There’s a slight false step, in the midst of a very helpful point, in Bruce Ellis Benson’s superb Graven Ideologies : He has been explaining the “double transcendence” of Platonism – metaphysical (Truth’s being is beyong the sensible world) and epistemological (human beings can get beyond the sensible world to have contact with truth and the world of ideas). He argues, rightly, that the epistemological transcendence cancels the metaphysical: “If I am able to transcend the boundaries of my world and my time, then that which I seek to understand is itself no longer transcendent . . . . If I can transcend my finitude to understand God in his fullness, then God is – at least to me – no longer transcendent . . . . Either God is transcendent and so my knowledge of him never fully transcends the limits of my time and place, or I become transcendent and God thereby becomes fully immanent to me.” As David Hart has put it, Platonism does not arrive at any true transcendence.
But Benson goes on to suggest that Christianity offers a “middle ground” in that it affirms that God is both immanent and transcendent. And he adds, “to whatever extend God becomes immanent, to that extent he loses transcendence.” This is the false step, and suggests that Benson is still to some degree working in a Platonic setting. God’s immanence is in no way at the cost of His transcendence; on the contrary, God is immanent only and precisely because He is transcendent of all created limitations. Besides, how is this picture of transcendence and immanence – that they trade off – consistent with the incarnation?
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Church in the Age of Therapy
In 1966, Philip Rieff wrote in The Triumph of the Therapeutic that “Religious man was born to…
Canada’s Deadliest Blind Spot
On September 20, the Daily Mail ran a story with the provocative headline, “Our 83-year-old Christian grandmother…
The Faithful Joy of Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen
Dolly Parton and Fulton Sheen seem to have had little in common. She favored rhinestones; he wore…
