The Immanence and Transcendence of God

18May10 The Immanence and Transcendence of God

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

In 1975 I wrote a book titled, God, I Don’t Understand, and examined eleven major mysteries I’d found in the Scriptures. One of the mysteries I explored addressed the question, “How can God be closer to us that we are to ourselves and, at the same time, be so distant as to seem unknowable?” It is clear that Scripture affirms both of these truths. Yet they seem so incompatible when we try and put them together. In my book I suggested that the solution is not to try and solve the mystery, but to embrace the tension within the mystery. By doing so, I acknowledge to God my finite understanding and his infinite understanding. In fact, being a limited creature means that I should expect to encounter certain elements in God’s revelation that go beyond the boundaries of my human comprehension – it is one of the distinguishing marks of the Bible’s authority. However, we must remember that a mystery is not the same thing as a contradiction. A contradiction goes against reason; a mystery goes beyond reason. God never asks us to believe anything that is unreasonable, but he frequently asks us to believe things that transcend our reason.

Ultimately pantheism fails because as Tozer reminds us, “’In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ (John 1:1). Not matter, for matter is not self-causing. It requires an antecedent cause, and God is that Cause. Not law, for law is but a name for the course which all creation follows. That course had to be planned, and the Planner is God. Not mind, for mind also is a created thing and must have a Creator back of it. In the beginning God, the uncaused Cause of matter, mind, and law.”

His point is that in the beginning (before anything was created, including time) was the logos (Word), and the logos was a personal agent, and the logos spoke reality into existence. That is, before there was a cosmos (creation), there was an uncaused logos who had not yet caused anything to be created. When the eternally existing logos created the cosmos, he brought forth the logos/cosmos (Creator/creation) distinction. Now the transcendent God beyond the universe becomes the immanent God in, but not of the universe. What he has created has his fingerprints on it and those whom he has created have his image upon them. Therefore, we can look at what he has made and discover some characteristics about the God who made it. But even better, we can look at how he has made us and, through his revealed Word, delight in the fact that he has come to seek us out, dwell within us, and soon take us to be with him forever.