The Imminence of God

Transcendence and immanence are two words often juxtaposed, to express paradoxical qualities of Divinity: his otherness, distance, and holiness - versus his closeness, love and indwelling. These doctrinal stances are reflected in different styles of spirituality and corporate worship – the majesty and awe of liturgy or grand hymnody, contrasted with the intimacy and fervour of charismatic gifts or revivalist ecstasy.

Another word, happily rhyming with Immanence, is ‘Imminence’: the Imminence of God. Fundamentalist doctrine often emphasises the ‘imminent’ second coming of Christ – however long it is in the waiting (2 Pe. 3.3-9), it is always ‘imminent’, just around the corner. And indeed, we must always be ready (the ‘Left Behind’ books notwithstanding). As the Rabbis said, every moment is equidistant from the Messiah: he could come any time. Many evangelistic sermons have played on the same plea, to be ready when he comes, like the ‘thief in the night’ (Matt. 24.43).

But there is another meaning to God’s Imminence. Instead of the Greek, Platonic, ideal of a static, unchanging Deity, the Bible’s God is always on the move (like C. S. Lewis’s Aslan), always coming. Jesus’ prediction, that some wouldn’t die before seeing the kingdom come in power, are usually taken as referring to his Second Coming (Matt. 16.28), and therefore mistaken. Some think it’s fulfilled in Pentecost. But it could entail any experience of the Kingdom breaking into our earthly reality, with power. While we maintain faith in Jesus’ final coming in glory, there are many comings of Christ, in our personal experience, in corporate church revivals, and wherever justice is done. 

 

This lends a tone of expectancy to our lives: openness to the new, the novitas. Of necessity, we expect the unexpected; because even in exile, God is always doing a(nother) ‘new thing’ (Isa. 43.19). Thus we appropriate the language of prophecy, apocalyptic; to leave the door ajar, against any feeling of closure - open to possibility, potentiality. Not just trends extrapolated from within the immanent historical time-line; but the genuinely creative word spoken into our time, causing the break, rupture, chiasma: Kairos, the decisive time of existential decision, interrupting the sage linear chronos-time of the clock. 

 

For, while Christianity conceives of time linearly, as opposed to the cyclical and, therefore directionless, meaningless, time of the ancients, this is not gradual, sedate, evenly-paced; but punctiliar, subject to interventions, pushed forwards through pneumatic impetus, Divinely-ordered; appearing from our viewpoint wholly unpredictable, random, because wholly outside our human control. The Spirit-Wind blows where it wills. 

 

We differ here from the ‘weak messianism’, of Italian philosophers, Georgio Agamben and Gianni Vattimo, building on Walter Benjamin’s writings. Their concept is a stand-in for loss of faith in the Marxist dialectic of progress; holding instead to a generalised wishfulness about the historical project. However, ‘hope deferred’ can affect us as well (Pr. 13.12). So, while being realistic about our historical conjuncture, we also cultivate the longing and yearning, which sustains us while we wait for the ‘next move’ of God’s Spirit, always imminent.