Q&A: Pantheism and Rabbi Kook
Pantheism and Rabbi Kook
Question
I saw in several places that you said that in your view there is no difference at all between pantheism and atheism. But in several places in Rabbi Kook’s writings, among them Gan HaNazir, it is explained that Rabbi Kook tended toward Spinoza’s pantheistic view. Maybe there is a broader explanation of pantheism? Assuming that Rabbi Kook was not actually an atheist…
Answer
People use the term pantheism for all kinds of views. Some of them are not really pantheistic. Those that really deserve that label are atheistic. I assume Rabbi Kook saw divinity in everything and everywhere (an immanent conception as opposed to a transcendent one). I’m not sure even that is clearly defined, and I’m even less sure that I agree with it, but it is at least something one can say. Pantheism is the identification of everything with divinity and of divinity with everything. So there is no God, and what you call nature is God. And that is exactly atheism. Alternatively, it means that there is only God and everything else does not really exist. That is just bizarre and unfounded (because who is speaking here when we state that conclusion? Who is the one drawing it?).
Discussion on Answer
That is indeed the usual way people put it, but that term too does not have a clear meaning. Panentheism means that everything is in God (unlike pantheism, which identifies everything as God). I don’t understand what that means, and I suspect that those who say it do not really understand it either.
The Nazir Rabbi explained that there is a great difference between Rabbi Kook and Spinoza.
Spinoza held that “everything is divinity” (pantheism), while Rabbi Kook held that “everything is in divinity” (panentheism).
Rabbi Yosef Avivi, in Kabbalat HaRa’ayah, argues that even this is not correct, because we are not speaking about the essence, about divinity itself (as Spinoza did—where it itself is everything and everything is it), but rather all the discussion is in terms of our concepts: “everything is in Atzilut,” meaning in the spiritual sefirot that we know…
Rabbi Kook leaned more toward panentheism, no?