In the previous podcast, we discussed God\u2019s transcendence. Today we will cover a complementary topic: God\u2019s immanence.<\/p>\n
God\u2019s \u201cimmanence\u201d refers to God\u2019s presence in creation. If we were to speak only of the ways in which God is \u201ctranscendent\u201d \u2013 how He is other than, above, and hidden in creation \u2013 we would be left with a god that seems more like an abstract force than a person. The God of the Bible, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, however, is a personal and relational God. This sort of God does not merely wind up creation like a watch and then sit back to watch it run. This sort of God is always intimately involved with His creation.<\/p>\n
God\u2019s immanence in creation is bound to God\u2019s character as a relational being characterized by love. In our next podcast, we\u2019ll explore in more depth why the doctrine of the Trinity \u2013 the fact that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three persons in one substance \u2013 is vital to our theology of creation. For now, we\u2019ll focus on the truth that all of creation is a product of who God is: as 1 John 4:8 says, \u201cGod is love.\u201d<\/p>\n
Creation is a product of love. God did not need to create. God in Himself knows no shortage of anything. The fact that God did create, then, reflects an outpouring of God\u2019s generosity and love. Indeed, this is echoed in the poetic refrain of Genesis 1: God declares the creation \u201dgood.\u201d It is profitable to let this truth sink deep into our souls: the world God made is good because all of it is the abundant expression of God\u2019s love. It is sadly true, of course, that the creation is affected by our sin, and we will discuss what this may mean in later podcasts. But it is still God\u2019s creation, and therefore it is still in its essence good.<\/p>\n
In fact, creation is continually sustained by God\u2019s love. An important corollary to God\u2019s immanence in creation is the contingency of the creation. If God were an absent watchmaker, the creation could run on its own, without anything from God beyond the initial wind-up. But if the creation is such that God is immanent in and throughout it, then the creation does not exist apart from God. The entire creation depends utterly on God\u2019s sustaining will and power for its ongoing existence. From the perspective of Christian theology, there is simply no such thing as \u201cnature\u201d without God. And despite our sin, God has not abandoned the creation. This too is a thought worth meditating upon: God has never withdrawn His presence from the creation; He has not given up on what He has made; it all remains entirely His and it all continues because of His love.<\/p>\n
This is not to say that God\u2019s immanence in creation deprives creation of its own integrity. Creation is characterized by a beauty and order that reflects God\u2019s own character. In His love, God has graced creation itself with causal freedom, within the probabilities of quantum physics and emergent physical laws.<\/p>\n
Consider, for example, the Bird of Paradise, which engages in elaborate mating displays involving the construction of bowers out of colorful flowers and other materials. A female might be courted by several males, and ultimately will choose one as a mate based in some way on the quality of his display. We should not imagine that God somehow directly instructs the female about which mate to choose. The causal relationship between the male\u2019s display and the female\u2019s choice of mate has its own integrity, as does the evolutionary history of the birds\u2019 plumage and social rituals. We can understand these causal relationships without invoking immediate Divine intervention. Classical theologians such as Augustine and Aquinas called this \u201csecondary\u201d causation.<\/p>\n
But creation cannot run on its own, because there is a deeper, \u201cprimary\u201d level of causation, which is God\u2019s creative and sustaining will and power. In classical theological terms, all \u201csecondary\u201d causes, because they are entirely dependent on God\u2019s \u201cprimary\u201d causation, are subsumed within God\u2019s \u201cprimary\u201d causation. In this way, we can think of creation as possessing inherent created freedom while at the same time existing entirely under God\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Yet, if creation possesses causal integrity at least at the level of secondary causation, why should we invoke God at all? Does God become an unnecessary appendage, to be elided by Ockham\u2019s Razor? Should we repeat the famous adage of the astronomer Laplace \u2013 who, when the Emperor Napoleon asked where God fit into the cosmos, replied, \u201cI have no need of that hypothesis?\u201d<\/p>\n
No, because the brute fact of the universe\u2019s existence alone does not adequately explain all \u2013 or even most \u2013 of what we as human beings believe is important. We might suggest that the universe as brute fact alone cannot explain the fact of itself. Why does this universe exist? Why does this universe seem so finely tuned to produce the sort of carbon-based life that results in human beings who are able to reflect on the meaning of it all? The best response of materialist scientists to date is the \u201cmultiverse\u201d theory \u2013 a curious idea that we\u2019ll explore in a future podcast \u2013 one that, even if it could be considered a true \u201cscientific\u201d idea, merely pushes the \u201cwhy\u201d question, and indeed the \u201chow\u201d question of the origin of physical laws, further back into the mists.<\/p>\n
Perhaps more importantly, the universe as brute fact alone cannot explain what is \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cjust\u201d or \u201cbeautiful\u201d or \u201ctrue,\u201d unless we strip those terms of any real meaning. The universe as brute fact alone cannot account at all for \u201clove\u201d \u2013 again, unless we reduce and redefine the meaning of \u201clove\u201d to a mere interaction of brain chemicals. (We\u2019ll also discuss this sort of reductionism in a future podcast).<\/p>\n
Finally, from a Christian perspective, most importantly of all, the universe as brute fact alone cannot explain the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Indeed, a truly Christian perspective is one that views the universe through the lens of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and not the other way around. We start where the scriptures start: \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God\u201d (John 1:1). We understand the immanence of God in creation most directly through Christ, the Word, the Logos, by whom all things were created, in whom all things hold together, and who himself took on flesh and became both creator and creature.<\/p>\n
And this brings us back to the notion of God\u2019s immanence. \u201cFor God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son\u2026\u201d, we read in John 3:16. Everywhere in creation, we should see the cross of Christ. We should see God present to such a degree that God Himself was willing to suffer and die in the person of the Son, in union with the groaning of all creation. All of creation \u2013 all of its beauty, all of its majesty, all of its power, all of its complexity, all of its simplicity, all of its suffering \u2013 points to the Logos, the Christ, who shaped it, who suffered with it and for it, and who will redeem it. This means that Christ himself is never far from any of us. He is not absent or far off; he has not abandoned what he has made. With the eyes of faith, wherever we look, we can see him; with the expectation of hope, in every season we can turn and find him right there; with the delight of love, we can enjoy and care for all the good things he has made as though he were enjoying them and caring for them along with us \u2013 for he is indeed Emmanuel, God With Us.<\/p>\n
Here is the text of my second God and Creation podcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the previous podcast, we discussed God\u2019s transcendence. Today we will cover a complementary topic: God\u2019s immanence. God\u2019s \u201cimmanence\u201d refers to God\u2019s presence in creation. If we were to speak only of the ways in which God is \u201ctranscendent\u201d \u2013 how He is other than, above, and hidden in creation \u2013 we would be left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[50,4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-religion","category-spirituality","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-rj","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}