Okay, after typing that last post I realized that after a month of non-posting it just wasn't right to merely post that I haven't been posting. Wow, what a crazy, mixed-up sentence!
Anyway, last night in youth group I taught about how God is both infinitely big and beyond us (transcendent) and incredibly close and deeply interested in each of us (immanent). We had small groups at the end and one of the High School guys made the comment that he was driving on the highway with his family recently and had this realization that God intimately knows every person in every one of the other cars around him. He said that his family talked about that for a few minutes and how cool it is that God can know us all so well.
And suddenly it occurred to me that even though God's transcendence and immanence almost seem like a contradiction, the truth is that it is only because God is transcendent that he is able to be immanent! I mean, I'm capable of knowing the names of maybe a few hundred people, maybe a thousand or so, and I'm capable of being friends with a good number of people and closely knowing a handful of them. But God is capable of knowing absolutely every detail about every person who ever was, is and will be (well, even if you're a free will theist you've at least got to admit that God will eventually know every detail about the people who, at this point, will be!).
If God were not transcendent - if he were not completely beyond our human capacities - then he woudln't even have the ability to be immanent with all of us.
It's pretty amazing.
leap day
2 hours ago
5 comments:
Actually, transcendent means that God is ENTIRELY (caps for emphasis, not shouting) outside of the realm of human knowingness. It is a non-biblical, philosophical position promoted by Aristotle and other stoics. It finds its roots in the church with the gnostics. I am not sure that it is propper to say that God is transcendent. It sets up a false paradox, one that actually does not exist.
God almighty, all knowing, and ever-present, but He is not transcendent.
But I still get what you are saying... God needs to be big in order to be intimate.
I just think you are not doing your teens any favors by telling them God is "transcendent."
"It sets up a false paradox, one that actually does not exist."
-OK, that was a stupid sentance. I need to go to bed...
I guess it would depend on how you define transcendent - because there are plenty of theologians who point out the influence Greek philosophy had on early Christianity and are working to get it out of our Christian psyche, but still use the term "transcendent." I mean it in the sense that God's attributes are infinitely beyond ours to the extent that we can't fully wrap our minds around him.
But I see where you're going with saying that it's a problem that God is entirely beyond us. In fact, that's part of what I talked to the teens about. Long story short if you go down the road of philosophy you end up at Immanuel Kant who said that God is unknowable (and therefore we can't say whether or not he even exists!) because we can't perceive him with the senses and because we can grasp him with our minds (because of transcendence). And later when Karl Barth tried to argue Christianity's way out of that one, he claimed that we can still know God because of revelation... but the natural progression from there is to ask, "Well, how do we know which religion's revelation is correct?" And suddenly the door to religious pluralism and postmodernism are opened wide.
Not saying that Barth alone began the postmodern trend, but he did make an impact.
Anyway, you're right, the word transcendent can create a problem. But I don't think that's reason to throw it out altogether.
When talking about God, I do...
Unless the sentence is something like, "Despite what Aristotle first taught and later philosophers embraced, the God of Abraham is not transcendent."
two is better than one!!
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