An Immanent Diety

An important feature of Wiccan thought is the immanence or intimacy of the Goddess or Spirit in the natural world. Here Wicca challenges Christianity to once again give full expression in its theology of God. In classic Christian thought God is affirmed as being both transcendent and immanent. By transcendence, it is meant that God is a being separate from the creation and is sovereign over it. By immanence, it is meant that God's being is present everywhere within the creation. Another way of looking at these terms would be to think of "ultimate things" and "intimate things". So when speaking about transcendent things, we are talking about what is ultimate. When we speak of immanence we are talking about the intimacy of God.

Christians have excelled in emphasizing God's transcendence, but often been slipshod in saying much about his immanence. The Bible, however, is very strong in affirming the presence of God's Spirit within the creation. The Hebrew word ruah appears more than three hundred times and is translated according to each context as spirit, wind and breath. God's ruah hovered over the earth in the act of creation (Gen. 1:2) and continues to maintain, sustain and renew the creation (Ps. 36:10; 54:4; 104; 139:7; Acts 17:28; Heb. 1:3). It was in this vein that Paul could share with the Athenian philosophers that God 'is not far from each one of us' (Acts 17:27). As Wiccans affirm the immanence of deity, we are compelled to refocus on this truth and redevelop a theology that seriously embraces it.

A case in point here is the evangelical apologist Craig Hawkins who has written about Wicca. Hawkins acknowledges that the Bible teaches God is both transcendent and immanent. He states, 'God both transcends and is immanent to us and all of creation. That is, God is both near to creation and he transcends it' (Witchcraft, p. 129). Amazingly he makes no further remarks about God's immanence other than to quote three Biblical passages in support. He does not seem to recognize that the Wiccan stance about the immanence of the Goddess is saying something back to Christians about how deficient our theology has become. We give lip service to the notion of immanence, but do not seek to clothe our theology in solid flesh on the matter. Hawkins' apologetic to Wiccans thus falls short on this point. He fails to treat immanence as a point of common ground for some effective dialogue.

For those Wiccans who affirm pantheism, we have an opportunity to present a challenge. One of the deepest, reflective features of the Bible is that God is a personal being who as a triunity of persons is eternally involved in relationship. One central affirmation is that God is love, and love is something expressed in relationships. The persons of the Godhead are in an eternal love relationship with each other. As the creator, God has brought the universe into existence and within it created beings that can enter into this eternal relationship too. The Biblical revelation emphasizes that God is present throughout the creation, but is a being to be distinguished from the creation. Jesus' teaching about God clearly presents the Father as a personal being, not as an impersonal higher consciousness. The early followers of Jesus, such as Paul and Barnabas, rejected the offer of worship given to them in Lystra (Acts 14), and they reiterated that God is a personal being. Pantheism and monotheism are mutually exclusive views.