God's trascendence and immanence in relation to His creation

[Anna Stickles]

Fr Alvin made an interesting comment in the Freedom and Control thread that I thought worth it's own thread.


We simply cannot conceive or imagine what it means for the infinite, eternal, omnipotent, and transcendent Deity to create, cause, and sustain every creature and event within the world. Every time we attempt to think about this, we inevitably fall back into thinking of God as a being within the world. ...

...But if we conclude this, then we have confused God as something external to us; but God is not external to us as other creatures are external to us. He is not external to us at all, just as he is not internal to us at all. God is not a being in the world; he is not a part of the world. He is not a thing that acts upon us in the way other things act upon us. In the most fundamental sense, God does not "make a difference" to the world.

In fact Orthodoxy, does proclaim that God is within the world, and I will address this in another post below. To deny this is to deny the Incarnation. But before addressing God's immanence in His creation, I first wanted to say something about the Orthodox view of God's transcendence. How God's transcendence is protected is something that differs greatly in the Scholastics of the middle ages and the earlier Tradition of the Church, which Orthodoxy has continued in.

In the view here, you have defended the difference between Creator and creature by picturing God as something wholly other and separate from us. In the Orthodox paradigm, the difference between Creator and creature is that God is essentially what He is, and more of that essence then we are. We, though, as his creatures are essentially nothing. However, being created in His image, we receive our essence from Him, in union with Him. In being separated from Him, we loose our very essence and tend back toward nothingness.

Thus what does it mean that we are mortal except that created nature, separated from God, looses the faculty of being immortal? What does it mean that we are corruptible, except that being separated from God we loose our wholeness, being no longer simple?

This is why Elder Porphyrios a modern day Orthodox spiritual teacher can say something as radical as this:

"On entering the uncreated Church, we come to Christ, we enter into the realm of the uncreated. We the faithful are called to become uncreated by grace, to become participants in the divine energies of God, to enter into the mystery of divinity, to surpass our worldly frame of mind, to die to the 'old man' and to become immersed in God." Wounded by Love, p 88

This call to become uncreated by grace is not outside Church Tradition. But what is being said has to be understood within Tradition. St Ireneaus says that we the created, in being called to perfection, are called into an ever closer approximation of the uncreated One.


bk 4 ch 38
1. If, however, any one say, What then? Could not God have exhibited man as perfect from beginning? let him that, inasmuch as God is indeed always the same and unbegotten as respects Himself, all things are possible to Him. But created things must be inferior to Him who created them, from the very fact of their later origin; for it was not possible for things recently created to have been uncreated. But inasmuch as they are not uncreated, for this very reason do they come short of the perfect.

3. ....For from the very fact of these things having been created, [it follows] that they are not uncreated; but by their continuing in being throughout a long course of ages, they shall receive a faculty of the uncreated, through the gratuitous bestowal of eternal existance upon them by God. And thus in all things God has the pre-eminence, who alone is uncreated, the first of all things, and the primary cause of the existence of all, while all other things remain under God's subjection. But being in subjection to God is continuance in immortality, and immortality is the glory of the uncreated One. By this arrangement, therefore, and these harmonies, and a sequence of this nature, man, a created and organized being, is rendered after the image and likeness of the uncreated God—the Father planning everything well and giving His commands, the Son carrying these into execution and performing the work of creating, and the Spirit nourishing and increasing [what is made], but man making progress day by day, and ascending towards the perfect, that is, approximating to the uncreated One.
Fr Dcn Matthew's here (http://www.monachos.net/forum/showpost.php?p=85617&postcount=10)says

"Man’s ‘God-ness’ is ‘God’ and not ‘god’, precisely because it is not a moral condition, an emulation, a synthesis, but authentic union in the eternal and true God. To qualify this, to admit that the ‘God’ in man’s ‘becoming God’ is anything lesser than the true and eternal God, is—in the context of St Athanasius’ discussion—to deny the very heart of the incarnation."
Thus in Orthodoxy God's transcendence, is never seen in terms of being antithetical to His immanent union with His creation.

[Anna Stickles]

For ease of reading I broke these two posts up, but since the Orthodox view of the transcendence of God not only does not preclude His immanence, but in fact is inextricably bound up with it in Christ, I wanted to speak of this too.

As Fr Dcn Matthew says in the quote above, we are what we are in virtue of a real and true union with God, through His energies. We say in Orthodox theology that God's energies are in fact God Himself. The whole tradition of the Church is imbued with this understanding.

St Paul says Eph 1:22-23 "And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way."

We go to communion and we eat Christ, and in this Christ is incorporated into our being just as the food we eat is incorporated into our body giving it life and energy.

St Ireneaus describes Christ this way, "they thus wander from the truth, because their doctrine departs from Him who is truly God, being ignorant that His only-begotten Word, who is always present with the human race, united to and mingled with His own creation, according to the Father's pleasure, and who became flesh, is Himself Jesus Christ our Lord,… (3.16.6)

And he talks about God's relation with us this way

5.8.1. "But we do now receive a certain portion of His Spirit, tending towards perfection, and preparing us for incorruption, being little by little accustomed to receive and bear God; …This earnest, therefore, thus dwelling in us, renders us spiritual even now, and the mortal is swallowed up by immortality. 2 Cor. v. 4. "For ye," he declares, "are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Rom. viii. 9. This, however does not take place by a casting away of the flesh, but by the impartation of the Spirit."

In our daily prayers we pray, "Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, O Treasury of Blessing and Bestower of Life come and dwell in us..."

Before communion we pray "O Lord who alone art pure and incorrupt, Who through the ineffable compassion of thy love for man didst assume our whole substance from the pure and virginal blood of her that in manner surpassing nature, conceived thee by the coming of the Divine Spirit…Thou Who by the coming of the comforter, Thy Spirit didst make Thy sacred Disciples precious vessels: show me forth also as a receptacle of His coming…"

From the Desert Fathers: "We receive the Holy Spirit at Baptism, since He is called both the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of Christ, and for this reason through the Holy Spirit we receive both the Father and the Son…. For just as the Son and the Spirit are in the Father, and the Father and the Spirit are in the Son, so also are the Father and Son in the Spirit- not by any confusion of the three hypostases, but by the union of one and the same Will and Godhead." The Evergetinos, vol 4, p 315

Thus from the Apostles to the early apologists, to the desert fathers, to the modern elders of the Church we hear a consistent message of the nature of God's relation with us. We live this relation in partaking of the Eucharist, and participating in the whole sacramental, liturgical and ascetical life of the Church. We pray and sing this relation in our prayers and hymnology. The theology, painting and veneration of icons is permeated by this truth. This is the Tradition of the Church passed down from the beginning.

We say of God that He is simple, meaning that everything within God, every action of His, is a reflection of Himself. He is wholly Himself with neither admixture nor division. And simple too the Church must be if She is to be truly Herself as God created Her. Her whole life, everything she says and does, must be a unified and consistent reflection of who She is in relation to God, for Her essence is realized from God and only in union with God does She exist.

[Aidan Kimel]

In fact Orthodoxy, does proclaim that God is within the world, and I will address this in another post below. To deny this is to deny the Incarnation.

Yes, I agree. Of course we may speak of God "in" the world through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, although always recognizing the dramatic limitations of employing spatial language to speak of either God's relations to the created universe or God's enfleshment as the man Jesus. The "in" is made possible by God's radical difference: precisely because he is not a part of the world he has made ex nihilo, he can assume to himself human nature without destroying its creaturely integrity. The uncreated and created do not compete against each other; they do not displace each other. Jesus, after all, is not a demigod; he is God Incarnate, "perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood." The hypostatic union asserted by Chalcedon presupposes the distinction between God and the world.


But before addressing God's immanence in His creation, I first wanted to say something about the Orthodox view of God's transcendence. How God's transcendence is protected is something that differs greatly in the Scholastics of the middle ages and the earlier Tradition of the Church, which Orthodoxy has continued in. In the view here, you have defended the difference between Creator and creature by picturing God as something wholly other and separate from us. In the Orthodox paradigm, the difference between Creator and creature is that God is essentially what He is, and more of that essence then we are. We, though, as his creatures are essentially nothing. However, being created in His image, we receive our essence from Him, in union with Him. In being separated from Him, we loose our very essence and tend back toward nothingness.

At no point did I say that God is "separate from us," as that would seem to imply spatial distance; but I certainly do believe that there is an absolute difference between the uncreated and infinite God and everything he has made, though if you ask me to describe this difference I will be unable to do so. One can identify differences between finite beings, but how does one specify the difference between finite beings and infinite Being? Does that mean God is "wholly other"? Those are your words, not mine, Anna. Perhaps the phrase is synonymous to what I intend when I say that God is radically distinct from the world he has made. I note, though, that Fr Georges Florovsky (http://www.holytrinitymission.org/books/english/theology_creation_florovsky_e.htm) did not hesitate to describe God as "other" to the world:


God is for the world exactly “the Other,” and the world is for God an outside. The Creation is precisely the Creation of this mysterious “outside.” There is an absolute and ultimate distance between God and the created world, an utter and ultimate hiatus — and it is a distance in nature.

I do not think I am saying anything different than what Florovsky is saying nor anything different than what Archbishop Hilarion writes in his book The Mystery of Faith:


Created being, however, is of a different nature from God: it is not, as in pantheism, an emanation, a pouring out of the Godhead. Creation 'is not the least like its Creator in substance, but is outside of him,' says St Athanasius of Alexandria. The divine substance did not undergo any division or transformation or change in the creation of the world: it did not merge with creation or become dissolved in it.

I'll leave to the Orthodox to respond to your description of the "Orthodox" view of transcendence and immanence, but I do not believe that I have said anything that cannot be found in the writings of any number of Orthodox theologians, past and present; nor do I discern substantive disagreement between us, Anna.

[Owen Jones]

mmm, I think you may be fumbling the ball just a bit with this phrase. Perhaps the way it comes across is not quite what you intended? "God is essentially what He is, and more of that essence then we are"

Orthodoxy makes an absolute distinction between the Creator and the created, between God's essence and created things. God is unknowable in His Essence.

Immanence and Transcendence are useful polarities but they are still polarities, and if we are not careful in using these terms, we will tend to obscure the absolute distinction between Creator and creature and make God just a polarity of the human and vice versa.

The standard Orthodox theological formulation for God is Beyond.

[Anna Stickles]

Owen,
I wasn't trying to diminish the distinction between God and His creatures, although I can see how it may appear this way. In conjunction with "God is essentially what He is" I said, "We are essentially nothing." There can be a tendency to make ourselves more then we are, as if we are something in ourselves apart from Him. We can give to human nature in and of itself, more substance then it has.

Fr Alvin,

precisely because he is not a part of the world he has made ex nihilo, he can assume to himself human nature without destroying its creaturely integrity. The uncreated and created do not compete against each other; they do not displace each other. The main emphasis I was trying to make was that not only do the uncreated and created not compete with each other, but the created is intimately in need of the uncreated. Not only does the Incarnation not destroy our creaturely integrity, but it restores that integrity.

This emphasis was mostly in answer to your statement
God is not a being in the world; he is not a part of the world. He is not a thing that acts upon us in the way other things act upon us. In the most fundamental sense, God does not "make a difference" to the world.We may not "make a difference" to God, but He certainly makes a difference to us. When I talk about a separation from God, I am not talking about something spatial, but something fundamental that effects our nature.

To use an analogy it is like taking a sensitive membrane out of the water and as it drys it looses it's integrity and becomes brittle. Only immersed in water and with that water permeating it can it maintain it's integrity.

[Aidan Kimel]

Fr Alvin,
The main emphasis I was trying to make was that not only do the uncreated and created not compete with each other, but the created is intimately in need of the uncreated. Not only does the Incarnation not destroy our creaturely integrity, but it restores that integrity.

This emphasis was mostly in answer to your statement We may not "make a difference" to God, but He certainly makes a difference to us. When I talk about a separation from God, I am not talking about something spatial, but something fundamental that effects our nature.

To use an analogy it is like taking a sensitive membrane out of the water and as it drys it looses it's integrity and becomes brittle. Only immersed in water and with that water permeating it can it maintain it's integrity.

Anna, I agree with everything you have written.

My brief initial comment addressed specifically, and restrictively, the question of divine agency and human freedom. I certainly did not intend to offer an thorough account of the doctrine of creation, which is beyond my competence. I am glad to see, though, that my suggestion (stolen from Fr Herbert McCabe) that the world does not make a difference to God caught your attention. It's a provocative way of highlighting the aseity and impassibility of God, isn't it? :)

[Owen Jones]

Yes, but...this is not an absolute doctrine. We do not know exactly why God created. But we know He did, and we know that he had a purpose. Did He NEED to create? Well, in one sense, He does not need to do anything. He does what He wills. But...

So it's tough to talk about things like free will, or any Christian doctrine, apart from Creation. Why would God create in the first place? And why create us, knowing He would have to save us. I think the Greek and Syriac traditions diverge just a bit here. The Greek tradition pushes toward an impassable God. In the Syriac tradition it's a different emphasis, as far as I know. Very concrete, not given to abstractions.

[Anna Stickles]

I'm not familiar with the difference between the Greek and Syriac traditions, Owen, you would have to elaborate. There is certainly a lot of leeway for varying articulations of many of the doctrines. In this case I think we all realize that we want to avoid pantheism on the one hand when we talk about God's presence in creation thus we have to defend His 'otherness', but neither can we deny the mystical reality of His union with us and the reality of our likeness to Him by making Him too 'other'. This I think is where the whole doctrine of God's condescension comes in. I agree with Fr Alvin in saying we need to avoid talking in spatial terms, God's condescension is usually seen in terms of being, or state.

Maybe someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I see God's condescension in terms of the fact that He can take on our state - ie our passibility, our dependence, changeability and instability, without loosing in anyway His own nature. In other words He can constrain Himself without being constrained, limit Himself without being limited...in a way, be less of what He is, without losing anything. He humbles Himself. I guess the analogy of energies helps here - we understand that we can decrease the amount of energy put into something.

This is what makes the Incarnation possible and is at the heart of His relationship with His creation. The humility of God is that in His love for us He brings Himself down to our level in order that we may by degrees grow in our likeness to Him.

I suppose if we consider the overall drama of the Fall and redemption, besides the fact that God Himself is a creative God, and a loving God - which are probably sufficient reasons for our creation in and of themselves - I have also read, but I don't remember where, that we were created to replace Satan and the fallen angels, and also in a way to 'show them up'. (Col 2:15) We were made flesh, with a nature a little lower then the angels, but were created to grow up in Christ to become "more honorable then the cherubim, more glorious beyond compare then the seraphim" Within Adam was a created potential that covered a very wide spectrum of being/nature. So here we are these 'weak' things, defeating the one who took pride in being the 'morning star' (Is 14:12)

[Anna Stickles]

I thought this might add some grist for conversation. I found St Gregory of Nyssa's equating of being with self-substistence interesting.

"23. In my view the definition of truth is this: not to have a mistaken apprehension of being. Falsehood is a kind of impression which arises in the understanding about non-being; as though what does not exist does, in fact, exist. But truth is sure apprehension of being. So, whoever applies himself in quietness to higher philosophical matters over a long period of time will barely apprehend what true being is, that is, what possesses exitence in its own nature, and what non-being is, that is, what is existence only in apprearance, with no self-subsisting nature." St Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses.

(note: we see from St Gregory's other writings that applying oneself to 'higher philosophical matters" does not mean sitting around thinking about things but rather living a life of virtue as defined in the ascetical tradition of the Church.

We here find St Gregory (albeit in a highly rhetorical way) saying what others have said about coming to the point where one realizes the transitory nature of creation and one's own nothingness in the encounter with God who is all in all. And also here in talking of falsehood he describes what others have called the fantasies of the imagination. (St Augustine and also St Ireneaus, in particular, mention the role of pride in causing a false apprehension of both our own being and God's.) Being and non-being then are not mere abstract concepts but actually apprehended states of existence.

14. "It seems to me that at the time the great Moses was instructed in the theophany he came to know that none of those things apprehended by sense perception and contemplated by the understanding really subsists, but that the transcendent essence and cause of the universe, on which everything depends, alone subsists."