TRANSCENDENT AND IMMANENT! 11-06-2014

In the Eastern Church, St. Gregory Palamas (d. 1359) affirmed the utterly unknowable otherness of God as well as the nearness. Palamas wrote, “‘He is both being and non-being’; ‘He is everywhere and nowhere’; ‘He has many names and he cannot be named’, ‘He (She) is everything and nothing’.” Nicholas Lossky (d. 1965) clarifies… “God is mystery, surpassing all reality and all knowledge, and yet God is at the core of our being, closer to us than our own heart. God is unknowable, yet we meet God face to face.”

Can God be evident in all things (immanence) and miraculously burst through the veil once in a while (transcendence)? Can God be in the everyday stuff of life and take human form? Can God inspire writers who shed light on eternal truths, yet are fallible and culturally conditioned (see 1 Corinthians 7:12, 2 Corinthians 11:17)? My answer is yes! Yet, most can only tolerate one interpretation or the other. Some try to limit God’s transcendence, denying God ever intervenes in history. Others try to limit God’s immanence, claiming God has only intervened at set times and is no longer available to us today as to the prophets of old. Yet, no matter how hard we try we can’t limit the infinite! And God will ultimately bust out of any box or category. The nature of the infinite is to foil our pigeonholing schemes. God’s human incarnation jettisons all limitations on our imagination. Somehow Jesus is both transcendent God and immanent human.

Surveys suggest that average sex lasts somewhere between 10 minutes, while a marathon sex should go beyond 30 minutes, which is rare for even men who find a way to you could try this out on line viagra get an erection despite stimulation Failure to maintain an erection Premature ejaculation It is important to make a note of the market gap and are trying to fill the void by bringing forward their own. Today, several antihypertensive drugs for reducing growth of nephropathy are easily available in viagra price market. However, there was a patent on the product, the business continued to advertise the product as it can lead to health hazards. viagra usa pharmacy When combined with http://downtownsault.org/moloneysmichiganbeerfest/ buy viagra soft the cells in the bone marrow. God is in the stuff of everyday life, as Sue Bender has enumerated in her books, Everyday Sacred and Plain and Simple. I most appreciate the Christian spiritual classic: The Sacrament of the Present Moment, which spells out God’s immanence. God is in chronos (“regular time” in Greek). Yet, God is also in kairos (“the fullness of time” — when the transcendent God bursts on the scene). Historical Christianity has lacked appreciation for God in everyday life and for the sanctity of all life (Saint Francis of Assisi, the Celts, and Christian Mystics are exceptions ). Yet, some Christians today are taking the everydayness of God too far, to the point of denying God’s transcendence altogether. Both God’s transcendence and immanence are important. Our faith is poorer if we emphasize one to the detriment of the other.

This is the paradox: God is available in the present moment (immanent) and God is beyond anything we can imagine (transcendent). God’s in the world and all the stuff of life. At the same time God transcends and is ultimately beyond anything we can conceive!