Panteísmo y cristianismo en Amado Nervo y C. S. Lewis

Brahma no piensa

Ego sum qui sum.

Brahma no piensa: pensar limita.
Brahma no es bueno ni malo, pues
las cualidades en su infinita
substancia huelgan. Brahma es lo que es.

Brahma, en un éxtasis perenne, frío,

su propia esencia mirando está.

Si duerme, el Cosmos torna al vacío;
¡mas si despierta renacerá!

Amado Nervo

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Ah, panteísmo puro. Un dios que lo llena todo siendo todo, trascendiendo el bien y el mal. C.S. Lewis contrasta el panteísmo con el cristianismo:

Pantheists usually believe that God, so to speak, animates the universe as you animate your body: that the universe almost is God, so that if it did not exist He would not exist either, and anything you find in the universe is a part of God. The Christian idea is quite different. They think God invented and made the universe—like a man making a picture or composing a tune. A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed. You may say, “He’s put a lot of himself into it”, but you only mean that all its beauty and interest has come out of his head. His skill is not in the picture in the same way that it is in his head, or even in his hands. I expect you see how this difference between Pantheists and Christians hangs together with the other one. If you do not take the distinction between good and bad very seriously, then it is easy to say that anything you find in this world is a part of God. But, of course, if you think some things really bad, and God really good, then you cannot talk like that. You must believe that God is separate from the world and that some of the things we see in it are contrary to His will. Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, “If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize that this also is God”. The Christian replies, “Don’t talk damned nonsense”. For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world—that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God “made up out of His head” as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.

(1)

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And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing–not even a person–but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.

(2)

C.S. Lewis

Mere Christianity

(1) Book two. What Christians Believe.
The Rival Conceptions of God (excerpt)

(2) Book Four. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity.

The Good Infection (excerpt)