Grounding panentheism

Abstract Panentheists advocate for a unique and rival view of God and his relationship to the cosmos. A common panentheistic slogan says the cosmos is in God, but God is more than the cosmos. God is simultaneously transcendent and immanent. However, it’s unclear how we should interpret this slogan. Focusing on key passages in the Bhagavad-Gīta, I propose three desiderata that a minimal account of the panentheist’s God-world relation must adhere to and argue that the relation of metaphysical grounding meets all three. On my view, panentheism is the view that God’s existence grounds the existence of the cosmos. I develop this view in opposition to rival accounts and argue that we can plausibly demarcate panentheism from traditional theism in terms of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo.