Wednesday, February 2, 2022

Concluding Shiur: On Immanence and Transcendence

 https://www.etzion.org.il/en/philosophy/issues-jewish-thought/issues-mussar-and-faith/concluding-shiur-immanence-and

The basic tension that has recurred over and over in our attempts to grasp how God relates to the world is between immanence and transcendence. An immanent God is part of the world and a character in history. He is apprehended by prophets, He reveals Himself to human beings, is enraged and by their betrayals and satisfied and joyous when they successfully conform to His will. He punishes the wicked, rewards the faithful and responds to prayers. All of these, however, are aspects of a theological imagination that conceives of God as a person, who as such must be limited in His knowledge and power, bound by time and space, part of the universe rather than the Author or source of it. The alternative is a transcendent God who is quite frankly beyond our imagination, beyond our capacities to describe or understand, utterly mysterious and utterly inaccessible. At best, and even this is debatable, we can describe Him with vague abstractions, as if we are, so to speak, reading His CV rather than meeting him.

1 comment :

  1. He doesn't actually mention Ramban's vies. he mentions Rambam, and th Kuzari, and their views, but then lumps the RambaN with them as one of the great jewish philosophers.

    ReplyDelete

ANONYMOUS COMMENTS WILL NOT BE POSTED!
please use either your real name or a pseudonym.