039. III. Omnipresence Of God.
III. Omnipresence Of God.
1. Notion of an Infinite Essence.—The omnipresence of God, however sure in its reality, has been regarded as very difficult for speculative thought. Much of this perplexity, however, arises from a misconception of the question; particularly from the rather common theological opinion that an essential omnipresence of God is the necessary ground of his omniscience and the potency of his will. This will appear as we proceed. The doctrine of an infinite essence of being should be carefully guarded in both thought and expression. Otherwise it may become the foundation of pantheism. In all true theism the divine essence is pure, absolute spirit. All sense of magnitude or spatial extension is alien to such a nature, and should be excluded from our notion of the divine ubiquity. Much of our experience is a hindrance to this exclusion. As so many existences known to us in sense-perception appear in the form of magnitude or spatial extension, it is the more difficult for us to dissociate the notion of such extension from any form of essential being. Thus if we think of God as essentially present in all worlds we tend to think of his essence as a magnitude reaching all in a mode of extension, and as filling all the interspaces. The notion is utterly inconsistent with pure spirituality of being. If, however, we still assert the essential ubiquity of God, but hold our thought rigidly to the notion of pure spiritual being, we must at once be conscious of an utter incapacity to form any conception of the manner in which he is thus omnipresent. Shall we deny the essential ubiquity because of its mystery, or hold fast to it notwithstanding the mystery? We shall find that the question of such a presence of God possesses very little interest when we attain the real truth of his ubiquity. The real truth is not in the sense of a ubiquitous divine essence. In such a view the essence is considered simply in itself, without the personal attributes. As such, it cannot exercise the agency which must ever be a reality of the divine presence. Indeed, personal agency is for us the only vital reality of this presence. A mere essential presence is not only without agency, but must be without any distinction with respect to places or existences: must be the same with forms of physical nature as with morally constituted personalities; the same with the ethically evil as with the ethically good; the same in the empty space as in the living Church; the same in hell as in heaven. Nothing could be more aberrant from any rational or scriptural sense of the divine ubiquity. The notion of an omnipresent divine essence as the necessary ground of omniscience and omnipotence involves insuperable difficulty. Omniscience and omnipotence are purely personal attributes. Hence the necessity of an essential ubiquity to these attributes can be asserted only on the assumption that God can have knowledge and exert energy only where he is locally present. If this be true, then personality in God must itself be so broadened in extension as to be omnipresent. Nothing could be more inconceivable or more contradictory to the nature of personality. In the light of reason and consciousness, as in the nature of its constitutive facts, personality is self-centered and above all spatial quality or relation. Neither knowledge nor the energy of will can have any dependence on so alien a quality as extension in spiritual essence and personality. The truth of the divine ubiquity must lift it above all spatial quality and relation and hold it as a purely personal reality.
2. Omnipresence through Personal Perfections.—We have previously stated that the personal agency of God is the vital reality of his presence. This truth is so obvious that it requires neither elucidation nor proof. There is an infinite plenitude of personal agency in the omniscience and omnipotence of God. His omniscience embraces the universe of realities, and all are subject to his omnipotence, according to his wisdom and pleasure. In the plenitude and perfection of these personal attributes God is omnipresent in the truest, deepest sense of the term. This doctrine obviates the insuperable difficulties of an extensive or spatial ubiquity, and, instead of grounding omniscience and omnipotence in the omnipresence of God, finds the reality of his omnipresence in the plenitude of those attributes.[243]
[243]
3. The True Sense of Scripture.—The Scriptures repeat the sublime utterances of the divine ubiquity. These utterances are the expression of a personal ubiquity through the perfection of knowledge and the plenitude of power. “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence” (Psalms 89:7)? These words are the center of a long passage which expresses the omnipresence of God in terms of the deepest intensity. In these terms we find the reality and the absoluteness of this omnipresence in the omniscience of God and the omnipotence of his will. While God dwells in heaven, he also dwells with the contrite and humble in spirit to revive and comfort them (Isaiah 57:15). These are purely personal ministries, and, therefore, signify a presence of God with the contrite and humble in his personal agency. “Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool” (Isaiah 66:1). Here is first the expression of the greatness and majesty of God; then the expression of his kingly government. He is enthroned in heaven and rules over all the realms of existence. In the representation God is personally local, but his personal agency is every-where operative. Thus he is present in all the universe in the comprehension of his knowledge and the infinite potency of his will. “Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:23-24). There is no interpretation of the omnipresence of God as here expressed except through the infinite perfection of his personal attributes. “For in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This text is central in St. Paul’s sublime expression of the being and providence of God. He is Creator and Ruler of all—Lord of heaven and earth. He giveth to all life, and breath, and all things. The sense of the broader and more detailed statements centers in the words cited. How is it that we live, and move, and have our being in God? Only through his personal agency. Any departure from this sense may run into the extravagance of mysticism, on the one hand, or into the bleakness of pantheism, on the other. There is no hylozoism. in the theism of the Scriptures. The agency of God, in whatever realm, is purely and solely a personal agency. The immanence of God in the universe must leave his personal transcendence complete. Through the infinite efficiencies of his personal agency all systems of worlds and all orders of rational and moral intelligences were created; through the same agency all are preserved. God is present with all—omnipresent in his personal agency. The omnipresence of God is a great truth: but as it is solely through the perfection of his personal attributes and in efficiencies of his personal agency, it cannot itself in any distinctive sense be classed as an attribute.