God is everything, and everything is God. That is, according to pantheism, an umbrella term for a set of beliefs that suggest God did not create the universe—but that God is the universe. For hundreds of years, philosophers have debated over this brand of theology, sometimes spelling death for those who dared to elevate the view in a positive light. After all, a pantheist, by definition, rejects the idea of God as something transcendent, something greater than the universe, something personified.
Take, for instance, the Italian friar Giordano Bruno, who was highly critical of the Catholic Church, espousing his notion of an infinite, universal God. Due to his provocative ideas in the sixteenth century, he lived as a migrant scholar, supported by monarchs and princes throughout Western Europe and England. “All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity,” Bruno famously said. It was not surprising, then, that by 1600 his luck ran out when his host at the time, a member of the Venetian nobility, denounced Bruno for heresy. The Inquisition interrogated him, declared him an unrepentant heretic, and then burned him at the stake in Rome.
