Immanence and Christianity—Part II
In the first post concerning “Christianity and the Axial Age” I briefly examined the primary revelation made to humanity during that extraordinary period of history (around 500 B.C.E). Christianity is a later manifestation of the revelation coming in Axial Age expressed in the Hebrew world through the Prophets. Yeshua’s teaching and insight extends that revelation, making available to every human person the Reality of that insight as a personal breakthrough.
The profound turn of understanding that occurs during this period makes Ultimate Reality truly transcendent to anything we might project upon the Divine as a “human form.” The gods are not merely “bigger version of a human being.” The Divine Reality is truly transcendent to us, breaking out of all our categories. Early Christianity, and certainly Yeshua agree, but the deep insight inside transcendence is the experience of immanence. It is an experience that was certainly known earlier. Witness the powerful prayers of the Psalms that speak of God as near, but Yeshua takes that insight and brings it even closer. He come to know this Ultimate, Transcendent Reality as a “Beloved Parent.” His word for it is Abba, a term of endearment and intimacy, and Abba dwells within, at the level of the heart. There one can commune deeply with what is utterly beyond us. It is a paradox, but it is nonetheless, true. Yeshua claims that he can lead us into such an intimacy, to the true heart-knowledge of the Father.
In the Christian development of the teaching stemming from the Axial Age, we are designed for intimacy with God. Everything in us and about us yearns for this deepest form of relationship. It is not a sentimental one experienced only at the level of our emotions. Instead, it is a deeply dialogical one at the level of heart, far deeper than the emotions, yet touching them.
The profound turn of understanding that occurs during this period makes Ultimate Reality truly transcendent to anything we might project upon the Divine as a “human form.” The gods are not merely “bigger version of a human being.” The Divine Reality is truly transcendent to us, breaking out of all our categories. Early Christianity, and certainly Yeshua agree, but the deep insight inside transcendence is the experience of immanence. It is an experience that was certainly known earlier. Witness the powerful prayers of the Psalms that speak of God as near, but Yeshua takes that insight and brings it even closer. He come to know this Ultimate, Transcendent Reality as a “Beloved Parent.” His word for it is Abba, a term of endearment and intimacy, and Abba dwells within, at the level of the heart. There one can commune deeply with what is utterly beyond us. It is a paradox, but it is nonetheless, true. Yeshua claims that he can lead us into such an intimacy, to the true heart-knowledge of the Father.
In the Christian development of the teaching stemming from the Axial Age, we are designed for intimacy with God. Everything in us and about us yearns for this deepest form of relationship. It is not a sentimental one experienced only at the level of our emotions. Instead, it is a deeply dialogical one at the level of heart, far deeper than the emotions, yet touching them.
posted by Lynn Bauman at 7:01 AM
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