§ 53. By the Omnipresence of God we understand the absolutely spaceless causality of God, which conditions not only all that is spatial, but space itself as well.
- This proposition is quite similar in verbal form to the foregoing; and the idea of omnipresence, indeed, is only taken up here because the contrast between the divine causality and the finite in the term eternity has been predominantly referred to time. It seems unnecessary then to do more than to carry over in the same form everything belonging to the former proposition, changing time into space. In religious poetry from of old, indeed, this conception has been more splendidly and more widely honoured than that of eternity.1 Indeed, it must be said in general that far more religious moments evoke the idea of omnipresence, and therefore it is a more living idea and has a more general currency. The relation of God and time expressed in the conception of eternity, on the other hand, pervades the religious life to a lesser degree, and is marked by a colder tone in consequence. This is probably due to the fact that the majority of religious people are bound up in their consciousness with the present. The equivalence of divine causality with the whole content of the finite enables every act to excite the religious consciousness, every act, that is, in which we take up into ourselves a part of the natural order or identify ourselves with such a part, every moment of our self-consciousness as it extends over the whole world. And thus, whenever a person either moves or is moved, he is also drawn to a conscious apprehension of the power of the Highest directly near to him in all finite causality. It is natural, then, that we are far more prone to transfer ourselves in thought to the farthest point of space, which after all comes immediately to our apprehension, than to go back to the remotest time. And yet from our standpoint this difference appears unjustifiable, however natural it may be; and it is incumbent on Dogmatics as a scientific discipline to see whether it can remove the discrepancy arising from the immediate juxtaposition in this way of the two ideas. At the same time it must take care lest the greater vividness of the conception now to be dealt with should be associated with a large admixture of the sensuous, and should be affected by it.
Now, just as the divine causality as eternity may easily appear to have lost its invariableness if the non-existence of the finite causality be asserted prior to its existence, in the same way a like result easily appears to hold in connexion with space. For we have to admit that finite causality is greater and less at different points in space; least, i.e. where the space is occupied with so-called ‘dead’ forces, and greater where there is a greater development of life, and greatest where clear human consciousness is active, and so upwards. Now as against this it must be said, first of all, that, of course, no distinction in the almighty presence of God is hereby posited, but only in the receptivity of the finite being to the causal activity of which the divine presence is related.2 For thus the receptivity of man is greater for it than that of any other earthly being, but amongst men it is greatest in the religious. Yet even this only becomes plain when it is remembered that, according to the statement given in our proposition, the divine omnipresence ought to be thought of as completely spaceless,3 and consequently not as greater or smaller at different places.
- It is, however, difficult successfully to avoid all such definitions as put something spatial into the divine omnipresence, if we try to carry over the poetical and popular descriptions (which almost always set forth the space-conditioning causality of God by the figure of unlimited space itself), into the dogmatic sphere. It is no less difficult if we begin by looking on the divine omnipresence, without relation to the divine causality as an inactive attribute. In relation to the first, we may not without advantage employ the description of the divine causality, as current in Greek theology, by the expressions ἀδιαστασία and συνουσία—both, of course, related to God’s almighty presence. For the negation of all remoteness expresses the contrast with finite causality, which—as well in the case of the spiritual as in that of the corporeal—becomes weakened by distance from its place of origin or central point, so that each force, as it is no longer present where it no longer works, is also less as such where it effects less. This difference it is which is denied, and thus an everywhere uniform self-identity of the divine causality is affirmed. The relation to space, however, which lurks in the expression ‘not outside one another,’ and thus also in ‘everywhere uniform self-identity,’ applies only to the finite as that which is effected, but not to God. The same is to be noted of the term συνουσία, which can only lay down that finite causality is nowhere without the divine, but not also that the divine with the finite is in space. For not only is the συνουσία ἐνεργετικὴ related to finite causality, but also the ὑποστατικὴ in so far as it lays down the divine omnipresence as the maintenance of things in their being and in their powers. Any other explanation would find it difficult to avoid the suspicion of a mixture of the divine being with the finite, and therefore a semblance of pantheism. This semblance belongs also very strongly to the definition that God is everywhere not circumscriptivè but repletivè. For when there is space-filling, we cannot get away from the analogy with expansive forces, and then the notion of an infinite extension to be predicated of God lies too near; and even the improvement which is introduced when we say that this is not to be understood corporeally (as though the existence of a finite in space were hindered by the divine space-filling), but in a divine way, is seldom interpreted with proper caution.4 And if the expression used be that God includes all places in Himself,5 this easily suggests the opposite, namely, that God is that which universally includes all things even spatially; and if this omnipresence be thought of as inactive instead of active, nothing almost remains except that God is that which is in itself empty. So, too, the kindred expression, that God Himself is the place of all things, ought on this very account to be used only with the greatest caution.6 Hence in this matter there remains a fundamental improvement, one which removes the spatial element altogether, namely, the formula that God is in Himself;7 but, of course, along with this it must be asserted that the effects of His causal being-in-Himself are everywhere. The same result is reached indirectly and, as it were, pictorially by the abrogation of spatial contrasts.8 As far as other matters are concerned, the distinction between the divine omnipresence as an inactive and as an active attribute almost inevitably destroys the essential self-identity of the divine causality, and thus only produces confusion. If, for example, one distinguishes between the omnipresence of God so far as related to Himself and omnipresence in relation to the creatures,9 and in addition accepts a creation in time, then before creation there would only be the first kind of omnipresence and the other would be then added. Or if one makes the world finite in space, and thus, of course, at the limit supposes an always empty space outside, then again the first kind of omnipresence stretches further than the other, and it very easily comes to be said that in and for Himself God is outside the world, but, in relation to the creatures He is present only in the world—which introduces a similar inequality. Here, too, the Socinians have gone furthest,10 but principally in order to avoid the appearance of pantheism,11 which they thought could only be achieved in this way; for they could not quite free themselves from spatiality in thinking of the being and activity of God. And this becomes most clearly apparent when in defence of this view it is alleged that it is a perfection in finite things if their power extends further than their essence. As opposed to this, the everywhere-ness of God must, of course, be related equally to His essence and His power.