Transcendent/immanent God

God exists outside of our time and spacial dimensions, and as such can move freely through or ignore them, or "transcend" them.
Like how you transcend two dimensional space.

How so?

God the Father remains seperate, but enters the creation of time/space/matter through the Word and Spirit. Specifically the Word/Son first for our sake.

And anyone who is talking about God in some transcendent sense doesn't know him.. or ever has any hope of knowing him. They are either liars or deluded. Especially the ones who've claimed to reach some sort of transcendent state themselves (i.e. Buddhas). "No one comes to the Father except through me," as Jesus said. As Christians, our focus first starts with Jesus, not in philosophy or seeking a trancendent, unknowing-ness of God or the universe.. but in the down to earth nature of the God-Man Jesus Christ, who very much can be known and loved. And through him, we can know the Father.

In light of that, be always on the lookout for anything that erodes notions about Christ's validity (such as a lot of modern biblical teaching), but still claims to teach about God. You can't teach about God, and then destroy scripture and Christ's testimony at the same time. It's like burning a bridge.

And every expression outside the Son is imperfect or a falsehood. Or worse, like I indicated earlier, will lead to some kind of pantheism (my IP changed, but I'm the same poster a few posts up who touched on this). Unredeemed man only has a vague notion of God, but ascribes all kinds of creaturely/created aspects to him or tries to make "analogies" (like the stupidity of the "analogia entis"…i.e. a God "comprehended" in created things.. be it sunsets, animals, taking sacramental symbols too far away from the full incarnation of Christ, etc., etc.. It's all the same nonsense, and eventually conditions the mind to accept a "universalism" that believes God is revealed everywhere in different cultures, be it Hindu or Buddha or aboriginal or anything outside the explicit revelation of Christ). One indicator that God isn't known these various ways (as the Catholic church is somehow teaching now) is in that story of St. Paul when he encountered the Greeks and their temples and idols. He didn't say "Hey, look at this statue of Aphrodite. Or look at Zeus. These are all expressions of the transcendent God." No, he never did anything so grotesque. He chose the lone monument "To the Unknown God", and started preaching from there, saying the Unknown God they acknowledged is actually the Creator, and can be known through Jesus Christ.

OK. Why are you talking about pantheism?

Sorry, panentheism. It still applies as I'm dismissing these philosophical notions of theism as having any kind of fellowship with orthodox teaching. Christianity is not theism. It's revelation. The actual first starting point in Orthodoxy is Jesus Christ. Not an understanding of God's nature in an abstract sense. Talking about God in any other sense than revelation is the trap the West has fallen into (and shows in practice fully now). Be it's the church apologists or science or secular philosophers. None of it engages God through the incarnation as the actual starting point.

It actually could all lead to pantheism though.. since it becomes such a load of nonsense from all sides that people just embrace each other's notions as having some form of the truth.. since they all apparently believe in a generic god who can be discussed in these stupid, transcendent ways.

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Not very open, is it bruv?

That's not what open theism means retard