Dr. Andrei Buckareff and some of his co-authors are convinced that in recent times philosophers of religion have been too traditional, focusing too much of their attention on an understanding of God as a perfect creator of the cosmos who is distinct from that cosmos, someone who created it out of nothing.

To remedy this many of them propose that God just is the cosmos (pantheism) or that God is like a soul and the cosmos is God’s body (panentheism).

As it’s philosophy, though, intellectual diversity is on display; other authors criticize such views, or explore alternatives within or outside of traditional theistic theologies.

In this wide-ranging interview, we hear about this ongoing research project, some of these alternative concepts of God (i.e. the unique, ultimate reality), and what motivates such explorations.

• Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, edited by Andrei Buckareff and Yujin Nagasawa.
  • Other contributors: Peter Forrest, Karl Pfeifer, John Bishop, Ken Perszyk, Marilyn McCord Adams, Charles Taliaferro, Robin Le Poidevin, John Leslie, Brian Leftow, Willem B. Drees, Hugh J. McCann, J.L. Schellenberg, Emily Thomas, Eric Steinhart
• The Pantheism and Panentheism Project
• interviews with Dr. Buckareff at Closer to Truth
• papers by Dr. Buckareff
• Charles Hartshorne
• William L. Rowe
• Linda Zagzebski, “Omnisubjectivity“
• tian
• Mark Johnston, Saving God: Religion after Idolatry
• John Hick’s “religious pluralism”
• Advaita Vedanta
• “God is love” in the Bible
• John B. Cobb
• Robert Oakes
• Baruch Spinoza
• Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 2nd ed. 
• omnipresence
• podcast 111 – Dr. Joseph Jedwab on divine omnipresence – Part 1
• Paul Tillich
• J.A.T. Robinson, Honest to God
• Shūsaku Endō
• This week’s thinking music is “Procreation,” by Little Glass Men.