Find and you shall seek

Andrew Perriman

The distinction between transcendence and immanence is one of a number of analytical criteria that theologians commonly apply to the definition of God. It belongs essentially to an ontological theology - that is, we typically make use of it in our attempts to describe the divine being. It commonly forms part of a systematic grid of perfections and paradoxes by which we attempt to map the contours of this supreme idea that we call God.

From a biblical perspective, however, the primary distinction is probably the more practical and experiential one between worship of the true God and worship of false gods. The issue in this regard is one not of ontology but of identity and is usually settled with reference to such concretely identifying characteristics as the name of the god, his actions, and prominent individuals who have associated themselves with him. This is immediately apparent, for example, in the opening lines of the decalogue, which establish the name of the god (yhwh), a decisive action, his connection with a particular group, and his relation to other gods: ‘I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me’ (Ex.20:2-3).

Once the identity of the true God has been determined, other distinctions come into play and become, potentially, the source of religious controversy. The divine presence may be encountered as a localized manifestation, limited to a particular place and time, or in more abstract universal terms. God may be encountered as an external reality, revealed in a burning bush or in the form of an angel of the Lord, or he may be discovered in the complex depths of the human spirit. He is a God who both reveals and conceals himself, who is both predictable and unpredictable.

This pattern suggests, however, that we should be careful not to deal with the question of God from an entirely abstract or universalized perspective. The various oppositions are explored and applied, for the most part, within a well-defined covenantal framework. Identification of the true God leads naturally to a corporate commitment to that God, validated and managed in the Old Testament by the Law of Moses and in the New by the experience of the Spirit (cf. 2 Cor.3:4-18). The covenant carries an assurance of the indwelling or immanence of God - the glory of the Lord in the Holy of Holies or the Spirit of the Lord in the heart of the believer - for those who are members of the covenant community.

So although our engagement with the indwelling presence of God is by no means a straightforward matter, it should be qualitatively, that is theologically, different from the experience of the person who is outside the covenant, who has not received the Spirit of Christ. The spirituality of the believer is essentially a pneumatic spirituality. The term ‘pneumatic spirituality’ is virtually a tautology: a spirituality of the Spirit. But it points to the fact that Christian spirituality is locked in to the activity of the Spirit of God. To have the Holy Spirit, which is integral to the identity of the disciple of Jesus, is to express in oneself the particular character, purpose, energy, of the somewhat narrowly defined God of the Bible.

The question that interests me at this point is this: What happens if, as members of this covenant community, for the purpose of missional engagement with the emerging culture, and perhaps in order to restore balance to our own souls, we step outside the confines of an unambiguous evangelical spirituality? Having found what we were looking for, can we become seekers again? Can we begin to define a more ambiguous, alternative spirituality for the space outside the church where emerging culture mission must take place? I have some tentative answers to this question.

1. We are bound to find that we must develop a different terminology, a different set of categories, for defining spiritual experience. The forms of religious life that we have learned from late twentieth century evangelicalism are the product of a particular construction of faith, which we have come to characterize broadly as ‘modern’ but which I think may be better understood as the result of an inadequate, narrow and nervous reaction to modernism. In any case, once we step outside the boundaries of a secure spirituality, we will discover, for example, that much of our language (‘personal salvation’, ‘getting to heaven’, ‘a passion for the lost’, etc.) has become questionable or meaningless. There will be a shift in priorities; answers will give way to questions; we will exchange linear, purpose-driven forms of spiritual behaviour for metaphors and practices of space and wandering.

2. Metaphors of space suggest exploration rather than the pursuit of a known, pre-determined objective. This hybrid spirituality will be hesitant, doubtful, reflective, inquisitive. But it will also be an active rather than passive spirituality, less dependent on an environment of intense, emotive, charismatic worship, less dependent on thoughtless dogmatic formulations.

3. If we remove ourselves from the enclosed sphere of covenant spirituality, we will become more acutely aware of the limitations and failings of our humanity. As Mike Riddell has written, ‘Because the church has become inhuman, the task before it is one of humanization’ (Threshold of the Future, 123). We will recognize the inadequacy of the human mind to grasp infinite truth, we will be less inclined to suppress the murmurings of doubt and disillusionment that arise within us, we will have to become more comfortable with our petty, commonplace sinfulness.

4. We will find ourselves having to come to terms more directly with those dimensions to the experience of God disclose his transcendence. The indwelling of the Spirit, which is determinative for the spirituality of those who are members of the new covenant community, is an expression of the immanence of God: “because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir” (Gal.4:6-7). Outside this community, then, we must deal with God prior to any experience of the sort of intimacy expressed by the metaphor of sonship.

In order to give shape to this more complex spirituality, it may be possible to draw on strands of religious experience from outside the biblical tradition. But the forms of Old Testament spiritual life may offer the most appropriate starting point. Under the old covenant the Spirit is a more elusive phenomenon. There are encounters with the mysterious otherness of God (the burning bush, for example; Moses’ glimpse of the back but not the face of the Lord (Ex.33:18-23)) that would seem out of place in the New Testament context, where the fulness of the godhead has been revealed in Christ (cf. Col.1:19; 2:9). In the spiritual struggles of the psalmists, in the soul-searching of Jeremiah, in the agonized reasoning of Job, we glimpse something of the dark night of the soul that has been obliterated by our easy evangelical spirituality.

5. I made the point earlier that in the context of a polytheistic religious environment the question of identity is more important than the more abstract puzzles that have preoccupied the minds of theologians in the era of the church. It is interesting that today we again find ourselves having to make sense of faith in God in a pluralistic context, where other gods, other ideologies, and other stories abound. Perhaps we need to go through that process of rediscovering who this God is, of learning again how to identify him, how to connect him with people and events and traditions. Perhaps this is the challenge: to help people connect their perception of a mysterious transcendent God with the stark landscape of history.

Postscript: How will this ambiguity be maintained in practice?

i) To some extent in the ambiguity of our own spiritual lives: in a transitional period we cannot escape the tension between the familiar old and the disturbing new.

ii) in the spiritual complexity and diversity of the community of faith: a postmodern community ought to be able to embrace different spiritualities. A charismatic or traditional conservative evangelical spirituality need not be branded as hopelessly ‘modern’ as long as it is able to interact creatively and fruitfully with other less confident spiritualities: we regard our different spiritualities as gifts that we bring to the community.

iii) in our use of scripture: we need to resist the drive to reduce the diversity of biblical types of spirituality, to view all things through the monochrome filter of our own experience of God.

iv) in mission: it ought to be mission that most powerfully alerts us to the inadequacies of our spirituality, both as individuals and as communities. Our spiritualities have evolved to function within a very narrow corridor of human life, and for the most part within the church: mission forces us to leave that corridor and enter a confusing and dangerous world, for which we will need a very different set of responses.

If spiritual life in the Court of the Gentiles is much more like Old Testament spiritual experience - externalized, materialistic, holistic, dramatic, creative, problematic - we may perhaps think of the baptized community as functioning within this positive and intrinsically worthwhile spiritual environment as a priesthood of the Spirit.