Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 45:178 (Apr 1888)
Article: The Divine Immanency
Author: James Douglas

BSac 45:178 (April 1888) p. 329

The Divine Immanency

The Rev. James Douglas

The allegation is so often made, either that there is no distinction between the doctrine of the divine immanency and that of pantheism, or that the doctrine of the divine immanency tends to pantheism, that it seems necessary at the outset to state with some elaborateness the distinction that exists between them. The analysis of the words themselves, “pantheism” and “immanence,” so different in their origin and significance, it might well seem should be sufficient. The unlikeness of these words is by no means to be accounted for on the ground that one is derived from the Greek and the other from the Latin. Their original signification is entirely different. One affirms that the totality of existence, not merely has its origin in God, but is itself God, and that the Deity has no separable existence apart from the material universe; that God and matter are one, inseparable and indivisible: the all is God.

The other affirms only a single quality or mode of the divine existence: not by any means limiting the divine existence to that mode or condition, but affirming the fact of such existence that God is immanent in nature or matter, as its inner energizing force—the life of all life, the force of all force—which is, as all scientists now affirm, the substratum of matter.

The doctrine of the divine immanency stands opposed to that of the existence of the material universe apart from God, although a doctrine calling itself Christian, and even orthodox, because held and transmitted to us by the early

BSac 45:178 (April 1888) p. 330

Christian Fathers, whose conceptions of Deity were the result of the culture and training of the heathen religion in which they were reared. In fact, it is almost impossible for those who have not had a philosophic culture, and have not been accustomed to the conception of invisible forces as realities, to have a clear idea of the existence of omnipresent spirit, as a real although an invisible power, a veritable entity and true substance. For those who have always associated the idea of valid real existence with visible and tangible forms, it is difficult to gain the conception of an invisible, omnipresent spirit. In metaphysical exactness we correctly affirm that such a conception is impossible. We can only have the idea of such existence.

The doctrine of the divine immanency really affirms only one of the conditions of the existence of the Omnipresent Being. If He is not within as well as without the particles of matter, He is not omnipresent. Again, if He is not the force and the life within the cell building up all organisms; if He is not the force within the atom that gives it its power of attracti...