27 [S]o that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us. 28 For in Him we live and move and exist, as even some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring. ' 29 Being God's offspring, then, we shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.
*Acts 17.27-29, ASV
19I want you to know all about Christ's love, although it is too wonderful to be measured. Then your lives will be filled with all that God is.
*Ephesians 3.19, CEV, Emphasis added
22And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
*Ephesians 1.22-23, ESV
Through my relation to the Other, I am in touch with God.
*Emmanuel Levinas. Difficult Freedom.
The glory of God manifests the divine presence here and now, in the flesh, as well as the fact that there is always more, a surplus that overflows every here and now.
*Mayra Rivera. The Touch of Transcendence.
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N. Graham Standish, in Becoming a Blessed Church, defines rational functionalism, a mind-set that is holding many Christians and congregations captive to a felt-absence of the God~Near:
Rational functionalism is rooted in the idea that we can uncover the mysteries of life and the universe mainly through rational thought and disciplined investigation. It is the tendency of denominations, their congregations, and their leaders to subscribe to a view of faith and church rooted in a restrictive, logic-bound theology that ignores the possibility of spiritual experiences and miraculous events.
After being in Christian churches for almost forty-eight years and doing professional ministry in them for over thirty, I can only concur with Standish. In fact, rarely have I been in a congregation not captive to rational functionalism. Even more, some churches are hostile to anything spiritual or mysterious.
Standish speaks to two problems with rational functionalism. He cites as the primary problem that rational functionalism fails to encounter God as a "tangible presence."
God is treated mostly as an idea or thought, or as an entity we encounter when we die, rather than as a tangible presence in the here and now. There is no sense that God's kingdom is all around us, and that this kingdom is a spiritual reality in which we can experience God directly.
Second, rational functionalism "functionalizes the life of the church." Efficiency becomes most important, not authenticity.
In the rationally functional church, the focus is on maintaining the institution, not on creating experiences through which God can be encountered and experienced in our midst. ... Guiding people to a tangible encounter, experience, and relationship with Christ isn't much of a concern. Teaching people how to discover the power of the Holy Spirit in their midst is never emphasized because the object of the church has been reduced to doing what we've always done, to function the way the church has always functioned simply for the sake of functioning. Guiding people to discover the Creator's call in their lives, calling them and us to live deeper, richer, and greater lives of love and service, is ignored in favor of guiding people simply to function as Christians have always functioned. In short, the message is reduced to (as someone once told me) "We should be Christians because Christianity is good and ethical, and we should be good and ethical people. The church's role is to teach us to follow the Golden Rule."
I certainly agree with Standish, but the presentation of God in theology often contributes to this rational functionalism. For how we view God, our theology, whether homespun or derived from esteemed scholars, acts. I now briefly explore that matter.
Use of the concept of transcendence has done much harm to persons being open to felt-nearness of Presence. Usage of the idea of transcendence in theology has often, and more so than not, led to a misreading of the Wholly-Otherness of God, which is seen as a spatial-upward reality. God is distantly up there somewhere. So, how can you have a felt-sense of the tangible nearness of a God not near, but far away?
Transcendence must be seen anew, within present understandings of the cosmos, as an intracosmic transcendence and an intercreature transcendence: the latter, actually, is within the former. The very dynamism of the created order, being in constant movement, is a manifestation of the Pleroma: God-Fullness, and a witness to the dynamism within the Three Persons of the Trinity. This is evidenced in the Eastern Orthodox calling the Trinity by perichoresis, a word for dancing.
God is an intra-God-ing, inter-God-ing. God experiences the Other of God in Godself God-ing, even as we experience the Presence of the Otherness in the Other of the other. Nature, then, is intra-inner, reflecting the Divine God-ing, in which the God-ing is the ongoing transcending of God by God; however, this transcending does not un-God God, but is the very nature of God ~ is God.
God is not simply making movement possible, the movement is the expression of God as movement. God moves with creation as a whole and each part of it. Creation, then, is alive from microcosm to macrocosm. The movement is the extension of the Divine, the ever-incarnation Word, which is transcendence, or ascension. God is meeting God in the Other, which is meeting God in the Other meeting God in the Other. The movement is mutual; there is no first Other or second Other, there is no I and Thou ~ only Thou and Thou in instantaneous mutuality of being and presence and action.
This means that the Divine Transcendence is not a transcendence of space or time. Either would separate God from Nature. Transcendence refers to the Divine Fullness, or the overflowing of Spirit within creation and creatures.
This, then, leads us to see that we experience the tangible presence of God in the Other. The Other, for each of the others, as you and I, embody part of the transcendence, or excess, or overflowing, or extension, of God. Likewise, each part of transcendence is unique to itself, and the multiplicity of the expression of God, then, witnesses to the Pleroma of the nature of God, of Transcendence.
No longer can we believe in the God seated outside Nature, yet, neither can be rightly ascribe to pantheism. Pantheism would say that Nature is God. Panantheism would say God is pervasive within Nature. There is a transcendence of God within the human, dog, and ocean; however, only God is God. This only God makes possible the transcendence that marks the creature as pervaded by God and living within God.
Our thinking about God and transcendence, as well as immanence, is important in opening to experiencing the God-Near. Rational functionalism is manifested among many persons and Christian churches with a specific form: "God is out there and when I die I will go meet God."
The contemplative Christian experiences a felt-sense of God, and this felt-sense is sensed even in what others would esteem a felt-absence. This contemplative consciousness results from, usually, a slow, progressive deconstruction of theological ideology that hinders the felt-presence of the Divine.
The Negative Theology (apophasis) of contemplatives work out the deconstruction. The Negative implies, ironically, affirming that all theological image and language signifies God wrongly, or, at least, incorrectly to a certain extent. Each sign points to, but no sign defines. Signs signify, but do not encompass.
I am not saying that signs are fully to be set aside. I am saying that signs are to be seen as signs. They are helpful means to access the Presence, or experience the felt-presence of God. They are not helpful, however, when they tend toward distancing a sense of God or when they become intellectualized in a manner that closes off to the boundlessness of mystery. Signs must remain open, or they tend to distort and block the view and experience of the God-Near. Boundaries, being in God, must remain open to experience there own expanding-fullnesses by transcending their own boundaries, which is always a lesser fullness of the Fullness.
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*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, and their fish, Hope, in Southwest Florida. Brian is vowed at Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. He lives a contemplative life and inspires others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ. He advocates for a spiritually-focused Christianity and the renewal of the focus of the Church on addressing the deeper spiritual needs and longings of persons and empathic relating with diverse spiritual traditions, East and West. Brian has an independent writing, workshop, and retreat ministry, for all spiritual seekers.
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