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{"id":23714,"date":"2014-05-12T11:28:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-12T15:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=23714"},"modified":"2014-05-12T11:28:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-12T15:28:00","slug":"the-physical-presence-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2014\/05\/the-physical-presence-of-god.html","title":{"rendered":"The Physical Presence of God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ In his sermon on Sunday, my pastor Tom Bartley mentioned a conversation he had, in which a person had said that our situation today is different from the time of Jesus, because we no longer have \u201cthe physical presence of God\u201d with us. Tom wasn\u2019t happy with that statement, and gave examples of acts of kindness that deserve to be considered \u201cthe physical presence of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wonder whether we can take this completely seriously, and not only as a pointer towards something else supposedly happening behind the scenes, particularly within the context of panentheism<\/a> or a radically-emergent theism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When some talk about the \u201cphysical presence of God\u201d they mean, most likely, Jesus, understood as God incarnate, having come into the world in a way that God is not normally present.<\/p>\n

But if one views all things as existing within God, and\/or God as a reality that emerges out of the interaction of all things, then we can literally say that \u201cGod is love.\u201d When there are acts of compassion, they are pointer towards transcendence, towards a reality that is not something else than these actions and events, but the sum totality of them.<\/p>\n

In some ancient stories included within the Bible, God did indeed have a physical presence \u2013 God could go with the Israelites, or stay behind<\/a>. Few people if any think in those precise terms now<\/a>. The question is how we ought to think differently in our present context.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"