January 2003 Question
I'm a member of one of the protestant churches in Holland. I've read Thomas Merton and some books about Zen. In my tradition God is 'very transcendent.' The things I've read are more 'immanent.' How do you (i.e. process theology) see God; immanent or transcendent?
Dr. Cobb's Response
The issue of
immanence and transcendence is crucial for religious
thought. One reason that it never gets settled is that it
has so many
meanings and turns up in so many different contexts. A view
that
emphasizes immanence in one context may emphasize transcendence
in
another. What the terms mean depends in part on the metaphysical
assumptions, usually unconscious, of those who use them.
One important
distinction is between epistemological and
ontological discussions. For some the crucial question is
whether God can
be conceived and talked about in a more or less coherent way.
Those who
deny this call God "transcendent". The human mind,
they believe, is
capable of dealing with ordinary mundane things but is not capable
of
understanding God. God is mystery, and that mystery is not
like detective
stories that call us to use our wits to solve the mystery, or
like the
extremely puzzling questions that confront physicists. It
is inherently
and necessarily mystery, a mystery before which we can only stand
in awed
silence.
Some of those
who emphasize this epistemological transcendence
believe that there are forms of mysticism through which God can,
nevertheless, be experienced. The experience is ineffable,
but there are
expressions that come from it that in some way point to the
mystery. Others believe that the utterly mysterious God
is revealed in
particular events. For Christians, these are events recorded
in the Bible
and especially the event of Jesus Christ.
There are some
who emphasize the divine mystery without allowing
for either mysticism or revelation as a bridge between creatures
and
God. This is the most extreme form of epistemological
transcendence. David Hume pointed out that one can hardly
distinguish this
form of belief from atheism, since nothing intelligible is actually
affirmed in asserting belief in such a God.
With respect
to epistemological transcendence, process theology
is strongly on the immanentalist side. Whitehead taught
that God is not an
exception to the metaphysical categories. God is an actual
entity as are
all the creatures; so that God exemplifies all the features that
pertain to
actual entities as such. When we say that God loves us,
we mean that there
is a real similarity between God's relation to us and the most
ideal
aspects of a mother's relation to her daughter.
Of course, God
is very different from the creatures. All the
other actual entities are actual occasions, that is, have finite
spatiotemporal locations. God does not. In important
ways, God remains
very mysterious. God's everlastingness and relatedness to
all things
boggle the mind, and we are far from having a fully coherent doctrine
of
God's being and activity. But the mind is boggled by what
we are learning
of subatomic entities and of cosmic origins and by the relation
of brains
and personal experience as well. It seems that the more
we know the more
mysterious our world becomes. But this is not the kind of
radical,
impenetrable mystery that accompanies views of epistemological
transcendence.
The denial of
radical epistemological transcendence has
implications for ontological transcendence as well. Usually
the
affirmation of epistemological transcendence is connected with
the idea
that God's being and nature are of a wholly different order than
that of
creatures. I have already indicated that process thought
is at an opposite
pole in this respect. It seeks metaphysical categories that
are applicable
to both God and the actual occasions that constitute empty space,
as well
as all our human experiences.
But sometimes
the meaning of immanent is more spatial than
qualitative. Is God to be found inside nature or inside
human experience
in contrast to outside? If one supposes that the world is
made up of
substantial things each of which occupies a distinct space, then
that
question has a quite straightforward meaning. The idea that
God is
immanent then means that God is an element in the constitution
of some or
all of these substantial things. For example, God may be
identified with
the true self of every person, so that by going beneath the superficial
flow of experience one may find God.
It is hard to
see how pure immanence can be affirmed even in this
case. If God is the true self of every person, then God
as a whole seems
vastly to transcend each individual person even if God is to be
found
within each. The alternative would be a vast plurality of
gods, one in
each person, that would make the use of the word "God"
extremely
problematic. In fact this doctrine as historically developed in
India leads
to the identification of the true self, Atman, with the ground
of all
being, Brahman, and Brahman is in many ways transcendent.
Nevertheless,
the movement toward God, when understood in this way, may be purely
immanent.
When transcendence
is affirmed in this spatial sense, God becomes
very remote. If God is not present in the creatures, and
the creatures
jointly occupy all space, then God is outside of space.
What we call
"deism" often pictured God in this way as outside the
universe acting on it
from without or simply leaving it alone. It has become extremely
difficult to fit such a vision with the picture of the universe
emerging
from ongoing developments in science. Nevertheless, much
Christian
language suggests that God acts on creatures from outside them.
Sometimes
this is the meaning of "transcendence". In this
sense, process thought
rejects "transcendence."
What it means
to be immanent or transcendent changes when one
thinks, with process thought, of the world as made up of events
or
occasions of experience. These are largely constituted by
their relations
to past events or occasions of experience. These relations
are internal
rather than external in the sense that the relations participate
in
constituting the occasions of experience. But these relations
are to
occasions that are external, that is, to occasions that have their
own,
different, spatiotemporal standpoint. Whitehead's most original
contribution, the idea of "prehension", explains how
what is external
becomes internal, how that which is spatiotemporally transcendent
becomes
immanent.
Do we then seek
God within or without? The answer is both/and and
neither/nor because the language of external and internal comes
from a
metaphysics that process thought rejects. God is a truly
constitutive
part of our experience moment by moment. But the God who
is constitutive
of our experience is a present in this way throughout the universe,
drastically transcending us.
Process theologians
see this relationship as the one that the
church tried to express in its idea of incarnation and in the
way the Holy
Spirit works within us. The God who was incarnate in Jesus
radically
transcended the finite Jesus but was truly constitutive of Jesus'
being. The Holy Spirit that indwells believers is radically
transcendent
of believers but is truly immanent with them. In the process
vision, there
is nothing especially mysterious about this. Everything
that is immanent
is transcendent, and everything that is transcendent is
immanent. Immanence and transcendence are mutually implicatory.
Nevertheless,
in relation to the teaching of divine transcendence
in many churches, there is no question but that the emphasis of
process
theology is that the transcendent God is immanent in every creature
and
especially in human experience. We think that both the Gospels
and the
Pauline letters support this way of thinking. Jesus address
God as Abba,
in a way that does not suggest divine remoteness or utter mystery.
When
Paul says that Christ is in us and we are in Christ, Christ cannot
be only
a transcendent being.
We may seek God
in our own quiet immediate experience. We may
seek God in the stories of the Bible and especially in Jesus.
We may seek
God in the ongoing life of the church. We may seek God in
cosmic
evolution. We may even try to imagine what it is like to
be God. However
we approach God, it is the same God, both immanent and transcendent,
whom
we approach.
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