transcendence and immanence of god

Aquinas offers a very compelling account of how to reconcile the transcendence of God with His immanence. Derek: I decided to be a priest when I was eight years old, so I was soaking up theology from a very early age—and I remember the simplest thing from when I was about ten years old: my priest drew a small circle on the blackboard. And because God’s own word is supremely odd, it is supremely ordinary.  Because it is supremely authoritative, it is supremely verifiable.  Because it furnishes the ultimate presuppositions of thought, it furnishes the ultimate truths of thought. It means that God is above, other than, and distinct from all he has made - he transcends it all. Our Transcendent, Immanent God What changes Job at the end of his suffering is not an answer to the question why or a logical conclusion that satisfies his reason. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. 140f.  In a footnote, McPherson notes a similar view in Martin Buber’s I and Thou. 19 Some readers may be helped here by the observation that there are many different degrees of “basicness” among our convictions.  All of our convictions govern life to some degree.  When someone disagrees with one of our opinions. All rights to this material are reserved. casting immanence as a characteristic of a transcendent God (common in Abrahamic religions), subsuming immanent personal gods in a greater transcendent being (such as with Brahman in Hinduism), or approaching the question of transcendence as something which can only be answered through an appraisal of immanence. This reconciliation is most compelling because Aquinas claims that God is most transcendent from, and most immanent in, creation for the very same reason, i.e. This view of God’s transcendence contradicts the view of God’s immanence which we presented. �Wᛰ�c^�6���/i�Y��ˏ�X��&/B[��M��|�pI�����P�b[�\� ��7!�߆����7�"��r�]V{�d�W���z�wV.���7��7�zs� ��[6���I+���[��S��eT�P꼮�Ͷ Basic-commitment language, therefore, is both “odd” and “ordinary”; it resists falsification, it refuses to be judged by some antithetical commitment; yet it accepts the responsibility to verify itself.  It accepts the responsibility of displaying whatever rationality and consistency it may claim. On the other hand, religious language is in some respects very “ordinary,” very similar to other language.  It is not a technical, academic language like that of physics or philosophy; it is the language of ordinary people.  It is not restricted to some limited and distinctive compartment of human life; rather it enters into all human activities and concerns.  We pray for the healing of a loved one, for help in a business crisis; we seek to “eat and drink to the glory of God.”18  I We believe that our faith “makes a difference” in the real world, that God can enter into all the affairs of our life and make his presence felt.  In this respect, the “action of God in history” is like the action of anyone in history.  God can change things, can make them different.  And what he does does not occur unless he chooses to do it.  God makes a difference, and in that sense he isverifiable – much as the existence of any person is verifiable (or so, at least, it appears to the simple believer! In Christianity, God and his creation, including humans, do not share the same essence or nature. Such arguments are circular; but they are also arguments A “proof”’ of, say, the primacy of reason, can be highly persuasive and logically sound even though, at one level, circular.  The circularity is rarely blatant; it lurks in the background.  One never says “Reason is true because reason says it is.” One says instead, “Reason is true because one must presuppose it even to deny it.” The second argument is just as circular as the first.  Both presuppose the validity of reason.  But in the second argument the presupposition is implicit rather than explicit.  And the second one is highly persuasive!  The irrationalist cannot help but note that he is (in many cases) presenting his irrationalism in a highly rational way.  He is trying to be more rational than the rationalists-a contradictory way to be!  He must decide either to be a more consistent irrationalist (but note the paradox of that!) Brian Chilton and Curtis Evelo discuss the transcendence and immanence of God. or to abandon his irrationalism.  Of course he might renounce consistency altogether, thus renouncing the presupposition of the argument.  But the argument shows him vividly how hard it is to live without rationality.  The argument is circular, but it draws some important facts to his attention.  The argument is persuasive though circular because down deep in our hearts we know that we cannot live without reason.20, Some circular arguments are persuasive to us, others not.  Those circular arguments which verify the most basic commitments of our lives are by definition the most persuasive to us. This sort of point, which is very common in twentieth-century theology, is essentially a religious appeal to the divine transcendence.  God is the Lord, the creator, the redeemer.  To him belong all praise and glory. How can any human language ever be “fitted” to the conveyance of his word?  Surely human language, like everything human and finite, can only be a servant, confessing its own unfitness, its own inadequacy.  The Bible cannot be revelation; it can only serve revelation.  To claim anything more for human language, for the Bible, is to dishonor God, to elevate something finite and human to divine status.  To claim anything more is to think of revelation “in abstraction from” God himself and from Jesus Christ.13  It is not just a mistake; it is an impiety. The basic-commitment language is “odd” indeed; but it is also “ordinary.” It is not something strange or esoteric; we use it all the time.  It enters into every area of life, simply because it is so basic, so important.  It is important because it “makes a difference” – more difference than anything else.  Without it nothing would make sense.  All of experience, then, “verifies” the validity of the commitment.  We can “prove” our commitment true in any number of ways.  The evidence is there. In “The Death of God” theology it is understood that God moved from transcendence to radical immanence culminating in the person of Jesus. 139:7). Divine transcendence and immanence are the related Christian doctrines that while God is exalted in his royal dignity and exercises both control and authority in his creation (transcendence), he is, by virtue of this control and authority, very present to his creation, especially his people, in a personal and intimate way (immanence). 3 One of the sharpest debates was over the status of the verification principle itself.  Surely it was not to be regarded as a tautology; but it did not seem to be “verifiable” either in any quasi-scientific sense.  Was it then to be dismissed as “cognitively meaningless”?  Ayer himself (see above note) came to the view that the verification principle was a “convention” (see his introduction to the anthology Logical Positivism [Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 19591 P. 15).  He maintained that this “convention” had some basis in ordinary usage, but admitted that it went beyond ordinary usage in crucial respects. << /Length 5 0 R /Filter /FlateDecode >> if there were a full-scale revolution among scientists over systems of measurement, and cogent reasons could be given for reverting to a flat earth view, I might be persuaded to reconsider.  Some convictions, then, we relinquish less easily than others; and the “most basic convictions” (which we focus upon in the text of the article) are relinquished least easily of all.  In fact, we never relinquish those unless at the same time we change in our basic concept of rationality. Deists hold that God is distinct from His creation but deny that He plays an active role in it. At the same time, Barth does insist that the words of revelation have an importance: Thus God reveals Himself in propositions by means of language, and human language at that, to the effect that from time to time such and such a word, spoken by the prophets and apostles and proclaimed in the Church, becomes His Word.  Thus the personality of the Word of God is not to be played off against its verbal character and spirituality…. Immanence and Transcendence by Jack Kettler “Shew me thy ways, O LORD; teach me thy paths.” (Psalm 25:4) In this study, we will look at the biblical teaching regarding Immanence and Transcendence. Tonight's episode of the Bellator Christi Podcast marks the end of part 1 in the series "Basic Theology: The Attributes of God." Christian language is “ordinary,” verifiable, because God is not only the transcendent Lord; he is also “with us,” close to us.  These two attributes do not conflict with one another.  God is close to us because he is Lord.  He is Lord, and thus free to make his power felt everywhere we go.  He is Lord, and thus able to reveal himself clearly to us, distinguishing himself from all mere creatures.  He is Lord, and therefore the most central fact of our experience, the least avoidable, the most verifiable. Immanence affirms, while transcendence denies that God is contained within the world, and thus within the limits of human reason, or within the norms and resources of human society and culture. Paul says that there is "one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6). 2 The classical exposition of logical positivism in the English language is A. J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York: Dover, 1946). Immanence is closely related to God's omnipresence, in that God is always present within the universe, though distinct from it.God is 'within' the universe in that God is its sustaining cause. To Barth, God’s transcendence implies that he cannot be clearly revealed to men, clearly represented by human words and concepts. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock.  No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry.  Yet still the Believer is not convinced.  ‘But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.’ At last the Sceptic despairs, ‘But what remains of your original assertion?  Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?’4. Flew, therefore, does not succeed in showing religious language to be “cognitively meaningless”; and therefore he fails to show that human language cannot speak of God.  But what of the third form of our objection? What of Karl Barth?  Should we simply leave him behind? Immanence of God. The Biblical theology of the immanence of God is expressed as what is called the hypostases: the union of Christ's human and divine nature. The fact is that recognition of such plausibility is a type of knowledge which epistemologists are obligated to note and account for.  “Basic convictions” cannot be avoided; and such convictions may be proved only through circular argument.  Therefore circular argument is unavoidable, at the level of basic conviction.  This sort of circularity is not a defect in one system as opposed to others.  It is an element of all systems.  It is part of the human condition.  It is altogether natural, the, that the term “knowledge” be applied to basic convictions, and if no technical account has yet been given of this sort of knowledge, then such an account is overdue. ).  Few religious people would claim that their faith is a blind leap in the dark.  They have “reasons for faith.” These reasons may be the technical theistic arguments of the philosophers, or simply the childlike appeal to experience, “He lives within my heart.” One who really believes (as opposed to one who merely drifts along in a religious tradition) believes for a reason, because he thinks God has somehow made his presence felt, because God now makes a difference – to him! 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