That in which a being participates or tends, even if this tendency cannot be put into action without external intervention. God’s immanence in the world (e.g. “continuous creation”) is a “reflection” of His transcendence (His inaccessible Beyond or Above).
More specifically
Immanence designates what is within a being — that in which it participates or toward which it tends, even if such a tendency cannot be brought into act without the intervention of an external principle. One may say, for example, that form is immanent to matter insofar as it is the internal principle that actualizes it, although matter cannot produce its own form.
The immanence of God in the world, as expressed in the doctrine of continuous creation, means that God is present at the heart of all things as their permanent source of being. Creation is not only an initial event but an uninterrupted donation of Being. Yet this immanence does not suppress divine transcendence; on the contrary, it is the reflection of it, since God remains absolutely beyond the world, inaccessible in His essence.
More precisely, immanence stands in contrast not to transcendence, but to externality: what is immanent acts or resides from within, not through spatial contact. A classical metaphysical perspective affirms that the Principle is simultaneously transcendent — insofar as it exceeds all beings — and immanent to all, insofar as it is their very act of being. Augustine’s statement that God is “more inward to me than I am to myself” expresses this intrinsic presence.
We may distinguish several modes of immanence:
— natural immanence, by which beings possess within themselves their own principle of motion or organization;
— ontological immanence, by which all beings participate in Being;
— divine immanence, by which God is present to every creature as its act of existence.
This last mode is never a closed immanence, but an immanence of participation: it does not confine the world to itself but opens it toward its transcendent Principle. Conversely, strictly “immanentist” views that deny transcendence reduce the sacred to the order of the world, failing to recognize the source that grounds it.
Authentic immanence is thus intelligible only in relation to transcendence: if God is immanent to the world, it is because He infinitely exceeds it. Hence Christian theology rejects both radical immanentism (which abolishes transcendence) and dualistic exteriority (which separates God from creation).
For further reading
- Aristotle, Metaphysics — On form as an immanent principle.
- Plotinus, Enneads — On the presence of the One in all things and beyond all.
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 8 — On the immanent presence of God as the act of being.
- Meister Eckhart, German Sermons — On God as the ground of the soul.
- Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia — On participation in the Absolute.
- Henri de Lubac, Le Surnaturel, Aubier — On the union of creation and grace.
- Jean Borella, Lumières de la théologie mystique (L’Âge d’Homme, 2002) — On participation, divine presence, and symbolic intelligence.
- Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press); trans. of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2022); it. Sui sentieri della metafisica ; sp. ¿Qué es la metafísica? ; ge. Was ist Metaphysik? — On immanence and transcendence, participation, and continuous creation.