# Why immanentism is not an uncontested synonym for pantheism

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH08.P009](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH08.P009/#char=237,296): "a certain modern attitude which is often called immanentism"

R. J. Campbell gives a concrete meaning to the terminology: Chesterton names him later in this chapter. In chapter III of *The New Theology* (first published 1907; inspected in Project Gutenberg’s transcription of the New York Macmillan edition, April 1907 reprint), Campbell represents individual selves as expressions of a universal divine consciousness. But he rejects the label *pantheism* when it means an unconscious, necessitated deity, and says individual self-knowledge will survive its expansion into the whole. [Campbell, chapter III, including ‘The Self is God’](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27500/pg27500-images.html).

Chesterton’s corrective ‘or rather’ therefore matters: he is identifying a modern tendency for criticism, not reporting an uncontested classification. The distinction is not merely verbal. A conscious divine whole and a blind necessity need not imply the same account of agency, while the claim that personal knowledge survives unity needs to be tested separately from either label. Campbell is a relevant interlocutor, but the comparison does not establish that this paragraph quotes him directly.

## Sources

- [R. J. Campbell, The New Theology (1907)](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27500/pg27500-images.html), Title and copyright pages; chapter I, subsection ‘The New Theology is spiritual socialism’; chapter III, paragraphs preceding and within ‘The Self is God’
- [G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908)](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769), Chapter VIII, ‘The Romance of Orthodoxy,’ paragraph beginning ‘Here again, therefore, we find’ naming R. J. Campbell

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