Divine Immanence
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Handout
In November, I taught on the attribute of divine transcendence—that God is distinct and independent from his creation—far above us in essence and function—the highest authority and most excellent, supreme being.
I also warned that isolating one of God’s attributes can be a quick path to heresy—we could begin to make faulty assumptions and concoct an image of a God who doesn’t exist. We’re safeguarded from that error by keeping in mind that all God’s attributes exist and function simultaneously and harmoniously.
When we think of God’s transcendence, we may focus on the biblical picture of him sitting on his throne in Heaven, ruling over his creation from afar. That, by itself has led some to conclude the heresy of Deism.
—that the universe was created by the transcendent God but then he left it to run on its own like a huge machine—like clockwork. God is distant and uninvolved as the world plays out according to how the machine was set in motion. God is not personal or close to his creation.
God’s transcendence is balanced by his attributes of omnipresence and immanence.
These attributes act like guardrails to keep us from wandering into error. Omnipresence prevents us from falling into the ditch of limiting God to only one location (Heaven). Immanence guards us from falling into the ditch of seeing God as cold and impersonal—uninterested and uninvolved.
What is Divine Immanence?
What is Divine Immanence?
Immanence is “nearness” or “presence”.
It’s not to be confused with “imminence”. Not nearness in relation to time (e.g. tornado warning=imminent danger—about to happen; at hand), but instead, nearness in relation to space (where God is present).
God is omnipresent and immanent, penetrating everything even while He contains all things. The bucket that is sunk into the depths of the ocean is full of the ocean. The ocean is in the bucket, but also the bucket is in the ocean—surrounded by it. This is the best illustration I can give of how God dwells in His universe and yet the universe dwells in God. (A.W. Tozer: Attributes of God, Vl. 1, p. 138)
Sounds like omnipresence, right?
But it’s not the same as omnipresence, although they’re very similar. They’ve been categorized as synonymous, however, they are not the same. If they were simply two terms to describe the same thing it wouldn’t be warranted to treat them as two separate attributes of God. I believe that while they are closely related, they are two distinct, biblically derived attributes that God has revealed to us so we can know him.
Divine omnipresence means that God exists everywhere—there’s nowhere God is not, and nothing is hidden from him.
Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.
Immanence includes the idea of spatial presence (after all, one can’t be at work where they are not present in some sense), but it’s much more than that.
Immanence focuses less on where God is present (everywhere), and more on how God is present. It is an active or functional presence, and there are different manifestations or experiences of God’s presence based on relationship.
Divine Immanence and Nature
Divine Immanence and Nature
God is present and active in the universe He created (the natural universe apart from His special creation—humankind).
*NOTE: There is an important relationship between immanence and transcendence. Transcendence by itself could lead us to deism, but immanence by itself could lead to pantheism (God is in everything, therefore everything IS God). Transcendence reminds us that God is distinct from and above his Creation.
“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father.
Psalm 104:10-30
-Present, active, benevolent care and provision.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
-Active presence and meaningful relationship—created by him, for his purposes which he’s actively working out.
Divine Immanence and Humanity
Divine Immanence and Humanity
It is also true that mankind experiences the immanence of God in a general, benevolent sense (common grace).
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
But, there are significant ways humans experience the presence of God that are beyond what the natural universe experiences.
What distinguishes us from all other created things and gives us the capacity for a unique, personal relationship with God?
The Imago Dei
The Imago Dei
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
We were made distinct from the rest of creation because we have a “likeness” to God. What is it?
It is personhood: intellect; will; emotions; and a spirit/soul that is of the right substance to be able to love, enjoy, commune and dwell with God forever. It is a capacity to magnify and reflect his glory.
This likeness is essential for relationship.
God, being the God He is, can never commune with anything except his own likeness. And where there is no likeness there can be no fellowship between God and that unlike thing (Tozer: Attributes of God, Vl. 1, p. 141).
A Natural Likeness
A Natural Likeness
The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
-“You may pet the head of a dog, but you can’t commune with a dog; there’s too great a dissimilarity of nature.” (Tozer, p. 141)
Adam learned this, and there are still some people who need to learn this today.
A couple posts pictures of them and their two dogs, and the caption is: “Had some family photos taken of us and the kids.” #furbabies You’re looking at it like, “Um…those are dogs.”
In order to have communion with God, we must have a similarity with him in our nature.
And God elevated us above the rest of the creatures by giving us that similarity. HOWEVER, that’s not the only “likeness” that makes us compatible for communion with God.
A Moral Likeness
A Moral Likeness
since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
In the same way an incompatibility of nature would prevent us from having communion with God, an incompatibility of morality would also prevent us from having communion with God.
Do we have a moral incompatibility with God?
-Since the fall, every human has entered this world not knowing the immanence of God as they were designed to. God is holy and pure, and we embody the uncleanness Isaiah described when the holiness of God was revealed to him. Because of sin, our communion with God is broken.
but your iniquities have made a separation
between you and your God,
and your sins have hidden his face from you
so that he does not hear.
We rightly describe this separation from God when we talk about the condition of humanity after the fall. But we need to understand what kind of separation it is. The immanence of God helps us understand it accurately.
-Not physical/spatial separation. There’s not a space in the universe where God isn’t present (or he wouldn’t be omnipresent). As if a sinner and God were the same polar end of two magnets, repelling each other, unable to occupy the same physical space.
“You’re as near as you can get as far as distance is concerned.” (Tozer, 153)
Every sinner in Hell is in the presence of God. God is not absent from Hell. He is immanent there, but his active presence is not for the people there, but against them in wrath and condemnation.
“It’s not a spatial thing. It is a spiritual thing.” (Tozer, p. 144)
Our spiritual separation from God because of our moral incompatibility with him needs a remedy, or his immanent presence will not be for us, but against us.
Humans once enjoyed unhindered communion with God, but lost it. Now, we need to be restored to it. How can we find our way back?
And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for
“ ‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
as even some of your own poets have said,
“ ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Divine Immanence and Christ
Divine Immanence and Christ
Christ is the ultimate expression of divine immanence in humanity. He is the only hope for restoration of our compatibility with God, so he can be with us and for us, and we can be with him.
How is He able to do this?
-He Has Natural Compatibility with God (As God)
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
*He is “God with us”—the physical manifestation of God—the clearest revelation of the presence of God.
-He Has Moral Compatibility with God (As a Man)
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
-Through atonement, justification, and regeneration, our moral “likeness” is being restored so we can have communion with God as we ought.
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
To us who are in Christ, God’s immanence means he is with us in active, intimate, personal relationship. His presence is a covenant presence, and an indwelling presence (by his Spirit). He will not break his covenant, and he will never leave us.
Why, then does he often feel absent from us?
Old Farmer and His Wife in Pickup Truck. It’s not Him, it’s us.
-Ignorance
a. Intellectual Ignorance (ignorant of who He is) “You won’t commune with and enjoy a God you don’t love, and you can’t love a God you don’t know.”
b. Practical Ignorance (avoiding his means of grace for our growth into Christ. What are they?)
-Remaining Sin inhibits our fellowship, and our sense of His presence
We’ve got enough likeness that God can commune with us and call us his children and we can say, “Abba, Father.” But in the practical working out of it, we sense our dissimilarity, and that is why God seems remote. (Tozer, Attributes of God, Vl. 2, p. 144)
Fit Us For Heaven
Fit Us For Heaven
Lyrics from the song, “Away In a Manger” (sometimes lyrics get carried away from reality in cute sentiment or poetic liberty: “the cattle are lowing…no crying he makes”).
We’re still a work in progress. Our moral compatibility is guaranteed, but not yet finished. But the more we become like Christ, the closer we get to God, and the more we can know and enjoy his presence.
Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.
