On Spinoza’s Systematics of Panentheism in Klaus Müller's Gott jenseits von Gott. Reply from a Christian Platonist

Abstract

In God Beyond God, Klaus Müller propounds a Spinozist speculative philosophy of religion in which God is defined as an infinite substance devoid of anthropomorphic characteristics of personal and moral nature. Finite beings are modes of the attributes of thought and extension. It is a theological system which informs not only Karl Rahner’s transcendental philosophy, but also Alfred N. Whitehead’s process philosophy. From the viewpoint of religious imagination, redemption is achieved in the reconciliation between human centrality and marginality, resulting from the soul’s realisation of its participation in the infinite. In a Christian Platonist response, the charge of anthropomorphism in terms of theodicy is rejected, since the theodicy question cannot even be raised if supreme moral perfection is denied. God’s infinity is the qualitative infinity of his goodness, which finds its symbol in the quantitative infinity of mind and space.