What does it mean that God is transcendent?

We read, however, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” It is clear from this first verse in the Bible that God existed before the creation that He is transcendent, that is to say, as to God’s being He is supreme, beyond all limitations, distinct from all that creation which has proceeded from Him.

It also contains a denial of Pantheism — an idea of the ancients and of the heathen world, but more recently revived in Christendom as one of the buttresses of "New Theology." The god of the Pantheist is simply the spirit or essence of Nature. He expresses himself in Nature, but is not to be known or even conceived of as outside of or apart from Nature. The Pantheist professes a god who is immanent in Nature but not transcendent above it. The God of verse 1 is clearly One outside of Nature and infinitely above it, seeing He made it, and therefore existed before it. From Him all that which we call Nature proceeds.

Another thing that is negatived is the very popular idea of PANTHEISM, that God is not to be thought of as outside nature and above it, but as only dwelling in nature, somewhat as the electrical current dwells in insulated cables. God is immanent — that is the word they use — and they do not believe in a transcendent God, a God that stands outside of and distinct from nature. You must merely think of Him as a Supreme Mind, a Sense dwelling in all things; that is the 'New Theology'. This Pantheistic idea is plainly denied. You have God before creation, and God outside of nature. The 1st of Genesis clearly presents Him not as an immanent God, but as a transcendent God, One that stands outside of and distinct from creation.

But clearly Genesis 1 refutes Pantheism. We read, “In the beginning God created.” If God created He existed before He created. The carpenter must exist before he can make a table. God is transcendental, that is, He exists before and outside the universe, which is the result of Divine mental conception, so that through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that “things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Heb. 11:3). The writer of Hebrews 11:3 is in accord with the writer of Genesis 1:1.

We have seen that this chapter, from the first verse onwards, refutes Unitarianism, for GOD — Elohim — in the plural occurs no less than 32 times. We have seen how it refutes Evolution, for every species reproduces itself "after his kind." We have just seen how Christian Science is refuted; and now as we open Genesis 2, we meet with a statement that reinforces what has been apparent all through Genesis 1; namely, that God is outside and above all that He created and made. Thus, on the seventh day when creation was what we may call "a going concern," God is said to have rested. Thus Pantheism — the idea that God is only to be conceived of as immanent in creation, pervading all nature — is wholly denied. He may indeed act in nature, but He is transcendent, essentially above it in Person and Being.

God inhabits eternity. He fills all things. He is everywhere. He is the uncreated, self-existent source of all things, yet knowing no source for Himself. He created all things out of nothing. Such a conception satisfies because it is beyond conception. We bow before this glorious Being with holy joy. Our hearts trust Him, for He is utterly beyond the littleness and frailty and sinfulness of men. He is in one sense unmoved by any impulse, save that which springs from Himself. He is all goodness, all love, all righteousness, all holiness, all faithfulness. Every attribute and quality that we can admire is absolute in its fulness in Him. In short, a Being who is love, who is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, satisfies the cry of our hungry hearts for omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, all serve His love, and therefore serve us. This could not be known without revelation, nor fully known apart from the Cross, where God manifested Himself fully in Christ.

As to omnipresence, God has no more to do with space than with time. He has created all things in a way apprehensible thus to us. In this creation nothing escapes Him. He is, morally speaking, omnipresent. He is not of, or in it, but pervades it. He is "through all"! He upholds everything, as He creates everything. He is not morally concerned in any motive (save as working in man in grace), but not a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.

These great features of Essential Godhead stand, as it were, on the outskirts of revelation and are beyond us for ever. If that were all we had, it would make us shrivel up into our own nothingness, as creatures of a day: Deity in its essential fulness and greatness could but keep us at a distance. There is that which stands for ever beyond revelation, a shoreless and fathomless ocean of Godhead. Here we come up against a wall, which says, thus far shalt thou come, and no further. This is the unseeable and unapproachable God, in His essential and impersonal Being as One.

God, who bounds everything else, is Himself without bounds. He sets bounds to the sea; Huc usque; "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further"; He sets bounds to the angels; they, like the cherubims, move and stand at His appointment (Ezek. 10:16), but He is infinite without bounds. He who can span the heavens, and weigh the earth in scales, must needs be infinite (Isa. 40:22). "Do not I fill heaven and earth?" (Jer. 23:24). The humble heart is His throne, in regard to His gracious presence (Isa. 57:15); and heaven is His throne, in regard to His glorious presence (Isa. 66:1); and yet neither of these thrones will hold Him, for the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.

(1) "Dominion and fear are with Him." Who can declare the infinite greatness of God, who fills heaven and earth, and transcends all His limitless creation? "The heavens, even the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee." Nor is this infinitude of being powerless; He reigns over all things, the government is His — "He everywhere hath sway, And all things serve His might."