O Lord our Lord, there is none like Thee in heaven above or in the earth
beneath. Thine is the greatness and the dignity and the majesty. All that is in
the heaven and the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom and the power and the
glory forever, O God, and Thou art exalted as head over all. Amen.
When we speak of God as transcendent we mean of course that He is exalted far
above the created universe, so far above that human thought cannot imagine it.
To think accurately about this, however, we must keep in mind that ”far above”
does not here refer to physical distance from the earth but to quality of being.
We are concerned not with location in space nor with mere altitude, but with
life.
God is spirit, and to Him magnitude and distance have no meaning. To us they are
useful as analogies and illustrations, so God refers to them constantly when
speaking down to our limited understanding. The words of God as found in Isaiah,
”Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity,” give a distinct
impression of altitude, but that is because we who dwell in a world of matter,
space, and time tend to think in material terms and can grasp abstract ideas
only when they are identified in some way with material things. In its struggle
to free itself from the tyranny of the natural world, the human heart must learn
to translate upward the language the Spirit uses to instruct us.
It is spirit that gives significance to matter and apart from spirit nothing has
any value at last. A little child strays from a party of sightseers and becomes
lost on a mountain, and immediately the whole mental perspective of the members
of the party is changed. Rapt admiration for the grandeur of nature gives way to
acute distress for the lost child. The group spreads out over the mountainside
anxiously calling the child’s name and searching eagerly into every
secluded spot where the little one might chance to be hidden.
What brought about this sudden change? The tree-clad mountain is still
there towering into the clouds in breath-taking beauty, but no one
notices it now. All attention is focused upon the search for a
curly-haired little girl not yet two years old and weighing less than
thirty pounds. Though so new and so small, she is more precious to
parents and friends than all the huge bulk of the vast and ancient
mountain they had been admiring a few minutes before. And in their
judgment the whole civilized world concurs, for the little girl can love
and laugh and speak and pray, and the mountain cannot. It is the child’s
quality of being that gives it worth.
Yet we must not compare the being of God with any other as we just now
compared the mountain with the child. We must not think of God as
highest in an ascending order of beings, starting with the single cell
and going on up from the fish to the bird to the animal to man to angel
to cherub to God. This would be to grant God eminence, even
pre-eminence, but that is not enough; we must grant Him transcendence in
the fullest meaning of that word.
Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable. He is as high above
an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the
archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God
and the archangel is infinite. The caterpillar and the archangel, though
far removed from each other in the scale of created things, are
nevertheless one in that they are alike created. They both belong in the
category of that-which-is-not-God and are separated from God by
infinitude itself.
Reticence and compulsion forever contend within the heart that would
speak of God.
How shall polluted mortals dare
To sing Thy glory or Thy grace?
Beneath Thy feet we lie afar,
And see but shadows of Thy face.
Isaac Watts
Yet we console ourselves with the knowledge that it is God Him-self who
puts it in our hearts to seek Him and makes it possible in some measure
to know Him, and He is pleased with even the feeblest effort to make Him
known.
If some watcher or holy one who has spent his glad centuries by the sea
of fire were to come to earth, how meaningless to him would be the
ceaseless chatter of the busy tribes of men. How strange to him and how
empty would sound the, flat, stale and profitless words heard in the
average pulpit from week to week.
And were such a one to speak on earth would he not speak of God? Would
he not charm and fascinate his hearers with rapturous descriptions of
the Godhead? And after hearing him could we ever again consent to listen
to anything less than theology, the doctrine of God? Would we not
thereafter demand of those who would presume to teach us that they speak
to us from the mount of divine vision or remain silent altogether?
When the psalmist saw the transgression of the wicked his heart told him
how it could be. ”There is no fear of God before his eyes,” he
explained, and in so saying revealed to us the psychology of sin. When
men no longer fear God, they transgress His laws without hesitation. The
fear of consequences is not deterrent when the fear of God is gone.
In olden days men of faith were said to ”walk in the fear of God” and to
”serve the Lord with fear.” However intimate their communion with God,
however bold their prayers, at the base of their religious life was the
conception of God as awesome and dreadful. This idea of God transcendent
rims through the whole Bible and gives color and tone to the character
of the saints. This fear of God was more than a natural apprehension of
danger; it was a nonrational dread, an acute feeling of personal
insufficiency in the presence of God the Almighty.
Wherever God appeared to men in Bible times the results were the same -
an overwhelming sense of terror and dismay, a wrenching sensation of
sinfulness and guilt. When God spoke, Abram stretched himself upon the
ground to listen. When Moses saw the Lord in the burning bush, he hid
his face in fear to look upon God. Isalah’s vision of God wrung from him
the cry, ”Woe is me!” and the confession, ”I am undone; because I am a
man of unclean lips.”
Daniel’s encounter with God was probably the most dreadful and wonderful
of them all. The prophet lifted up his eyes and saw One whose ”body also
was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his
eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to
polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a
multitude.” ”I Daniel alone saw the vision” he afterwards wrote, ”for
the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell
upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore I was left
alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me:
for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no
strength. Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice
of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward
the ground.”
These experiences show that a vision of the divine transcendence soon
ends all controversy between the man and his God. The fight goes out of
the man and he is ready with the conquered Saul to ask meekly, ”Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do?”
Conversely, the self-assurance of modern Christians, the basic levity
present in so many of our religious gatherings, the shocking disrespect
shown for the Person of God, are evidence enough of deep blindness of
heart.
Many call themselves by the name of Christ, talk much about God, and
pray to Him sometimes, but evidently do not know who He is. ”The fear of
the Lord is a fountain of life,” but this healing fear is today hardly
found among Christian men.
Once in conversation with his friend Eckermann, the poet Goethe turned
to thoughts of religion and spoke of the abuse of the divine name.
”People treat it,” he said, ”as if that incomprehensible and most high
Being, who is even beyond the reach of thought, were only their equal.
Otherwise they would not say ‘the Lord God, the dear God, the good God.’
This expression becomes to them, especially to the clergy, who have it
daily in their mouths, a mere phrase, a barren name, to which no thought
whatever is attached. If they were impressed by His greatness they would
be dumb, and through veneration unwilling to name Him.
Lord of all being, throned afar,
They glory flames from sun and star;
Center and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Lord of all life, below, above,
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
Before Thy ever-blazing throne
We ask no luster of our own.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
