God is both transcendent and immanent. In His transcendence,
He is above and beyond His creation, and He knows and controls all things.
“Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other, and
there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient
times things that have not been done, saying, My purpose will be established,
and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.” (Isaiah 46:9-10; see also Daniel
4:35)
In God’s
immanence, on the other hand, He interacts with His creation in time and space,
and to some degree experiences events emotionally and intellectually in
sequence, yet always with infinite wisdom and complete control. The phenomenon
of God’s immanence helps explain the anthropomorphic language we find in the
Bible, particularly in the Old Testament. When Scripture quotes God as saying,
“I said, surely you will revere Me, and accept instruction” (Zephaniah 3:7), or
records that God “repented” or “changed His mind” (Exodus32:14; Jeremiah 26:19;
Amos 7:3, 6), it is highlighting and illustrating God’s immanence, His active,
emotional interaction with His people.
The
ultimate manifestation of God’s immanence is the incarnation of the Son of God.
As God, Jesus owned the attributes of omniscience, omnipotence, and
omnipresence. Yet during his earthly life, he willingly limited the independent
exercise of those attributes in order to fulfill his mission as Messiah and
Savior. So while Jesus could declare that he “saw” Nathaniel sitting under a
fig tree far away (John 1:48-50), he was also genuinely surprised when he did
not find early figs on another tree (Mark 11:13). Jesus also prayed sincerely
in the Garden of Gethsemane: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass
from me; yet not as I will but as You will.” (Matthew 26:39).
While it is
comforting to know that God experiences our life and feels for our infirmities,
it is even more comforting to know that our transcendent God knows before hand
all that will occur in our lives and is in complete control of all things.
Failure to
understand both the transcendence and the immanence of God has led to serious
errors regarding God’s nature. Error in regard to God’s transcendence led to
Deism, the dominant philosophy during the so-called Enlightenment. Deism is the
notion that God created the universe and then withdrew to let it run according
to natural laws.
Error in
regard to God’s immanence has led in recent decades to the heresy of Open
Theism, the idea that God’s creation
includes such contingencies, particularly man’s free will, that even God does
not know precisely what will happen next! Therefore, according to the Open
Theists, God could not prevent a bad thing from happening to His people because
he could not foresee it. This is a foul error and is of no comfort to God’s
people. It is hardly comforting to know that God feels our pain if He is not in
control of all that happens to us.
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