Every idol-based worldview seeks to stuff all of reality into a box. Inevitably, however, something will stick out of the box. Something will fail to fit within its conceptual categories. Both materialism and pantheism define ultimate reality in non-personal terms—and therefore both fail to account for human personhood. Thus they end up denying, denigrating, and devaluing the unique features of human persons. Humans are reduced to products of non-personal forces. The individual dissolves into the rock of the mountainside.
