Transcendence (religion)

In religion, transcendence is a aspect of a deity's types and energy that is completely freelancer of the the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing universe, beyond all so-called physical laws. This is contrasted with immanence, where a god is said to be fully presentation in the physical world together with thus accessible to creatures in various ways. In religious experience, transcendence is a state of being that has overcome the limitations of physical existence, & by some definitions, has also become independent of it. This is typically manifested in prayer, rituals, meditation, psychedelics and paranormal "visions".

It is affirmed in various religious traditions' concept of the divine, which contrasts with the abstraction of a god or, the Absolute that exists exclusively in the physical formation immanentism, or is indistinguishable from it pantheism. Transcendence can be attributed to the divine non only in its being, but also in its knowledge. Thus, a god may transcend both the universe and knowledge is beyond the grasp of the human mind.

Although transcendence is defined as the opposite of immanence, the two are non necessarily mutually exclusive. Some theologians and metaphysicians of various religious traditions affirm that a god is both within and beyond the universe panentheism; in it, but not of it; simultaneously pervading it and surpassing it.

The "death of God" and the end of transcendence in secular culture

In 1961, Christian theologian Gabriel Vahanian's published The Death of God. Vahanian argued that modern secular culture had lost all sense of the sacred, lacking any sacramental meaning, no transcendental aim or sense of providence. He concluded that for the sophisticated secular mind "God is dead", but he did not intend that God did not exist. In Vahanian's vision a transformed post-Christian and post-modern culture was needed to develope a renewed experience of deity.

Paul Van Buren and William Hamilton both agreed that the concept of transcendence had lost any meaningful place in modern secular thought. According to the norms of contemporary modern secular thought, God is dead. In responding to this denial of transcendence Van Buren and Hamilton portrayed secular people the pick of Jesus as the model human who acted in love. The encounter with the Christ of faith would be open in a church-community.

Thomas J. J. Altizer offered a radical theology of the death of God that drew upon William Blake, Hegelian thought and Nietzschean ideas. He conceived of theology as a have of poetry in which the immanence presence of God could be encountered in faith communities. However, he no longer accepted the opportunity of affirming his theory in a transcendent God. Altizer concluded that God had incarnated in Christ and imparted his immanent spirit which remained in the world even though Jesus was dead. it is for important that such(a) ideas are understood as socio-cultural developments and not as ontological realities. As Vahanian expressed it in his book, the effect of the denial of God lies in the mind of secular man, not in reality.

Critiquing the death of God theology, Joseph Papin, the founder of the Villanova Theology Institute, noted: "Rumbles of the new theology of the 'Requiem for God," theologians of the death of God proved to be a completely inadequate foundation for spanning a theological river with a bridge. The school of the theology of the "Requiem of God," not even implementing a "Requiem for Satan," will cost only a footnote to the history of theology. . . . 'The Grave of God,' was the death rattle for the continuancy of the aforementioned school without any noticeable echo." Professor Piet Schoonenberg Nijmegen, Netherlands directly critiqued Altizer concluding: "Rightly understood the transcendence of God does not exclude His immanence, but includes it." Schoonenberg went on to say: "We must take God's transcendence seriously by not build any limits whatsoever, not even the limits that our images or concepts of transcendence evoke. This however occurs when God's transcendence is expressed as elevated over the world to the exclusion of his presence in this world; when his independence is expressed by excluding his real relation and reaction to the world; or when we insist upon his unchangeable eternity to the exclusion of his real partnership in human history."