Pandeism combines Deism with Pantheism, the belief that the universe
is identical to God. Pandeism holds that God was a conscious and
sentient force or entity that designed and created the universe, which
operates by mechanisms set forth in the creation. God thus became an
unconscious and nonresponsive being by becoming the universe. Other
than this distinction (and the possibility that the Universe will one
day return to the state of being God), pandeistic beliefs are
identical to Deist. The term, pandeism, was coined in 1859 by German
philosophers and frequent collaborators Moritz Lazarus and Heymann
Steinthal in Zeitschrift f=FCr V=F6lkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft.
They wrote:
Man stelle es also den Denkern frei, ob sie Theisten, Pan-theisten,
Atheisten, Deisten (und warum nicht auch Pandeisten?) [Moritz Lazarus
and Heymann Steinthal, Zeitschrift f=FCr V=F6lkerpsychologie und
Sprachwissenschaft (1859), p. 262.]
This is translated as:
Man leaves it to the philosophers, whether they are Theists, Pan-
theists, Atheists, Deists (and why not also Pandeists?)
In the 1960s, theologian Charles Hartshorne scrupulously examined and
rejected both deism and pandeism (as well as pantheism) in favor of a
God whose characteristics included "absolute perfection in some
respects, relative perfection in all others" or "AR", writing that
this theory "is able consistently to embrace all that is positive in
either deism or pandeism", concluding that "panentheistic doctrine
contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations".
[Charles Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism
(1964) p. 348.]
In 1995, Jim Garvin, a Vietnam vet who became a Trappist monk in the
Holy Cross Abbey of Berryville, Virginia, and went on to lead the
economic development of Phoenix, Arizona, described his spiritual
position as "'pandeism' or 'pan-en-deism,' something very close to the
Native American concept of the all- pervading Great
Spirit..."[Albuquerque Journal, Saturday, November 11, 1995, B-10.]
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