ultimate reality essay

The Biblical-Christian View of Ultimate Reality: God - An Excerpt from The Essentials of Christian Thought

• March 24, 2017
• Share Twitter Facebook

Christians disagree on doctrine, politics, church government, certain moral questions—just about everything under the sun, it can seem. Yet a unity remains, centered around a core outlook on God and the world that is common to all believers.

In today’s excerpt from  The Essentials of Christian Thought , eminent theologian and church historian Roger Olson outlines a biblical vision of this ultimate reality—God, the sole absolute, the metaphysical source and sustainer of all that has being.

A Brief Review

We saw in the previous chapter and interlude that over the centuries and across cultures people have used reason and experience to speculate about the one great answer to life’s ultimate questions. Metaphysicians have traditionally referred to this particular central issue of metaphysics as the problem of the “one and the many”—what is the “one” that underlies the “many”? Is it one eternal substance that is all that really exists such that the many are just manifestations of it, ultimately unreal in and of themselves (monism)? Is it nature, a set of mathematically describable laws controlling eternal matter and energy (naturalism)? Is it two ultimate realities, beings, principles, powers, one good and one evil, locked in eternal conflict (dualism)? Is it a finite, nonabsolute being related to everything else, giving them their aim, their purpose, but struggling to bring unity out of chaos and harmony out of conflict (panentheism)? Is it a powerful but remote deity, creator of all but uninvolved or unaffected by the world of finite things and persons (deism, Greek philosophical theism)?

Whitehead said that Christianity is a religion searching for a metaphysic; it has at times borrowed these and other metaphysical visions and attempted to synthesize them with biblical Christianity. Christians living in pluralistic cultures where these and perhaps other visions of ultimate reality swim around in popular culture or in “the universe next door”1 often confusedly borrow aspects of extrabiblical metaphysical visions and combine them with their Christian faith. Throughout Christian history Christian philosophers and theologians have frequently used Greek philosophy and metaphysics as a theoretical framework for Christianity.

The thesis of this book is that, while philosophy can be helpful for answering questions the Bible does not answer, two considerations must be made. First, the Bible is not devoid of any metaphysical vision of ultimate reality; it implies one and that is easily discernable if one does not approach the Bible with a wrong assumption (e.g., that narrative cannot imply a metaphysic). Second, discerning that biblical metaphysic is a matter of looking behind the narrative at what it assumes about ultimate reality. There a clear vision of ultimate reality is apparent to any discerning reader looking for it.

That clear biblical vision of ultimate reality is, as already expressed, the supernatural, personal (but not human) God of Israel and of Jesus Christ. Brunner rightly stated that, in biblical revelation and therefore in Christian philosophy, the “metaphysical background” of every atom is God: “In order that I may know what it is that holds the world together in its inmost being—this means no less than the knowledge of the Creator Himself.” Also, according to Scripture, ultimate reality, God, is “one personal spirit” and “the one true reality” behind all else who can be known only as he reveals himself. Finally, the same Christian thinker declared that the personal God of the Bible is revealed there as the one “principle of all things,” “both cause and reason” for everything else’s existence. Brunner also rightly emphasized that for the Christian this is no “theory of the world,” no rational, speculative hypothesis, but revealed truth of the “one word of God.” On the other hand, the biblical-Christian vision of God as ultimate reality answers life’s ultimate questions better, more satisfactorily, than all types of extrabiblical philosophy.

God-World Duality without Dualism

The concern of this chapter is to elucidate the biblical vision of this ultimate reality—God, the sole absolute, the metaphysical source and sustainer of all that has being. Every effort will be made to follow the examples of Tresmontant, Cherbonnier, Brunner, Heschel, and other Christian and Jewish thinkers who were determined to take the biblical narrative seriously and not interpret it through the lens of an extrabiblical philosophy or metaphysic. Extrabiblical, philosophical language must be used at times, but it will be filled with biblical content as opposed to content drawn from Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, or other extrabiblical philosophies that have been used to say what the Bible must really mean when it is assumed it cannot mean what it says.

At the most basic level, in contrast to some other worldviews and metaphysical visions of ultimate reality, the Bible assumes a fundamental duality in reality as opposed to dualism and nonduality. That is, the Bible everywhere presupposes an irreducible ontological interval between God, the source and sustainer of everything, and himself. And yet, both sides of the interval are real—one ultimately so and one penultimately so; one independently real and the other dependently real.

Books and articles that equip you for deeply biblical thinking and ministry.

Thank you! Sign up complete.

• Table of Contents
• Random Entry
• Chronological
• Editorial Information
• About the SEP
• Editorial Board
• How to Cite the SEP
• Special Characters
• Advanced Tools
• Support the SEP
• PDFs for SEP Friends
• Make a Donation
• SEPIA for Libraries
• Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

• Friends PDF Preview
• Author and Citation Info
• Back to Top

God and Other Ultimates

What it takes to be ultimate is to be the most fundamentally real, valuable or fulfilling among all that there is or could be. Historically, philosophy of religion in the West has taken God to be ultimate. Over the past century, the field has become increasingly aware that ultimacy is grasped under different concepts in the world’s religions, philosophies and quasi-religious philosophies—so not only as “God” but also as, e.g., “Brahman”, “the Dao”, and more. Moreover, people have thought to conceptualize each of these ultimates in numerous ways across cultures and times, so there are many models of Brahman, many models of God, many models of the Dao, and more; perhaps there is even a model of what is ultimate for each person who has thought hard about it. This entry presents a framework for understanding this vast landscape of models of God and other ultimates and then surveys some of its major sights. Familiarity with this landscape can clarify the long journey to deciding whether there is anything ultimate, among other benefits.

Section 1 defines “ultimate” and “models” of ultimates, discusses reasons to be interested in the project of modeling what is ultimate or alternatively to think it futile, and explains major categories that help organize the field of models. Section 2 uses these categories to relay over twenty models of Brahman, God and the Dao, both for their own sakes and as entrées into the landscape (the models are numbered as they surface to help the reader spot them and to show by example what a model is). Section 3 discusses the significance of the plurality of models once they are juxtaposed.

1.1 Definition of “ultimate”

1.2 definition of “model”, 1.3 motivations, 1.4 challenges, 1.5 philosophical categories of ultimacy, 2.1 models of brahman, 2.2 models of god, 2.3 models of the dao.

• 3. Responses to the Diversity of Models of What Is Ultimate

Other Internet Resources

Related entries, 1. conceptual foundations and motivations.

Brahman, the Dao, emptiness, God, the One, Reasonableness—there, in alphabetical order, are names of the central subjects of concern in what are commonly parsed as some of the world’s religions, philosophies and quasi-religious-philosophies. [ 1 ] They are all names for what is ultimate, at least on some uses of the names (for instance, “God” is not always taken to be ultimate, more soon). But what is it to be ultimate, in this sense?

To answer in terms of its use, the term “ultimacy”, meaning the state or nature of being ultimate, has Brahman, the Dao, emptiness etc. as instances. To answer semantically, with a meaning, is difficult for at least two reasons. First, though there is abundant precedent in the literature for collecting these subjects as ideas of ultimacy, [ 2 ] doing so presupposes they have some shared characteristic or family resemblance that makes them count as ultimate. But is there a shared core idea of being ultimate? “Particularists” among others argue no: the diverse range of cultural and historical contexts from which these subjects come, coupled with how hard it is to talk across such contexts, makes them all “separate cultural islands” (Hedges 2014: 206; see also Berthrong 2001: 237–239, 255–256). [ 3 ] The second concern is related, and not far from one Tomoko Masuzawa (2005) among others has raised about religion: even if we found a substantive account of ultimacy visible in multiple traditions, such an account necessarily will be borne from a cultural conceptual context. Thus, far from delivering the notions at work in other traditions, such an account actually risks de-forming them.

Regarding the first concern, John H. Berthrong, among others, is far more optimistic than the particularists that concepts not only can be shared across cultures but in fact are

already comparative, having been generated by the interactions of people, texts, rituals, cultural sensibilities and the vagaries of history and local customs. (2001: 238)

Other theorists explore factors that could detail or add to Berthrong’s list—e.g., trade and conquests (Gayatriprana 2020), shared human evolutionary biology (Wildman 2017), and the evolution of moral development (Wright 2010). [ 4 ] Still, most take the second concern about enculturation to stick and thus to temper the optimism: there is both a shared humanity and real cultural difference to own in reaching a global idea of ultimacy. Raimon Panikkar says it well:

Brahman is certainly not the one true and living God of the Abrahamic traditions. Nor can it be said that Shang-ti or kami are the same as brahman. And yet they are not totally unrelated. (Panikkar 1987 [2005: 2254])

The Cross-Cultural Comparative Religious Ideas Project, run by Robert C. Neville and Wesley Wildman from 1995–99, balanced the overlap and difference when they concluded that an account of ultimacy should be a “properly vague” category: it needs enough shared content to count as a category, but enough vagueness to cover the disparate instances generally taken to be ultimates. [ 5 ] There are multiple contenders for such vague categories, including, e.g., Paul Tillich’s “object of ultimate concern” (1957a, e.g., 10–11), John Hick’s “the Real” (1989: 11ff); Keith Ward’s “the Transcendent” (1998); and the Project’s own proposal as “that which is most important to religious life because of the nature of reality” (Neville & Wildman 2001, see 151ff for an explanation of each part of the phrase).

Informed by the Project’s finding, this entry will “vague-ify” the content of John Schellenberg’s account of what is ultimate to use as a cross-cultural core idea of ultimacy and as an organizing principle. To paraphrase, Schellenberg takes being ultimate to mean being that which is (1) the most real, (2) the most valuable, and (3) the source of deepest fulfillment among all that is or perhaps could be. More carefully, and in Schellenberg’s words, being ultimate requires being ultimate in three ways: (1) metaphysically ultimate, i.e., the “most fundamental fact” about the nature of things (2016: 168), (2) axiologically ultimate, i.e., that which “has unsurpassably great value” (2009: 31), meaning greatness along all its categories of being, and (3) soteriologically ultimate, i.e., “the source of an ultimate good (salvific)” (2009: xii, also 2005: 15), meaning being the source of salvation or liberation of the kind practitioners of the world’s religions and philosophies ardently seek (e.g., nirvana, communing with God, moksha, ascent to the One, etc.), whether these all amount to the same salvation (e.g., Hick 1989: Ch. 14) or constitute radically distinct types of salvations (Heim 1995: Ch. 5). Schellenberg’s choice of these three terms is insightful: most extant takes on ultimacy per se and on Brahman, God and the Dao in particular are variations on a theme of Schellenberg, as scrutiny of even the brief definitions above as well as the models in Section 2 will bear out. [ 6 ]

Schellenberg’s account of what it takes to be ultimate is already somewhat vague: he recommends no further precisification of his three terms in order to stay open about what counts as ultimate as our knowledge grows (2009: 31). This entry will loosen his account further by placing a disjunction between its terms instead of a conjunction. That is, Schellenberg takes metaphysical, axiological and soteriological ultimacy to be severally necessary and jointly sufficient for something to count as ultimate; he requires “triple ultimacy”, as James Elliott calls it, for ultimacy per se (2017: 103–04). Those who agree in principle include, e.g., Clooney 2001 and Rubenstein 2019, [ 7 ] as well as, e.g., Aquinas, Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, who in fact argue that, given the entailments between the terms, there is triple ultimacy or none at all. [ 8 ] Others take double or even single ultimacy to be not only possible but also sufficient for being ultimate. For example, Neville defines ultimacy in strictly metaphysical terms as “the ontological act of creation” (2013: 1); Elliott and Paul Draper each take soteriological ultimacy to be sufficient for ultimacy (Elliott 2017: 105–109; Draper 2019: 161); and John Bacon takes his understanding of God as “<Creator, Good>” to be metaphysically and soteriologically ultimate though a “let-down axiologically” (2013: 548). Moreover, requiring triple ultimacy stops some of the paradigmatic models of Brahman, God and the Dao from counting as ultimacy, as Section 2 will demonstrate (see also Diller 2013b). Thus, this entry will take some combinations of the three types of ultimacy to be sufficient for being ultimate, without settling which, provided nothing else in a system has more. Note that replacing Schellenberg’s conjunction with a disjunction makes the field of ultimates a family resemblance class.

Even disjunctivized, the Schellenbergian view adopted here is clearly an inheritance from Abrahamic perfect being theology, [ 9 ] so two cautions about scope. First, when we look outward and find that some non-Abrahamic traditions have ultimacy in the sense here—as we will in Section 2 for Hinduism and Daoism—we should acknowledge that this result comes framed from the outside. Second, not all non-Abrahamic traditions will have ultimates in the sense just adopted. For instance, to offer just one example, Barbara Mann suggests that in non-colonized interpretations of Native American spiritualities there is nothing that is ultimate in Schellenberg’s sense (2010: 33–36). [ 10 ] So ultimacy as just defined may be widespread in the world’s religions and spiritualities, but it is not universal.

Finally, three points of clarification about terminology. First, talking about ultimacy does not entail that anything ultimate exists. The concern that it might is related to “the problem of singular negative existential statements”, to which Frege and Russell offered solutions that in turn have been enshrined in predicate logic, though not without complaint (for more see Kripke 2013 and the SEP articles on existence and on nonexistent objects ). Second, the term “ultimate reality” could be taken to mean how reality ultimately is —i.e., that which is metaphysically ultimate, perhaps a part of every complete ontology—instead of meaning the richer sense of “ultimacy” at issue here, which is not a part of every complete ontology. [ 11 ] To avoid confusion, this entry will reserve the term “ultimate reality” for metaphysical ultimacy per se and use “ultimate” and variants for the combinations of the Schellenbergian disjunction. [ 12 ] Thus framed, the distinction leaves open this central question: is ultimate reality ultimate? Lastly, regarding the choice of the term “ultimate” and its variants, there is a syntactic parallel to the semantic issue above: we need a sufficiently vague kind of speech to cover the diverse ontological kinds implicit in accounts of ultimacy, including concrete or abstract particular things (e.g., God or Brahman on some views); states of being (e.g., Existence-Consciousness-Bliss for Brahman, see Section 2.1 ); properties (e.g., everything is empty on Buddhism or divinely intentional for Karl Pfeifer, see Section 2.2 ); actions and events that things perform or undergo (D. Cooper models God as “a verb” as in “God-ing”, 1997: 70; cf. Bishop & Perszyk 2017); and grounds of being that are meant to be category-less (e.g., as in “the creative source of the categories themselves”, Vallicella 2006 [2019], see also, e.g., Tillich in Section 2.2 , the Dao in Section 2.3 ). Though no term is quite right given the diversity, this entry uses the adjective form of being “ultimate” as primary, to describe x as metaphysically, axiologically or soteriologically ultimate per above, whatever x ’s ontological kind (cf. with the more familiar term from Abrahamic monotheism of “divine”). It also uses “ultimacy” as a noun for the nature or state of being ultimate (cf. “divinity”), the nouns “the ultimate”, “an ultimate” or “ultimates” to function flexibly both as a mass noun (such as “water” or “butter”) for the property or uncountable substance of being ultimate and as a count noun for things, events and grounds of being (cf. “God” or “gods”); and “to ultimize” as the verb form, if ever we need it. [ 13 ]

A “model” of what is ultimate is a way it can be conceived. In general, a model is a representation of a target phenomenon for some purpose. For instance, R. Axelrod developed a computational model that represented a target of two “agents” caught in an iterated prisoner’s dilemma, with the purpose of solving the dilemma. [ 14 ]

The term “model” in religious and philosophical contexts is related to but not identical with its use in scientific contexts, in ways Ian Barbour (1974) foundationally traced. Though there is some disagreement between the fields on whether models describe their target or not and what the point of modeling is, importantly, in both contexts, the term “model” (1) connotes that its target is somehow out of reach—not able to be directly examined—and, perhaps by force of this, (2) encodes a conceptual distance between the target and the model. In particular, the model is not a copy of the target but rather chooses revealing aspects of the target to relay by leaving out or distorting other aspects. [ 15 ] Think of a model of a city that is by design not to scale, precisely so viewers can see the relationships between the city’s streets, buildings and neighborhoods. Models are thus simultaneously epistemically instructive and humble.

Thus understood, “model” captures well the ways people have thought about what is ultimate. Taking a model’s target to be obscured per (1) and the model itself to be fallible per (2) is not only apt but also crucial for thinking about what is ultimate given our necessarily limited knowledge of it (see Section 1.4 ). Moreover, among the choices on the linguistic menu, “model” is a middle way. It is more specific than “idea” understood in the Cartesian sense as “whatever is immediately perceived by the mind”, [ 16 ] since a model is the more particular kind of idea just relayed. At the same time, “model” is general enough to cover the very diverse kinds of extant linguistic accounts of what is ultimate in the literature, including, e.g., “concepts” understood in the classic sense as necessary and sufficient conditions for being ultimate, such as Anselm’s idea of God as “that than which no greater can be conceived;” “conceptions” which are “more particular fillers” for more general concepts, such as Richard Swinburne’s verdict about what it would take to be that than which nothing greater can be conceived; [ 17 ] sustained “metaphors” such as Ramanuja’s Brahman as the “Soul” of the cosmos (see Section 2.1 ) or Sallie McFague’s “God as Mother, Lover and Friend” (1987); and “indexical signs” that point to an indeterminate ultimate visible in Neville (2013). This entry will call all these linguistic types “models” of what is ultimate, given that they each in their own way represent or aim at a target of what is ultimate for various purposes, at least as much as language can (more in Section 1.4 ). [ 18 ]

As Section 1.5 will detail, some models of what is ultimate nest, e.g., Shankara’s idea of Brahman is a species of Vedantic ideas of Brahman which in turn are species of Hindu ideas of Brahman. To simplify, this entry will use the term “model” for ideas of what is ultimate at all levels, and take a model’s target to be “the ultimate” if the modeler thinks what is ultimate is single or uncountable (as in models of e.g., Brahman, God and the Dao) or “ultimates” if multiple (as in polytheistic or perhaps communotheistic models).

Understanding the scope of the work on modeling what is ultimate is central in multiple ways for assessing claims about its existence. First, the meaning we have in mind for “ x ” can decide our take on whether x exists. For example, in the case of God, some are convinced by arguments from suffering that there is no God, but such arguments, even if they succeed, generally apply only to God conceived as an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent (“OOO”) person and as written do not apply to God conceived differently (“generally” since there are notable exceptions, e.g., Bishop 2007 and Bishop & Perszyk 2016). Further, the act of abandoning one model while being aware that there are alternative models can set up an exploration into the field of models of the ultimate or ultimates. For example, if one decides there is no OOO personal God, one might ask: are there any other models of God genuinely worth the name “God” without these properties? If not, are there perhaps any non-theistic (non-God) models of what is ultimate without these properties? In other words, for those who have a limited sense of what it takes to be ultimate (e.g., what is ultimate is a OOO God or nothing at all), a search of extant models can open up the range of options on their menu and position them to see whether any are philosophically palatable. In fact, such a search may be required in order to settle the question of whether anything ultimate exists, because it is invalid to conclude that there is nothing ultimate on the basis of arguments against specific models of ultimacy if there could still be genuine ultimacy of another kind (see Diller 2016: 123–124).

In addition to their pivotal role in deciding questions of existence, notions of what is ultimate profoundly impact questions about religious diversity, such as whether multiple religions can have simultaneously true core beliefs. For example, on “plenitude of being” models—where the ultimate is infinitely full of incommensurable content—multiple religions are taken to be grasping different aspects of it accurately. So multiple religions can have true beliefs about what is ultimate, even if each has only a part of the truth. Finally, models of what is ultimate are also intimately bound up with philosophical questions of meaning, e.g., in meaning’s “Cosmic” and “Ultimate” senses as Rivka Weinberg explains them, though she decides that even if there were something ultimate, it would not finally deliver meaning in either sense (2021).

Though some model what is ultimate, others object to the entire project of modeling it. There are three main kinds of concerns in the literature: about the existence of ultimacy, about the coherence of the very idea of ultimacy, and about whether talk and knowledge of ultimacy is humanly possible, even assuming the idea is coherent. The first concern is motivational: for those who think there is nothing ultimate, there seems no point worrying about how it has been conceived. However, as indicated in Section 1.3 , it is invalid to conclude that there is nothing ultimate without having some sense of the range of what it might be. So even those who think there is nothing ultimate are thrown into the project of modeling it—at least enough to license the conclusion that this work is not worth doing.

To offer just one example of the second challenge, Stephen Maitzen (2017) argues against the concept of ultimacy on multiple fronts, including, e.g., that nothing can be metaphysically ultimate in Schellenberg’s sense because it would need to be simultaneously a se and concrete so that it can be metaphysically independent and explain concrete things, respectively. But no concrete thing can explain itself because (to shorten the argument considerably) even the necessity of such a thing is not identical to itself so it is not explaining itself (2017: 53). If Maitzen is right, nothing can be metaphysically ultimate in Schellenberg’s sense, and thus not metaphysically, axiologically and soteriologically ultimate at once.

The third kind of concern is more widespread—that it makes no sense for us to model what is ultimate because it is beyond human language (ineffable) or beyond human cognitive grasp (cognitively unknowable), or both. Why think this? To combine a few common arguments: what is ultimate (1) goes beyond the world, (2) is in a class by itself, and (3) is infinite, while our predicates are (1′) suited to describe things in the world, (2′) classify things with other things, and (3′) are limited (see, e.g., Wildman 2013: 770; Seeskin 2013: 794–795). Thus, for any P , a statement of the form “ultimacy is P ” seems necessarily false, if it is meaningful at all. Ineffability and unknowability are related: if we can say nothing true about ultimacy, then we can know nothing about it—at least nothing that can be said in words.

That last hesitation—“at least not in words”—leaves room for, e.g., embodied ways of knowing by way of religious, mystical or spiritual experiences which are reported in the world’s religious traditions and more generally (whether such experiences actually happen or not, see, e.g., James 1902 [1961]). Still, the combined arguments above and the gut intuition behind them represent an enormous challenge to the whole enterprise of modeling what is ultimate in words . There are those who opt for silence in the face of these arguments, and thus understandably but alas “literally disappear from the conversation” (Wildman 2013: 768, “alas” because they are missed). One main move of those who do keep talking is to distinguish what is ultimate as it is in itself, which they concede we can never talk about or know, from it as it affects our experience, which they think we can talk about and know. So some distinguish, e.g., the absolute from the relative Dao ( Daodejing, chapter 1); the Godhead from God as revealed (Meister Eckhart, e.g., Sermon 97; Panikkar 1987 [2005: 2254]); the noumenal from the phenomenal Real (Hick 1989) etc. and talk or make knowledge claims only about the latter (see also, e.g., Paul Hedges 2020 [ Other Internet Resources ]). [ 19 ]

Some also claim to make true statements about what is ultimate by restricting those statements to certain kinds of claims about it. One tactic is to talk about how ultimacy is related to us or to other parts of the natural (or non-natural) world instead of talking about how it is in itself, i.e., to talk about its extrinsic vs. intrinsic properties. For example, Maimonides suggests that one way to make “ultimacy is P ” true is to make P an “attribute of action”, i.e., an “action that he who is described has performed, such as Zayd carpentered this door …” ( The Guide of the Perplexed , I.52–3, italics added), an attribute which says nothing about Zayd’s intrinsic properties save that he has what it takes to carpenter this door. An analogue of this for ultimacy is, e.g., the Dao generated being , again an attribute which indicates only that the Dao, whatever it is or is not, can and has generated being. Other possible ways of speaking truly about ultimacy include famously the via negativa (“God is not P ”, Shaffer 2013: 783), the via eminentia (“God is better than P ”), the way of analogy (“God is perfectly P ”, Copleston 1952: 351 on Aquinas, e.g., Summa Theologica I, 13 and Summa contra Gentiles I, 30, see also Kennedy 2013: 158–159), the way of super-eminence (“God is beyond P or not P ”, Pseudo-Dionysius, Shaffer 2013: 786ff) and—though this seems doable in theory only—equivocal predication (“God is P *” where P * is a predicate outside of human language, Shaffer 2013: 783). What does all this really allow us to say, know, and do philosophically, though? More than one might think, says Neville: though ineffability might seem to stop metaphysics, it actually tells us how to do the metaphysics, e.g., “the dao… can be discussed mainly by negations and indirections” (2008: 43), or in these other ways.

For those who decide to model what is ultimate in the face of or informed by these challenges, there are several common categories, or “model types” as Philip Clayton once called them, which distinguish kinds of models of what is ultimate from each other. Knowing these categories can organize what might be an otherwise haphazard array of models, in something like the way knowing what an oak, maple and birch are can help sort the sights on a walk through a forest. The categories of ultimacy are best grasped by framing them with a question. For example, Hartshorne and Reese (1953) categorized models of God in particular as the logically possible variations on a theme of five questions, whose positive answers get symbolized by ETCKW:

• E: Is God eternal?
• T: Is God temporal?
• C: Is God conscious?
• K: Does God know the world?
• W: Does God include the world?

To use models that will be discussed in Section 2 , Shankara’s pantheism is ECKW since he takes Brahman to be an “Eternal Consciousness, Knowing and including the World” but which is atemporal and never changes; Hartshorne and Reese’s own panentheism is ETCKW, etc. (see their 1953 [2000: 17] and Viney 2013 for more examples). Wildman (2017) has his own set of questions and entire system built out of them (more in Section 3 ), which adds another important question that ETCKW leaves out or perhaps merely implies: Is what is ultimate personal/anthropomorphic—i.e., is it aware and does it have intentions—or is it impersonal/non-anthropomorphic? One might also look for functional categories: is what is ultimate the efficient, material or final cause of the universe?, does it intervene in it?, does it provoke religious experience?, and more.

Another question that may be asked about a particular model is: How many ultimates does the model conceive ultimacy to be? Though the very idea of plural ultimates sounds contradictory—wouldn’t one thing need to beat out all competitors in order to satisfy the superlatives “most fundamental” fact, “highest” value, “deepest” source of fulfillment?—those who model “ultimate multiplicity” see a tie for first place. Some models of Zoroaster’s view, for instance, take there to be two ultimates, the good Ahura Mazda and the evil Angra Mainyu engaged in fundamental battle (though such models will have to explain why Ahura Mazda is not the true ultimate given his apparent axiological edge on Angra Mainyu). John Cobb and David Ray Griffin at least some of the time take there to be three distinct ultimates: the Supreme Being experienced in theistic experiences, Being Itself (or emptiness) experienced in acosmic experiences, and the Cosmos experienced in cosmic experiences (Griffin 2005: 47–49). [ 20 ] Monica Coleman models what is ultimate in traditional Yoruba religion as a “communotheism”, in which “the Divine is a community of gods who are fundamentally related to each other but ontologically equal”, including Olódùmarè and the 401 òrìşà (2013: 345–349). All the models we will look at in Section 2 will be “ultimate unities” although there will be some diversity in the unity for the panentheisms in particular. George Mavrodes also cautions us to be wary of the unity/multiplicity distinction:

there are monotheisms that seem to include an element of multiplicity—e.g. Christianity with its puzzling idea of the divine trinity—and views of divine multiplicity—such as the African religions [have]—that seem to posit some sort of unity composed of a large number of individual divine entities. (2013: 660)

Probably the most frequently-used categories to sort models from each other are the logically exhaustive answers to the question: How does the ultimate or ultimates relate to the world? Though the answers (and question actually) are commonly framed with the word “God”, as the theos root in some of the category names below belies, their descriptions at least are framed here with “ultimacy” to include non-theistic ultimates, too: [ 21 ]

• Monism (literally, one-ism): There exists just one thing or one kind of thing (the “One” or “Unity”), depending on how the monism is read: either ultimacy is identical to the world, or all there is is ultimacy, or all there is is the world. Pantheism is a species of monism in which the one thing or kind of thing is God, or as Linda Mercadante once said in conversation, it is a monism in which the emphasis is on the divinity of the world instead of on the worldliness of the divine. Baruch Spinoza’s view of “God, or Nature” ( Deus sive natura ) is often deemed a pantheism, [ 22 ] though some experts deem it a panentheism (1677, Part IV.4; see, e.g., Edwin Curley 2013).
• Panentheism (all-in-God-ism): The world is a proper part of ultimacy. I.e., though the world is in ultimacy, ultimacy is more than the world. Panentheism is a wide tent since there is ambiguity in the “in”, but R. T. Mullins, for example, offers one disambiguated panentheism: take space and time to be attributes of God, and “affirm that the universe is literally in God because the universe is spatially and temporally located in God” (2016: 343).
• Merotheism (part-God-ism): Ultimacy is a proper part of the world. I.e., though ultimacy is in the world, the world is more than ultimacy. This type is rare, but see, e.g., Alexander 1920 and Draper 2019 (more soon).
• Dualism (two-ism): Ultimacy is not the world and the world is not ultimacy, so there are two fundamentally different things or kinds of things, depending on how the underlying ontology is read. Dualism includes both the view that ultimacy and the world are disjoint (they share no parts) and the view that they bear a relation of proper overlap (they overlap in part, but not in whole). [ 23 ]

The various models of God, Brahman and the Dao in Section 2 taken together will instantiate all four of these categories.

2. Models of Brahman, God, and the Dao

This section turns to multiple models of three ultimates extant in living world traditions: Brahman in the Hindu traditions indigenous in India, God in the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) indigenous in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula, and the Dao in the Daoist and Ru (Confucian) traditions indigenous in China. The sections here are ordered historically, with the idea of Brahman surfacing first in the Rig Veda ca. 1000–1500 BCE, the idea of the Dao during the Warring States period ca. fifth century BCE, and the idea of God in the Jewish tradition shifting from a henotheistic to monotheistic deity somewhere in between.

A main point of looking at these models is to grasp some ways people across the globe have conceived and are conceiving of what is most real, most valuable or most fulfilling to them—knowledge worth having for its own sake. Looking at the models also deepens understanding of ultimacy in general, by seeing how it plays out in the specifics. Finally, studying the models is a window into how they relate. Specifically, as we go, look for (1) the wide intra-traditional disagreement about how to model what is ultimate (e.g., there are Hindu monisms, panentheisms and dualisms) and related (2) the significant inter-traditional agreement about it (e.g., there are Hindu, Christian, and Daoist panentheisms). The amount of disagreement within a tradition makes talk about “the idea of Brahman” or “the idea of God” ambiguous, and crucially so in some contexts, as indicated in Section 1.2 . The amount of agreement between traditions creates strange bedfellows across the landscape of models—strange because the modelers disagree about their religious or philosophical tradition, but bedfellows all the same because they agree about which philosophical categories from Section 1.5 best suit what is ultimate (see Diller 2013a). The existence of such agreement at the very heart of diverse traditions is an important fact.

One perplexing issue before we encounter the models is the range of their connection to a lived religious tradition. The “religious models” purport to provide an understanding of reality as it is believed (or held by faith) to be in a particular tradition—as evidenced by their efforts to capture as much as they can of a tradition’s key texts, figures, practices, symbols etc.—while “philosophical models” do not do this. For example, the models of the Dao in Section 2.3 seem to be religious models given the regular citations of the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi and liturgical practices in explication and defense of the models. Some philosophical models include Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover or divine Nous ( Physics Bk. VIII, Metaphysics Bk. XII), Plato’s Demiurge in the Timaeus (29–30) or Plotinus’ One in the Enneads . None of these modelers turn to traditional sources to explain or defend their views; indeed, it is not even clear what traditional sources would be germane. Perhaps there are intermediate “quasi-religio-philosophical models”, e.g., Spinoza 1677 or Hegel 1832, which have some salient connection with a religious tradition, either because of the model’s status as a revision of a traditional model or because they share some key features of ultimacy within a religious tradition.

The puzzle: are all these modelers modeling the same thing? This question may be just a rehash of the “God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob” vs. “God of the philosophers” issue (see Section 2.2 ). The answer to it is yes in the vague-categorial sense that both philosophical and religious models are talking about that which is fundamentally real, valuable or liberating, but no in the sense that philosophical models are about what is ultimate per se while the religious models are about what is ultimate as it appears in their tradition. In any case, nota bene : Section 2.3 (Models of God) houses several recent philosophical models because they use the term “God” to name the ultimate they are modeling. Perhaps they are misnamed and should be renamed models of “the ultimate” and housed in an entirely different section. Or perhaps they are rightly named “God” and God is not dead as Nietzsche had it, but is becoming increasingly unhinged from the lived religious traditions.

Though the term “Hinduism” and its variants was originally a foreign imposition during the British Raj in India, they have become widely used in the public realm to refer to forms of religiosity and spirituality that had their start in the Indus River valley at least since 2000 BCE and have endured with great internal diversification ever since. [ 24 ]

The idea of Brahman was birthed in the Rig Veda (ca. 1000–1500 BCE), was defined in the Upanishads (ca. 500 BCE), came to full flower in the Bhagavad-Gita (ca. 200 BCE) and the Brahmasutras (400–450 CE), and has been refined in commentaries about them for over the past millennium, first by Adi Shankara (788–820 BCE) and then by many others after him which constitute the Vedanta system of Hindu philosophy ( Vedanta = “end of the Vedas”). [ 25 ] Vedanta has been dominant among the traditional six Hindu philosophical systems for at least the last 500 years. [ 26 ]

All the Vedanta schools agree on three things about Brahman, or ultimacy (here is this entry’s first, very general model of an ultimate). First, Brahman’s nature is essentially sat-chid-ananda , “Existence-Consciousness-Bliss”, which means that the metaphysical rock bottom of reality is—surprise, given the phenomenal mess—a blissful consciousness. Second, most of the schools take Brahman to be what Jeffery D. Long calls a “theocosm”: (1) God and (2) a cosmos, meaning a universe/multiverse of all natural forms. [ 27 ] The original Sanskrit in the Vedantic texts is conceptually precise and better than what we have in the God-world relations in Section 1.5 because there is a name for God and the world put together: the theocosm gets called “Brahman”, God is “Ishvara” (or “Narayana” or “Krishna” etc.), and the cosmos is “samsara”, and the whole thing and each part are eternal. [ 28 ] Third, the Vedanta schools all agree that their view about Brahman is associated with (1) an epistemological license in direct experience, either in texts heard by spiritual adepts ( sruti ) or in proponents’ own firsthand spiritual experience (for much more, see Phillips 2019), and (2) a life expression that lives out such experience and the view so deeply that it is hard to know which came first, the life expression or the metaphysical commitments that enable it. [ 29 ]

What the Vedanta schools disagree about is the kind of link between God and the cosmos in the theocosm. These disagreements spread them out in a range.

On one end is the Dvaita ( dvaita = “two”) Vedanta school, which is dualistic in its ultimate-world relation and not far from the classical monotheistic views (model 2 in this entry). It reads the theocosm to be two really distinct things, viz., God and the cosmos, with no organic link between them. Though there is no creation ex nihilo in Dvaita or any other Vedanta school, Ishvara (God) is the Divine creator and sustainer of the distinct cosmos and ensouls it and resides within it. The ultimate is the two eternally co-existing, like an eternal dweller eternally content to live in an eternal house It built out of something other than Itself. Of the four traditional Hindu yogas, Dvaita is a deeply bhakti-oriented system ( bhakti = “devotion”), generally practicing devotion to Vishnu/Krishna.

On the other end of the range is the Advaita Vedanta school ( advaita = not two) which is well-known in the West but not as dominant in India. It reads the theocosm/Brahman as one/non-dual, and takes God and the cosmos not to be really distinct, i.e., God = the cosmos. The paradigmatic filling out of this view, often and perhaps mistakenly attributed to Shankara, is pantheistic and world-denying. [ 30 ] Specifically (here is model 3), such classical Advaitans hold that since reality is one and the cosmos is many, the cosmos cannot be real. It looks as if there is a cosmos filled with many things, but the cosmos is merely an appearance ( maya), and taking it to be reality is like taking a rope at dusk to be a snake (Shankara’s famous metaphor, see, e.g., Tapasyananda 1990: 34). With the cosmos out of the picture, the theocosm is just the “ theo ” part; to use the metaphor above, the ultimate is all dweller, no house. That move makes the terms “Brahman” and “God” interchangeable, and on it, God-Brahman is generally read as impersonal. The epistemological license in direct experience for this view is samadhi , a state of spiritual absorption in which all dualities vanish and one experiences just infinite bliss. Since the classical Advaitan view denies the world, Anantanand Rambachan, a contemporary Advaitan, takes its best life expression to be that of the renunciant ( sannyasi ) who lives out that denial (2006: 69).

In the middle range between Dvaita and Advaita are a dozen subtly distinct schools of mainstream Vedanta, often called the “Bhakti schools” given their emphasis on devotion (the distinctions between them make a dozen distinct models here). These schools are all panentheistic and world-affirming. Their best representative is Ramanuja (ca. 1017–1157), the first comprehensive critic of Shankara, who synthesized Advaita with bhakti in a system called Vishishtadvaita (meaning “non-duality of the qualified whole”, model 4 for this entry). [ 31 ] Like classical Advaitans, Ramanuja takes the theocosm/Brahman to be non-dual because it is all God, but unlike them, he takes the cosmos and the many things within it to be real and distinct from Brahman. How can the ultimate be one but have parts? Ramanuja’s panentheistic answer: the cosmic parts form an “inseparable and integral union” ( aprthaksiddhi ) with Brahman, like the union of body and soul ( sarira and sariri ): Brahman is the cosmos’ soul, and the cosmos is Brahman’s body—a body which, to use Ramanuja’s illustration from a quote from the Upanishads,

“is born in, sustained by, and is dissolved in Brahman”….[just] as pearls strung on a thread…are held as a unity without impairing their manifoldness. (Tapasyananda 1990: 6)

So for Ramanuja, Brahman builds a house not out of something else as in Dvaita but out of Brahmanself, and eternally dwells in this eternal Brahman-house which (here is the mark of panentheism) depends on Brahman for its existence but not vice versa, i.e., (Brahman → the cosmos) but not (the cosmos → Brahman). Ramanuja also takes Brahman to be not impersonal but the Divine Person, known under different sacred names, e.g., “Vishnu”, “Narayana”, “Isvara”, etc. The moves to a real cosmos and divine personality have Ramanuja deciding that Brahman’s essential nature as sat-chid-ananda is filled out with countless extrinsic “auspicious properties” (“qualities manifested in him in relation to finite beings”), among them some of the classical perfections such as omnipotence, omniscience and immutability, as well as compassion, generosity, lordship, creative power, and splendor (1990: 36–37).The experiential epistemological licenses for Vishishtadvaita are the combination of samadhi (which justifies the non-dual piece) and darsan (visual contact with the divine through the eyes of images, which justifies the qualification to non-duality). Its best life expression is the practice of bhakti yoga, supported by the reality and personality of both devotee and devoted in Ramanuja’s metaphysics, and exemplified by the Alvars’ passionate devotion to Vishnu from the second to eighth century CE (Tapasyananda 1990: 33).

In the midst of this centuries-long dispute between the Dvaitans, Advaitans and Bhakti schools, a key modern figure arose: Ramakrishna (1836–86), sometimes called “the Great Reconciler” because he attempted to integrate all the schools into one pluralistic, non-sectarian approach. His major insight (birthing model 5 for this entry) is that “God is infinite, and the paths to God are infinite”, and the schools are among these infinite paths (Maharaj 2018: frontispiece). Ramakrishna came by this view firsthand when, after being in a state of samadhi for six months, which he said was “like reaching the roof of a house by leaving the steps behind”, [ 32 ] he had a divine command to come down and stay in a state he called “ vijñāna ” (intimate knowledge), during which he could see the roof but also see that “the steps are made of the same material as the roof (brick, lime, brick dust)”. In other words, in vijñāna he saw that Brahman is both non-dual and dual, and thus began to affirm the “spiritual core” of both schools, and eventually of all the Hindu schools and Christian and Muslim ones, too (Long 2020: 166). He decided they all must be contacting different “aspects” of one and the same reality, and that this reality thus must be deeply, indeed infinitely complex in order to make such diverse experiences possible (Maharaj 2018: Chapter 1, part 3, tenets 1 and 3; see also interpretive principle 4 and K422/G423). [ 33 ] Because he affirms the core of all schools, Ramakrishna is hard to classify, but his view is probably best read as panentheistic and world-affirming since he says over and over again that “all is Brahman” and that Brahman “has become everything”, i.e., Brahman → the cosmos but not vice versa (Long 2020, especially 163).

Contemporary Vedanta is alive and well. To offer just three examples: Long recently merged Ramakrishna’s thought with Whitehead’s to develop a Hindu process theology that offers an ultimate unity behind the God-world relations that was missing in both Whitehead’s and Griffin and Cobb’s interpretations (see Section 2.2 and Long 2013, our model 6). Ayon Maharaj has systematized Ramakrishna’s thought (no small task!) and put it into conversation with major Western philosophers to advance global philosophical work on the problem of evil, religious pluralism and mystical experience (2018). Finally, Rambachan, a present-day Advaitan, moves Advaita closer to Vishishtadvaita when he asserts that “not-two is not one” (2015): non-dualism is not pantheistic but rather panentheistic because Brahman is the cosmos’ material and efficient cause; [ 34 ] Brahman intentionally self-multiplies to make the cosmos. [ 35 ] The cosmos is thus not maya but rather a finite “celebrative expression of Brahman’s fullness” (Rambachan 2006: 79). This reading (model 7 here) opens up Advaitic theology to help heal a variety of human problems from low self-esteem to the caste system because there is real power in re-seeing people as infinite-conscious-bliss, so worthy of respect (Rambachan 2015).

Much of the explicit discussion among the schools is debate over metaphysical ultimacy in general and over the Brahman-God-cosmos relation in particular. Still, there is an implicit drumbeat in all the schools that one can find ultimate fulfillment in Brahman, whether that is in a state of samadhi , vijñāna or devotion (e.g., the “profound and mutual sharing in the life of God…creates unsurpassed bliss [for the devotee]”, Long 2013: 364). So Brahman seems to be soteriologically as well as metaphysically ultimate. What is less clear is whether Brahman is axiologically ultimate, especially in the moral category of being. There are suggestive phrases sprinkled through the texts in the affirmative, but as Alan Watts says:

reason and the moral sense rebel at pantheistic monism which must reduce all things to a flat uniformity and assert that even the most diabolical things are precisely God, thus destroying all values. (Hartshorne & Reese 1953 [2000: 325], quoting Watts 1947)

Though this sentiment is softened by the panentheistic readings in several of the schools since the world can take the fall, in the end, all the schools affirm that Brahman is everything, in some sense. And if Brahman is everything, and not everything seems to be good, then Brahman seems not to be good, at least not full stop. There is no question that Brahman is still the ultimate in Vedantic schools even if Brahman is not axiologically ultimate; as indicated at the start, metaphysical and soteriological ultimacy are sufficient for ultimacy when nothing else in a system has all three marks. But it is jarring and a real contribution to global thought about ultimacy to consider dropping axiological ultimacy from the trio: what is most deeply real may not be all good, though contact with it may still manage to fulfill us deeply all the same.

As in Vedanta, the extant models of God disagree about the ultimate-world relation and those disagreements spread them out in a range, with dualisms on one end and monisms on the other, and panentheisms and—for the first time in this entry—merotheisms in between. The idea of God seems to be nothing if not flexible. Even the relatively common view that God is by definition a personal ultimate—an ultimate that is conscious and self-aware—has been on the move for millennia and is hotly debated today.

The most venerable model of God that is often read dualistically is known as “perfect being theology”, which bears traces of its origin in its name (this is model 8—a general model, species coming). The idea fully grown, as we have it today, defines God as that which is perfect (whether personal or not), where perfection is typically taken to entail being unsurpassable in power, knowledge, and goodness, and several models add being immutable, impassible, a se , eternal, simple and necessary in some sense. Most perfect being theologians take God to have created the universe out of nothing ( ex nihilo ), and that view can be taken to entail dualism for a variety of reasons. To offer one, as Brian Davies says, “God makes things to be, but not out of anything” (italics his), including not out of Godself, so the cosmos is entirely fresh stuff—a second kind of stuff, distinct from and radically dependent on God (2004: 3). [ 36 ] Perfect being theology was birthed during the Hellenistic era from the fusing of the Jewish idea of a single God that acts in history (the theos in “perfect being theology”) with the Greek philosophical idea of perfect ultimacy (“perfect being”). [ 37 ] From the very start, there were conceptual tensions in the combination: how can the God who led us out of Egypt, who hears our prayers and who intervenes in the world as the Jews say (Cohen 1987: 44) also be immutable, impassible and a se as the Greeks say (e.g., Guthrie 1965: 26–39, 272–279; Guthrie 1981: 254–263)? This question is sometimes framed: how can “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” be the “God of the philosophers?” Even after perfect being theology had passed for centuries from Judaism to Christianity to Islam—with an important handoff in the midst by Anselm who amped up the Greek perfection by taking God to be that than which no greater can be conceived—the great medieval theologians in all three faiths were still hitting up against the tensions and finding ways to tamp them down. For instance, on the issue of anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Bible and the Quran, both Maimonides and Aquinas read them as negations and said that God “is not a body” (Dorff 2013: 113; Kennedy 2013: 158) and both Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and al-Ghazali parted with “theologians who took all these descriptions literally” because “beings that have bodily form…have characteristics incompatible with a perfect being” (Hasan 2013: 142).

The tensions continued into the modern era and are still felt in our time. Perhaps as early as 1644, perfect being theology split into two camps over them (see Davies 2004: chapter 1, and Page 2019). Both camps take God to be absolutely perfect, but disagree over what it takes to be perfect: “classical theists” deny or weaken God’s personhood to save the Greek perfections such as impassibility, immutability and simplicity, while “theistic personalists” (a species of “neoclassical theists”) conversely deny or weaken the Greek perfections to save God’s personhood. “Open theists” (model 9 in this entry), for example, are theistic personalists: they call for new readings of, e.g., omnipotence and omniscience and drop immutability and impassibility to comport with God’s desire “to be in an ongoing, dynamic relationship with us” (Basinger 2013: 264–268, see also, e.g., Clark 1992; Pinnock et al. 1994; Sanders 1998). [ 38 ] Other neoclassical theists aim merely to resolve inconsistencies among the perfections, as in Nagasawa’s Maximal God Theism (2008, 2017; model 10). In addition to its old challenges, perfect being theology also hit new ones in the modern era from advances in science. When it met Newtonian mechanics (and more) during the Enlightenment, the combination spawned “deism”, the idea that God set the initial conditions of the universe and then left it to play out on its own (model 11). Deism is a dualism because it assumes God can leave the world behind and thus is neither “in” it as in panentheism nor identical with it as in pantheism. Picture all these theistic dualisms as close to Dvaita Vedanta’s image of the eternal builder building a house out of something different from itself and dwelling in it as it pleases, but make the house not necessarily eternal (it may have had a start and may end), and for classical theism, give the builder all the perfections; for neoclassical theisms, give it a few less and perhaps have it throw better parties in the house; and for deism, have the builder abandon the house altogether once it is built and leave it to its own devices, like an “absentee landlord” (Mitchell 2008: 169).

On the other end of the spectrum from these varieties of theistic dualism, we find pantheism, the species of monism that takes the One to be God (a general model, 13). All monisms face a problem of unity : how are the many things in the world integrated enough to call them One? But pantheisms face an additional problem of divinity : even if all is truly One, does the One have what it takes to be God? Here we will focus on two contemporary pantheisms, both in Buckareff & Nagasawa (2016): what we might call a “one-thing” pantheism by Peter Forrest (2016) (a specific pantheism, model 14), where the One is a count noun (as in “a walrus is sleeping over there”), so the cosmos as a whole is One thing, and a “one-stuff” pantheism by Karl Pfeifer (2016) where the One is a mass term (as in “that little lamb is made of butter ”), so everything in the cosmos is made of the same kind of One-stuff (model 15). Unlike the Advaita pantheists who take the universe to be a mere appearance, Forrest and Pfeifer definitely take the universe to exist. So for them (and pantheists like them), the One will have to be identical to the universe, and the work is to show how the universe can be identical to God. In other words, this is not all builder no house as in Advaita; the builder is the house, and the builder-house is special enough to call it “God”. Forrest’s main move to effect this is to take the universe to be a conscious self, by way of a “properly anthropocentric” non-reductive physicalism: just as our brain processes correlate with our mental states, so also the universe’s physical processes correlate with universal mental states, which on the model involve a unity of consciousness and thus a sense of self. Forrest has a strong reply to the problem of unity here: the One is an integrated Self precisely because of what emerges from the processes of the many. But is the Self conscious in high enough ways to meet the problem of divinity, to count as God? Though Forrest does not argue like this, the resources for nascent perfections are here, such as omnipotence (the Self has all the power in the universe), omniscience (It could know the entire universe by biofeedback), good will for all (since to hurt any part of the universe is to hurt Itself) etc.—enough in theory to count as God in the classical or at least neoclassical sense. For Pfeifer’s view, instead of picturing the universe as a person, picture it as an “intentional field”, like an electromagnetic field except spread physical dispositional states across space instead of magnetic forces and electrons. Because those physical dispositional states have the same extension as intentional states, [ 39 ] intentional states are effectively spread everywhere too. That spreading means there is a kind of “panintentionalism”, and if the intentions are divine enough, then a panGodism, i.e., pantheism. So if Forrest is right, the universe is God itself, and if Pfeifer is right, the universe is made of God-stuff, this field of divine intentional states—both strong thoughts. How plausible, though? On the plus side, Forrest’s view is an instance of “cosmopsychism” (“the cosmos as a whole is phenomenal”, i.e., the Cosmos as a whole has conscious states) and Pfeifer’s an instance of “panpsychism” (“everything in the cosmos is phenomenal”, every particular in the cosmos is conscious), both of which are receiving growing attention in philosophy of mind since, e.g., cosmopsychism may solve physicalism’s problem of strong emergence and panpsychism’s combination problem at once (Nagasawa 2019, for more on these views and their link with Hinduism and Buddhism see, e.g., Shani 2015, Albahari 2019, Mathews 2019). However, even if either the cosmo- or panpsychic aspect of Forrest’s or Pfeifer’s views turns out to be true, the divine part seems doubtful for a reason Pfeifer enunciates: the kind of intentionality the universe would have within it (on Pfeifer’s view) or that would supervene on it (in Forrest’s view) seems likely to be at best the consciousness of an animal, or a comatose or schizoid human, etc.—not even close to the kind of consciousness that would make it count as God (see Pfeifer’s footnote on 2016: 49).

In the middle, between the theistic dualisms and the pantheisms, stand the merotheisms and the panentheisms (two general kinds of models, 16 and 17, again, species coming). As indicated above, the merotheisms are rare, the “odd bird” idea that God is in the world, but the world goes beyond God. Though the term “merotheism” was coined only recently by Paul Draper for his own view (2019: 160), merotheisms have been around well before, for example, in divine emergence theories such as Samuel Alexander’s (1920, a specific model 18) on which the world is metaphysically ultimate and God arises in it. [ 40 ] So on the metaphor, the house comes first, then God grows within it. Alexander, for instance, thinks the rock-bottom reality is space-time, and that when “patterns” or “groupings” of it become complex enough, matter comes to evolve in it, then life, then mind and then deity (257). The universe now is at mind, so we are waiting for deity to emerge, not from small “groupings” of things as with the other levels, but from the universe as a whole. Because things can think only about the things below themselves in the hierarchy, we cannot know what deity will be like when it comes (Thomas 2016: 258)—a nice way to explain why God is ineffable and unknowable, albeit one that gives no (other) content to say why Alexander’s “deity” should count as God. In contrast to the emergence merotheisms, Draper (2019) offers a sheer “meros” one (model 19), in which nature, instead of growing God, always has God as one proper part. Specifically, nature is composed of two parts which are both metaphysically ultimate: fundamental matter, and fundamental mind. So what there is not only all the familiar material stuff but also one and only one immaterial mind, i.e., God—“the single subject of all phenomenally conscious experiences”, located in and coextensive with space (2019: 163). Assuming that minds are the source of value, this one mind is the fundamental “source of all the value there is”, and hence is axiologically ultimate (2019: 163). Interestingly, just like prisms immersed in sunlight naturally diffract the electromagnetic spectrum (2019: 167, originally from William James), our brains, which are with everything else immersed in this omnipresent universal mind, naturally diffract what we might think of as the divine spectrum—displaying aspects of the universal consciousness by generating one of its “multiple streams”, “making use” of it for our own ends, tuning in to it in mystical experiences, etc. (2019: 163, 170). So brains don’t produce consciousness—they tap into it—and God doesn’t make the universe or emerge in it—God is the mental part of it that gives it value, and gives us a hope for a form of life after death because the consciousness that runs through our brains and that we mistakenly call our own continues to live on after the brain dies as the aspect of the enduring universal consciousness it always was. This hope secures some soteriological ultimacy: though it makes sense to mourn our deaths, we should “not despair” (2019: 170) since, if we ally ourselves with our consciousnesses, we are even after death still what we always were, an aspect of the mental fundamental reality, as Shankara and Ramakrishna and others would tell us.

Panentheistic models of God (on which the world is in God but God goes beyond the world) have been popular for millennia, to the point that John Cooper calls them “the other God of the Philosophers” in the title of his book on panentheism (Cooper 2006, a general model, #20 in this entry). There are literally too many panentheistic models of God to count, from a star-studded list of historical thinkers including Plato, Pseudo-Dionysius, Ibn Arabi, Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa, Kant, Hegel, Peirce and more, with a resurgence in the last decade owing at least in part to Yujin Nagasawa and Andrei Buckareff’s Pantheism and Panentheism Project (2017–19 [see Other Internet Resources ]). Though some complain that the “in” in panentheism is so ambiguous it is not obviously a single view (see Gasser 2019), Chad Meister suggests that the recent appeal of panentheism is a direct result of (1) some of the neoclassical revisions to the idea of God (more immanent, more passible, etc.) which can be explained by the world’s being in God, as well as (2) the advent of emergentist theories in science which make room not only for the emergence merotheisms sketched above (on which God emerges from the world) but also for their converse, the emergence panentheisms (on which the world emerges from God), among other reasons (Meister 2017: section 4).

Hartshorne’s process theology is a great example of the first impulse Meister identifies (so it is a specific panentheism, model 21). Hartshorne’s process view begins with Whitehead’s metaphysics from Process and Reality —with the idea that the world is dynamic, not static, and indeed that the fundamental units are events, “actual occasions”, not substances, which

do not endure through a tiny bit of time unchanged but [take] a tiny bit of time to become…concrete (“concresence”, Cobb & Griffin 1976: 15)

and which are thus dynamic all the way down. Hartshorne then places this dynamic world of events in God, by taking a page from Ramanuja’s book and saying that all of it—this “totality of individuals as a physical or spatial whole is God’s body, the Soul of which is God ” (Hartshorne 1984: 94, quoted in Meister 2017: section 5, italics added)—a move which cements his view as a panentheism, since the world is literally in God, but God, as Soul of the world, goes beyond the world. The practical pay dirt of the view is that, in the same way we feel our bodies, so also God as the Soul of the world feels the world—feels every last “drop of experience” as Whitehead says, every last bit of change happening in every last actual occasion. Moreover, just as we respond to what we feel in our bodies, so also God responds to each felt occasion, and in that instant does two things: runs through a catalog of all possible next occasions, next moves as it were, and then “lures the world forward” with suggestions for the best next moves to actualize in the next occasion. The world can “listen” or not to these suggestions as the next occasion concresces, and then God will regroup again, moment after moment after moment. This is the dynamic process of perfecting—from the world to God back to the world again—which gives process theology its name, and makes it a kind of “becoming-perfect-being” theology.

John Bishop and Ken Perszyk (2016, 2017) propose a panentheism they call a “euteleological conception of divinity” (model 22 here), on which (1) divinity is the property or activity of being the supreme good (“ eu ” in “euteleological”) and (2) realizing this property or activity is the point (“ telos ” or final cause) of the universe. In addition—inspired by an unusual kind of efficient causation called “axiarchism” on which final causes can function as efficient ones, an idea visible at least since Plato and having something of a revival in the last couple decades—Bishop and Perszyk (3) take concrete realizations of the supreme good to be the efficient cause of the universe. [ 41 ] Thus, on (2) and (3), these realizations of the good are both the efficient and final cause of the universe, both alpha and omega . This model is, as its authors say, “prone to be met with incomprehension or blank incredulity” (2017: 613): how can effects in the universe be the cause the universe, and thus their own causes? Though Bishop and Perszyk do not answer this question in 2016 or 2017, they do point out the eerie precedent in the Christian tradition, the model’s home context, for efficient causes to double as final ones: Jesus is both the source and offspring of David, both “root and flower;” Mary “gives birth to her own creator;” the Divine word is both “without which was not anything made that was made” and “born late in time” (2017: 614). They also identify the supreme good in Christianity as perfect love, take Jesus to have instantiated it in his person and time and again in relationships, and take us to do so too when we “love one another as he has loved us” (2017: 613). Note such concrete occasions of love are per (1) literally divinity dotting (and hopefully eventually overrunning) the universe, and that they deserve to count as divinity because they are triply ultimate: metaphysically since they are the efficient and final cause of the universe; axiologically since they are the best of things, and soteriologically since they are deeply fulfilling (to quote the Beatles, “all you need is love”). Whether or not the axiarchism at its heart is a strike against euteleological theism, an enormous point in its favor is how profoundly it addresses the problem of evil: it makes God the force in nature that defuses evil instead of intending it. [ 42 ]

This section would be incomplete without at least mentioning Tillich’s “ground of being theology” in closing (model 23). His view is not filed into the range of God-world relations above because it is famously difficult to categorize: Christopher Demuth Rodkey (2013) says Tillich has been read variously as a panentheist, deist (i.e., dualist), and pantheist, and that it is in fact best to characterize him as none of the above but rather as an “ecstatic naturalist”, where the Power of Being delivers the naturalism (since this Power is “the power in every thing that has power”) and the Depth of Being delivers the ecstasy (persons experience this Power of Being ecstatically, as holy). This interpretation tracks Tillich’s method of correlative theology in Systematic Theology I and II : ecstasy is a “state of mind” which is “an exact correlate” to the “state of reality” of the power of being which animates and transcends the finite world (see, e.g., Tillich 1957b: 13). So for Tillich, God is the power or energy that animates the world which, when truly encountered, provokes ecstatic response. This view is spare enough that it is not obvious how someone might work up an “ultimate concern” about God, another of Tillich’s central ideas mentioned at the start of this entry (1957a, e.g., 10–11). Tillich will have to hypothesize that the ecstasy provoked is, for believers, strong enough to rouse such a concern.

These are, then, several models of God, sorted mainly by how they see the relationship between God and the world. Is the God that is modeled in each of these ways metaphysically, axiologically and soteriologically ultimate, in Schellenberg’s terms? Interestingly, the answers differ dramatically for each model. To offer just two examples, on classical theism we get a yes, yes, yes: God as single-handed origin of the universe, making everything out of nothing, is metaphysically the fundamental fact; and, in Anselm’s hands, God as the greatest not only actual but also possible being in every category of being, is as axiologically ultimate as anything can be; and in Aquinas’ idea, God as our very telos , the point of our being, is soteriologically ultimate as well. In contrast, God on Alexander’s view gets a no, maybe, maybe. Alexander’s deity is not metaphysically the most fundamental fact in any of the ways collected in the models seen so far: it is neither the efficient cause of the universe (as in the dualisms), nor its material cause (as in the pantheisms and some panentheisms) nor its final cause (as in Bishop and Perszyk). [ 43 ] Alexander also cannot say if deity will be axiologically or soteriologically ultimate when it arrives, since deity is by definition unknown for him. Thus, God as modeled in some ways is ultimate and in others is not.

The idea of the Dao (Way, Path, Guide) emerged during the Warring States period in China (fifth to second centuries BCE), when the reigning idea of Tian (Heaven) as a kind of personal god or God started to shatter along with the rest of the imperial structures of the Zhou Dynasty. Chinese thinkers faced their version of the problem of evil: “Why is Tian letting this chaos persist?” and added “Where is the dao to harmony?” (Perkins 2019; Miller 2003: 37). An extended debate arose among different schools of thought arguing for different answers (Zürn 2018: 300ff), including two schools that have endured: the early Ru (Confucian) thinkers who said the dao could be brought back into the human world by reestablishing right social relationships and customs, and the early or proto-Daoists [ 44 ] who found a new focus in the dao in the impersonal, consistent patterns of the non-human natural world. The Daodejing (ca. sixth to fourth centuries BCE, hereafter “ DDJ ”) is the earliest Daoist text that reads these natural patterns as evidence of a single force or principle of all that there is—as a single metaphysical ultimate—and “tentatively”, as Perkins (2019) says well, names this ultimate “the dao ” or in some translations “the Dao ” or “ Dao ”. Though this entry will focus mainly on the Daoist tradition and use the word “Dao” (hereafter not italicized) to refer to it, the res in question runs under other important names and concepts in both the Daoist and Ru traditions, including Taiji (Great Ultimate or Grand One), Xuan Tian (Dark Heaven), Zhen (Truth or noumenal Reality) and conjoined with Tian as Tiandao in Ruism.

Gradually, the early Daoist thinkers took the Dao to have multiple functional roles—metaphysically, as the cosmos’ origin, its pattern or structure ( ti ), its functioning ( yong ); and soteriologically as a guide through the cosmos for humans, as Robin Wang says ( DDJ ch. 25, Wang 2012: 47). Combining the Dao’s role as the origin of all things with its undeniable unitariness threw Daoist thinkers into the question of how the One became Many, and thus into a focus on cosmogony. The Daoist cosmogonists generally agreed, and agree now, on at least six things about the Dao (the last general model this entry will showcase)—though there is substantial diversity in interpretations of each which help constitute various thinkers’ models of the Dao.

First, in a seeming nod to the consistent patterns of the universe that encouraged postulation of the Dao in the first place, the Dao is taken to be immanent in everything. As the Zhuangzi says,

There’s no place [the Dao] doesn’t exist….It is in the panic grass….in the tiles and shards…in the piss and shit!…“Complete”, “universal”, “all-inclusive”—all point to a single reality. ( Zhuangzi , sec. 22, Watson translation)

Second, because it is capable of singlehandedly originating everything, the Dao is taken to be necessarily ziran , meaning “self-so” or “spontaneous”, which is read as entailing something like the kind of necessity and aseity of being causa sui in the Thomist tradition (Perkins 2019). Wang explains the entailment in her explication of a famous passage (“Human beings follow earth, earth follows heaven, heaven follows dao , and dao follows ziran ”): the Dao’s following ziran arrests the regress because “following” spontaneity is the opposite of following since spontaneity is making it up yourself on the fly ( DDJ , ch. 25; Wang 2012: 51).

What is the nature of a ziran generator of all things, then? Zhuangzi answers in his inimitable way: “what things things is not itself a thing” (ch. 11, see Schipper 1982 [1993: 115]). In other words, the third commonly held claim is that the Dao is no thing, nothing, nonbeing ( wu ). Bin Song (2018) helpfully disambiguates several readings of nonbeing, including as (a) sheer nothingness, a great vacuum “before” time and things; or (b) abstract forms not yet made concrete, e.g., Zhu-Xi’s “pattern-principles” or Wang’s “patterns and processes of interrelatedness” (2018: 48) or, instead of nothingness or abstractness, (c) concrete no-thingness, i.e., a totally undetermined whole of being, stuff without form. Song and Poul Andersen favor option (c), translating a key phrase in DDJ 21 that describes the Dao as a “complete blend” and as having “murky indistinctness”, respectively (Song 2018: 224–230, Andersen 2019: 131–132). Another line in that chapter also tells against the Dao’s being sheer nothingness:

yet within it is a substance, within it is an essence, quite genuine, within it, something that can be tested. ( DDJ , Lau translation)

On any of these readings of nonbeing, it is clear why the Dao is taken to be impersonal: the Dao is not only not anthropomorphic; it is not even thingmorphic. It is also clear why it is taken to be ineffable: it is not just because its being is beyond us; it is also because it is not a being at all, and most uses of words (to talk like Zhuangzi) thing it. So we find Daoist texts using the tricks of the ineffability trade to talk about the Dao, including famously, e.g., a use of the via negativa in the opening line of the DDJ : “the way that can be spoken of is not the constant way…” Also, in an expression that is perhaps less about the Dao’s ineffability and more about the futility of finding it intellectually, there is Zhuangzi’s dynamic semper negativa of “continuous self-negation” or “unsaying”, visible also in the Buddhist tradition and in Tillich millennia after and oceans away:

There is being, there is no-being, there is not yet beginning to be no-being, there is not yet beginning to be not yet beginning to be no-being. ( Zhuangzi , sec. 2; on Tillich, Rodkey 2013: 491–493)

The fourth and fifth widely held views of the Dao are both about how nonbeing generates being, namely with wu wei (“non-action”), and in stages. Andersen describes wu wei more fully: “the Way does not cause [things] to come into being but provides a gap that allows things to emerge” (2019: 131). To reveal wu wei , Daoist literature frequently uses images of the female and infants, e.g., twice over in DDJ 10, where wu wei is likened first to “keeping the role of the female” who with no apparent (anyway) action naturally nurtures the fetus and then, to use Andersen’s words, provides a gap to allow it to emerge in birth; and second to “being as supple as a babe” who is the epitome of the wu wei ruler since a baby does not do anything but gets everyone else to act to please it (Zürn in conversation; see also Erkes and Ho-Shang-Kung1945: 128).

The Dao is also taken to generate in stages, and actually in four of them ( DDJ 40, 42; Perkins 2019; Robson 2015: 1483; Wang 2012: 48; etc.). There are various readings of the sequence, but one prominent view takes 0 as nonbeing, the Dao; 1 as unity, Being; 2 as duality, yinyang ; [ 45 ] and 3 as multiplicity, namely heaven, earth and human beings. In a prescient recognition of how natural (heaven and earth) and social (human) constructions combine to make reality, 3 burgeons into 4, i.e., the 10,000 or myriad things that comprise the universe. Crucially, 4 returns to 0—to use the feminine imagery, returns to the womb where everything is possible and everything develops—and then the sequence repeats (Pregadio 2016 [2020: sec. 4], Wang 2012, 51 citing the Huainanzi ). This world-to-Dao-and-back cycle is reminiscent of the occasion-to-God-and-back cycle in process theology, though on a grand vs. momentary scale. [ 46 ]

Interestingly, in general, Daoists read the sequence as strictly cyclical (so 4 returns to 0, i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 0, 1, …) while Ruists read it as an “endless advance to novelty” so that we never step into the same cycle twice (i.e., 0, 1, …, 0′, 1′, …, 0″, 1″, … etc.) (Song 2018: 230–232). Moreover, there is an open question whether the sequence is temporal or ontological (Song 2018: 225–226) which is sometimes crystallized into a debate about whether 0 is temporally (and thus ontologically) prior to 1 or merely ontologically so. If the move from 0 to 1 is temporal, then 0 happens before 1 and they are really distinct; as Andersen argues:

the One is a product of the Way, not the Way itself… [because] identity and stability as a thing in the world depends on being one. (Andersen 2019: 180)

If, on the other hand, 0 is only ontologically prior to 1, then nonbeing and being are always co-existing as two eternal aspects of what there is, with being still depending for its existence on non-being like a burning eternal candle depends for its existence on its eternal flame. The ontological-only reading seems licensed by DDJ 1 which talks about “the nameless [who] was the beginning of heaven and earth” and “the named [who] was the mother of the myriad creatures…. these two are the same but diverge in name as they issue forth” (italics mine, for more see Pregadio 2016 [2020: sec. 4.1])—assuming that the passage implies that they diverge in name “only”. The dispute about how nonbeing and being relate is vexing enough that it is a relief, actually, when DDJ 81 throws up its hands and says: “their coexistence is a mystery”!

Grasping all this together—that the Dao is the origin of all, immanent in all, ziran , essentially nonbeing, generating forms of being by wu wei , generating stage by stage until we reach the roiling boil of being in the myriad things—we are able to catch the last and perhaps deepest thought of all about the Dao: that it is generative by nature, or as Neville says: “nonbeing is simply fecund from the perspective of being” (2008: 3). This idea hails back to the I Ching , which takes “the foundation of the changes” to be sheng sheng , literally meaning “life life” or “generating generating”, sometimes glossed with the phrase shengsheng buxi “generating generating never ceasing!”—held as the highest metaphysical principle by Ruists (especially neo-Ruists) and not far from Spinoza’s natura naturans (Gao Heng 1998: 388 cited in Perkins 2019). Thus, at the bottom of it all, there is just endless, unformed, spontaneous life stuff, which is generating increasingly formed spontaneous life stuff which, because it is shot through with the Dao, in turn generates even more, even further formed, spontaneous life stuff, and we are off and running to the 10,000 things, until, as yang wanes to yin, life life goes back to 0 (death death?), and all is still until it waxes to yang again. In spite of the cycle that always sends it back to yin, it is fitting to call the Dao “life life” because it always waxes to life again; the life force is irrepressible, no matter how many times it temporarily dies.

Though the Daoist literature does not use these philosophical distinctions much, and though occasionally it is read there as a monism in passing, the standard model of the Dao just recounted is best understood as an impersonal panentheism—as are the classical theisms and Bishop and Perszyk’s model of God ( Section 2.2 ). The Dao-world relation has the asymmetry that defines panentheism: all the forms of being at 1–4 (or at least 2–4, if Being is read as identical to the Dao) depend for their existence on the Dao, but the Dao does not depend on them, or anything, for its existence. [ 47 ] In addition, if we take the theme of immanence in a full-throated way so that really there is nowhere down the line of the stages that the Dao is not, then the Dao is both the efficient and material cause of the universe, as we saw in the Bhakti Vedanta views. So the view of the Dao traced here is close to the idea of Brahman as the builder of a house out of Brahmanself, who eternally dwells in this eternal Brahman-house which depends on Brahman for its existence but not vice versa. But “builder” is too intentional for the Dao, and, at least on the temporal reading of the sequence, there is no eternal house and thus no eternal dwelling in it. So try this: think of the Dao as an eternal seed for a house. The seed sprouts naturally in stages into a house filled with 10,000 things which depends on the seed but not vice versa, until the house dies back into the seed, which then lies dormant, pregnant with being, until it sprouts into being again, and so on, eternally.

After all that has been said, the Dao is clearly metaphysically ultimate in Schellenberg’s sense: it is “the most fundamental fact about the nature of things” (2016: 168). The Dao is soteriologically ultimate as well, but, as with Brahman, it is not clearly axiologically so. Regarding axiology, first, if we understand axiology as greatness along all the categories of being, we can see immediately that the Dao, at least understood as 0, has greatness along no category of being since it is not being at all (for more see Kohn 2001: 18). [ 48 ] Moreover, if we narrow the idea of axiology just to the moral category of being, the Dao is still not axiologically ultimate. In multiple texts, the Dao is taken to be neither good nor bad; it is taken to be what is. Famous among them is DDJ , ch. 5 (“Heaven and earth are not kind, they treat the ten thousand beings as straw dogs”, see also chs. 18, 62). Interpreters take these passages to mean that the Dao is either amoral—as nonbeing, not the kind of thing that has moral interests in the first place; or “value-contrarian” (Hansen 2020); or, to add a thought, perhaps “ananthropocentric”, having moral concerns that are not human-centered (see Mulgan 2015 and 2017). Wang Bi’s commentary on the straw dogs passage suggests that these amoral or anti-moral moments spring from the Dao’s and the sage’s wu wei :

The one who is kind necessarily creates and erects, impacts and transforms. He shows mercy and acts. If someone creates and erects, impacts and transforms things, then these things lose their true reality. If he shows mercy and acts, then these things are not entirely there. (quoted in Andersen 2019: 130)

In other words, acting wu wei actually requires not being kind in the usual sense. But if Wang Bi is right, maybe there is an axiology after all to treating the myriad things like straw dogs: being kind in the traditional sense may not be being kind deeply since it destroys a thing’s power to be itself.

Regarding soteriology, it is agreed that a—or even the—central goal of Daoist practices such as inner alchemy, t’ai chi, etc. is to return to the Dao ( fandao, huandao , DDJ 16 and 40; Andersen 2019: 126), and specifically to return to nonbeing, which is the Dao at its most creative, powerful and sublime, on the crest of becoming being (Song 2018: 234–5). If we can return to 0, we embody this power and sublimity in human form and, as Andersen says, also do our part to return the cosmos to the start for a new beginning (2019: 123). There are specific rituals Daoists do in communal contexts to return. In one of the important rites in Daoist liturgy called bugang (“walking along the guideline”), a Daoist high priest walks through the ritual space, with the audience making their own occasional movements too, to embody a complete motion of return with a successful arrival back to 0 by the end of the rite, when

the forces that animated the universe at the beginning of time may once again be channeled into the community on behalf of which the ritual is performed. (2019: 118–123)

Practitioners outside of ritual contexts also try to return by inwardly cultivating the skill of acting as the Dao does when it generates being: with wu wei . Miller reminds us that wu wei is not some loose form of letting go, but is rather a specific “spiritual technology” of intervening very gently at the right time, in the right place—as Neville says, with “a subtle infinitesimal dose” when there is a rare “opening for spontaneity [in the otherwise hard-to-beat] inertial forces of the Dao” (Miller 2003: 140; Neville 2008: 47–51). Andersen’s take on these efforts is haunting:

An accomplished Daoist resides in the gap between being and nonbeing. The fundamental truth of Daoism is in this gap, in the Way and its manifestation as true and real. (2019: 130)

This thought suggests an answer to the puzzle that surfaced about Brahman—about why contact with a metaphysical ultimate that is not axiologically so might still be fulfilling to us. At least for those seeking awareness of Brahman and harmony with the Dao, our whole desire looks like it is to be in the presence of what is true and real ( Zhen ), whether what is true and real is bad or good or neither or both. We are fans of unvarnished reality.

3. Responses to the Diversity of Models of What is Ultimate

After surveying these many models of Brahman, God, and the Dao, and recognizing that they are just a small sample of the range of options for modeling Brahman, God, and the Dao, which are in turn a small sample of the range of ultimates that could be modeled, one may wonder: What should one do with all this information?

People respond in various ways after grasping the diversity of the models. Some abandon the models altogether, either exhausted by their complexity (embodied in Watt’s wonderful phrase “the which than which there is no whicher”, 1972: 110), or convinced by their number and inconsistency that some models logically must be making a mistake, and it will be very hard to tell which ones. In other words, one response to the diversity is to decide more deeply that the nature of what is ultimate is indeed beyond us, if there is anything ultimate at all, so it is not worth thinking about it.

In sharp contrast, others actually embrace the diversity of models as part of the path to understanding what is ultimate. The comparative theologians, for example, study novel models in order to carry fresh insights from them back to their own tradition and re-see their own models more deeply (see Clooney 2010 for an introduction and, e.g., Feldmeier 2019 for the method applied to Buddhist and Christian models of the ultimate). An emerging movement, Theology Without Walls (TWW), draws on the models to understand the nature of a globally shared ultimate, one to which all the models may be intending to refer, reading the body of models as data and their number and inconsistencies as an interpretive challenge instead of a deal breaker (see, e.g., Martin 2020). Ramakrishna offers one such interpretation in the TWW spirit: he decides there is no need to choose between the models because each is a finite start on the “infinite paths to an infinite reality” (see Section 2.1 )—each is news about an ultimate whose nature is so full that we actually need all the models to help us see it. Both TWW and Ramakrishna will have to explain how it is possible for many or all the models to deliver news of what is ultimate given their inconsistency, e.g., by relying on perspectivalism, a phenomenal/noumenal distinction, the models’ incommensurability, etc. (see Ruhmkorff 2013 for a survey of options).

Others fall somewhere between abandoning and embracing the plurality of models by recommending that we hold the models loosely somehow, that we attenuate our commitment to them. Kierkegaard for instance tells us to move our focus from the content of our model to our orientation to what we are attempting to model: it is better to pray to a false God truly than to a true God falsely (paraphrase of 1846, Part Two, Chapter II). [ 49 ] Similarly, J.R. Hustwit cautions us to “balance engagement with non-attachment” to models to avoid ego-reinforcement and more (2013: 1003–1007)—not far perhaps from Zhuangzi’s and Tillich’s semper negativa of holding and letting go model after model, a view which converts the pile of models into grist for the mill of a spiritual practice. For his part, Schellenberg suggests that instead of having faith in a specific model of, e.g., Brahman, God or the Dao, we do better to have it in the more general thing ( res ) that underlies them all—the axiological, soteriological, and metaphysical ultimate which has been the organizing principle of this entry. One advantage of reading ultimacy in Schellenberg’s way is that the general ultimate is more likely to exist than any of the particular ultimates it covers, since it exists if any of them do. [ 50 ] A second advantage is that Schellenberg’s general ultimate is by design the core, the overlooked “heart” of the many models—the same thing that the particular models it covers are about, just at a higher level of description. So faith in Schellenberg’s ultimate permits a “faith without details” (2009: ch. 2) in many of the world’s religions and philosophies at once.

For those who, after this long journey through the landscape of models and now these responses to them, still hope to discover which model is philosophically the best of them all, know that Wildman (2017) has a plan for “think[ing] our way through the morass” (2017: viii). In brief:

• identify the models worth your time;
• place them in a “reverent competition” that scores them on “comparative criteria” (2017: viii–ix, ff.), then
• adopt the winner, at least provisionally, since the entire inquiry is “fallibilist” (2017: 161 and elsewhere).

Wildman demonstrates his plan by following it himself (2017). Interestingly, he frames his options for step 1 in terms of “entire systems of thought” comprised of combinations of models of what is ultimate (which he calls “U types”) plus “ontological cosmologies” (“C types”)—an idea which may really do a better job of identifying our choices than the models per se do, given their fuller capture of an entire worldview. His U types include agential models on which the ultimate is personal, ground of being models on which it is impersonal, and “subordinate deity” models such as process theology on which it is “disjoint:” one or more personal deities operate in an impersonal ultimacy (2017: 13, 165, 182). His C types include supernaturalism, which involves disembodied agency; naturalism, which does not; and monism. Combining the U and C types produces nine U + C views, and to live out step 1 of his plan, he chooses his top three to place in competition: supernaturalist theistic personalism (God as a personal perfect being), naturalist ground of being (think, e.g., the panentheistic impersonal Dao), and Whitehead’s or Hartshorne’s process theism. For step (2), he then subjects these three views to his comparative criteria, which include coherence, ability to handle the problems of evil and the One and the Many, fit with the sciences, and most importantly non-anthropomorphism, his main criterion since he takes anthropomorphism to result from misapplying human cognitive structures that were naturally selected for mere survival purposes to ideas of ultimacy (2017: 217).

When Wildman ran his competitors against these criteria, the naturalist ground of being system won. But it is obviously up to each of us interested in such a project to run our own competitions on the models we take to be worth our time, with comparative criteria we think make a model truth-conducive, in order to light on the most philosophically satisfying model of what is ultimate that we can. That model would be the one to then subject to the best arguments for and against the existence of God and other ultimates, to discover in a fully researched and now clarified way, whether there is anything ultimate.

• Albahari, Miri, 2019, “Beyond Cosmopsychism and the Great I Am: How the World Might Be Grounded in Universal ‘Advaitic’ Consciousness”, in Seager 2019: 119–130.
• Adams, Marilyn McCord, 2016, “Horrors”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 128–144. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0008
• Alexander, Samuel, 1920, Space, Time and Deity: The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow 1916–18 , 2 volumes, London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd.
• Andersen, Poul, 2019, The Paradox of Being: Truth, Identity and Images in Daoism , (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 120), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
• Aristotle, Physics and Metaphysics , in R. McKeon (ed.), The Basic Works of Aristotle , New York: Random House, 1941, pp. 218–394 and 681–926.
• Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica , Part I, in A. Pegis, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (volumes 1 and 2), New York: Random House, 1944.
• Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles , Books I and II (Latin-English Opera Omnia), Aquinas Institute (trans.), Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019.
• Bacon, John, 2013, “The God Insight: Vengeance or Destiny?” in Diller and Kasher 2013: 543–565. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_44
• Barbour, Ian G., 1974, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science and Religion , New York: Harper & Row.
• Basinger, David, 2013, “Introduction to Open Theism”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 263–275. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_22
• Berthrong, John H., 2001, “The Idea of Categories in Perspective”, in Neville 2001: 237–259.
• Bishop, John, 2007, “How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments: Exploring an Alternative to Classical Theism”, Philosophia , 35(3–4): 387–402. doi:10.1007/s11406-007-9071-y
• –––, 2009, “Towards a Religiously Adequate Alternative to OmniGod Theism”, Sophia , 48(4): 419–433. doi:10.1007/s11841-009-0130-7
• Bishop, John and Ken Perszyk, 2016, “Concepts of God and Problems of Evil”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 106–127. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0007
• –––, 2017, “The Divine Attributes and Non-Personal Conceptions of God”, Topoi , 36(4): 609–621. doi:10.1007/s11245-016-9394-z
• Buckareff, Andrei and Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), 2016, Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.001.0001
• Clark, Kelly James, 1992, “Hold Not Thy Peace at My Tears: Methodological Reflections on Divine Impassibility”, in Our Knowledge of God: Essays on Natural and Philosophical Theology , Kelly James Clark (ed.), Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 167–193. doi:10.1007/978-94-011-2576-5_9
• Clooney, Francis Xavier, 2001, “Vedanta Desika’s Isvarapariccheda (‘Definition of the Lord’) and the Hindu Argument about Ultimate Reality”, in Neville 2001: 95–123.
• –––, 2010, Comparative Theology: Deep Learning across Religious Borders , Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
• Cobb, John B., Jr. and David Ray Griffin, 1976, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition , Philadelphia, PA: The Westminster Press.
• Cohen, Shaye, 1987, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah , Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press.
• Coleman, Monica A., 2013, “From Models of God to a Model of Gods: How Whiteheadian Metaphysics Facilitates Western Language Discussion of Divine Multiplicity”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 343–355. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_29
• Cooper, David A., 1997, God is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism , New York: Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
• Cooper, John W., 2006, Panentheism the Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato to the Present , Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
• Copleston, Frederick C., 1952, in A History of Philosophy, Volume III: Ockham to Suarez , Westminster, MD: Newman Bookshop. Reprinted New York: Doubleday, in Book 1 (which included the first three volumes of the original series), 1985.
• Curley, Edwin, 2013, “How Spinozistic was Toland’s Pantheism?” in Diller and Kasher 2013: 643–652. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_51
• Davies, Brian, 2004, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion , third edition, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Dawkins, Richard, 2006, The God Delusion , Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
• [ DDJ ] Daodejing attributed to Lao Tzu. Translated as Tao Te Ching , D. C. Lau (trans./ed.), New York: Penguin Books, 1963.
• Descartes, René, 1641, replies in Objections and Replies to the Meditations on First Philosophy in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. II , J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, & D. Murdoch (trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, reprinted 1988, pages 66–383.
• Diller, Jeanine, 2013a, “Epilogue”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 1025–1029.
• –––, 2013b, “The Conceptual Focus of Ultimism: An Object of Religious Concern for the Nones and Somes”, Religious Studies , 49(2): 221–233. doi:10.1017/S0034412513000097
• –––, 2016, “Global and Local Atheisms”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 79(1): 7–18. doi:10.1007/s11153-015-9550-1
• Diller, Jeanine and Asa Kasher (eds.), 2013, Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities , Dordrecht: Springer. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1
• Dorff, Elliot N., 2013, “Jewish Images of God”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 111–123. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_10
• Draper, Paul, 2019, “Panpsychotheism”, in Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion , Paul Draper (ed.), New York: Routledge, pp. 160–177.
• Eckhart, Meister, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart , Maurice O’C. Walshe (trans., ed.), New York: Crossroads Publishing Company, 2009.
• Elliott, James, 2017, “The Power of Humility in Sceptical Religion: Why Ietsism Is Preferable to J. L. Schellenberg’s Ultimism”, Religious Studies , 53(1): 97–116. doi:10.1017/S0034412515000475
• Erkes, Eduard (trans.) and Ho-Shang-Kung, 1945, “Ho-Shang-Kung’s Commentary on Lao-Tse”, Artibus Asiae , 8(2/4): 119–196. doi:10.2307/3248186
• Feldmeier, Peter, 2019, Experiments in Buddhist-Christian Encounter: From Buddha-Nature to the Divine Nature , Maryknoll, MD: Orbis Books.
• Forrest, Peter, 2016, “The Personal Pantheist Conception of God”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 21–40. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0002
• Gao Heng 高亨, 1998, Zhouyi dachuan jinzhu 周易大傳今注, Jinan: Qilu Shushe.
• Gasser, Georg, 2019, “God’s Omnipresence in the World: On Possible Meanings of ‘En’ in Panentheism”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 85(1): 43–62. doi:10.1007/s11153-018-9695-9
• Gayatriprana, Sister, 2020, “Introduction”, in Swami Vivekananda’s History of Universal Religion and Its Potential for Global Conciliation , Sister Gayatriprana (ed.), Elgin, IL: Cook Communication, xi–li.
• Griffin, David Ray, 2005, “Religious Pluralism: Generic, Identist and Deep”, in Deep Religious Pluralism , David Ray Griffin (ed.), Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 3–38.
• 1965, Volume 2: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus
• 1981, Volume 6: Aristotle: An Encounter
• Hadot, Pierre, 1981 [1995], Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique , Paris : Etudes augustiniennes. Translated as Philosophy as a Way of Life , Arnold Davidson (ed.), Michael Chase (trans.), Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
• Hansen, Chad, 2020, “Daoism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2020/entries/daoism/ >
• Hartshorne, Charles, 1984, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Hartshorne, Charles and William L. Reese (eds), 1953 [2000], Philosophers Speak of God , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Reprinted, Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2000.
• Hasan, Ali, 2013, “Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) on Creation and the Divine Attributes”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 141–156. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_13
• Hedges, Paul, 2014, “Why Are There Many Gods? Religious Diversity and Its Challenges”, in Controversies in Contemporary Religion: Education, Law, Politics, Society and Spirituality, Volume 1: Theoretical and Academic Debates , Paul Hedges (ed), Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, pp. 191–218.
• Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 1832 [2006], Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion , Berlin. Translated in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion , 3 volumes, Peter C. Hodgson (ed.), Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson, and J. Michael Stewart (trans), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1984–1987. Selections from the translation printed in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion: the Lectures of 1827 , Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006.
• Heim, Mark, 1995, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion , Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press.
• Hick, John, 1989, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent , second edition, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
• Holm, Jean with John Bowker (eds), 1994, Picturing God , London: Pinter Publishers Ltd.
• Hume, David, 1779, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , London. [ Hume 1779 available online ]
• Hustwit, Jeremy R., 2013, “Models, Idols, and the Great White Whale: Toward a Christian Faith of Nonattachment”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 1001–1011. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_83
• Huxley, Aldous, 1945, The Perennial Philosophy , New York and London: Harper & Brothers.
• James, William, 1902 [1961], The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902 , New York: Longmans, Green. Reprinted New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1961.
• –––, 1909, A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy , New York: Longmans, Green. Reprinted Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.
• Kasser, Jeff, 2013, “Peirce on God, Reality and Personality”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 441–452. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_36
• Kennedy, Robert G., 2013, “Thomas Aquinas: Model of God”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 157–164. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_14
• Kierkegaard, Soren, 1846, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments , David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (trans and eds), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974. 
• Kleeman, Terry F., 2016, Celestial Masters: History and Ritual in Early Daoist Communities , (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series, 102), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.
• Kohn, Livia with James Miller, 2001, “Chinese Religion: Ultimate Reality”, in Neville 2001: 9–35.
• Kripke, Saul A., 2013, Reference and Existence: The John Locke Lectures , New York: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199928385.001.0001
• Leslie, John, 2016, “A Way of Picturing God”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 50–63. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0004
• –––, 2001, Infinite Minds: a Philosophical Cosmology , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1989, Universes , London and New York: Routledge.
• –––, 1979, Value and Existence , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Long, Jeffery D., 2007, A Vision for Hinduism: Beyond Hindu Nationalism , London: IB Tauris.
• –––, 2013, “Ultimate Complexity: A Hindu Process Theology”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 357–367. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_30
• –––, 2020, “Sri Ramakrishna’s Philosophy of Anekānta Vedānta”, in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedānta , Ayon Maharaj (ed.), London, Oxford and New York: Bloomsbury, 157–178.
• Maharaj, Ayon, 2018, Infinite Paths to Infinite Reality: Sri Ramakrishna and Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780190868239.001.0001
• Maimonides, Moses, Guide of the Perplexed , vol. 1, Shlomo Pines (trans.), Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.
• Maitzen, Stephen, 2017, “Against Ultimacy”, in Renewing Philosophy of Religion: Exploratory Essays , Paul Draper and J.L. Schellenberg (eds.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 48–62.
• Mann, Barbara, 2010, “A Failure to Communicate: How Christian Missionary Assumptions Ignore Binary Patterns of Thinking within Native American Communities”, in Remembering Jamestown: Hard Questions about Christian Mission , Amos Young and Barbara Brown Zikmund (eds), Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publishers, 29–48.
• Martin, Jerry L. (ed), 2020, Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative , London and New York: Routledge.
• Masuzawa, Tomoko, 2005, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Mathews, Freya, 2019, “Living Cosmos Panpsychism 1”, in Seager 2019: 131–143.
• Mavrodes, George, 2013, “Introduction to Divine Multiplicity”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 657–660. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_52
• McFague, Sally, 1987, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age , Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press.
• Meister, Chad, 2017, “Ancient and Contemporary Expressions of Panentheism”, Philosophy Compass , 12(9): e12436. doi:10.1111/phc3.12436
• Miller, James, 2003, Daoism: A Short Introduction , Oxford: Oneworld.
• Mitchell, Helen Buss, 2008, “Philosophy and Ultimate Reality: is Anyone in Charge?” in her Roots of Wisdom: A Tapestry of Philosophical Traditions , Belmont, CA: Wadsworth: 166–214.
• Mulgan, Tim, 2015, Purpose in the Universe: The Moral and Metaphysical Case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199646142.001.0001
• –––, 2017, “Beyond Theism and Atheism: Axiarchism and Ananthropocentric Purposivism”, Philosophy Compass , 12(6): e12420. doi:10.1111/phc3.12420
• Mullins, Ryan T., 2016, “The Difficulty with Demarcating Panentheism”, Sophia , 55(3): 325–346. doi:10.1007/s11841-015-0497-6
• Nagasawa, Yujin, 2008, “A New Defence of Anselmian Theism”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 58(233): 577–596. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2008.578.x
• –––, 2017, Maximal God: A New Defense of Perfect Being Theism , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198758686.001.0001
• –––, 2019, “Panpsychism Versus Pantheism, Polytheism, and Cosmopsychism”, in Seager 2019: 259–268.
• Neville, Robert C. (ed.), 2001, Ultimate Realities , (The Comparative Religious Ideas Project), Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 2008, Ritual and Deference: Extending Chinese Philosophy in a Comparative Context , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 2013, Ultimates , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Neville, Robert C. and Wesley Wildman, 2001, “Comparative Conclusions about Ultimate Realities”, in Robert C. Neville 2001: 151–185.
• Nicholson, Andrew, 2010, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History , New York: Columbia Press.
• Nuland, Sherwin B., 1995, How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter , New York: Vintage Books, Random House Inc.
• Page, Ben, 2019, “Wherein Lies the Debate? Concerning Whether God Is a Person”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion , 85(3): 297–317. doi:10.1007/s11153-018-9694-x
• Panikkar, Raimundo [Raimon], 1987 [2005], “Deity”, reprinted in Encyclopedia of Religion , second edition, 2005, Lindsay Jones (ed.), Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, an imprint of Thomson Gale, 2252–2263.
• Parfit, Derek, 1998, “Why Anything? Why This?” London Review of Books , 22 January, 20(2): 24–27.
• Parke, Emily C. and Anya Plutynski, 2020, “What Is the Nature of Theories and Models in Biology?”, in Philosophy of Science for Biologists , Kostas Kampourakis and Tobias Uller (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 55–78. doi:10.1017/9781108648981.005
• Perkins, Franklin, 2014, “Divergences within the Lǎozǐ: A Study of Chapters 67–81”, T’oung Pao , 100(1–3): 1–32, reprinted as ch. 31 in Kelly James Clark (ed.), 2017, Readings in the Philosophy of Religion , Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press: 463–473. doi:10.1163/15685322-10013p01
• –––, 2019, “Metaphysics in Chinese Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/chinese-metaphysics/ >
• Pfeifer, Karl, 2016, “Pantheism as Panpsychism”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 41–49. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0003
• Phillips, Stephen, 2019, “Epistemology in Classical Indian Philosophy”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/epistemology-india/ >
• Pinnock, Clark H., Richard Rice, John Sanders, William Hasker and David Basinger, 1994, The Openness of God: a Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God , Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• Plantinga, Alvin, 2000, Warranted Christian Belief , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/0195131932.001.0001
• Plato, Timaeus . Translated in Plato: The Collected Dialogues , E. Hamilton and H. Cairns (eds.), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961, pp. 1151–1211.
• Plotinus , Enneads . Loeb edition, vols. 1–7, A. H. Armstrong (trans.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–1988.
• Pregadio, Fabrizio, 2016 [2020], “Religious Daoism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/daoism-religion/ >
• Rambachan, Anantanand, 2006, The Advaita Worldview: God, World and Humanity , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• –––, 2015, A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two Is Not One , Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
• Rescher, Nicholas, 2010, Axiogenesis: An Essay in Metaphysical Optimalism , Lanham, MA: Lexington Books.
• Reuterdahl, Arvid, 1928, The God of Science , Minneapolis, MN: The Arya Company.
• Robson, James, 2015, “Introduction: Daoism Lost and Found”, in The Norton Anthology of World Religions, Volume 1: Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism , Jack Miles with Wendy Doniger, Donald S. Lopez, Jr. and James Robson (eds.), New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 1473–1500.
• Rodkey, Christopher Demuth, 2013, “Paul Tillich’s Pantheon of Theisms: An Invitation to Think Theonomously”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 483–495. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_40
• Rubenstein, Mary-Jane, 2018, Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters , New York: Columbia University Press.
• –––, 2019, “Mary-Jane Rubenstein, In-Depth Interview: on the Multiverse, Pantheism, and Beyond”, in Philosophy for Our Times: 1000+ Debates from the World’s Leading Thinkers , London: Institute of Art and Ideas (IAI TV), 19 November 2019 (26 minutes). [ Rubenstein 2019 available online ]
• Ruhmkorff, Samuel, 2013, “The Incompatibility Problem and Religious Pluralism Beyond Hick: Incompatibility Problem and Religious Pluralism”, Philosophy Compass , 8(5): 510–522. doi:10.1111/phc3.12032
• Sanders, John, 1998, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence , Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
• Schellenberg, J. L., 2005, Prologomena to a Philosophy of Religion , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2009, The Will to Imagine , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• –––, 2016, “God for All Time: From Theism to Ultimism”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 164–177. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0010
• Schipper, Kristofer, 1982 [1993], Le Corps taoïste , Paris: Arthème Fayard. Translated as The Taoist Body , Karen C. Duval (trans.), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993.
• Schmidt-Leukel, Perry, 2019, Buddha Mind - Christ Mind: A Christian Commentary on the Bodhicaryavatara , Ernst Steinkellner and Cynthia Peck-Kubaczek (trans.), Leuven-Paris-Bristol: Peeters Publishers. doi:10.2307/j.ctv1q26wkd
• Seager, William (ed.), 2019, The Routledge Handbook of Panpsychism , New York: Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315717708
• Seeskin, Kenneth, 2013, “Strolling with Maimonides on the Via Negativa ”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 793–799. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_66
• Shaffer, Nancy J., 2013, “Pseudo-Dionysius and the Negation of Models of God”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 783–792. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_65
• Shani, Itay, 2015, “Cosmopsychism: A Holistic Approach to the Metaphysics of Experience”, Philosophical Papers , 44(3): 389–437. doi:10.1080/05568641.2015.1106709
• Simon, David Worthington, 1898, Reconciliation by Incarnation , Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark.
• Song, Bin, 2018, A Study of Comparative Philosophy of Religion on “Creatio Ex Nihilo” and “Sheng Sheng” (Birth, Birth 生生) , PhD thesis, Boston University. Song 2018 available online
• Spinoza, Benedict, 1677, Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrata . Translated as Ethics Demonstrated in Geometrical Order , in The Collected Works of Spinoza, volume 1 , Edwin Curley (ed./trans.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985, pp. 400–617.
• Swinburne, Richard, 1993, The Coherence of Theism , revised edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press. First edition 1977. doi:10.1093/0198240708.001.0001
• Tapasyananda, Swami, 1990, Bhakti Schools of Vedanta , Mylapore, Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math Printing Press.
• Thomas, Emily, 2016, “Samuel Alexander’s Space-Time God”, in Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016: 255–273. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198722250.003.0015
• Tillich, Paul, 1951, Systematic Theology I , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 1957a, Dynamics of Faith , New York: Harper & Row.
• –––, 1957b, Systematic Theology II , Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
• Vallicella, William F., 2006 [2019], “Divine Simplicity”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = < https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/divine-simplicity/ >
• Vireswarananda, Swami, 1936, Brahma-Sutras: With Text, Word-for-word Translation, English Rendering, Comments and Index , Calcutta, India: The Art Press.
• Viney, Donald Wayne, 2013, “Relativizing the Classical Tradition: Hartshorne’s History of God”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 63–79. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_6
• Wang, Robin R., 2012, Yinyang: The Way of Heaven and Earth in Chinese Thought and Culture , New York: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511687075
• Ward, Keith, 1998, Concepts of God: Images of the Divine in the Five Religious Traditions , London: Oneworld Academic.
• Watts, Alan, 1947, Behold the Spirit: A Study in the Necessity of Mystical Religion , London: John Murray.
• –––, 1972, In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915–1965 , Novato, CA: New World Library.
• Weinberg, Rivka, 2021, “Ultimate Meaning: We Don’t Have It, We Can’t Get It, and We Should Be Very, Very Sad”, Journal of Controversial Ideas , 1(1): art. 4 (22 pages). doi:10.35995/jci01010004
• Wildman, Wesley J., 2001, “On the Process of the Project during the Second Year”, in Neville 2001: 261–274.
• –––, 2013, “Introduction to Negative Theology”, in Diller and Kasher 2013: 767–773. doi:10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_63
• –––, 2017, In Our Own Image: Anthropomorphism, Apophaticism, and Ultimacy , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780198815990.001.0001
• Wesley J. Wildman with Jerry L. Martin, 2020, “Daunting Choices in Transreligious Theology: A Case Study”, in Theology Without Walls: The Transreligious Imperative , Jerry L. Martin (ed.), New York: Routledge, pp. 119–127.
• Wright, Robert, 2010, The Evolution of God , New York: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company.
• Zagzebski, Linda, 2007, Philosophy of Religion: An Historical Introduction , Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
• Zhuangzi, The Zhuangzi , in The Complete Works of Zhuangzi , Burton Watson (trans.), New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
• Zürn, Tobias Benedikt, 2018, “Overgrown Courtyards and Tilled Fields: Image-based Debates on Governance and Body Politics in the Mengzi , Zhuangzi , and Huainanzi ”, Early China , 41: 297–332. doi:10.1017/eac.2018.5

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• All Things Cosmic, The Center for Process Studies , on process philosophy and theology
• The Analytic Theology Project (2010–2014) , about the growing field of analytic theology.
• What is Ultimate Reality? (Part 1)
• What is Ultimate Reality? (Part 2)
• Is Consciousness Ultimate Reality?
• Alternative Concepts of God? (Part 1)
• Alternative Concepts of God? (Part 2)
• Comparative Theology, Harvard Divinity School
• Gifford Lectures , renowned lecture series on natural theology since 1888, some of which develop ideas of God or ultimacy, e.g., William James, Samuel Alexander, etc.
• Paul Hedges’ Weblog on comparative theology, e.g., “ Critical Reflections on the Theology Without Walls Project ”, in 21 December 2020.
• Nagasawa, Yujin and Andrei Buckareff, 2017–19, The Pantheism and Panentheism Project .
• The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast , showcases in podcast form some of the fruits of Templeton’s Pantheism and Panentheism Project, see especially: Episode 57: ‘Pantheism, Personhood, Consciousness, and God’ with Sam Coleman, Episode 58: ‘The Idealism and Pantheism of May Sinclair’ with Emily Thomas, and Episode 63: ‘Alternative Concepts of God’ with Andrei Buckareff.
• Theology Without Walls , about an emerging movement to theologize with all religious texts as a starting point.

atheism and agnosticism | Chinese Philosophy: metaphysics | Daoism | Daoism: religious | existence | Indian Philosophy (Classical): epistemology | monotheism | Neo-Daoism | nonexistent objects | panentheism | panpsychism | pantheism | process theism | religion: philosophy of | religious diversity | religious language | Śaṅkara | simplicity: divine | Zhuangzi

Acknowledgments

The author is indebted to Jeffery Long as well as Bin Song and Tobias Zürn for their indispensable assistance on the sections on Brahman and the Dao, respectively, and to John Bishop, Paul Draper, David Perry, and Samuel Ruhmkorff for reading preliminary drafts and many helpful conversations. The author is also grateful to Yujin Nagasawa for valuable comments as this entry took shape and to Edwin Curley and George Mavrodes for important formation on this topic.

Copyright © 2021 by Jeanine Diller < jeanine . diller @ utoledo . edu >

• Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

• Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The term ultimate reality is frequently used within rational, theological, magical, and mysterious circles. Additionally, the term is used in different metaphysical customs of theoretical learning and specific sacred or religious schemes. In the case of this study, ultimate reality is defined within the religious connotations which describe it as a thought of achieving harmony in the Devine. It can be further argued that for many spiritual paths, the personal conscious understanding of Ultimate Reality has satisfied the meaning of life. It should be noted that endeavors at making logic of the human knowledge of reality have led to the founding of religions and science.

In this case, each one is based on sequences of postulations concerning a human being’s capability of sufficiently grasping; hence accurately comprehending the nature of existence. It can be argued that within the bible, Jesus Christ is declared as the heavenly revelation personified; factual God and the factual way of life (1 John 5). Based on this, the Christian belief in divine worship; is ultimate actuality and power is founded on the earth’s chronological occurrence of Jesus Christ’s and his revivification from the dead. In this case, the feel for affection conquers all ills including death, and hence confirms to be the heavenly power of life itself (Mitchell 209-278).

It is of importance to note that, each world faith recognizes an Ultimate Reality that is everlasting and static. Based on this, there are three basic definitions of Ultimate Reality as a personal being, distant being; or as an everlasting reality or belief that oversees the whole coverage of creation. Based on the beliefs of Judaism, God is described as creating the world out of ‘nothing’ and does not patent it out of his essence. In this case from the book of Psalms 102, 25-27, all the creations will perish but God does not change.

It can further be argued that according to the beliefs of Judaism; the creation or foundation of the world is not an unfriendly requirement or a blind demonstration of a destabilized nature; but the creation of the free selection of a personal God (Sherbok 123-154) (Psalms 102, 25-27)

It should further be noted that the true God lives by himself as it can be seen from his disclosure to Moses. In this case, God revealed himself as ‘I am who I am’; meaning that he is independent, hence does not rely on any other external constituent. Based on this, God’s reality is articulated in the course of love, all-powerfulness, and omniscience among which there is a wonderful harmony and agreement. In addition, God among the Christians and the Jews admit no other ultimate reality beyond himself, as can be seen from the book of Isaiah 44, 6.

From this chapter, he says; “I am the first and the last, and apart from me there is no God”. This can be used to indicate that, God cannot be compared to any god of the Hindu pantheon. In this case, the Christian God disagrees with Buddhism where it is stated that; there is neither a personal god nor a religious being or material essence that continues living by itself as a final actuality (Isaiah 44,6), (Exodus 1:1-4:17; 13:17-15:27; 19:1-20:21).

It should be noted that Buddhism was founded by Siddartha Gautama also known as the Buddha in the sixth century BC. Based on this, Buddhism has two main forms which include the conservative and the liberal branch. In this case, the conservative branch is characterized by the Theravada school, which is mainly practiced in Sri Lanka. Additionally, the liberal branch-Mahayana is mainly practiced in China, Korea, Tibet, and Japan. On the other hand, according to the Buddhists, the world does not have its cause in the primeval being like Brahman; but exists as psychological creation fashioned by the senses.

In this case, Buddhism articulates that what exists as the world is only a creation of fleeting factors of survival; which rely purposely upon each other. In this case, the Buddha argues that “the world exists because of causal actions, where all things are produced by causal actions” (Sutta-Nipata 654). Based on this, the existence of gods is not denied but they exist as fleeting beings, which managed to the paradise using the same good worth as any other individual believer. Further, it is indicated in Buddhism that, gods have no ultimate reality hence are neither adored nor do they symbolize the basis for ethics as they do not provide contentment to human beings.

Importantly, Ultimate reality according to the Buddhists is nothing else but an inspirational reality; which oversees the creations and the whole essence of human life. On the other hand, Mahayana Buddhism considers Ultimate Reality as a final truth; called the fact of meaninglessness. In this case, emptiness was a value connected to any bodily, psychological, or doctrinal concept. Based on this it can be argued that the dogma rejects any kind of considerable ultimate reality; and asserts that the world should be seen as a network of inter-reliant and unjustified occurrences (Mitchell 209-278).

When considering reality from the point of view of Mahayana Buddhism, it is perceived through three levels referred to as the ‘three bodies of Buddha’. In this case, the body of Buddha should be viewed not as one thing or phenomenon; but as which is found everywhere; justifying his omniscience. It can be argued that the way the Buddha views the nature of actuality; is confirmed by showing how humans speculate in Samsara as a result of the lack of knowledge.

Further, it describes the course leading to the end of the renaissance as the expansion of knowledge. From this, it can be argued that there are two ways of understanding reality according to the Buddhists. Based on this, the two ways include the beginning of the renaissance dependent on the unawareness and the termination of the renaissance dependent upon knowledge (Khema 134-187).

From the above discussions, it can be argued that there are differences and similarities between the two religions as far as Ultimate Reality is considered. In both religions, there is the belief in the existence of spiritual beings in heaven. Further, both religions believe that these spiritual beings are omniscient and impersonal. Additionally, ultimate reality is a magnificent truth that oversees the universe and human life (Mitchell 209-278).

On the other hand, there are differences between the two religions concerning the Ultimate Reality. In this case, Christianity and Judaism believe that God is the creator of the universe and his magnificence should not compare to any other god.

On the contrary, Buddhism teaches that there is no personal being or holy substance that subsists by itself as the ultimate Reality. Further, in Christianity and Judaism (the bible); it is only God who is to be praised while in Buddhism; no being should be worshiped. According to the teachings of the bible in the book of Genesis, God created the universe. On the other hand, Buddhism teaches that the world exists as a result of causal actions as indicated in the Sutta-Nipata 654 (Khema 134-187).

Works cited

Khema, Ayya. “I Give you My Life”. Boston: Shambhala Publishers. (2000): P. 134-187.

Mitchell, Donald. “Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience”. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (2001): P. 209-278.

Sherbok, Dan. “The Vision of Judaism: Wrestling with God (Visions of reality)”, 1 st edition. Continuum Publishers. (2004): P. 123-154.

The English Standard Version Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments with Apocrypha. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

Tillich, Paul. “Biblical Religion and the Search for Ultimate Reality”. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. (1964): P. 23-56.

• God’s Great Promises to Human Beings
• Walter Rauschenbusch, His Works and Beliefs
• The Actuality of Issue of Food Safety
• Ancient Indian and Roman Civilizations
• Concepts of Buddhism
• Refutation of Dembski’s Argument About Intelligent Design
• Comparing and Contrasting Two Types of Theodicies
• Martin Luther: Justification by Faith Alone
• Myths of Male Devine: Knowledge About God
• Baptist, Roman Catholic Church, and Episcopal Church: Comparison
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2021, December 22). The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ultimate-reality-in-different-religions/

"The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions." IvyPanda , 22 Dec. 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/the-ultimate-reality-in-different-religions/.

IvyPanda . (2021) 'The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions'. 22 December.

IvyPanda . 2021. "The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions." December 22, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ultimate-reality-in-different-religions/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions." December 22, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ultimate-reality-in-different-religions/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Ultimate Reality in Different Religions." December 22, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-ultimate-reality-in-different-religions/.

Home — Essay Samples — Science — Science and Culture — Exploring Ultimate Reality: A Personal Perspective

Exploring Ultimate Reality: a Personal Perspective

• Categories: Science and Culture

About this sample

Words: 528 |

Published: Mar 8, 2024

Words: 528 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Dr. Karlyna PhD

Verified writer

• Expert in: Science

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

1 pages / 615 words

1 pages / 608 words

2 pages / 821 words

2 pages / 780 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Science and Culture

Budgeting is a crucial financial tool that individuals and organizations use to plan and control their spending. It involves setting financial goals, estimating income and expenses, and creating a plan to allocate resources [...]

The debate between creationism and evolution has been a long-standing and contentious issue in the realm of science and religion. While creationism is rooted in religious beliefs and posits that the universe and all living [...]

We hereby declare that the project work entitled (“Smart Health Care”) is an authentic record of our own work carried out as requirements of Capstone Project for the award of B.Tech degree in Computer Science & Engineering from [...]

Slime has become a popular toy among children in recent years, but what exactly is slime? Is it a solid, a liquid, or something else entirely? In scientific terms, slime can be classified as a colloid. In this essay, we will [...]

Science is a term that is used quite often, but what happens when the things one learns prove to be false? As a researcher, one has to be very aware and able to readily recognize the difference between fact and fiction. The term [...]

Spirituality is so much like science both of these looks closely at the world. Science and spirituality are two complete beliefs of the world. Spirituality in education refers to the connection between the student, teacher and [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

Ultimate Reality

• A personal being (personal and loving God),
• An impersonal being (as origin and target of all personal beings), or
• An eternal truth or principal that governs the universe.

Terms of use privacy statement of faith about us contact us support us donate sitemap.

Copyright © 2002-2021 AllAboutPhilosophy.org , All Rights Reserved

• Does God Exist Scientifically?
• Or Philosophically?
• Is the Bible True?
• Who is God?
• Is Jesus God?
• What Do You Believe?
• Popular Issues
• Life Challenges
• Skeptics FAQ

• Argumentative
• Ecocriticism
• Informative
• Explicatory
• Illustrative
• Problem Solution
• Interpretive
• Music Analysis
• All Essay Examples
• Entertainment
• Law, Crime & Punishment
• Artificial Intelligence
• Environment
• Geography & Travel
• Government & Politics
• Nursing & Health
• Information Science and Technology
• All Essay Topics

Ultimate Reality: A Religion Analysis

In the study of religion, the concept of ultimate reality plays a crucial role. It refers to the underlying truth or essence that is believed to exist beyond the observable world. Different religions have various interpretations of ultimate reality, and in this essay, we will explore some of these perspectives.

One of the major religions that provide insights into ultimate reality is Hinduism. According to Hindu philosophy, ultimate reality is known as Brahman. Brahman is considered the eternal, infinite, and transcendent reality that underlies all existence. It is believed to be the source from which everything arises and to which everything returns. Hindus strive to attain union with Brahman through spiritual practices like meditation and self-realization.

In contrast, Buddhism offers a different perspective on ultimate reality. Buddhists believe in the concept of Nirvana, which can be seen as the ultimate reality beyond suffering and desire. Nirvana is the state of liberation from the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. It is achieved through the practice of the Eightfold Path, which includes elements such as right understanding, right intention, and right mindfulness.

Moving on to Christianity, the ultimate reality is understood as God. Christians believe that God is the creator of the universe and the source of all existence. They view God as a personal being who is loving, just, and all-powerful. Through faith and devotion, Christians seek to establish a relationship with God and align their lives with His divine will.

Another religion that provides insights into ultimate reality is Islam. In Islam, the ultimate reality is known as Allah. Muslims believe that Allah is the one true God, and there is no deity worthy of worship except Him. Allah is seen as the creator, sustainer, and judge of all things. Muslims strive to submit themselves to Allah's will and follow the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as revealed in the Quran.

Ultimately, the concept of ultimate reality is deeply intertwined with the religious beliefs and practices of different cultures and societies. While the specific interpretations may vary, the pursuit of understanding and connecting with this ultimate reality is a common thread among many religious traditions.

In conclusion, the analysis of ultimate reality in different religions offers valuable insights into the diverse ways in which humans seek to understand the underlying truth of existence. Whether it is through the concept of Brahman in Hinduism, Nirvana in Buddhism, God in Christianity, or Allah in Islam, the exploration of ultimate reality provides a window into the spiritual and philosophical dimensions of human experience. By studying and appreciating these various perspectives, we can gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of religion and the profound questions that it seeks to answer.

(Word count: 378)

Related Essays

• Analysis Of The Reality Of Repressed Memories Elizabeth Loftus
• An Analysis Of The Jehovahs Witnesses Religion Essay
• Macbeth Appearance Vs Reality Analysis
• Burton Leiser Deserve The Ultimate Punishment Analysis
• Reality Television Oxymoron Analysis

Pestle Analysis: The New Realities Of Aging

Pestle Analysis The New Realities Of Aging Pestle analysis is a strategic tool used by organizations to understand the external macro-environmental factors that can impact their operations. When applied to the context of aging populations, it becomes evident that there are several new realities emerging that must be considered by businesses, governments, and society as a whole. This essay will explore these new realities in detail. One of the key aspects of the aging population is the demographic shift towards older age groups. This shift is driven by factors such as increased life expectancy and declining birth rates. As a result, businesses need to adapt their products and services to meet the needs of older consumers. This could include developing age-friendly technologies, healthcare services, and leisure activities that cater to the preferences and limitations of older individuals. Another important consideration is the economic impact of aging populations. As the proportion of older people increases, there may be a decline in the size of the workforce. This can lead to labor shortages and increased competition for skilled workers. Businesses will need to find innovative ways to attract and retain older workers, such as offering flexible working arrangements and training programs tailored to their needs. From a societal perspective, the aging population presents both challenges and opportunities. On one hand, there may be increased pressure on healthcare systems and social services to meet the needs of older people. On the other hand, older individuals bring a wealth of knowledge and experience that can benefit society as a whole. Encouraging active aging and providing opportunities for older people to contribute to their communities can help to mitigate some of these challenges. In conclusion, the aging population represents a significant and complex issue that will have far-reaching implications for businesses, governments, and society as a whole. By conducting a pestle analysis, organizations can gain a better understanding of the new realities of aging and develop strategies to address them effectively. This may involve adapting products and services, attracting and retaining older workers, and promoting active aging within communities....

• Economic Issues
• Global Economy

Ghost Dance Religion Analysis

The Ghost Dance religion emerged in the late 19th century among Native American tribes, particularly the Plains Indians, as a response to the profound social, cultural, and spiritual upheavals brought about by European colonization and westward expansion in the United States. This movement, which originated among the Paiute people of Nevada, gained widespread popularity among various indigenous groups across the Great Plains. Its core beliefs centered on the imminent return of deceased ancestors, the restoration of traditional ways of life, and the eventual expulsion of the white settlers from Native lands. Central to the Ghost Dance religion was the belief in a messiah figure, often identified as the prophet Wovoka among the Paiute, who promised a utopian future where Native Americans would regain their lost lands, reunite with departed loved ones, and live in harmony. The movement's namesake ritual, the Ghost Dance, involved participants dancing in circular formations for hours, sometimes even days, while chanting sacred songs and prayers. This communal activity was believed to facilitate communication with the spirit world and hasten the fulfillment of the promised prophecies. The Ghost Dance religion reflected the profound sense of loss, displacement, and cultural erosion experienced by Native American communities in the face of relentless colonization and assimilation efforts. It served as a powerful means of resistance and cultural revitalization, providing a sense of solidarity and hope amidst adversity. However, its rapid spread and perceived threat to white settlers' interests sparked fear and paranoia, culminating in the tragic events of the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, where hundreds of Lakota Sioux, including women and children, were brutally killed by U.S. troops. Despite its suppression by government authorities and Christian missionaries, the Ghost Dance religion left a lasting legacy in Native American history and identity. Its enduring significance lies in its role as a testament to indigenous resilience, spirituality, and resistance in the face of colonial oppression. Moreover, the Ghost Dance movement underscored the ongoing struggle for cultural survival and sovereignty among Native peoples, serving as a poignant reminder of the enduring impact of colonization on indigenous communities in North America. In conclusion, the Ghost Dance religion emerged as a grassroots spiritual movement among Native American tribes during a tumultuous period of colonial expansion and cultural upheaval. Rooted in the quest for spiritual renewal, cultural revitalization, and resistance to assimilation, it embodied the collective aspirations and struggles of indigenous peoples striving to maintain their identity and way of life in the face of adversity. Despite its tragic end, the Ghost Dance movement remains a poignant symbol of Native American resilience and resistance against colonial oppression....

• Indigenous Peoples' Histories
• Colonialism

Ultimate Reality Is Believed To Be The Absolute Nature

Throughout human history, the quest for understanding ultimate reality has been a central pursuit of philosophy, religion, and science. While interpretations vary across cultures and belief systems, there is a shared acknowledgment that something fundamental underlies existence. The exploration of ultimate reality delves into questions about the nature of existence, the purpose of life, and the underlying fabric of the universe. In religious traditions, ultimate reality often takes the form of a divine being or a transcendent force beyond human comprehension. For example, in Christianity, ultimate reality is perceived as the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—whose existence transcends the material world and encompasses all aspects of reality. Similarly, in Hinduism, ultimate reality is conceptualized as Brahman, an infinite, eternal, and unchanging reality that underlies and sustains the universe. These religious perspectives provide frameworks for understanding the nature of existence and the interconnectedness of all things. Philosophical inquiry into ultimate reality explores questions of metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology. Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Immanuel Kant have grappled with the nature of reality and the limits of human knowledge. Plato's theory of Forms posits that ultimate reality consists of abstract, immutable, and eternal Forms or Ideas, which serve as the true essence of things in the physical world. Aristotle, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of empirical observation and categorizes reality into substance, form, and matter. Kant introduces the concept of the noumenal realm, which lies beyond human perception and understanding, suggesting that ultimate reality may be inaccessible to human cognition. In the realm of science, the quest for ultimate reality manifests in the pursuit of a unified theory of everything—a comprehensive framework that explains the fundamental forces and particles of the universe. Theories such as quantum mechanics and general relativity offer insights into the nature of reality at the subatomic and cosmic scales, but they have yet to reconcile the disparate phenomena of the quantum world and the gravitational realm. Scientists continue to explore avenues such as string theory and quantum gravity in search of a more comprehensive understanding of ultimate reality. In conclusion, the concept of ultimate reality transcends disciplinary boundaries and invites inquiry from diverse perspectives. Whether approached through religious, philosophical, or scientific frameworks, the exploration of ultimate reality remains a fundamental endeavor of human intellectual inquiry. While definitive answers may remain elusive, the pursuit of understanding offers opportunities for personal and collective growth, fostering deeper insights into the nature of existence and our place within the cosmos....

• Philosophers
• Philosophical Concepts
• Philosophical Theories
• Philosophical Works

Frank Lloyd Wright's Ultimate Boon Analysis

Frank Lloyd Wright, a renowned American architect, left a lasting legacy in the world of architecture with his innovative designs and philosophies. One of the key concepts associated with Wright's work is the idea of the "Ultimate Boon." This concept, derived from Joseph Campbell's theory of the hero's journey, represents the ultimate goal or achievement that a hero strives for throughout their quest. In the context of Wright's architectural endeavors, the Ultimate Boon can be seen as the culmination of his creative vision and the realization of his architectural ideals. Wright's Ultimate Boon can be interpreted as the harmonious integration of nature and architecture. Throughout his career, Wright was deeply inspired by the natural world, and he sought to create buildings that would seamlessly blend with their surroundings. This can be seen in iconic projects such as Fallingwater, where the house seems to emerge organically from the landscape, blurring the boundaries between built environment and nature. By achieving this synthesis of nature and architecture, Wright was able to create spaces that not only served their practical functions but also uplifted the human spirit and connected people to the beauty of the natural world. Another aspect of Wright's Ultimate Boon lies in his emphasis on organic architecture. Wright believed that buildings should be designed in harmony with their inhabitants, taking into account human needs, emotions, and experiences. This human-centric approach to design is evident in Wright's concept of the "Usonian house," which aimed to provide affordable, functional, and aesthetically pleasing homes for the average American family. By prioritizing the well-being and comfort of the people who would inhabit his buildings, Wright was able to create spaces that were not only visually striking but also deeply livable and conducive to human flourishing. In conclusion, Frank Lloyd Wright's Ultimate Boon can be seen as the culmination of his efforts to create architecture that is in harmony with nature, responsive to human needs, and spiritually uplifting. Through his innovative designs and visionary approach to architecture, Wright was able to leave a lasting impact on the architectural world and inspire generations of architects to come. By embracing the principles of nature, organic design, and human-centered architecture, Wright's work continues to serve as a beacon of creativity and innovation in the field of architecture....

• Art Movements
• Famous Artists
• Visual Arts

Odysseus Appearance And Reality Analysis

In Homer's epic poem "The Odyssey," the protagonist Odysseus grapples with the complex interplay between appearance and reality as he navigates through various challenges and encounters on his journey back home to Ithaca. Throughout the epic, Odysseus is depicted as a master of disguise and cunning, adept at manipulating his appearance to achieve his goals. However, beneath his outward façade lies a deeper reality that reflects the true essence of his character. One of the most striking examples of Odysseus's manipulation of appearance is seen in his encounter with the Cyclops Polyphemus. To escape from the Cyclops's cave, Odysseus devises a clever plan to blind Polyphemus while he is asleep. He introduces himself to Polyphemus as "Nobody," thus concealing his true identity. When Polyphemus cries out for help after being blinded, the other Cyclopes assume that nobody is harming him, allowing Odysseus and his men to escape unnoticed. This episode highlights Odysseus's ability to use his appearance to deceive others and achieve his objectives. However, Odysseus's mastery of disguise also raises questions about the nature of reality and identity. Throughout his journey, Odysseus adopts various personas and disguises, blurring the line between appearance and reality. Whether he is disguised as a beggar in his own home or as a sailor on foreign shores, Odysseus's true self remains elusive, hidden beneath layers of deception. This ambiguity raises profound philosophical questions about the nature of self and the authenticity of identity. Moreover, Odysseus's experiences with disguise and deception ultimately serve to underscore the importance of authenticity and integrity. While he may be skilled at manipulating his appearance to achieve his goals, Odysseus's true strength lies in his ability to remain true to himself and his values in the face of adversity. Despite the challenges he faces, Odysseus remains steadfast in his commitment to returning home to his beloved wife, Penelope, and his son, Telemachus. In the end, it is Odysseus's unwavering determination and resilience that ultimately lead him to triumph over the forces of chaos and deception. In conclusion, Homer's portrayal of Odysseus in "The Odyssey" offers a nuanced exploration of the theme of appearance versus reality. Through his encounters with disguise, deception, and identity, Odysseus grapples with the complexities of navigating a world where truth is often obscured by appearances. Yet, amidst the chaos and uncertainty of his journey, Odysseus ultimately discovers that true strength lies not in the ability to manipulate one's appearance, but in the courage to remain authentic to oneself....

• Greek Mythology

Ultimate Reality: Similarities Between Christianity And Islam

Ultimate Reality Similarities Between Christianity And Islam In both Christianity and Islam, the concept of ultimate reality forms the cornerstone of belief systems that guide the lives of billions of adherents worldwide. While the two religions exhibit significant theological differences, they share striking similarities in their understanding of ultimate reality, which serve as points of connection between these diverse faith traditions. Central to both Christianity and Islam is the belief in the existence of a singular, transcendent deity. Christians profess faith in the Holy Trinity, consisting of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as the ultimate reality underlying all creation. Similarly, Muslims uphold the oneness of Allah, emphasizing monotheism as the fundamental tenet of their faith. This shared monotheistic belief underscores the foundational similarity in the understanding of ultimate reality between the two religions. Furthermore, both Christianity and Islam assert the notion of divine revelation as the means through which ultimate reality communicates with humanity. For Christians, the Bible serves as the authoritative scripture, believed to contain the revealed word of God through prophets, apostles, and ultimately Jesus Christ himself. In Islam, the Quran is regarded as the literal word of Allah, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of 23 years. Despite differences in content and context, the recognition of divine revelation as a channel for understanding ultimate reality unites Christians and Muslims in their reverence for sacred scripture. Moreover, both Christianity and Islam acknowledge the existence of an afterlife as an integral aspect of ultimate reality. Christians anticipate eternal life in communion with God in heaven, predicated on faith in Jesus Christ as savior and the resurrection of the dead. Similarly, Muslims believe in the Day of Judgment, where individuals will be held accountable for their deeds and rewarded with paradise or punished in hell accordingly. This shared belief in eschatological realities underscores the parallel perspectives on ultimate reality that transcend theological disparities. In conclusion, while Christianity and Islam diverge in doctrinal specifics and theological interpretations, they converge on essential principles concerning ultimate reality. The acknowledgment of monotheism, divine revelation, and the afterlife serves as common ground between these two major world religions, fostering mutual understanding and dialogue amid diverse religious landscapes. Through recognizing these similarities, adherents of Christianity and Islam can engage in meaningful interfaith discourse, deepening their appreciation for the profound mysteries of ultimate reality that shape human existence....

• Christianity

Candide: an Analysis of Voltaire's Perspective on Organized Religion.

Candide: An Analysis of Voltaire's Perspective on Optimism Voltaire's "Candide" is a masterpiece of satire that delves into the theme of optimism in the face of adversity. Through the journey of its protagonist, Candide, Voltaire presents a scathing critique of the philosophical optimism espoused by thinkers like Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. The novel follows Candide as he travels through a series of increasingly absurd and tragic events, encountering suffering, injustice, and hypocrisy at every turn. Through these experiences, Voltaire exposes the folly of blind optimism and highlights the absurdity of believing in a perfect world. One of the central themes of "Candide" is the contrast between the naïve optimism of its characters and the harsh realities of the world they inhabit. Candide begins his journey with the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds," a philosophy instilled in him by his mentor, Pangloss. However, as he witnesses and experiences firsthand the horrors of war, natural disasters, and human cruelty, Candide's optimism is gradually eroded. Voltaire uses Candide's disillusionment to illustrate the inherent flaws in optimistic philosophy and to argue for a more realistic and pragmatic worldview. Throughout the novel, Voltaire employs biting satire to skewer the institutions and ideologies that perpetuate suffering and injustice. From the hypocritical piety of the clergy to the greed and corruption of the nobility, no target is spared from Voltaire's critique. By exposing the hypocrisy and folly of those in power, Voltaire challenges his readers to question the prevailing social order and to strive for a more just and equitable society. In conclusion, Voltaire's "Candide" offers a blistering critique of philosophical optimism and a compelling argument for a more realistic and pragmatic worldview. Through the misadventures of its protagonist, Voltaire exposes the absurdity of believing in a perfect world in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. By challenging the prevailing ideologies of his time, Voltaire encourages his readers to question authority, confront injustice, and strive for a better future. "Candide" remains as relevant today as it was when it was first published, a timeless reminder of the dangers of blind optimism and the power of critical thinking....

Analysis Of The Reality TV Show: Gene Simmons Family Jewels

Analysis Of The Reality TV Show Gene Reality TV shows have become an integral part of our entertainment landscape, captivating audiences with their unique blend of drama, competition, and unscripted moments. One such show that has garnered significant attention is "Gene." In this essay, we will analyze the various aspects of the show, exploring its format, impact, and cultural significance. "Gene" follows the lives of a group of individuals who have agreed to have their DNA analyzed and shared with the public. The show takes us on a journey as these participants discover their genetic heritage, uncover family secrets, and confront the implications of their genetic makeup. Through a combination of emotional storytelling, scientific exploration, and personal revelations, "Gene" aims to entertain and educate viewers on the complexities of genetics. One of the key strengths of "Gene" lies in its ability to engage viewers on multiple levels. On one hand, it offers a voyeuristic insight into the lives of the participants, as they navigate the emotional rollercoaster of discovering their genetic identities. The show's producers skillfully inject suspense and anticipation, as each participant eagerly awaits their genetic test results. This creates a compelling narrative arc that keeps viewers hooked week after week. Moreover, "Gene" also serves as a platform for broader conversations surrounding genetics and identity. The show raises important questions about the influence of genetics on our lives, the ethical implications of genetic testing, and the role of family in shaping our identities. By showcasing real-life stories and personal journeys, "Gene" encourages viewers to reflect on their own genetic heritage and consider the impact it has on their sense of self. In terms of cultural significance, "Gene" has sparked widespread discussion and debate. The show has been praised for its ability to humanize genetic science, making it accessible to a wider audience. It challenges stereotypes and preconceived notions about genetic identity, highlighting the diversity and complexity of human genetic makeup. By featuring participants from different backgrounds and cultures, "Gene" celebrates the richness of our collective genetic heritage, fostering a sense of unity and understanding. However, it is important to acknowledge the potential ethical concerns associated with reality TV shows like "Gene." Critics argue that the exploitation of personal information and emotions for entertainment purposes raises serious privacy and consent issues. While the participants willingly agree to have their DNA analyzed, the long-term consequences of such public exposure are uncertain. It is imperative that shows like "Gene" maintain a responsible approach to handling personal information and provide appropriate support to participants throughout their journey. In conclusion, "Gene" is a reality TV show that delves into the fascinating world of genetics, offering viewers a captivating blend of personal stories and scientific exploration. With its ability to entertain, educate, and spark meaningful conversations, the show has made a significant impact on our cultural landscape. While it is essential to consider the ethical implications of such shows, "Gene" has managed to strike a delicate balance, providing a thought-provoking and entertaining viewing experience....

Can't find the essay examples you need?

Use the search box below to find your desired essay examples.

Concepts of God/Ultimate Reality

Cite this chapter.

• Chad Meister 2  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Philosophy Today ((PPT))

365 Accesses

There is a wide diversity of beliefs among the great faith traditions of the world. For centuries, philosophers have reflected on and analyzed the variety of religious concepts and symbols among the religions, and the concept of God or Ultimate Reality has been one of the most dominant. The differing beliefs about God/Ultimate Reality are expressed in unique and divergent conceptual schemes, symbols, metaphors, and models. Within these expressions various questions arise concerning the nature and existence of this transcendent reality. Is there an objective reality to which the language corresponds or points, or are the terms and descriptions merely the reifications of the believing communities expressed in the various linguistic forms of a given culture? The next chapter will examine reasons and evidences for and against the existence of a transcendent reality. Before investigating that question, however, it is important to have in mind some idea of what one means when considering that reality. This chapter will explore several conceptions of God/Ultimate Reality. Contrary to much popular belief, it may be that a fundamental and universal concept can be found at the heart of at least several of the major religious traditions about which they can agree.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

• Get 10 units per month
• Download Article/Chapter or eBook
• 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
• Cancel anytime
• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Unable to display preview.  Download preview PDF.

For Further Reading

Arvind Sharma, The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta . Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995.

Google Scholar  

Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism , rev. ed. Clarendon Press, 1993.

Book   Google Scholar  

Keith Ward, Concepts of God Oneworld, 1998.

Edward Wierenga, The Nature of God: An Enquiry into Divine Attributes . Cornell University Press, 1989.

Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations . Routledge, 1989.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Bethel College, USA

Chad Meister ( Director of Philosophy )

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Copyright information

© 2014 Chad Meister

About this chapter

Meister, C. (2014). Concepts of God/Ultimate Reality. In: Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Philosophy Today. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314758_3

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137314758_3

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, London

Print ISBN : 978-0-230-23291-4

Online ISBN : 978-1-137-31475-8

eBook Packages : Palgrave Religion & Philosophy Collection Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

Your complimentary articles

You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.

You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please

Question of the Month

What is the nature of reality, the following readers’ answers to this central philosophical question each win a random book..

What’s the problem? Isn’t it enough that things are as they are? No, because we are sometimes deceived. We need to tell the difference between hard ground and marsh that only looks hard. We need to know whether something is a bear or only a child with a bearskin rug over its head. We have evolved to tell the real from the false. Injure the brain and the victim may lose their sense of reality. When you have flu the familiar world can seem unreal. You might as well ask “What is the nature of ‘upright’?”

The real is the genuine, the reliable, what I can safely lean on. It is akin to truthful, valuable, even delightful. Its opposite is not illusion, but the fake, the counterfeit, that which can’t be trusted, has no cash value. Theatre, television, paintings, literature deal in illusion but can be real in the sense that they nurture and enlarge us, help to make sense of experience. When they fail in this, they feel unreal, they don’t ring true. They are false, they fail as art. Theatre and everyday life overlap – although the murderer in the play is not prosecuted. Psychotherapists know how people act out ‘scripts’ which they can rewrite to invent a new reality. It may not matter if the story of my life is real or invented, until a lawyer asks if I am really the person mentioned in my long-lost uncle’s will.

Electrons, energy, valency, spin are real in so far as the scientific structure they form part of explains what we experience. Phlogiston no longer makes sense, so it has lost its claim to reality, as a banknote which goes out of circulation becomes a piece of paper. Promises, agreements, treaties are real only so long as they can be trusted. Some plans and commitments are called unreal because we know they will come to nothing.

To take the big question: is God real? ‘Real’ I find more meaningful than the ‘existence’ question. We cannot prove the existence of the electron or alpha particles or even such matters as market forces, compassion or philosophy. But we see their effects, and assuming they are real makes sense of great swathes of our experience. God is at least as real as an idea like ‘compassion’.

Tom Chamberlain, Maplebeck, Notts

The problem ‘what is reality?’ arises from a consciousness of ourselves as living in a world which seems to be outside of, and yet is the cause of, our conscious life. Our reflections on this lead us to wonder if we can know of the world beyond our perceptions – the underlying cause of our consciousness of appearances. This world of the underlying cause we call ‘reality’.

Is reality mental – mind; or is it physical – matter and energy? If mind, is there a deeper consciousness underlying appearances that unites us all and is the source of our conscious thoughts? If matter, can we understand how the play of material objects and forces can give rise to conscious life?

If reality is mental, we might best connect with it by skillful introspection; by a pure, deep, and penetrating way of thought that would see past appearances and show reality directly to the mind. Alternatively we might passively receive, by a process of revelation, a mental image of reality. In revelation, the cosmic mind could speak directly to us, in apparitions or visions.

If ultimate reality is instead composed of matter and energy, the method recommended is more empirical; that is, more reliant on the senses. This method, which we call ‘science’, involves the formulation of statements of proposed facts (observable truths) about the physical, along with statements about relationships between the facts, in the form of physical laws. In science, these statements of laws and proposed facts are subject to criticism and testing by observation and experiment. The statements that at any time best convince, after testing and criticism, are given the status of ‘actual fact’, or if you wish, reality .

Revelation resists and endures, because science gives scant comfort to the desire for unification with cosmic reality. But science is relentless, and facts, ultimately, are irresistible.

Greg Studen, Novelty, Ohio

In discussing the nature of reality, we must distinguish between physical reality and immaterial (non-physical) reality. Physical reality is that which is constrained by physics or physical laws. Perhaps the best person to relegate this part of the discussion to would be a physicist, since a physicist is probably more qualified in discussing physical reality then an armchair philosopher such as myself.

Immaterial reality then pertains to what is not constrained by physical laws, eg concepts such as ‘character’ and the ‘mind’, Plato’s Forms, the realm of God and spirits. If physical reality is all that is ‘real’, then what is the relationship of immaterial concepts, such as ‘character’, the ‘Good’, and ‘morals’, to this physical reality? Are concepts such as these just the content of our brains and products of our reasoning and emotions? If so, then it is probable these concepts are just subjective and thus non-absolute, since the contents of our beliefs is contingent and always changing. Conversely, if there is a separate and distinct (non-subjective) immaterial reality , and the aforementioned concepts of character, the Good, and morals etc exist as aspects of this reality, then the existence of objective, absolute concepts is possible (maybe even necessary), since the nature of reality is not contingent, dependent on subjective opinion.

On the other hand, some questions now arise: if immaterial reality does exist as separate and distinct from physical reality, how would these two realities interact? Is there a distinct location for an immaterial concept (or a form, or spirit) in somewhere such as heaven, Plato’s perfect realm, or perhaps a more local area in the universe? And is there a distinct nature for logic and mathematics, or for the connections that exists between these realities. These are questions for the philosopher and physicist to ponder, and perhaps answer, together.

Joe Moore, Woodland Hills, CA.

I recently uncovered the nature of reality from a man on a flaming pie, who handed me a herbal cigarette. I now know that previously I was a body in a vat being poked by a malignant demon. I was only an ape then, but after millions of years I evolved so that I could have the brain power to lasso the demon with my electrode and thus escape. I was chased by a large white balloon, but made my getaway from the Island. Since then, I have set up my own very successful religion in the U.S. So, all in all, make sure you always trust your senses, never question organised religion, and don’t engage in any philosophy beyond Matrix 1-3.

Simon Maltman, Bangor

Definition 1. A reality consists of the interactions of a particular thing with what ‘becomes’ for that thing.

Definition 2.  Reality (with a capital R) consists of all realities.

Definition 3. The nature of a reality, or of Reality, is a description or explanation of that reality, or of Reality.

A reality for a particular stone or person consists of that stone’s or person’s interactions with changing environments – ie with what becomes for them. The nature of reality for the stone is not available to any person, since stones do not speak or understand a language any person can understand. However, the nature of a stone’s reality can be imagined or inferred by people. Geologists do this, so do poets like Shakespeare (“sermons in stones”), and so could you if you try. People infer that a person’s reality is different in kind from a stone’s reality since, for example, people infer as a result of their interactions with what becomes that they can have more elaborate interactions with environments than stones can. One way people interact with what becomes is by way of their senses. Another way is by reasoning and feeling, or perhaps by way of intuitions or revelations. Stones don’t have these capabilities.

An hypothesis which can entertain people is that together all the realities – for stones, for people, for whatever – form a single Reality. One can then ask whether or not all these realities, the parts of Reality, have something in common. One answer is that they have in common interacting with what becomes. One can ask further, what is the nature of what becomes? An answer is that what becomes is realities , ie, what becomes consists of interactions with what becomes. That is, the parts of Reality, the realities, interact with each other. Thus Reality is the interaction of realities with each other .

A more difficult task would be to explain how one particular reality interacts with another reality, and with all the realities it interacts with. One can then contemplate how all the realities can or might or do or did or will interact with each other. This is how one can contemplate the nature of Reality.

Gordon Fisher, South Salem, NY

One thing that everyone agrees on – idealists, materialists, dualists – is that there is sense to our question. Another thing all these views share is that we all share the same reality. For example, for Berkeley the nature of my reality and your reality is the same – it is all constructed out of mind-dependent ideas.

We should be wary of the idea that the nature of reality is relative to what someone believes. Suppose I believe that the Earth is flat and you believe it is round. Therefore, the line goes, we have two different realities. This cannot be right, for we are talking about (referring to) the same thing. We just differ in our beliefs about it. But whatever the nature of reality is, it cannot be hostage to anyone’s view of it. It must be independent of any individual’s mind. We can only hope to understand questions about its nature once we admit this. Of course, this rules out solipsism, the view that reality – all of it – is a function of my private experiences. This view is deeply mistaken, for the beliefs and other mental states the solipsist takes to be the sole furniture of his world depend on there being a shared environment. As Wittgenstein, Davidson, and Strawson have all stressed, the development of language and of thought cannot occur in isolation. So, there must be someone else on the scene for the solipsist to have the beliefs he does, even if it is only Descartes’ evil demon. With two, at least, in reality, we see that the nature of reality cannot just be how the world seems to any (one) individual. While this is not a full answer to our question, it is a fact we cannot ignore. At the very least, we can now say something of what the nature of reality is not.

Casey Woodling, Gainesville, FL

Reality is the independent nature and existence of everything knowable, whether it is knowable by logical inference, empirical observation, or some other form of experience. Reality’s existence and nature are independent because reality does not depend on our mind’s apprehension of it to continue to exist or to maintain its character.

Consider Kant’s idea of the ‘thing in itself’: that aspect of existence always outside of our perceptions of it. In Kant’s view, we can never truly know reality in itself, what he called ‘the noumenal world’, because we are limited to our mind’s imposition of fixed ‘categories’ of knowledge upon our perceptions of it (this giving us what Kant called ‘phenomenal’ knowledge). So it would seem we are forever cut off from reality as it is in itself, that is, distinct from our minds’ apprehension of it.

Furthermore, Thomas Aquinas pointed out that our perceptions of the world around us cannot be knowledge , since perceptions can logically contradict each other. For example, I may say, “This chair is brown,” while another may say, “No, this chair is not brown, it’s white.” Since these perceptions contradict, perception cannot produce genuine knowledge, since truthful knowledge cannot contradict itself.

Therefore, genuine knowledge of reality would have to be direct knowledge of the object itself. And so reality itself, comprising the independent nature and existence of everything knowable, exists independently of our minds’ apprehension of it. At best, perceptions are not that which we know; rather, perceptions are that by which we know.

Craig Payne, Ottumwa, IA USA

While much of reality is a shared conceptualization, a great deal of it is personal to the individual, for reality is how we describe the world: it is how the world seems to us to be. Therefore the foundation of our reality is our language use.

We must resist the tendency to think of reality as a fixed state of affairs that language merely identifies or labels. Reality is the product of language. The impressions that flood our mind provide food for thinking, and the language we use provides us with the means to ‘cook up’ a reality. Peter Winch states it clearly: “Our idea of what belongs to the realm of reality is given for us in the language that we use. The concepts we have settle for us the form of the experience we have of the world.” ( The Idea of Social Science , Humanities Press, p15.)

What we know of the world we can only know through language, and as our language is subject to change, so too is our reality. The world will not change in the sense that physical objects may come into existence as a result of language use, but our comprehension of our impressions of the world (our experiences) often change as a result of language. When Harvey discovered that blood circulates he did not discover red and white corpuscles or plasma. But though corpuscles and plasma existed as part of the perceived world they were not realized . They held no place as conceptual elements of reality. Realization is an act of discovery governed by language use. In this sense, cultural differences in language use often create cultural differences in realities. New Guinea tribesmen who have only two basic colour words (light and dark) have a different apprehension of reality to us. They live in the same world we do and they are capable of receiving the same impressions, but their reality is different from Europeans as their language use obliges them to divide the world into different categories.

Launt Thompson, Armidale, NSW

How does reality appear to us? What are the circumstances that could cause one’s reality to be different from another’s?

Our perception of reality is a generation of sensations caused by our minds, and the sense that they make of the inputs to the brain, be they aural, visual, tactile, taste or smell. These sensations, particularly the visual, will give us a sense of our surroundings and their dimensions. It is very easy to distort this perception, and this can be done through mind-altering drugs or through the loss of one of the senses.

People who have never seen can have their own sense of reality, which may be vastly different to that of a sighted person. They may have an internal non-visual ‘visualisation’ of bodily form for example, which if drawn or created could be completely different from what is normally visually perceived.

Questions have been raised whether one person’s sense of reality may be basically different to the next person’s. However, as we are made of essentially the same genetic material and receive essentially the same sensory inputs, this seems unlikely.

How different would an insect or animal’s perception of reality be to ours? A fly for example will have a distorted (to us) representation of its visual stimuli, caused by the need for the fly to be aware of different aspects of its surroundings.

In a dream state, situations often occur which seem absurd when awake. Therefore, we seem to have a dual existence; one conscious and the other subconscious. The subconscious state can seem as real as the waking state to a person who is dreaming or having a nightmare. How often is it that you wake, and then go over your dream to realise that some of the things you were doing are impossible. Or are they?

Alternate realities can now be induced by wearing computerised headsets, which can place a person inside a virtual reality. As graphics become more sophisticated, will this visualisation always be distinguishable from ‘actual’ reality?

Simon Scates, Kalamunda, Western Australia

Reality is a simulation. In a very real way we live in a reality like that portrayed by the Matrix . I can prove it to you, right now.

Take the sensors you call your eyes. They transform light energy into an electrical, essentially digital, signal, which is sent to your brain. The same with all your other senses. All the sensory information you have about the world, according to our best scientific understanding, comes to you as electrical pulses. Your brain uses this information to produce a highly elaborate simulation. It produces a 3D coloured representation of something that’s almost certainly not coloured in itself, and may not even be 3D. It bears some relationship to reality, sure.

This may seem a bit worrying. All these science fiction ideas about being a brain in a vat are essentially true. We are just that. The vat your brain is in is your head. Worse, we are a consciousness, in a brain, in a vat. However a simulation is not necessarily less real than an unsimulated world, just a different type of reality. To paraphrase Kant, there is reality and reality, and we need to be sure which we are talking about.

Take a fighter pilot as an example. If she looks out the window at 700mph, all she may see is a mist of darkness-obscured blur whizzing past her window. If she looks down at her instruments however, she is provided with a much more useful reality simulation. A radar screen tells her where she is in the world and what is coming up far beyond her ‘real’ vision. A topographical display and night-vision goggles help her see the ground she is flying over. Our ‘normal’ simulation of reality aids us in the same way. Colour tells us information about the surfaces of objects we would otherwise not have (and how else could this information be displayed ?). Three dimensionality helps us make our way in a world of solid objects. Psychologists can tell you how much this all relies on brain processes.

We live in a simulation, yes; but it is not a lesser reality, it is an enhanced reality. Problems only come about if we, as the pilot, start to think the radar screen or the night-vision goggles are the only true way to see the world, and confuse our representation of reality with reality itself.

Justin Holme, Surrey

The Y-Monster of Reality

Gazing upon a beer bottle I hold in my hand, I consider that I am not seeing the beer bottle as it exists, out there, in ‘reality’. Instead, I am looking at a picture of it as produced in my brain via my sensory perceptions. That is, my senses provide data about the object of my perception (a beer bottle), and using the sensory data my brain assembles a picture for me to see. At any rate, it is the picture in my brain that I see and not the bottle of beer I hold in my hand. But because the picture in my brain is not the object itself, one may come to doubt the very existence of the object out there, in reality. How can we ever know whether objects really exist externally, if all we have to look at are images of them in our heads? Is ours a world of ideas, or is our world really real? The answer is, Both. Reality is at once a world of ideas, and an objective world of empirical reality.

Although one may never perceive physical objects apart from our perceptions of them, we can safely conclude that the objects out there really are there, and so really are real, because there is general consensus about them. People agree, generally, as to what objects are. If I were to throw my beer bottle and hit a passer-by on the head with it, that person would tell the police I threw a beer bottle at him – as opposed to having been kicked in the head by a flying blue unicorn, for instance. If there were no such consensus about the perceived external world, then the fact of one’s experiences would be all one could be sure of, with little by way of meaningful discourse with others. Yet, there is consensus about the perceived external world. Like moviegoers in a theater, we all see the same movie.

Indeed, there is some consensus even concerning the world beyond our senses. Niels Bohr & Co explored an invisible world on the basis of theory. Yet the world they thus ‘observed’ and described is real, as corroborated by subsequent discoveries and common experiences (well, sort of, at least to some extent). So, how can the empirical world, about which there is general consensus, and the world that exists in our individual heads, be reconciled? Behold: the Y-Monster of Reality.

The nature of reality is that it has two perceptual realms, or two heads, like a ‘Y-monster’ – albeit with a slight qualification. Unlike a Y-monster with two heads perched separately on two torsos joined to one spine, the Y-monster of reality has two heads, but one is inside the other . On the one hand [head], we have our individual, subjective perceptions, individual to our own heads. On the other hand, however, there is also a giant, external ‘head’ which encompasses all empirical reality, including our individual heads. It is science-based culture.

This metaphorical ‘outer head’ encompasses the empirical world of our common consensus. It is by way of this consensus that we experience reality . Any individual’s perception is made within the context of a much larger shared perception. To use a crude analogy, moviegoers at a cinema each perceive the movie in their minds, but what they perceive is in the movie theater, and their perceptions are determined by the same objective data, as depicted on the silver screen. If, as quantum physicists say, our perceptions play a role in selecting reality by freezing a wave of quanta upon perception, then the world is also subject to our collective perception. Thus we form our world together, from one infinite moment to the next.

Raul Casso, Laredo, Texas

Bishop Berkeley’s Friday teas attract philosophers, whose most imminent reality is an empty purse. His rock cakes have to be seen to be believed.

“Time is a human construct,” reflected Cornbow. “One cannot say that Reality is, or was. One can only say that humans reflect on Reality as a defence against the mental trash unloaded upon us by the media. Those dire Reality shows especially.”

“I heard that the cosmos is shaped like a ring doughnut,” suggested Dr Shambollix, whose ultimate reality would be abundant with doughnuts. “Dark matter may be much like raspberry jam.” There followed a long debate about the meaning of ‘like’, and, fearing indigestion among his guests, the Bishop intervened: “St Paul told the Corinthians that he could see Reality only through a dim reflection. However, he also thought that Reality understood him.” Young Amy, inclined to charismatic utterance, said that like Paul she had ascended into the Third Heaven, and it was both spacious and comfortable. “Not like railway travel,” she added.

“There was a time,” sighed the Bishop, “when Bradshaw’s Railway Timetable sustained public belief in the reliability of religion.”

The last word, and the final cake, fell to Sam Socrates, the New Yorker, who saw Pragmatism in all phenomena, including the Bishop’s cakes: “When we arrive at the gates of Heaven, we are clad only in the wisdom we’ve garnered in this life. But we don’t mention it much on Capitol Hill.” A tear dropped on the Bishop’s cheek. It is easier to sense Reality within the human spirit than to say much about it. He pronounced the benediction before distributing the washing-up rota. “There are some,” he said, “who believe that God is bound up with the spiritual evolution thrust upon mankind. All is in the process of becoming Real, but is not yet. Washing Up, not Cosmic Reality, is the Categorical Imperative for our Friday afternoons. As for Spiral Dynamics, look at the icing pattern on the soft sponge...”

David Lazell, East Leake, Loughborough

From the perspective of modern physics, the chairs we use are not solid at all but are comprised mostly of space. In consequence we not only sit down rather more cautiously, but have become really quite relaxed with the notion that our day-to-day constructions of reality may be largely illusory, varying not only from person to person but from one era and culture to another, and most notably between species.

Plato’s Cave allegory would not get him onto any chat shows today; it may not even have been big news way back in 400BC. The trouble is he fudged the issue, because the reflections in the cave were distortions of real people, carrying their various burdens past the mouth of the cave.

By contrast, Heraclitus a couple of centuries earlier was making the more challenging suggestion that everything is flux – nothing permanently is. There are no beings at the cave mouth. What we think of as things – as stable objects – are really in constant transition: they are processes. Our selves are the same.

Well, this is more like it: far better box office stuff, like the Matrix , where we’re fed a stream of data. If we take on board the notion that the raw material on which our limited senses feed comprises a shifting, shapeless field of energy or data, like a sort of thin gruel in constant motion, then the question emerges: What conditions within this constant flux yield boundaries? Without boundaries, the thing-medium distinction that so taxed ecologist Roger Barker cannot exist, and our varied experiences imply such a distinction. Further, without any boundaries, any awareness must of necessity be ubiquitous and remain undifferentiated from other focuses of awareness. I, in consequence, become positively godlike.Well, I can live with that if you can.

Martin Lunghi, Scottish Borders

Next Question of the Month

The next question is: Why Should I Be Good? Answers should be less than 400 words. Subject lines or envelopes should be marked ‘Question Of The Month’. If you want the chance of getting a book, please include your physical address. You will be edited.

This site uses cookies to recognize users and allow us to analyse site usage. By continuing to browse the site with cookies enabled in your browser, you consent to the use of cookies in accordance with our privacy policy . X

• The Christian Worldview and Its Concepts Words: 1221
• The Christian Worldview: Fundamental Elements Words: 1375
• The Christian Worldview and Key Concepts Words: 1702
• The Christian Worldview: Gospel Essentials Essay Words: 1354
• Christians, Jews, and Muslims Have the Same God Words: 1173
• The Concept of God in Christian, Islamic and Hindu Religions Words: 1754
• Christian Foundations and Worldview Words: 672
• Worldview and Christian Beliefs Words: 743
• Understanding the Christian Worldview Words: 1215
• The Influence of the Gospel on the Construction of the Christian Worldview Words: 1231
• God and Humans Relate Words: 1994
• The Christian and Buddhist Perspectives in Healthcare Words: 1768
• Christian Worldview: Criticizing Essays Words: 673
• The Ten Commandments for Christians Words: 679
• Life With ALS in the Context of the Christian Worldview Words: 1099
• Baptist Christians Versus Deism Words: 869
• Christian Gospel Essential Beliefs Words: 1681
• The Meaning of Human Existence Words: 830
• Ethical Analysis of End-of-Life Decisions From a Christian Worldview Words: 2217
• Aspects of Christian Beliefs Words: 928
• Postmodernism. History. Christian Apologetics Words: 3076
• Christian Salvation: Essential Elements Words: 1200
• Bioethics: Primer for Christians Words: 1667
• Human Life and Death in Christianity and Buddhism Words: 1533
• Death Explanation in Christian Religion Words: 675

Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality

Introduction.

Ultimate reality is an existing actuality that surpasses the physical and non-physical dimensions of the world. It is absolute power, a central connecting point, and the source of everything that prevails in the universe. In the Christian denomination, this phrase refers to a transcendent presence, a supreme being, or an eternal being that governs the world (“The Biblical-Christian View,” 2017). Therefore, it is a powerful entity that exists in an all-inclusive actuality that surpasses all things. Numerous verses in the Bible support the Christian beliefs regarding the existence of a supreme being. God is portrayed as an ultimate reality which endures eternally. He is termed as omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. The definitions of this phrase vary across religions and cultures with each one bearing its description and name for the concept.

The Source of Everything

The universe is materialized from nothing through the work of God. The book of Genesis recounts that God created the universe from nothing and, therefore, everything that exists in the universe is the expression of God’s will. Genesis 1:2 says that the earth was dark, empty, and formless until God starting speaking life into existence ( New King James Version , 2011). David in Psalms 33:9 related the source of everything to the “word” stating that “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” ( New King James Version , 2011). The second source of everything can be accredited to the trinity. In the Bible – Genesis 1:26, God is quoted saying “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Hermann & Min, 2019). This verse suggests that there was a form of existence with God as he created the universe. Although the literature does not specify who God was talking to, several Christian scholars believe that God was referring to the trinity. Besides, the trinity is the only polytheistic concept that is mentioned in the Bible. Based on Christian accounts of creation, the source of everything in life is God, the word, and the trinity.

The Beginning of the Nature of the World

There is evidence from several biblical texts indicating that the universe is not eternal. The universe had a beginning – Genesis’ account of creation, but it also has an end – revelation’s account of the world and humanity’s destiny. The Big Bang Theory is the most widely accepted scientific evidence that proves the beginning of the world. Other evidence associated with the beginning of the world includes the cosmic expansion of the universe, astrophysical observations, and radiation echoes. Various biblical references show that it is God that spreads out heavens. For example, the prophet Isaiah asserted that God sits at the center of the earth and spreads out its inhabitants throughout the planet ( New King James Version , 2011; Isaiah 40: 22). The concept is supported by modern cosmology, which states that the universe expands from a central point. If there is a considerable level of proof revealing the world’s inception or beginning, then it is basic logic to postulate that it also has an ending. Like Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity predicted, the universe has no eternity, and all physical matter has an end, following the deficiency of gravity, and so does human life.

Good, Orderly and Intelligible Nature of the World

The world’s nature is fundamentally good because it fulfills people and gives a sense of purpose. Humans’ ultimate need is to be happy, although happiness can be meaningless without the knowledge of evil or good. The latter refers to something desirable, while wrongdoing is defined as the absence of good. Loosely translated, virtuousness is superior over wickedness because it can prevail without it, and evil only exists to oppose good. Happiness exists for the sake of existing, making it a natural occurrence. Because good occurs naturally, then the world’s nature is also good. Christian theism underscores the fact that God is an organized being, and the world He created is in perfect order to reveal his glory. On the other hand, naturalism describes the world as an orderly system that is mediated by natural law. Both worldviews seem to support that the world is a coherent system. Philosophers that support the notion that the world is unintelligent often associate their viewpoint with the idea that the world is disorderly and random. However, from the analysis indicated above, it is evident that the word is indeed organized and therefore, intelligible.

A Human Being

The relationship between humans and God is integral in all religious groups. There is a substantial amount of literature, including philosophical, scientific, and religious texts that attempt to describe God. However, the theological and philosophical views of what defines an individual are limited. People have intrinsic capabilities that differentiate them from all life forms and technology, for instance, robot-like humans. First, the human experience draws a distinction between people and other creations or entities. Unlike animals and robots, individuals attach meaning to every experience. For example, through experience, a person can learn and expand his or her knowledge. On the other hand, machines cannot learn anything outside the programming domain regardless of their years in operation. Individuals can analyze past events and associate these incidents with the present. A human is an entity that can attach meaning to an encounter, has free will, and an intrinsic moral compass.

Th Body and Soul of Human Beings

The dualism of life is a familiar concept that has been accepted in many disciplines, including the medical field. The mind is typically correlated with character and personality, while the brain is associated with reasoning, emotion, language, and motor control. Dualism is an approach to human life based on the idea that the mind and body are separate elements. The concept asserts that humans have a physical brain, but they also have a mind tied to their consciousness. A brain is an organ that can be physically observed and touched, but the mind cannot be perceived. This assertion highlights that there is something more than the visible and non-physical matter that exists.

However, the stance that an entity prevails outside the physical has been confronted by various neuroscientists. To illustrate the impossibility of the brain’s existence, neuroscientists have demonstrated that brain injury can alter human personality (Norup & Mortensen, 2015). If the mind were a real and separate entity from the brain, it would be impossible for this body part to affect personality. A second reasoning relates to the conception that the existence of non-physical matter is antithetical to the basic concepts of human evolution. Since humans evolved from physical matter, it is absurd to introduce non-physical matter along the sequence or series of evolution.

From a cultural view, different cultures and mythologies taught on the actuality of an external force outside the physical domain. For example, the Chinese believed in a vital force that existed outside living matter called the “qi” or “chi.” Chi relates to material energy or life force, which is distinct from the physical body. Several Indian practices such as yoga, martial arts, and medicine were founded on the concept of the presence of energies or life forces that permeates all levels of inanimate objects’ reality (“Spirit, soul and body,” 2020). The Bible, on the other hand, teaches of physical and spiritual death. Apostle Paul asserted that after physical death, believers are spiritually reunited with God ( New King James Version , 2011; 2 Corinthians 5: 6-8). This verse underscores the distinction that exists between the body and spirit; they are separate from each other.

From the above analysis, it can be deduced that people have a body and a soul. Humans are primarily aware of the non-perceptible matter that can influence their body’s wellbeing. For example, research indicates that stress can harm the physical health of a person (“Spirit, soul and body,” 2020). While distress is intangible, its influence on the body can be visibly perceived. Therefore, the existence of the non-physical matter, for instance, the soul, that is distinct from flesh, i.e., the body is possible or real.

The Nature of Human’s Morality

The question of the nature of human morality lies in whether people are inherently good or learn to be good. Individuals have intrinsic moral values and judgments that underlie their decisions and practical considerations. There is adequate research evidencing that a person is naturally amoral (Al-Rodhan, 2019). The aforementioned nature is attributed to emotional weakness and egoism. For example, some behavioral psychologists argue that human choices are not free but conditioned by external factors. Human behaviors are impacted by exogenous influences, such as culture or religion. Since external factors affect an individual’s ethical compass, morality is not intrinsic (Al-Rodhan, 2019). Sociobiologists support this argument because they believe humans are naturally wired to make selfish choices to increase their chances of survival (egoism). Extensive research also shows that humans are more emotional than rational and, thus, tend to have a weak judgment (Al-Rodhan, 2019). Although influenced by personal beliefs, most moral accords are universal across different cross-cultural settings.

Furthermore, there is a connection between religion and morality in the Bible; this correlation is based primarily on God’s command. For instance, in the second chapter of Genesis, God commanded Adam to eat or source food from any tree within the garden except that which gives knowledge of evil and good ( New King James Version , 2011). However, they failed to heed the decree and ate from the tree. They later gained knowledge of their nakedness and were abashed; this caused them to hide. Eve and Adam were expelled from the garden following their disobedience since they ate from the tree of wisdom ( New King James Version , 2011). From the description above, it is evident that they disobeyed God, which consequently typifies the scenario as a fall from God’s will – sin. The story of Abraham (his acquiescence to God), the Israelites, and the ten commandments also underscore the element of morality.

The Ability to Acquire Knowledge of the World and God

Humans can acquire knowledge of the world through revelation, which refers to the difference between God’s wisdom and that of man. God is all-knowing, self-contained, and did not learn anything; instead, He is the wellspring of all knowledge. Man’s cognizance is limited and dependent on external sources. God can reveal his know-how to humans through the scripture or mystical appearances, such as the incarnation of Jesus. There are three significant views of knowledge: secular humanism, theistic humanism, and Christian theism. Secular humanism asserts that insight can be derived through deductive or inductive reasoning and sensory perception. Theistic humanism posits that knowledge can be acquired from both religious revelation and reasoning. For example, humans can depend on God for interpretation, but at the same time, use their reasoning and logic to obtain information. Christian humanism believes that all knowledge originates from God and is dependent on His interpretation.

A defining feature of the human and transcendence relationship is characterized by moral accountability and free will. The Protestant and Roman Catholic churches universally accept the analogy of moral liberty and free will. The latter is based on the notion that people have the capacity to choose and make decisions independently without any type of conditioning. In most religions, individuals’ moral actions significantly affected their relationship with God or the transcendent power of their religion. Understanding the religious-moral expectations and making the free choice to comply with them typically gives humans the ability to have relationships with divine power. Through experience, humans can seek spiritual guidance and respond to religious questions.

The Source of The Problems Humans Face and the Solution

Humans experience a wide range of problems, including financial, insecurity, health, and spiritual issues. Christians believe that a sinful life is the source of most of the problems encountered by individuals. When Christians choose a sinful life, God separates Himself from them. In the books of Torah, it is shown how Israelites are repeatedly plagued by wars, disasters, conflicts, economic loss, and diseases when they disobey God ( New King James Version , 2011; Judges 2: 12-14). However, not all the life problems endured by man result from sin. There are several illustrations in the Bible of saints that underwent tribulations and trials such as imprisonments, starvation, and torture despite being innocent ( New King James Version , 2011). However, Christians can solve their distress or difficulties through fasting and prayer and seeking guidance from God. They can also desist from leading a sinful life to form deeper relationships with God.

What Happens to a Person after Death?

There are two possible outcomes of life after death: reincarnation and “soul sleep.” The latter is a notion based on the belief that when humans die, their soul sleeps until the final day of judgment. Several theologists have refuted this conceptualization because it does not contain Biblical foundations. Reincarnation is established on the assumption that believers are reborn again after death. Jesus says that “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” ( New King James Version, 2011; John11: 25-26). Christians also believe that the human spirit is reunited with God after death.

Why It Is Possible to Know Anything

Humans can perceive with certainty only through knowledge (truth) or belief. Knowledge refers to a fact that has been ascertained and tested. When a truth has not been measured or determined, it is a belief. Humans can choose to accept anything they believe is valid or real. However, due to the unreliability of the human sensory system and emotive nature, they cannot objectively perceive through beliefs. On the other hand, man’s knowledge is dependent on external sources and, therefore, can be limited by the brain and language. However, humans can use intuition, empirical study, and reasoning to derive a fact and reach a conclusion without subjectivity.

How Humans Know Right from Wrong

Humans can determine right from wrong through moral subjectivism, cultural relativism, ethical egoism, divine commands, rationality, utilitarianism, and consequentialism. Moral subjectivism relates to the personal beliefs of an individual of what feels right or wrong. Cultural relativism refers to cultural values and principles that stipulate what is virtuous and dishonorable. Ethical egoism underscores the procedure of determining what is ethical from evil based on an individual’s self-interest. Divine command alludes to the guiding principles of the Supreme Being to his/her followers. Rationality is based on the Kantian theory, which posits that people ought to do what is right because it is their moral obligation. The utilitarianism theory asserts that people determine what is right from wrong, depending on the consequences of their actions.

The Meaning of Human History

The Bible provides or delineates the fundamental human history framework. This model outlines the four incidents that shape this particular history; they include creation (Ephesians 1:11 and Genesis 1), fall (Romans 8:20, Romans 5:12-19, and Genesis 3), redemption, and consummation ( New King James Version , 2011). Consequently, it gives meaning to history by underscoring that it is non-cyclical and non-random. It can be traced back to its inception. It has an end and a path directed by God’s sovereign purpose, and it is not defined by continuous evolution and advancements. According to the Christian worldview, a man was intentionally created as per God’s plan, that would be uncovered as history or time ensued (Penner, 2020). People’s main end or their ultimate reason for their existence is to give God glory and enjoy His presence forever. However, this fellowship was fragmented or destroyed almost instantly, following the sin committed by Eve and Adam. This insubordination led to both spiritual and physical demise as well as the cursed earth or ground (Penner, 2020). God has been utilizing history to uncover his restoration and salvation plan for humans ever since.

Metanarrative and Personal, Life-Orientating Core Commitments

Metanarratives refer to recounts which attempt to tell the story of human creation and the meaning of life. However, each religion and culture have their narrative of historical human events. For instance, the Bible asserts that God’s divine will was for Jesus Christ to unite all elements of heaven and earth when the time of fulfillment comes ( New King James Version , 2011; Ephesians 1: 9–10). This text reveals that God had a purpose for human life that would be achieved according to his timetable. Furthermore, it states that Jesus would be incarnated “But when the fulness of the time came;” this indicates that everything was happening on a pre-determined plan ( New King James Version , 2011; Galatians 4: 4). When Jesus Christ was incarnated, it underscored the supreme plan of God on human life: a metanarrative. Additionally, the biblical passages in Hebrews can be traced back to the Old Testament; they emphasize that God’s ultimate plan for human life originates from the book of Genesis ( New King James Version, 2011). The reincarnation of Jesus Christ fulfilled the purpose of God for human life: redemption. The core commitments consistent with the Christian worldview include morality and ethics, acceptable behaviors, repentance, and seeking the kingdom of God.

Al-Rodhan, N. (2019). A neuro-philosophy of human nature: Emotional amoral egoism and the five motivators of humankind . OpenMind – BBVA. Web.

Hermann, R. & Min, D. (2019). Why did God say: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness? ” The Outlaw Bible Student. Web.

New King James Version Bible . (2011). SABDA. Web.

Norup, A., & Mortensen, E. L. (2015). Prevalence and predictors of personality change after severe brain injury . Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation , 96 (1), 56–62. Web.

Penner, B. M. (2020). An introduction to Christian worldview: Pursuing God’s perspective in a pluralistic world. Reviews in Religion & Theology , 27 (2), 171–173. Web.

Spirit, soul and body – How God designed us . (2020). Faith and Health Connection. Web.

The Biblical-Christian view of ultimate reality: God – An excerpt from the essentials of Christian thought. (2017). Zondervan Academic. Web.

Cite this paper

• Chicago (N-B)
• Chicago (A-D)

StudyCorgi. (2022, February 25). Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality. https://studycorgi.com/christian-worldview-ultimate-reality/

"Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality." StudyCorgi , 25 Feb. 2022, studycorgi.com/christian-worldview-ultimate-reality/.

StudyCorgi . (2022) 'Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality'. 25 February.

1. StudyCorgi . "Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality." February 25, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/christian-worldview-ultimate-reality/.

Bibliography

StudyCorgi . "Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality." February 25, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/christian-worldview-ultimate-reality/.

StudyCorgi . 2022. "Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality." February 25, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/christian-worldview-ultimate-reality/.

This paper, “Christian Worldview: Ultimate Reality”, was written and voluntary submitted to our free essay database by a straight-A student. Please ensure you properly reference the paper if you're using it to write your assignment.

Before publication, the StudyCorgi editorial team proofread and checked the paper to make sure it meets the highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, fact accuracy, copyright issues, and inclusive language. Last updated: February 25, 2022 .

If you are the author of this paper and no longer wish to have it published on StudyCorgi, request the removal . Please use the “ Donate your paper ” form to submit an essay.

What happened in the Kolkata rape case that triggered doctors’ protests?

Activists and doctors in India demand better safeguarding of women and medical professionals after a trainee medic was raped and murdered in Kolkata.

Activists and doctors across India continued to protest on Wednesday to demand justice for a female doctor, who was raped and murdered while on duty in a hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata.

Feminist groups rallied on the streets in protests titled “Reclaim the Night” in Kolkata overnight on Wednesday – on the eve of India’s independence day – in solidarity with the victim, demanding the principal of RG Kar Medical College resign. Some feminist protesters also marched well beyond Kolkata, including in the capital Delhi.

Keep reading

Doctors across india protest rape and murder of medic in kolkata, india supreme court to monitor investigations into manipur sexual violence, goals not guns: how a girls football team in india’s manipur beats violence, four arrested after spanish blogger on india motorcycle tour gangraped.

While the protests were largely peaceful, a small mob of men stormed the medical college and vandalised property. This group was dispersed by the police.

This comes after two days of nationwide protests by doctors following the incident at RG Kar Medical College in West Bengal’s capital city. “Sit-in demonstrations and agitation in the hospital campus will continue,” one of the protesting doctors, identified as Dr Mridul, told Al Jazeera.

Services in some medical centres were halted indefinitely, and marches and vigils shed light on issues of sexual violence, as well as doctors’ safety in the world’s most populous nation.

What happened to the doctor in Kolkata?

A 31-year-old trainee doctor’s dead body, bearing multiple injuries, was found on August 9 in a government teaching hospital in Kolkata.

The parents of the victim were initially told “by hospital authorities that their daughter had committed suicide,” lawyer and women’s rights activist Vrinda Grover told Al Jazeera. But an autopsy confirmed that the victim was raped and killed.

Grover has appeared for victims in sexual violence cases in India in the past, including Bilkis Bano , a Muslim woman who was gang-raped during the 2002 Gujarat riots, and Soni Sori, a tribal activist based in Chhattisgarh state.

Thousands of doctors marched in Kolkata on Monday, demanding better security measures and justice for the victim.

On Tuesday, the Kolkata High Court transferred the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

The Federation of Resident Doctors Association (FORDA) called for a nationwide halting of elective services in hospitals starting on Monday. Elective services are medical treatments that can be deferred or are not deemed medically necessary.

On Tuesday, FORDA announced on its X account that it is calling off the strike after Health Minister Jagat Prakash Nadda accepted protest demands.

One of these demands was solidifying the Central Protection Act, intended to be a central law to protect medical professionals from violence, which was proposed in the parliament’s lower house in 2022, but has not yet been enacted.

FORDA said that the ministry would begin working on the Act within 15 days of the news release, and that a written statement from the ministry was expected to be released soon.

Press release regarding call off of strike. In our fight for the sad incident at R G Kar, the demands raised by us have been met in full by the @OfficeofJPNadda , with concrete steps in place, and not just verbal assurances. Central Healthcare Protection Act ratification… pic.twitter.com/OXdSZgM1Jc — FORDA INDIA (@FordaIndia) August 13, 2024

Why are some Indian doctors continuing to protest?

However, other doctors’ federations and hospitals have said they will not back down on the strike until a concrete solution is found, including a central law to curb attacks on doctors.

Those continuing to strike included the Federation of All India Medical Associations (FAIMA), Delhi-based All India Institute Of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) and Indira Gandhi Hospital, local media reported.

Ragunandan Dixit, the general secretary of the AIIMS Resident Doctors’ Association, said that the indefinite strike will continue until their demands are met, including a written guarantee of the implementation of the Central Protection Act.

Medical professionals in India want a central law that makes violence against doctors a non-bailable, punishable offence, in hopes that it deters such violent crimes against doctors in the future.

Those continuing to protest also call for the dismissal of the principal of the college, who was transferred. “We’re demanding his termination, not just transfer,” Dr Abdul Waqim Khan, a protesting doctor told ANI news agency. “We’re also demanding a death penalty for the criminal,” he added.

“Calling off the strike now would mean that female resident doctors might never receive justice,” Dr Dhruv Chauhan, member of the National Council of the Indian Medical Association’s Junior Doctors’ Network told local news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).

Which states in India saw doctors’ protests?

While the protests started in West Bengal’s Kolkata on Monday, they spread across the country on Tuesday.

The capital New Delhi, union territory Chandigarh, Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow and city Prayagraj, Bihar capital Patna and southern state Goa also saw doctors’ protests.

Who is the suspect in the Kolkata rape case?

Local media reported that the police arrested suspect Sanjoy Roy, a civic volunteer who would visit the hospital often. He has unrestricted access to the ward and the police found compelling evidence against him.

The parents of the victim told the court that they suspect that it was a case of gang rape, local media reported.

Why is sexual violence on the rise in India?

Sexual violence is rampant in India, where 90 rapes were reported on average every day in 2022.

Laws against sexual violence were made stricter following a rape case in 2012, when a 22-year-old physiotherapy intern was brutally gang-raped and murdered on a bus in Delhi. Four men were hanged for the gang rape, which had triggered a nationwide protests.

But despite new laws in place, “the graph of sexual violence in India continues to spiral unabated,” said Grover.

She added that in her experience at most workplaces, scant attention is paid to diligent and rigorous enforcement of the laws.

“It is regrettable that government and institutions respond only after the woman has already suffered sexual assault and often succumbed to death in the incident,” she added, saying preventive measures are not taken.

In many rape cases in India, perpetrators have not been held accountable. In 2002, Bano was raped by 11 men, who were sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2022, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi authorised the release of the men, who were greeted with applause and garlands upon their release.

However, their remission was overruled and the Supreme Court sent the rapists back to jail after public outcry.

Grover believes that the death penalty will not deter rapists until India addresses the deeply entrenched problem of sexual violence. “For any change, India as a society will have to confront and challenge, patriarchy, discrimination and inequality that is embedded in our homes, families, cultural practices, social norms and religious traditions”.

What makes this case particularly prominent is that it happened in Kolkata, Sandip Roy, a freelance contributor to NPR, told Al Jazeera. “Kolkata actually prided itself for a long time on being really low in the case of violence against women and being relatively safe for women.”

A National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report said that Kolkata had the lowest number of rape cases in 2021 among 19 metropolitan cities, with 11 cases in the whole year. In comparison, New Delhi was reported to have recorded 1, 226 cases that year.

Prime Minister Modi’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has called for dismissing the government in West Bengal, where Kolkata is located, led by Mamata Banerjee of All India Trinamool Congress (AITC). Banerjee’s party is part of the opposition alliance.

Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in parliament, also called for justice for the victim.

“The attempt to save the accused instead of providing justice to the victim raises serious questions on the hospital and the local administration,” he posted on X on Wednesday.

Roy spoke about the politicisation of the case since an opposition party governs West Bengal. “The local government’s opposition will try to make this an issue of women’s safety in the state,” he said.

Have doctors in India protested before?

Roy explained to Al Jazeera that this case is an overlap of two kinds of violence, the violence against a woman, as well as violence against “an overworked medical professional”.

Doctors in India do not have sufficient workplace security, and attacks on doctors have started protests in India before.

In 2019, two junior doctors were physically assaulted in Kolkata’s Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital (NRSMCH) by a mob of people after a 75-year-old patient passed away in the hospital.

Those attacks set off doctors’ protests in Kolkata, and senior doctors in West Bengal offered to resign from their positions to express solidarity with the junior doctors who were attacked.

More than 75 percent of Indian doctors have faced some form of violence, according to a survey by the Indian Medical Association in 2015.

What happens next?

The case will now be handled by the CBI, which sent a team to the hospital premises to inspect the crime scene on Wednesday morning, local media reported.

According to Indian law, the investigation into a case of rape or gang rape is to be completed within two months from the date of lodging of the First Information Report (police complaint), according to Grover, the lawyer.

The highest court in West Bengal, which transferred the case from the local police to the CBI on Tuesday, has directed the central investigating agency to file periodic status reports regarding the progress of the investigation.

The FIR was filed on August 9, which means the investigation is expected to be completed by October 9.

Bengal women will create history with a night long protest in various major locations in the state for at 11.55pm on 14th of August’24,the night that’ll mark our 78th year as an independent country. The campaign, 'Women, Reclaim the Night: The Night is Ours', is aimed at seeking… pic.twitter.com/Si9fd6YGNb — purpleready (@epicnephrin_e) August 13, 2024

More From Forbes

The future of e-commerce: trends to watch in 2024.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Denis Sinelnikov is the CEO of Media Components and Curis Digital, an award-winning, full-service digital marketing agency.

E-commerce is a dynamic industry that has transformed the way we shop and conduct business. With rapid advancements in technology and changing consumer preferences, your business must stay ahead of the curve to remain competitive.

Several emerging trends are set to reshape e-commerce in 2024. I’ll focus on the ones that are worth keeping an eye on this year and then share some tips for taking advantage of them.

Which Trends To Watch

Augmented reality shopping experiences.

AR enables customers to have immersive shopping experiences from the comfort of their homes. It allows them to visualize products in a real-world context, making informed decisions before making a purchase. Ikea has been using AR technology with its app for a few years now , proving that it isn’t merely a short-lived fad.

Ikea doesn’t have to be an outlier. We have the frameworks to apply AR technology to e-commerce on a broader scale than we currently do. TikTok and Instagram filters alone prove that we can do this easily, and relatively inexpensively. What we need is for companies that can most benefit from this tech—salons, clothing retailers and more furniture and home improvement retailers—to provide this interactive and engaging shopping experience.

Blockchain For Supply Chain Transparency

Blockchain technology is not new to the e-commerce industry, but its application is evolving. While we tend to think of blockchain in terms of cryptocurrency and NFTs, it has more potential uses. A blockchain is an append-only ledger, meaning that data can be added to the chain but not removed. The accountants and security professionals among you undoubtedly recognize the term and can immediately see the transparency a blockchain ledger can provide.

Logistics companies could greatly benefit from a blockchain ledger. It would provide transparency to their shipping clients and improve communication with their contracted owner/operators. The benefits could even extend to the customers of their clients, who could use the blockchain to provide real-time updates for restocking and shipments.

Customized Loyalty Programs

Personalization has been a hallmark of e-commerce; however, its scope has been historically limited to cross-selling through product recommendations. In 2024, I want to see us bring personalization further as retailers harness data analytics and AI. This could involve large retailers offering more personalized content to users and allowing users to customize loyalty programs to meet their specific shopping habits and needs. Ultimately, increased personalization can forge stronger connections between brands and their customers.

Eco-Friendly E-Commerce

The focus on sustainability and eco-friendliness has gained momentum in recent years. In 2024, this trend will likely intensify in the e-commerce industry. Customers expect e-commerce platforms to offer eco-friendly options, reduce packaging waste and embrace sustainable practices. I want to see retailers align with these values to improve their businesses and gain a competitive edge in the market.

Stronger Security And Privacy Measures

In 2024, I see consumers gravitating toward platforms that prioritize their personal data security, and governments are likely to introduce more stringent regulations. Retailers must invest in advanced security technologies and adopt transparent practices to build trust with their customers.

More Personalized Subscription Models

Subscription services have become increasingly popular in the e-commerce industry, but in 2024, I expect retailers will offer subscriptions tailored to individual preferences, not only in terms of product selection but also in the frequency and timing of deliveries. These highly customized subscription models can enhance customer loyalty and supply a steady revenue stream for businesses.

Taking Advantage Of The 2024 Trends

Knowing the trends isn’t enough. The companies that will rise to the top in 2024 are the ones that position themselves to implement them successfully. We are well past the era of “move fast and break things.” This needs to be the year that you build consumer trust as you take advantage of these trends.

The Considerations

Before you begin jumping on these trends, you need to consider which ones fit your brand, your industry and your customer needs. Ask yourself questions before you start looking at bringing these trends into your e-commerce strategy. Here are some key questions to get you started:

• Who is our consistent customer base, and what keeps them loyal?

• What new markets do we want to expand into this year?

• What security measures do we have in place for customer data, financial data and company data?

• What weaknesses do we have in our security?

• How are we collecting data, and are we continuing to receive valuable information on customers and leads?

• Which trends match our company vision, goals and culture?

• What is our process for converting leads to customers, and how do these trends fit into this process?

The Technology

Once you have an idea of what trends you want to implement and what roadblocks may be ahead of you, let’s look at what you will need to have in place to make these trends work for you.

• Have a solid data collection strategy and software. Several of the strategies I’ve discussed revolve around customer data. If you don’t have a reliable program that can run reports, monitor customer activity and interpret data, you will fall behind on these trends. Tools like Qualtrics that use AI can help companies not only capture information but use it to create the personalized experiences consumers want.

• Improve your data encryption and security. No matter how good your current security is, you need to improve it this year. Because so many of these trends rely on consumer habits and customer data, it’s more important than ever that you can safeguard that data. Not only will the increased security improve consumer trust in your brand, but it will also protect that valuable data from competitors.

• Invest in AI technology. Investing in AI tools for security, data collection and analysis and customer service interactions is a vital step to help you take advantage of each trend we have looked at here.

E-commerce in 2024 is characterized by several trends that I expect to reshape the industry. From the integration of augmented reality and blockchain for transparency to subscription models with increased personalization and a heightened focus on sustainability, e-commerce is set to offer customers innovative and socially responsible shopping experiences. By figuring out which trends best fit their brand and then investing in technology to enable them, businesses can navigate the e-commerce world of 2024 with confidence and enthusiasm.

Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

• Bahasa Indonesia
• Slovenščina
• Science & Tech
• Russian Kitchen

Expectations VS reality while visiting Russia

1.   christmas holidays.

During the winter, Red Square transforms into a winter wonderland, where you can drink mulled wine, ice skate, and have snowball fights. Here’s your   guide   on how to enjoy winter like a Russian.

2. St. Petersburg

Remember to bring an umbrella when you visit Russia’s cultural capital. Read   our article   in which we answer the most frequent questions about St. Petersburg, such as: What is the best month to visit?

3. Winter sports

Enjoying winter like a Russian is not as challenging as you might think, especially if you attend the annual bikini skiing contest in Sochi. These   pictures   are sure to set your pulse racing.

4. Siberian summer

Most people stuff their suitcase full of warm clothes before setting sail to Russia, but the summers are often hot and sweaty. Bear this in mind if you’re planning on taking the Trans-Siberian...those carriages can imitate a Russian sauna all too easily. Read the   platskart diary   of a girl who took a train from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok.

5. Moscow metro

If you avoid rush hour you don’t have any reason to be afraid of this reality – Moscow’s metro is without doubt the most spectacular in the world. Follow   our guide   on how to manage the capital’s underground like a local.

6. Russian parties

Another stereotype about fancy Russian life! Eating   shashlyk   at the dacha can be wild! Read about why foreigners prefer the Russian dacha to an exotic island   here .

7. Russian food

Actually, we don’t eat black caviar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Russian cuisine is about far more than just borsch. Check out our   ultimate guide   to Russian restaurants in Moscow.

8. Russian men

They are really romantic, and they don’t all look like former heavyweight boxing champion Nikolay Valuev. Here are some other   unexpected facts about Russian men   that will inspire you date them.

9. Russian girls

For this point, reality really does match the expectations – in fact, it often exceeds them. However, handling a Russian girl’s beauty is no walk in the park. Here are seven reasons   not to date a Russian woman .

If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.

to our newsletter!

Get the week's best stories straight to your inbox

• 28 stereotypes about Russia: Which ring true and which are complete rubbish?
• 10 things a foreigner should never do in Russia
• 3 things you SHOULD worry about when visiting Russia

This website uses cookies. Click here to find out more.