The 'immanence'¹ of God is enjoying something of a high profile in theology at the moment, so much so that I wish I understood what it meant. Does it mean God has become all relational and loving, interactive and friendly, involved with me and even incomplete without me?

Some of us remember the joy with which we read David Wells' No Place for Truth² in the 1990s and slapped our thighs and cried YESSSS! at his call for 'The Recovery of God' in his transcendence³ Many such calls have been made since, and Calvinists at least have been reminded of the greatness and separateness of God.

Why God's Immanence Must Be Well Understood⤒🔗

But I am still not sure what his immanence means, at least to Calvinists. How are we to understand 'in him we live...', and its ramifications?

There are good reasons to be clear about the meaning of God's immanence. Positively, it helps us to develop our own theology. A fruit­ful example is the concept of the concursus⁴ of divine and creaturely action, developed, for example, by B. B. Warfield in relation to the inspiration of Scripture and to the development of living creatures.⁵ Perhaps more pressing is the negative duty of defending the faith against abuses of the doctrine of immanence. Throughout much of the twentieth-century process theology asserted God's immanence and jettisoned his transcendence. In his comprehensive survey, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers – From Plato to the Present,⁶ John W. Cooper traces the many varieties of panentheism which he defines thus:

In brief, panentheism affirms that although God and the world are ontologically distinct⁷ and God transcends the world, the world is 'in' God ontologically. In contrast, classical theism posits an unqualified distinction between God and the world: although intimately related, God and creatures are always and entirely other than one another.⁸

Putting it another way, if in pantheism immanence means ontological identity ('God' is 'all things' – pan), in panentheism, immanence means 'all things' (pan) are included in God, or are an emanation of God. Both are to be distinguished from Christian theism.

This might leave us cold, were it not for the fact that through 'open theism' (amongst other sources) process theology has seeped into evan­gelicalism. Cooper is very careful not to tar people with the same brush but concedes that certain forms of open theism are close to, if not actually instances of, certain forms of panentheism. Particularly is this true of the notion that God's Being is constituted by his relations and interactions with his creatures. In the writings, too, of 'emerging church' leaders like Brian McLaren and Steve Chalke words such as 'interact­ing', 'involved' and 'relational' are frequently and incautiously used of God, who at the drop of a hat is said to 'take risks' with his creatures. In a theologically secure context some of this is unobjectionable, but one looks in vain for that context.

Cautions Regarding Panentheism←⤒🔗

A number of features of panentheism, in all its varieties, give cause for concern. As well as the understanding of immanence which diverges from classical theism, recurrent themes include: dialectic as a way of thinking of God – that he includes within himself evil as well as good; that he is himself developing within history in relation with his creatures, and that the world is necessary for God – both for him to create, and in his own self-development. It tends, probably invariably, to universalism. In addition, and crucially, as Cooper points out:

Because panentheism asserts that God includes the world onto­logically, it cannot affirm his perfect holiness. It can assert a great Creator-creature distinction, and it can affirm that God never wills or does evil. But it inevitably implies that the sin and evil of the world are in God ontologically...⁹

As transcendence is lost, so is holiness; and with the 'dialectic' of good and evil in God, comes a very different understanding of the presence of good and evil in the world:

In Augustinian Christianity, sin and evil are an ontological acci­dent, outcomes that are not natural or inevitable in the fundamen­tal structure of the world. They are inevitable by God's permissive decree but not ontologically inevitable.¹⁰

In pantheism and panentheism, however, sin and evil are necessarily part of both God and creation. They cannot say 'an enemy has done this' (Matt. 13:2.8). There is consequently no moral chasm or barrier between man and God. Is there an implicit panentheism behind the attacks on the doctrine of penal substitution? Or behind the present­ation of God as 'love and nothing else', a compulsive and unfree lover?

Should we be concerned? After all Jonathan Edwards is listed as a panentheist in aspects of his philosophy of God. Of Edwards, Cooper tells us:

...his philosophical doctrine of God is classical theism. He argues that God is the eternal, infinite, necessary, perfect, self-sufficient Being who is the cause of everything else that exists. The question of panentheism arises with respect to his ontology of creatures and their relation to God. He clearly affirms the immanence of all things in God...¹¹

Nobody doubts that in his theology Edwards was devoted to bibli­cal Christianity and to Calvinism, but the reference Cooper makes to 'creatures and their relation to God' is pivotal to our understanding of immanence. Says Cooper in a discussion of Acts 17:28 ('for "In him we live and move and have our being"' – Paul's quotation from Epimenides in Athens – and John 17:21 '...just as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us... '): 'The real issue is the significant difference in how classical theism and panentheism understand divine immanence.'¹² What does 'in him we live' mean? It is part of the bigger question of how God relates to the world.

Help from A. A. Hodge←⤒🔗

This question is the main theme of the first lecture in A. A. Hodge's Evangelical Theology.¹³ This lecture repays careful study and lays a Reformed foundation for understanding divine immanence which is not redundant today, but rather can be built upon. This is so even though Hodge is dealing with pantheism, not panentheism.¹⁴ Where appropriate I shall insert comments relating the analysis to panentheism.

After dealing briefly with the nature of God, Hodge asks 'What relat­ion does God sustain to the universe he has called into being?' He out­lines the position of Deists who set God apart in his transcendence; and Pantheists who assert exclusively his immanence. Each of these heresies contains truth that Christians want to affirm, but is erroneous, both in its formulation of the concept and in making its insight the whole truth. Hodge summarizes the situation as follows:

1. We affirm God's transcendence: that God is essentially other than his creatures and that the relation he bears to the universe is therefore 'analogous to that of a maker to his work, of a preserver and governor to a mechanism, of a father to his children, of a moral ruler to his intelligent and responsible subjects'. This view of his relation to the world is denied by pantheists and other advocates of the view that God's immanence contains all the essential truth of the matter. Yet transcendence is not the whole truth: 'The view of God as extramundane¹⁵ is essentially the moral view of his relation to the world; that which recognizes his imman­ence is pre-eminently the religious view.'
    
2. We affirm God's immanence: We believe that God is everywhere present 'in every point of space and within the inmost constitu­tion of all created things at the same time. God's activity springs up from the central seat of energy in all second causes, and acts from within through them as well as from without upon them. He reveals himself in us and to us through our own subjectivity, as well as objectively through the things presented to our senses. He is the universal present and active basis of all our being and action, the First Cause ever living and acting in all second causes.' He is everywhere present in his eternal essence, his whole essence is present at every moment of time in every point of space. Whereas the Deist's god sits like a machinist outside the machinery he has made, God as truly immanent acts from within through the spon­taneities of the things he has made, rather than upon them from without. The Christian can say, 'that we live and move in him and have all our being in him. In some distant sense, as the birds draw their life and have their being in the air, God is the one essential, fundamental environment and life-condition of all creatures.'
    
3. This is true in our religious experience: 'A divine power not ourselves, working for righteousness, enters us on the side of our own subjectivity, and is confluent always with our most spontane­ous and least deliberative exercises. Thus, regeneration is an effect of God's immediate working within the soul below our conscious­ness, giving a new character to all our conscious states and acts. God works within us constantly to will, and by willing to do, of his good pleasure' (Hodge, p. 20).

The consequences of the divine immanence, according to Hodge, are at least fourfold:

1. In terms of 'being', 'The whole world exists in God' as 'the stars in the ether, as the clouds in the air' – but is not ontologically included in God, as in panentheism, and is not an emanation of God.
    
2. In terms of intelligence (mind, wisdom, purpose), all the intel­ligence manifested in the physical universe is of God; all things work together, as workers on a great cathedral, while apparently independ­ent, work harmoniously accord to the one plan of the architect.
    
3. In terms of energy, all effect-producing energy seen in the universe is ultimately the efficiency of God: 'The First Cause must be the efficient cause of all second causes and the source of all the dependent energy they ever exercise' (Hodge, p. 21).
    
4. Finally, it follows that everything reveals God. In the strictly lim­ited context of the universe revealing God, and not in any sense to suggest it as a complete analogy for the God-World relation, Hodge uses the relation of the soul to the body: 'As our souls animate and manifest their presence and their changing modes in every part of our bodies, and as God is immanent and active in all his works, so all nature and the course of universal history reflect his thoughts ... He works in us all to will and to do of his good pleasure in all things. Hence every flower is a thought of God' (Hodge, p. 22). Hodge would agree that the universe is 'charged with the grandeur of God' (Gerard Manley Hopkins).

Conclusions from Hodge (with Observations from Cooper)←⤒🔗

In what way does Christian Theism's conception of immanence differ from that of pantheism? It is significant that Cooper's analysis of panentheism parallels what Hodge says in many places.

1. Christian Theism asserts the distinct personality of God as the Head of a moral government administered over free and responsible agents by a system of ideas and motives. The Personality of God is essential to Christianity but is denied by pantheism. 'God' to a pantheist is infinite but not a person, though every person is a transient form of his being. The pantheist god has 'no existence other than that of the sum of all finite existence and no consciousness nor intelligence other than the aggregate of the consciousness and intelligence of the transient crea­tures'. (The god of panentheism is by some thought impersonal, but by others personal – the closer they come to Christian Theism. However, Cooper remarks that freedom is not a mark of this divine personality. He is under compulsion to create the world. 'Divine freedom is an oxy­moron in almost all panentheism' [p. 32.6]).
    
2. Christianity asserts the distinct personality and moral freedom and responsibility of men. Pantheism denies both the personality of God and the freedom of man. 'All events proceed by a law of absolute necessity. All evil, precisely as all good, comes immediately from God, and evil men are related to him precisely as are saints and angels.' There is no moral governor, no heavenly Father, no just ruler, no system of rewards and punishments. (This would be an implication of much panentheism too.)
    
3. Christianity maintains the distinction of the human and the divine agency, though making the former depend on the latter.
    
4. It embraces and adjusts itself to the complementary doctrine of the divine transcendence, which Pantheism renders impossible. (Indeed only because God is transcendent can immanence have any real mean­ing – only thus can he be the 'Holy One in our midst'.)
    
5. It is the necessary basis of the highest freedom and the most exalted morality and religion conceivable, whereas pantheism makes freedom, morality, and religion impossible.
    
6. It is the most rational basis for the supernatural, that is, the activity in the sphere of nature of that God who infinitely transcends nature.

All this is predicated on the fact that pantheism holds that the whole universe is one substance ('monism'), and that substance is God, who exists only in the successive forms or events which constitute the universe. Pantheism crucially 'confounds the doctrine of immanence with ontological identity' and further turns it into a heresy by denying the complementary doctrine of divine transcendence.

When a Christian, therefore, says, 'In God we live and move and have our being', he means something very different from that which is meant by a pantheist, though both could use the phrase. So too could a panentheist. The extent to which Hodge's strictures on pantheism fit panentheism will vary according to the version embraced. But much will apply directly. In any event Hodge gives us some invaluable pointers to understanding divine immanence.

We do need a renewed theology of immanence:

First, to defend the faith. Asserting transcendence is good but not enough. God's immanence has always been a glorious element of Christ­ian theology, and Reformed thinkers need to reclaim the ground taken by divergent views.

Secondly, for the positive development of our own theology – for example, the outworking of concursus, mentioned above. Calvinists have always recognized both what Hodge calls the 'constant depend­ence of the creature and the constant in-working of the divine energy as the controlling source of all our spontaneous affections and actions'; and also a 'simultaneous and determining concursus (continuous co-working) of the ceaseless activities of God with the activities of the creature'. This is how God providentially 'works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure' (Phil. 2:13) without compounding the divine and the human. A fresh look at divine immanence could yield fruit in many directions.