POSTSCRIPT: THE IMMENSITY OF GOD

It follows clearly that we shall not need to treat further of this term as the designation of a special divine attribute. Its use is bound up with the greatest difficulties.¹² Partly it is equated with the infinity of God, and in part it is derived therefrom; since of course infinity regarded as substance yields immensity, but regarded as existence eternity. But just as when taken so time is not done away in eternity, but only its limits; so too with immensity, it is not space but its limits that are abrogated;¹³ and we should then in this way have only an omnipresence separated from omnipotence, and consequently conceived as inactive but always spatial. But if immensity is thought of as infinity itself, this again is frequently presented as the attribute of all God’s attributes. In that case we should have no reason whatever to speak of it here, nor indeed would it ever come up for discussion; for in virtue of its negative content it could be no true attribute, not even of the attributes, but only a reservation with regard to them. It would then have to repudiate for all the attributes every analogy with the finite, and would be the general anti-anthropomorphic and anti-somatomorphic formula. As such it has guided us even here and will do so also in the future, without our finding it right on that account to erect it into an attribute. For since here we have to do only with the causality of God, the conception of the infinity of God is useful only as warding off analogy with finite causality. But all finite causality is measurable in time and space; consequently we have made the Divine infinite in the most proper sense, since we made it absolutely timeless and non-spatial. And the term immensity is easily brought round to equivalence with this proper meaning of infinity, if one only says immeasurability; because all measure may be resolved into time and space determinations. Immensity is usually defined by laying down, on the one hand, a being everywhere, and, on the other, a warning that this is not to be taken to imply extension. But once the activity of God has been separated from the being of God, and only the latter regarded, there of course remains for this immensity only a negation with no positive substratum which could have emerged from religious emotion. Whereas, on the contrary, it is self-evident that the contrast between the feeling of absolute dependence and the feeling of either partial dependence or partial freedom (both being equally spatial and temporal) includes in itself the implication that the causality which evokes the former feeling cannot be temporal and spatial.

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Footnotes

1. Ps. 139, and elsewhere in the Psalter. ↩

2. Joh. Damasc., de fid. orth. i. 13: αὐτὸς μὲν γὰρ διὰ πάντων ἀμιγῶς διήκει, καὶ πᾶσι μεταδίδωσι τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἐνεργείας κατὰ τὴν ἑκάστον ἐπιτηδειότητα καὶ δεκτικὴν δύναμιν. ↩

3. Augustin., de div. quaest. xx.: Deus non alicubi est, quod enim alicubi est, continetur loco; et tamen quia est, et in loco non est, in illo sunt potius omnia quam ipse alicubi. Nec tamen ita in illo, ut ipse sit locus. Idem, Ep. 187, 11: Et in eo ipso quod dicitur Deus ubique diffusus carnali resistendum est cogitationi … ne quasi spatiosa magnitudine opinemur Deum per cuncta diffundi, sicut aër aut lux. ↩

4. This is to be commended in Joh. Damas., l.c.: “Ἔστι δὲ καὶ νοητὸς τόπος, ἔνθα νοεῖται καὶ ἔστιν ἡ νοητὴ καὶ ἀσώματος φύσις, ἔνθαπερ πάρεστι καὶ ἐνεργεῖ … ὁ μὲν οὖν θεὸς … λέγεται καὶ ἐν τόπῳ εἶναι, καὶ λέγεται τόπος θεοῦ, ἔνθα ἐκδηλος ἡ ἐνέργεια αὐτοῦ γίνεται. ↩

5. Hilar., d. f. Trin. i. 6: Nullo sine Deo, neque ullus non in Deo locus est. ↩

6. Theoph., ad Aut. ii.: Θεὸς γὰρ οὐ χωρεῖται, ἀλλ’ αὐτός ἐστι τόπος τῶν ὅλων. ↩

7. Augustin., Ep. 187, 14: Nullo contentus loco, sed in se ipse ubique totus. ↩

8. Augustin., de Gen. ad litt. viii. 48: incommutabili excellentique potentia et interior omni re quia in ipso sunt omnia, et exterior omni re, quia ipse est super omnia.—Hilar., l.c.: ut in his cunctis originibus creaturarum Deus intra extraque et supereminens et internus, id est circumfusus et infusus in omnia nosceretur, cum … exteriora sua insidens ipse, rursum exterior interna concluderet atque ita totus ipse intra extraque se continens neque infinitus abesset a cunctis, neque cuncta ei, qui infinitus est, non inessent. ↩

9. radicaliter et relative. Cf. Gerh., loc. th. t. iii. p. 136. ↩

10. Smalcius, refut. Franc., p. 4: Essentia et praesentia Dei in locis omnibus nulla datur, nec enim frustra in coelis Deus esse dicitur. ↩

11. Thom. Pisecius, respon. ad rat. Camp.: Virtutem Dei infinitam permeare omnia scripturae testantur, non essentiam, cujus infinitate concessa universa orbis machina, quam cernimus, corpus quoddam divinum esset. ↩

12. Cf. Gerh., loc. T. iii. p. 122, and Reinhard, Dogm., pp. 101–104. ↩

13. See Mosheim, Theol. dogm. i. p. 247: Quando infinitas cum respectu loci seu spatii consideratur dicitur immensitas. ↩