Religion is a two-story affair, to adapt a phrase from
James Feibleman. It is in part an empirical and historical
matter, concerned with contingent fact about human nature
and traditions. The idea of God, however, is nonempiri-
cal and metaphysical. Dealing as they do with what is eternal
and necessary, including the eternal and necessary aspects of
God, metaphysical statements are true if they make coherent
sense and false otherwise. To admit that one has no idea of
the answers is to imply that one has no idea of the question;
for they are either self-answering or else confused. It is hu-
manly difficult to admit this confusion. If one could clearly
see that and how one is confused, would one still be con-
fused? I feel confident there will be other writers in this col-
lective enterprise whose confusions will contrast with mine.
And there is something to be said for making one’s partiali-
ties explicit.
SEE ALSO Anthropomorphism; Attributes of God; Panthe-
ism and Panentheism; Sky; Supreme Beings; Theism.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
My article “Pantheism and Panentheism” in this encyclopedia
deals with closely related topics; its bibliography is relevant
here. My Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Alba-
ny, N.Y., 1984) is a somewhat popular, nontechnical presen-
tation of my own version of the idea of God as supreme love
exalted above ordinary love by dual transcendence. My arti-
cle “Transcendence” appears in An Encyclopedia of Religion,
edited by Vergilius Ferm (New York, 1945), pp. 791–792;
see also in the same work my articles “Hume, David,” “Om-
nipotence,” “Omnipresence,” and “Perfect, Perfection,” as
well as Herman Hausheer’s “Fechner, Gustav Theodor.”
For a distinguished Jewish theologian’s idea of God, see John C.
Merkle’s The Genesis of Faith: The Depth Theology of Abra-
ham Joshua Heschel (New York, 1985); see also Heschel’s
God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism (New York,
1955). Heschel’s view is remarkably close to the neoclassical
view, although both doctrines were worked out indepen-
dently. Edgar S. Brightman’s The Problem of God (Nashville,
1930) is an approximation to the dual transcendence view;
see also Brightman’s A Philosophy of Religion (1940; West-
port, Conn., 1969), especially chapters 7, 10, and 11, for a
fine historical sketch of the idea that God must have finite
as well as infinite aspects. Brightman’s conceptualization is
in line with the trend to turn away from the extremist strate-
gy that prevailed from Aristotle to early modern times toward
a middle-ground strategy, in which God is neither exclusive-
ly infinite nor exclusively finite but is, in suitable divine
ways, both.New Sources
Faulconer, James E., ed. Transcendence in Philosophy and Religion.
Bloomington, 2003.
Hyland, Drew A. Finitude and Transcendence in Platonic Dialogue.
Albany, 1995.
Polakola, Jolana. Searching for the Divine in Contemporary Philoso-
phy: Tensions between the Immanent and the Transcendent.
Translated by Jan Veleska. Lewiston, N.Y., 1999.
Roy, Louis. Transcendent Experiences: Phenomenology and Critique.
Toronto, 2001.
Seligman, Adam B. Modernity’s Wager; Authority, and Transcen-
dence. Princeton, N.J., 2000.
Stone, Jerome Arthur. The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A
Naturalist Philosophy of Relgion. Albany, N.Y., 1992.CHARLES HARTSHORNE (1987)
Revised Bibliography9286 TRANSCENDENCE AND IMMANENCE