That which lies beyond all things and remains inaccessible (by continuous effort) to human nature.
God is not in the world as an animal vital principle animating the living being (Lalande).
God is paradoxically both transcendent (beyond) and immanent (at the heart or foundation of all).

More precisely

Transcendence refers to the principial superiority of a reality that radically surpasses the created order — whether physical, psychic, or even intelligible.
It refers to what cannot be attained by human faculties on their own.

In classical metaphysics, transcendence is associated with the uncreated, the Absolute, the Principle, situated “beyond being.”
It does not express spatial distance, but ontological hierarchy: what is transcendent is not elsewhere, but higher in the order of reality.

Immanence refers to the presence of this same principle within beings.
In traditional metaphysics, there is no contradiction between transcendence and immanence: the same Principle is both beyond all and within all.

Thus, God is transcendent as principial source and immanent as interior presence.
Transcendence preserves divine Majesty;
immanence guarantees the participation of creatures in their Principle.

Transcendence does not imply absence or remoteness: it expresses the sovereignty of the Absolute, which is limited by nothing, even while present to creatures in supra-natural modes.

Further reading

  • Plato, Republic VI — the Good “beyond being.”
  • Plotinus, Enneads — the One transcending Intellect.
  • Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology — transcendence and negative way.
  • Meister Eckhart, Sermons — Deity beyond God.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae — God as subsistent being beyond world.
  • Nicholas of Cusa, De docta ignorantia — transcendence and coincidence of opposites.
  • Spinoza, Ethics — tension between transcendence and immanence.
  • Jean Borella, The Crisis of Religious Symbolism — transcendence, immanence, participation.
  • Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone — analysis of transcendence / immanence.
  • Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Knowledge and the Sacred — transcendence and the nature of Intellect.