Program / Course 8: God, Trinity, and Creation / Lesson 1.4
What you will learn
- Define transcendence and immanence and show where each appears in Scripture.
- Explain why Christianity holds both together and what goes wrong when one is dropped.
- Distinguish Christian teaching from deism, pantheism and panentheism.
- Describe how the Incarnation and the sacraments express divine nearness in different traditions.
The big idea
To say that God is transcendent is to say that God is not part of the world, not limited by it and not reducible to it. To say that God is immanent is to say that God is intimately present in the world, sustaining and acting within it. Christian teaching holds both at once. If transcendence is held alone, God seems distant and unconcerned. If immanence is held alone, God risks being confused with the world. The Christian claim is that the God who is above all is also nearer to each creature than it is to itself.
Key terms
- Transcendence
- God’s being beyond and distinct from the created world, not limited by space, time or matter.
- Immanence
- God’s presence and activity within creation, holding it in being and acting in it.
- Omnipresence
- The teaching that God is present everywhere, not as a part of space but as the one who gives every place its existence.
- Deism
- The view that God made the world but does not act in it afterward. Popular among some thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
- Pantheism
- The view that God and the world are identical, so that the universe is divine.
- Panentheism
- The view that the world is in God but God is more than the world. Some forms deny that God is wholly independent of the world.
- Incarnation
- The Christian teaching that the eternal Son of God became a human being in Jesus of Nazareth.
- Sacrament
- A rite in which Christians believe God acts through physical signs such as water, bread and wine. The number and meaning vary among traditions.
Background
The Bible presents both themes without apology. Isaiah 6:3 shows the seraphim calling that the Lord is holy and that the whole earth is full of his glory: a single verse can hold the otherness of God and the fullness of his presence. Solomon, praying at the dedication of the temple, says that heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God (1 Kings 8:27), and yet he asks God to hear prayers made toward that house. Psalm 139 asks where a person could flee from God’s presence and finds no place.
The two themes became a problem for philosophy as well as piety. Greek thinkers sometimes pictured the highest reality as so remote that it took no interest in the world. Others, like the Stoics, spoke of a divine principle running through all things, close to pantheism. The fathers of the church rejected both extremes. They held that God created the world freely and out of nothing, so that the world is truly distinct from God. They also held that God holds everything in being at every moment, so that nothing exists apart from God’s presence.
In modern times the themes were put under strain. Enlightenment deism pictured God as a distant maker. Romanticism and some later theology stressed divine immanence so strongly that the line between God and nature blurred. In the twentieth century some theologians reacted by stressing God’s otherness, and others by stressing God’s involvement. A careful reading of the older tradition shows that the best writers never made the choice. They thought God is near because God is God, not despite it.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Transcendence in Scripture and the tradition
Texts for transcendence include Isaiah 55:9, where the Lord says his ways are higher than human ways as the heavens are higher than the earth, and the opening of John’s Gospel, where the Word was with God before creation. The tradition draws from them that God does not depend on the world and is not bound by space or time. The word used of this is aseity, from the Latin for from oneself.
Transcendence is not distance in space. God is not far away in the sky. The point is that God is of a different order from creatures, so that God cannot be measured against them or placed in a series with them. A cause that is on the same level as its effects can be near or far. The Creator is not on that level.
Step 2: Immanence in Scripture and the tradition
Paul tells the Athenians that God is not far from any one of them, for in him they live and move and have their being (Acts 17:28). The Psalmist says of God that if he took away his breath, creatures would die (Psalm 104:29). Colossians 1:17 says that all things hold together in Christ. The tradition reads these texts to mean that creation does not continue by its own power. God’s act of giving existence is not finished once and left behind; it continues at every moment.
Augustine put this by saying that God is more inward to a person than that person’s inmost self and higher than the highest part of the soul (Confessions III.6.11). Immanence in this sense does not mean that God is inside the world as a part of it. It means that the world is held in being by God, so that God is closer to each thing than that thing is to itself.
Step 3: Why both are needed
A one-sided view leads to trouble. If God is only transcendent, prayer seems pointless and Scripture’s stories of God walking with people seem false. This is the fear raised about deism. If God is only immanent, then God seems to be the world, and worship is hard to distinguish from reverence for nature. This is the fear raised about pantheism.
The Christian answer is that creation is a gift from a God who remains free. Because God made the world from nothing, the world is not divine, and God is not part of it. Because God sustains the world, God is present to every part. These two truths do not compete. Nearness of God does not shrink God, and God’s greatness does not push God away.
Step 4: The Incarnation and the sacraments
The Christian faith holds that the highest nearness has taken place in Jesus Christ, in whom the eternal Son took human nature. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 taught that this happened without confusion or change. The Son did not cease to be God, and the humanity was not turned into divinity. Here transcendence and immanence meet in one person.
The traditions then differ on how that nearness continues. Catholic and Orthodox Christians teach that God acts through the sacraments, which they hold to be real vehicles of divine grace, including the Eucharist. Lutherans and Anglicans keep a sacramental view in different forms. Reformed Protestants speak of the sacraments as means of grace received by faith, with differing emphases. Some Protestant groups treat baptism and the Lord’s Supper mainly as ordinances that symbolize and commemorate. All of these are attempts to say how the God above all is present to people in particular times and places.
- Do I picture God as far away, as near, or as both?
- What would change in my prayers if I believed God holds me in being at every moment?
- Which biblical passage stresses God’s greatness more than I usually notice?
- Which stresses God’s nearness more than I usually notice?
- Do I confuse reverence for God with reverence for nature?
- What does the Incarnation say to someone who feels God is far off?
Examples
A deist view
An eighteenth-century deist might say that God made the world like a clockmaker and left it to run on natural laws. Prayer for particular help would then be useless. Christians reply that Scripture shows a God who answers and acts, and that creation needs God’s sustaining at every moment.
A pantheist view
A thinker such as Baruch Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, identified God with nature. In his view nothing exists outside God and God is not a person who answers prayer. Christian writers have argued that this removes both the Creator and the worship of him.
A Christian summary
The Nicene Creed begins with the Father, maker of heaven and earth, and goes on to say that the Son came down from heaven and became man. The same creed, in the same few lines, speaks of God beyond the world and God within it.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic teaching holds that God is distinct from the world and yet sustains it. Aquinas teaches that God is in all things by essence, presence and power, because God gives them existence. The sacraments are seen as the chief way God’s nearness meets people in the church.
Orthodox
Orthodox theology stresses that God’s essence is beyond all knowing while God’s energies fill all things. This is one way of saying transcendence and immanence together. Alexander Schmemann, a twentieth-century Orthodox writer, emphasized that the world itself is a sacrament, meant to be received with thanksgiving.
Protestant
The Reformers stressed God’s majesty and holiness, and the Reformed tradition especially spoke of providence as God’s continual upholding of all things. Lutherans teach that Christ is bodily present in the Supper. Protestants differ widely about the sacraments but largely agree that the God who is high and holy draws near through his Word.
Panentheist and liberal views
Some modern theologians argue that the world is in God in a way that makes God more dependent on the world. They say this fits the biblical picture of a God involved with creation. Classical theists reply that this loses divine independence and creation from nothing, and ask whether it can account for God’s freedom.
Jewish
Jewish tradition also holds both themes. The Hebrew Bible speaks of the Lord as high and lifted up and as dwelling among his people. Later writing speaks of the Shekinah, the divine presence among Israel, a term that does not appear in the Bible itself but belongs to rabbinic literature.
Why it matters
How a person pictures God’s distance or nearness affects worship, prayer and trust. Someone who knows only God’s greatness may feel afraid or unnoticed. Someone who knows only God’s nearness may drift into a vague spirituality that cannot say who God is. The Christian claim is that these are held together in one God, and learning to hold them together guards against both of those mistakes and prepares for the Trinity and the Incarnation in later lessons.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Transcendence means God is far away.
Correction: Transcendence is about kind, not distance. God is not in a series with creatures. This is what allows God to be present to everything, since God is not one more thing taking up space.
Misunderstanding: Immanence means God is part of the world.
Correction: In classical Christian teaching it means the opposite: the world is held in being by God and is present to God. Seeing God as a part of the world is what pantheism does, and the tradition rejects it.
Misunderstanding: Deism and Christianity are close because both believe in a Creator.
Correction: They differ sharply on whether God acts after creating. Christianity teaches continued sustaining, providence, revelation and Incarnation. Deism denies most of these.
Misunderstanding: Panentheism is the same as the Christian teaching of God’s presence.
Correction: Some Christians use the term in a mild sense, close to the traditional view. Others use it to mean that the world is necessary to God or changes God. The second sense is not the classical teaching, so the word needs defining each time.
Knowledge check
Define transcendence and immanence in one sentence each.
Transcendence is God’s being distinct from and beyond the created world, not limited by space, time or matter. Immanence is God’s presence and action within creation, holding it in being. Christianity says both are true of the one God, who is above all and yet nearer to each creature than it is to itself.
Why does creation from nothing help hold the two together?
Because God made the world freely and from nothing, the world is truly distinct from God, which safeguards transcendence. Because everything exists only as God gives existence, nothing is ever apart from God’s presence, which safeguards immanence. The same act of creating grounds both claims.
What goes wrong in deism and in pantheism?
Deism keeps transcendence but loses immanence: God made the world but does not act in it. Pantheism keeps a kind of immanence but loses transcendence: God and the world are the same. Christian teaching rejects both and holds that God is both beyond and present.
How does the Incarnation relate to this lesson?
In the Incarnation the eternal Son took human nature, so that the God who is beyond the world became present within it as a man. Chalcedon taught that this happened without confusion or change. It is the Christian claim for the closest union of the transcendent and the immanent.
Think it through
- Which of the two themes did your upbringing stress more? What did it do to your picture of God?
- How would you explain to a friend that God can be near without being part of the world?
- What practice of worship helps you feel God’s nearness, and what helps you feel his greatness?
Independent assignment
Two Psalms
In your own notebook, write about 400 words. Read Psalm 139 and Psalm 8. For each, list the lines that stress God’s nearness and the lines that stress God’s greatness. Then write a paragraph explaining how a person could hold both in a single prayer. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Read Book III, chapter 6, and Book X for his account of God as inward and higher.
- Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World An Orthodox account of the world as given to humanity to be received with thanksgiving.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Read Part I, Question 8, on God’s existence in things.
- Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church Read for the Eastern distinction between God’s essence and energies.
- Psalm 139 Where can a person flee from God’s presence?
- Isaiah 6:3 Holy, and the whole earth is full of his glory.
- Acts 17:28 In him we live and move and have our being.
- 1 Kings 8:27 Heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain God.