NOVEMBER 2008 If God is transcendent (wholly separate) but not immanent (near to us) then God is so wholly other that He cannot be known or experienced. If God is immanent but not transcendent then there is no distinction between His creation and Himself – all is one; individual personality, His, and ours is ultimately lost. The Christian God is both immanent and transcendent, near enough to be known, encountered and experienced, but far enough to be distinct from creation and to some extent unknowable and thus awe-inspiring or worthy of worship. I enjoy reading Pagan literature in general and Wiccan or Witchcraft literature in particular. I enjoy the existential, practical emphasis that pagans and witches bring to their spiritual journey. The experience of God has always been a key motivator in my spirituality and in my life. The quest for spiritual understanding is my central focus. I am often challenged to rethink my own positions, my own theology based on what I encounter in the literature of other religions and that is precisely why I enjoy the exercise – it forces me to think about beliefs that I might otherwise take for granted. One such challenge came from Gus diZerega, author of Pagans and Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience. In his book, diZerega argues that Divinity from a pagan point of view is “both transcendent and immanent, rather then merely immanent or merely transcendent.” He argues that “when modern Americans think of God, it is usually as a spiritual power fundamentally removed from the material world….This wholly transcendental way of viewing God desacralizes the world. The world becomes a soulless object.” Later in his book, diZerega tells the moving story of his personal encounter with the Goddess, a divinity he feels is uniquely immanent in Her creation. It is Her very immanence that makes Her accessible to Her followers. The presumption on diZerega’s part is that the Christian God is more transcendent than immanent and thus less accessible, less likely to be encountered or personally known. Part of the standard curriculum in every Christian seminary in the United States is a class or two in systematic theology – the study or science of God based primarily on the testimony of God’s self-disclosure, the Bible but made relevant to the questions of modern culture. Every systematic theology text I have ever read (and I’ve read several) deals extensively with the attributes of God. Two of these attributes are His immanence and His transcendence. From a Biblical perspective, the Christian God is both immanent and transcendent. I understand that these qualities or attributes seem at odds with each other. At first glance, it might seem impossible, even contradictory that One Being could be at the same time immanent and yet transcendent but God, the great mystery, is like that – all human and yet entirely divine, present everywhere yet fully removed, knowable yet incomprehensible. I have always lived with seeming contradiction or paradox. I am a Christian goth – many have told me that is a contradiction and yet it is my reality. I embrace contradiction because it reminds me of my finiteness – it makes me feel small in a vast universe, and that fills me with wonder and awe. In turn, wonder fills my life with joy. Is not paradox at the heart of mystery, and is not mystery at the heart of Divinity? Go ahead, box God in if you can, define Him if you will, He (She) will always and ever elude you. God is infinite, I am finite, God understands all; I see in part and understand in part. God indwells His creation, and yet He is wholly separate and above His creation. He is within, and yet He comes from without. The immanence of God gives Him a knowable quality, we can come into relationship with Him, and we can experience Him. His transcendent quality removes Him entirely from His creation – He is above it, beyond it, ever a mystery that will never be fully known or understood. While His immanence gives Him a knowable quality that can be understood from the observation of His creation, the Christian God went a step beyond immanence when He incarnated. He so desired to be known, that He became one of us, He walked among us; He touched us physically and was physically touched. He has provided a revelation of Himself in the person of Jesus and in His word that stands fully separate from the material world, not in the sense that it is immaterial but in the sense that it stands alone. The extreme of immanence is monism or pantheism. According to wikipedia.org, “monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry, where this is not to be expected. Thus, some philosophers may hold that the Universe is really just one thing, despite its many appearances and diversities; or theology may support the view that there is one God, with many manifestations in different religions.” The heart of occult philosophy is that all is one, but if all is one without transcendence than our individual identity is ultimately lost as is God’s. The extreme of transcendence is deism. Deism asserts that God is so far removed from creation that He/She cannot be known or experienced. The cult of science has arisen from the grave of deism. “There may be a God,” the so-called scientific philosopher says, “but we can’t prove it. All we know is what we can measure and quantify – no miracles, no magick, no relationship with a personal deity.” Is God a contradiction or mystery? God is fully immanent. God is fully transcendent. God is fully human. God is fully Divine. God is one entity in three Persons. If Jesus were not fully human His work and sacrifice would not be applicable to those that are fully human. If He were not fully divine, His work and sacrifice would not be sufficient to accomplish the task of redemption. How, for instance, can Jesus be all God and all human at the same time? Or, how can God be three distinct entities and yet one entity at the same time? These are the mysteries of the Christian faith – mysteries not contradictions. It is the very fact that He is transcendent which makes Him a mystery (that is, we cannot know Him exhaustively), and yet it is the fact that He is immanent which makes Him both knowable, approachable, and personal. Paul said, “From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God,” Romans 1: 20 God may be known in His creation because He is immanent within it. Jeremiah 23:24 said, “Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?” Saith the LORD, “Do not I fill heaven and earth?” saith the LORD” God richly and fully indwells His creation. He does so to such an extent that if any one claims he or she has not had the opportunity to know God, God will say to them, “I have been all around you from the dawn of your days.” It is precisely because God is immanent that He is also personal – He is an individual, with self-consciousness and will, capable of feeling, choosing, and having a reciprocal relationship with other personal and social beings, with you and with me. Living without the experience of God, for me, would be and was a form of hell. I respect the authority of scripture because I first knew by experience the author not visa versa. I know Him better because of His book, and I encounter Him in its pages, teachings, and stories but my first encounter with Him was not in the pages of scripture but on the road to Damascus as it were – that is as I went about my life, I encountered Him and my life was irrevocably altered by that encounter. Please don’t settle for anything less in your religion or spiritual quest. But, as knowable and as accessible as He has made Himself, He is still God. Isaiah 55: 8 – 9, “8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.? 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God is part of nature, He indwells it but He is also wholly beyond it, therefore He can and does provide a plumb line, an objective standard of truth without variance. He is immanent and therefore knowable but at the same time transcendent and therefore He cannot be completely captured or boxed in with human concepts or understanding. As He is innately beyond our comprehension, our salvation, our deep and satisfying personal relationship with Him, is wholly dependent upon His initiative, it is not our achievement lest anyone should boast. Reverence is in order. The earth is not sacred because it is the earth; the earth is sacred because it is His. We are not sacred because we exist; we are sacred because we are His. He created and designed us for His purpose and that purpose is to love and be loved, to be known and to know Him and those near us. The miraculous occurs when that which is transcendent above and beyond nature, when that which is distant comes near, and that is His choice not ours. Please consider the words of Christian song writer Maltbie D. Babcock: This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears all nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres. This is my Father's world: I rest me in the thought of rocks and trees, of skies and seas; His hand the wonders wrought. This is my Father's world, the birds their carols raise, the morning light, the lily white, declare their Maker’s praise. This is my Father's world: He shines in all that's fair; in the rustling grass I hear Him pass; He speaks to me everywhere. This is my Father's world. O let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet. This is my Father's world: why should my heart be sad? The Lord is King; let the heavens ring! God reigns; let the earth be glad! Live with a sense of awe, beloved, David |