Identification of the Universe with God

This is an identification of the universe with God. With this view there is a blurring of the distinction between the Creator and the creation as well as an attack upon the personality and nature of God. Pantheism tends to equate God with the process of the universe and states that the universe is God and God is the universe. This is not true because God is the creator of the universe (Is. 44:24) and therefore separate from it.

As pantheists readily admit, they believe that there is no real difference between good and evil “on the highest level of consciousness.” The absurd consequences of this are vividly illustrated by the late Francis Schaeffer:

“One day I was talking to a group of people in the digs of a young South African in Cambridge. Among others, there was present a young Indian who was of Sikh background but a Hindu by religion. He started to speak strongly against Christianity, but did not really understand the problems of his own beliefs. So I said, “Am I not correct in saying that on the basis of your system, cruelty and non-cruelty are ultimately equal, that there is no intrinsic difference between them?” He agreed…the student in whose room we met, who had clearly understood the implications of what the Sikh had admitted, picked up his kettle of boiling water with which he was about to make tea, and stood with it steaming over the Indian’s head. The man looked up and asked him what he was doing and he said, with a cold yet gentle finality, “There is no difference between cruelty and non-cruelty.” Thereupon the Hindu walked out into the night.”

Quoted by Norman Geisler in False Gods of our time, p. 85-6