as the universe. There is a big difference between these two views but people ignore it.

                Pantheism is a theory of Oneness of Substance but wahdat al-wujud does not accept the universe as the only substance.

                Both Ibn Arabi and Spinoza ascribe infinite number of attributes to God. But according to Spinoza, one can only know “thought” and “extension” and the whole universe is the outcome of these two attributes. But Ibn Arabi accepts the attributes that are mentioned in the Qur’an al-Kareem and he follows the Ahl al-Sunnah. He does not ascribe God with thought and extension. These are the attributes of creatures.

                In pantheism, the creation/manifestation is necessity and God has no will. There is no quiddity in the universe and no consciousness in the substance. In wahdat al-wujud, The Creator does not resemble what He created. We cannot compare anything we see/touch with Him.

                In pantheism, there is no religion, no command, prohibition, so no need for afterlife. Prayer is contemplationary. In wahdat al-wujud, religious ceremonies, prayers are vital and they certainly believe in the afterlife.

                In wahdat al-wujud, the essence of things is within God but their entity is not God Himself. In pantheism, both the essence and the entity is God.

                Since they don’t accept the creator capacity of God, there is no creation in pantheism. In wahdat al-wujud, creation is one of the most important aspects, as creation happens every passing second. 

                Wahdat al-wujud stands on ayahs and hadiths but cannot trust mind. So, their system is also based on inspiration and observation. While they fulfill it, they follow an irrational method. Pantheists ground existence on determinist-rationalist basics. In pantheism, there is a casual link between God and the universe. Once again, they are not two different things. Affector and the affected is the same.

                Footnote

                Ibn Arabi’s writings are hard to understand, explanation is required, since it is extensive in meanings. That’s why people are divided while understanding his purpose. He uses double-barreled words causing him to walk on the edge of sharia(law of religion). They say there are two ways to understand Ibn Arabi; wahdat al-wujud and sunni methods. His topics are metaphysical and irrational. Such topics should be examined by their methods. His writings which came to life through inspiration and observation creates contradictions when we examine them with sense and logic because our criterions are different. The purpose of the reading is important because prejudices conceal the truth. The wahdat al-wujud doctrine is a work of “Arif”(seeker). Whether we analyze it as a philosophical system or as a path of ascetism and taqwa(piety). We need to learn it from them instead of blindly blaming them because of influencers on different platforms such as Youtube or with limited research. Adopting such a way of approach leads us to jahala(ignorance).

“Sharia is the essence of mind. The truth is the essence of Sharia.
Mind preserves sharia. Sharia preserves the truth.”