If this realistic principle -accepted by the theistic metaphysicians Charles S. It is the data of an awareness that are in the awareness, not vice versa. Does our mere contemplation of the world make us immanent in that world? When we remember past experiences, does that put our present consciousness back into those experiences? If I think of someone in Hong Kong, does that put me in Hong Kong? The form of idealism referred to by Webster's definition is no longer widely held. The idealist view referred to above is less obviously intelligible. David Hume pointed this out in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion through the character Cleanthes. If our thoughts do not influence our behavior, then we know nothing of any influence of mind or spirit on the physical world.
The relation of mind to body in human (and other) animals is the relation of mind to physical reality, to "matter," that we most directly and surely know. In this I take Whitehead to have been mistaken.
This proposal (in the Timaeus ) was, however, seldom followed until recent times, and was rejected by Whitehead. In what sense is God in the universe? The suggestion in Webster's, attributed to "idealists," is that the divine presence is "like that of a conscious self in the world of that self." Or, attributed to "realists," it is like "that of a self in its organism and its behavior." The latter suggestion makes Plato a realist, for it was he who in the West first thought of God as the World Soul, whose body is the entire cosmos of nondivine things and persons. Freedom to do this seems nonsensical when affirmed of God. The objection to this once-popular view is that since any creatures are better than none (that being as such is primarily good and only secondarily bad is a classical doctrine), God would be making the worst possible choice by not creating at all. Not every theologian agrees with those who think to compliment God by affirming divine freedom to have simply no creatures. God's "real being apart from the universe" means, in such a view, a vantage apart from our current universe, not apart from all universes. What may be subject to such choice are the particular laws that will govern a cosmic epoch about to arise. Whitehead held that having a universe, some universe or other, is, in principle, inherent in God's nature and not subject to divine choice. We see a partial return to that position in Alfred North Whitehead's hypothesis of "cosmic epochs," each with its own natural laws. Origen thought God had created an infinity of universes in succession and never lacked relation to some actual creatures. But it also might mean that there was a different universe before our own. "Prior to the universe" seems to suggest a time when God was alone, with no cosmos of creatures to relate to -first a creator not actually creating, then one creating. If God is everywhere in the world and also in some sense beyond the world, then God certainly surpasses all ordinary objects of respect or love. It is less obvious that immanence is a value term, but ubiquity, "being everywhere," comes closer to expressing a unique property. It is clear that transcendence is a value term expressing the unique excellence of God, because of which worship -utmost devotion or love -is the appropriate attitude toward the being so described. According to theism, immanence occurs in various degrees, more in the personal than the impersonal, in the good than in the evil." According to Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, second edition, unabridged, to transcend is to "ascend beyond, excel." The term is used of the "relation of God to the universe of physical things and finite spirits, as being … in essential nature, prior to it, exalted above it, and having real being apart from it." Immanence, defined as "presence in the world … in pantheism is thought of as uniform, God … equally present in the personal and the impersonal, in the evil and the good.
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