ALBISETTIAN PSYCHOSPIRITUAL ANALYSIS

TRANSCENDENCE

The impossibility of a human being’s seeing the face of God points to God’s transcendence and to the impossibility of manipulating or controlling Him. But today, in this highly technological period in history – a time also of confusion about values and about the meaning of life – the term “transcendence” has been emptied of real meaning. Most commonly it is understood to mean that God is transcendent in the sense that He is infinitely distant and different from man. This understanding over time has come to mean that God is also distant and indifferent to man’s ultimate destiny. And this has resulted in an estrangement and alienation of man from God in his everyday living – to a net break between heaven and earth.

To my way of thinking, in my Albisettian Psychospiritual Analysis, God is above man, not because He is distant from him, not because He is indifferent to his humanity, but, instead, because He is man’s very foundation. Like the roots are for a tree and the stone or cement foundation for a house.

So God’s transcendence over man is inclusive, not exclusive – not a question of alienation and separation, but of intimacy. As a mother’s womb contains the fetus. Or like the circumference of a circle contains its center, which doesn’t exclude its periphery but whose periphery allows its center to exist. It defines, delimits, or delineates the field of life, outside of which there is only death.

SUGGESTIONS TO DEEPEN AN UNDERSTANDING OF ALBISETTIAN PSYCHOSPIRITUAL ANALYSIS

The strength of God’s being is such that man cannot stand against it.

(Exodus 33:20) “My face, God said, you cannot see, for no human being can see me and survive.”

God transcends the entire universe.

(Psalm 146:6) “God who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them. He keeps faith for ever.”

The unspiritual man has confused and perverted the power of technology. He doesn’t believe in God or in His values but believes, if there is a God, He is distant, indifferent, and estranged from everyday life.

(Isaiah 29:16) “How perverse you are! Is the potter no better than the clay? Something that was made, can it say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’? Or a pot say of the potter, ‘He does not know his job’?

(Romans 9:20, 21) “But you – who do you think you, a human being, are, to answer back to God? Something that was made, can it say to its maker: why did you make me this shape? A potter surely has the right over his clay…”

Inclusive, intimate transcendence…God takes care of all of his creatures who search for and love Him.

(Deuteronomy 30:19, 20) “Today, I call heaven and earth to witness against you: I am offering you life or death, blessing or curse. Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the love of God, obeying his voice, holding fast to him; for in this your life consists, and on this depends the length of time that you stay in the country which God swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that he would give them.”

(Psalm 147:11) “His pleasure is in those who fear him, in those who hope in his faithful love.”

(Psalm 145:14) “He is close to all who call upon him, all who call on him from the heart.”

(Proverbs 27:11) “Learn to be wise, my child, and gladden my heart, that I may have an answer for anyone who insults me.”

(Psalm 78:40, 41) “How often they defied him in the desert! How often they grieved him in the wastelands! Repeatedly they challenged God, provoking the Holy One of Israel.”

(Psalm 25:14) “Only those who fear God possess his secret and his covenant, for their understanding. [Ain}

(Psalm 145:3) “Great is God and worthy of all praise, his greatness beyond all reckoning.

(Psalm 14:3-6) “He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds, he counts out the number of the stars, and gives each one of them a name. Our Lord is great, all-powerful, his wisdom beyond all telling. God sustains the poor, and humbles the wicked to the ground.”

(Zechariah 2: 12b, 13a) “Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye. Now look, I shall wave my hand over them and they will be plundered by those whom they have enslaved.”

(James 4:8-10) “The nearer you go to God, the nearer God will come to you. Clean your hands, you sinners, and clear your minds, you waverers…Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will lift you up.”

Field of life

(I John 4:8) “Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love.”

(John 13:35) “It is by your love for one another that everyone will recognize you as my disciples.”

Another passage that speaks about divine transcendence

(Isaiah 55:1-11) “Oh, come to the water all you who are thirsty; though you have no money, come! Buy and eat; come, buy wine and milk without money, free! Why spend money on what cannot nourish and your wages on what fails to satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and you will have good things to eat and rich food to enjoy. Pay attention, come to me; listen, and you will live. I shall make an everlasting covenant with you in fulfillment of the favors promised to David. Look, I have made him a witness to peoples, a leader and lawgiver to peoples. Look, you will summon a nation unknown to you, a nation unknown to you will hurry to you for the sake of God, your God, because the Holy One of Israel has glorified you. Seek out God while he is still to be found, call to him while he is still near. Let the wicked abandon his way and the evil one his thoughts. Let him turn back to God who will take pity on him, to our God, for he is rich in forgiveness; for my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways, declares the Lord. For the heavens are as high above earth as my ways are above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts. For, as the rain and the snow come down from the sky and do not return before having watered the earth, fertilizing it and making it germinate to provide seed for the sower and food to eat, so it is with the word that goes from my mouth.; it will not return to me unfulfilled or before having carried out my good pleasure and having achieved what it was sent to do.”