Saturday, May 2, 2009

Transcendence and Immanence

In The Doctrine of God Frame devotes a chapter to the discussion of transcendence and immanence. He discusses the important impact of what you believe about these two attributes of God:

One who believes that God is absent will question the possibility of rational thought, for he will doubt whether there is any rational structure or meaning to the world at all. He will be an irrationalist. But one who believes that the finite world is divine will believe that something in the finite world, maybe the human mind itself, constitutes the supreme authority for human knowledge. He will be a rationalist...the non-Christian views of transcendence and immanence - the non-Christian metaphysics - imply a non-Christian epistemology as well...We must choose whether to recognize God as Lord or not. Those who do not recognize him as Lord exchange the truth for a lie (Rom. 1:25), and they lose the basis for finding truth. Although they know many things, they gain knowledge only by borrowing principles from Christian theism...So we are not talking about mere differences of opinion, but about spiritual warfare. The two opposite worldviews are contending today for the hearts of all people. (115)

It seems to me that many people today, Christians in particular, try and minimize the importance of doctrine and theology. But, I do not think that they have pondered the ramifications of different beliefs. The importance of such things is hard to overstate.

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