This is a bit of a mess, but required pulling together a lot of things in a way that I don't think has really been done before. In any case, I have been picking at this for some months now, and it seems best just to get it out and move on.
1.5.1&2
1.5.3 On Divine Presence
Throughout sacred scripture we find references to God's face (Hb. panim, Gk prosopon) or countenance and to facing God, the face being that which more than anything else is associated with presence. Thus we are told that in the garden, the man and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God (Gn 3:8). Jacob says (Gn 32:30), I have met God face to face and names the place Peniel, the Face of God, because he survived having met God in such a way, and of Moses is likewise said (Ex 33:11), The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend, after which God promises him (Ex 33:14), My face will go with you and give you rest. Moses then asks of God (Ex 33:18), Show me your glory (kavod), but God says to Moses (Ex 33:20), you cannot see my face, for none shall see me and live. Within the Tabernacle, as well, and later the Temple, there was the Bread of Presence (lehem panim), which was before (le-phanay, facing) the Lord (Ex 25:30). In Aaron's blessing, he prays (Nm 6:25), May the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you, and the Psalmist prays (Ps 4:6), Shine the light of your face upon us, O Lord. And it is said of the blessed in the new creation (Rv 22:4), And they will see his face. We find also in the Psalms (139:7-10), Where can I walk away from your spirit, or where can I escape from your face (mippaneka)? If I ascend to the heights, there you are; if I bed down in the abyss, there you are. I take the wings of dawn, dwelling in the ends of the sea; even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand hold me. Of this passage, Clement says (1 Clem 28:4), Whither shall one depart, or where shall one flee, from Him who embraces the universe? All of these are concerned with presence, for human beings are social animals who communicate with their faces, and therefore the face is that of whose presence we are often most aware. In order better to understand this as applied to God, whose presence must be considered in many ways, we should consider first the presence considered generally, and then through the gradations of presence we should reach those kinds of presence of which one may say in some sense that they are face to face, that is, as Maimonides says (Guide 1.37), presence that is in some way "without intermediary" between two people, and finally consider the communication through this countenance, including that which is described as light or glory.
Presence is as it were a secondary aspect of being, in that it is a kind of being to another; thus presence or absence is therefore always with respect to some kind of relation. In particular, one thing is said to be present to another insofar as its being is by relation united to the other in some way, either in an unrestricted way or by the removal of something that externally restricts presence. Thus presence in itself may be with respect to being, or with respect to being as related to something external that serves as a measure, or with respect to acting, or with respect to being an object of cognition or volition.
I. Subjective divine presence with respect to being. If we begin with presence said with respect to being, someone is said to be by presence in those things with which his substance itself may be considered united in some some way. Someone is said to be present in all those things within the range of vision, either directly, or mediated, as with telepresence. We say someone is by power in all those things subject to that power, as a king in his realm. It is customary to say that God is present in all things in three ways that are something like these.
(1) By essence or priority, because his essence is innermost in all things, not as part of the essence of those things, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For, as Aquinas says (Sent 1d37q1a1), God is most intimate in everything, as the proper being of a thing is most intimate in the thing itself, and again (In Io. 134, and also ST 1.8.1) that every agent as acting has to be immediately joined to its effect, because mover and moved must be together, for the causing and being caused are one act. Since God is very being by His own essence, being itself in itself, actual being in other things must be His proper effect. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must as its cause and precondition be immediately present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things, being that on which everything else depends. Hence it must be that God is in all things in an immediate and innermost way. Thus Augustine (Conf. 3.6.11): You were more inward to me than my most inward part and higher than my highest. And Aquinas says (ST 1.8.1), God is said to be in all things by essence, not indeed by the essence of the things themselves, as if He were of their essence; but by His own essence; because His substance is present to all things as the cause of their being. We see this further in that things are possible; for it is only by the presence of divine being that anything is possible at all. Because of this we can even say that it is more proper to say that things are in God than that God is in things. Thus Paul at the Areopagus says (Acts 17:27-28), And He is not far from each one of us, for in Him we live and move and are.
(2) By cognitive presence or knowledge, because there is nothing for which He has no thought. Newman says (Letter to Godfrey Faussett), Presence then is a relative word, depending on the channels of communication existing between the object and the person to whom it is present. It is almost a correlative of the senses. A fly may be as near an edifice as a man: yet we do not call it present to the fly, because he cannot see it, and we do call it present to the man, because he can. But God takes thought for all things. As it is said (Pr 15:3), The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good, and (Hb 4:13), There is no creature hidden before Him; everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of Him with whom is our reason (logos). In this way we say that God is all-seeing or omnivoyant, because, as Nicholas Cusanus (De vis. Dei 4) says, As your seeing is your being, therefore I am because you regard me. And if you take away your face from me, I will not subsist at all. This type of presence is perhaps also what is meant in the Qur'an (2:115), "To Allah belong east and west, so wherever you turn you face Allah; surely Allah is All-Encompassing, All-Knowing," and likewise (57:4), "He knows whatever goes into the earth and whatever comes out of it, and whatever descends from the sky and whatever ascends to it; and He is with you wherever you are, for Allah is All-Seeing of what you do." As previously noted, our own intellect reaches toward the infinite, and this ordering of the intellect would be in vain were there no infinite intelligible; this infinite intelligible, from which all things get their intelligibility and which is the ultimate final cause of our intellect, is God. This infinite intelligible is thus also truth itself, and as truth itself must be intellectual; and, again, it must be pure act, but the intelligible that is act is itself intellect. Thus there is nothing intelligible which God does not apprehend, i.e., see, and therefore God is cognitively present to all. We see this in that things are intelligible; for it is only by fundamentally being related to God that anything is intelligible at all.
(3) By effective power or will, since all things are subject to his power; as the Psalmist says (139:10), I take the wings of dawn, dwelling in the ends of the sea; even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand hold me. We find this in the Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS 1), as well: "Everything is subject to His command; nothing is beyond His command." Every operation is attributed causally to what gives the power for it, but every power in any agent is from God as from the first mover and ultimate final end. As Irenaeus says (Adv. Haer. 2.1), He is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Father, alone containing all things, and Himself commanding all things into existence. We see this in that things actually exist at all; for it is only by divine will that anything other than God exists at all, and when we consider God according to the notion of efficient cause, possible being are relative to his power.
We can easily recognize that the divine presence can have no restrictions on the part of the divine being itself; for every limitation indicates a lack of being, but God is subsisting being itself. Further, all inquiry and explanation, carried on sufficiently, eventually reaches infinity of some kind, something unrestricted, since the possibilities that are to be explained are infinite. Such an ultimate infinite cannot be a material infinite, which is potential to many forms, because what is material is restricted by its form, the material being this or that according to its form, which completes it. Likewise, however, it cannot be a formal infinite of the sort that is associated with that form, in which it can be common to many, because the formal that restricts the material is restricted by it, because it is contracted to this material thing. Thus something truly unrestricted would have to be formal in the way being is formal, and it would moreover have to be being that is not received in anything. But this is divine being, which is subsistent in and of itself. Thus God himself must be infinite and complete. Likewise, being is infinite considered simply in itself, because the modes in which it can be participated are infinite. If something has finite being, therefore, it follows that that that being must be limited by something else, as for instance by a cause. But there can be no such limitation by another for the divine being, for God, being subsistent being itself, is necessary through Himself. Therefore, His being is infinite. Further, actuality is limited and restricted by potentiality, but God is pure act, and therefore infinite.
We can see this again with the argument commonly used by the Cartesians. Aspiring to be more than we are, we recognize ourselves as finite or limited, as well as incomplete, which is true, because what can aspire to be more cannot be unlimited and complete. But in order to recognize this, we must have some notion of being that is infinite and complete. Since we are finite and incomplete, however, we cannot get this notion from ourselves, for no amount of the finite and incomplete, not yet recognized as such, can give one a notion of the infinite and complete, but only a greater finite and incomplete. Therefore our notion of the infinite and complete must come, directly or indirectly, in some way from what is actually infinite and complete from which we can receive it, and this all call God. Likewise, as we have previously argued, God is the infinite intelligible; given any finite quantity, our intellect can think of a greater one, but this requires that there be an infinite intelligible, God, who is therefore infinite. Likewise, our intellect is a participation in the infinite intelligible, which is ultimate final cause of all things, but an effect cannot transcend its causes. Thus the intellect cannot think of anything greater than God, who is, indeed, that than which no greater can be thought. If, therefore, it can think of something greater than any finite, as we see it can in fields like mathematics, it follows that God cannot be finite.
II. Subjective divine presence with respect to something external. Because being unlimited or infinite belongs to the divine presence, we must, in our attributions with respect to divine presence, exercise the discipline of remotion, removing all things that restrict presence on the part of the one present. Restriction of presence of the part of the one present may happen in two ways; either the one present may be restricted in presence on the part of itself, in itself, thus limiting its ability to be present, or it may be restricted in presence according to some measure of its ability to be presence. In the first way, something may be limited in its presence due to its composite nature or mutability or contingency. In the second way, it may be limited in its presence due to its being measurable in terms of place, time, or count.
(1) God, as first efficient cause, cannot be composite, because if he were composite, he would have a cause of composition. Therefore, the divine presence is not restricted by divine parts of any kind, not being the kind of thing that can be partitioned. God as a whole is present under whatever conditions he is present. Further, as first moving cause, God is immutable, and therefore the divine presence on the side of the divine being must be immutable, not receding or extending. For a similar reason, the divine presence cannot be in itself contingent, because God is subsistent being itself, on which other beings depend; the divine presence, considered as divine, cannot vary across contingent possibilities, because all contingent possibilities presuppose God as a necessary precondition and first cause. Further, first being is being through its essence, but because of this must be most perfect, that is, wholly complete in being. It pertains to what is most perfect that it should not be limited or restricted in that which pertains to itself, which in this case is being. Were first being limited or restricted in presence, it would be be limited or restricted in being. Therefore first being is infinite in presence. Its presence therefore does not have in itself any restriction or limitation at all.
(2) Spatiotemporal measurement is a measure of change, and therefore of incomplete actuality. Thus God himself, who is complete actuality, both simple and immutable, cannot be measured by containing boundary or clock or correspondence, for God is, as IV Lateran says, eternal and immense, and the Quicunque Vult says, The Father is infinite; the Son infinite; and the Holy Spirit infinite. The Father is eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated, nor three infinites, but one uncreated and one infinite. However, when considered with the divine presence, more must be considered, because while God himself is immeasurable by place or temporal interval, that to which he is present can itself be local or temporal, and therefore we can speak of the eternal and immense deity in terms of those places and times which are related to him by his presence. The presence of things that are local or temporal are restricted in ways that can be measured, even though the divine presence is not.
(2.1) Location is at least a measurement of presence with respect to a containing boundary, and thus presence is a more fundamental idea than location, which requires relation to boundaries that can serve to measure what is located. It is tempting to think of local presence as nothing but sharing of location, that is, as merely the sharing of a containing boundary, but this would make everything in space locally present to everything else, since you can identify boundaries arbitrarily. Actual presence is always an active causal notion; we see this even in the theory of the external world or of other minds, in which we determine whether things are locally present by causal reasoning. Local presence, therefore, has to be a matter of reach of action associated with a containing boundary.
Presence may be restricted because it is circumscribed by a containing boundary, whether the boundary is real (such as an actual physical container) or rational (such as a boundary mentally drawn around the thing so contained). We call this being present in a place by circumscription, and this circumscriptive presence is the most proper and strict way in which something may be in place; it is the kind of presence we usually mean when we say that something occupies a place. Leibniz (New Essays 2.23.21) characterizes it as "point for point", so that it involves specifying points in the located and relating them to points in space, which is not adequate, and indeed, fails to capture why one would call it 'circumscriptive' at all. It is true, however, that, if certain conditions are met, bodies that are circumscriptively located have parts that are related to the whole in a way that corresponds to parts of the region marked by the boundary of the body in a way that preserves how those parts of the region are related to the whole region. It is also true that the inability to identify such points is a sign that something is not circumscriptively located, but this is merely a sign and a rough test. A more accurate account of presence in a place by circumscription is to say that for each thing circumscriptively in a place, it has a part in part of what is contained and the whole of it is in the whole of what is contained. From this it can easily be seen that God's presence is incircumscribable because it is simple and is not divided into parts, and it is likewise indivisible because God's presence is not divided among different places; God does not fall under the genera of divisible things or circumscribable things. That is, God's presence in each place is not measured by a containing boundary, nor is his presence divided by such boundaries. Rather, He is prior to all place; by the immensity of His presence He touches on all things that are in any way located, as the universal cause of their being; and He is present wholly wherever He is, because He is simple.
A thing may in a broader sense be in a place when the whole is not outside what is contained, the whole is in each part of what is contained, and the whole is in the whole of what is contained. This is called being present in place by definition, because it involves being related to a place not by being within a boundary but by taking the place so bounded as a specific term of one's presence. This definitive presence has sometimes been said to be the sense in which angels are in a place. As angels are simple substances, they have no parts and therefore cannot be circumscriptively in a place, but angels were thought to be present to a place, and and because their ability to be so is not unlimited, they were thought to be able to be present in this place and not outside of it, by their whole substance having a relation to all of the parts of the place and the whole place. Thus St. Thomas says (ST 1.52.1), an incorporeal substance virtually contains the thing with which it comes into contact, and is not contained by it. However, God is also not definitively in a place, because His presence is not limited in its term.
The third way is that something may be present wholly and without limit, whether of boundary or term. This is called being in present in place by repletion, i.e., by fullness, because of the words of the Prophet Jeremiah (23:23-24): I am a God nearby, says the Lord, and not a remote God. Can anyone hide himself in coverts so I do not see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. Compare also Wisdom 1:7, The Spirit of the Lord has filled the world. What is repletively present at a place is not located at that place, nor does it occupy that place the way a material body does; that is, the boundaries of the place do not measure it either directly or indirectly by marking the limits of its term, but rather it fills the place without being bounded or restricted by it, that is, is wholly everywhere as a whole. As Anselm says (Mon. 22), But whatever is not at all bound by the containment of place and of time is not bound by the law of place or the law of time with respect to multiplicity of parts, or is not prevented from being present as a whole at the same time in many places or at many times. Of this, Leibniz says (New Essays 2.23.21), "God is said to have it, because he fills the entire universe in a more perfect way than minds fill bodies, for he operates immediately on all created things, continually producing them, whereas finite minds cannot immediately influence or operate upon them." Likewise, some of the rabbis (Bereshit Rabbah 68.5), commenting on the verse (Gn 28:11), He encountered the place, read 'the Place' (Ha-maqom) as a name for God, with Rav Huna saying, "It is because He is the Place of the world, and His world is not His place." This may also be the idea in the verse of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib (SGGS 797), "The perfect Lord has established the perfect creation. Behold the Lord pervading everywhere." Thus God is repletively present in every place.
Given that there are places, God is either somewhere but not elsewhere, or nowhere, or everywhere. He is not only at some places, because then he would be limited like other things that are determined, circumscriptively or definitively, to a certain given place. If we say, however, that he is nowhere, and by this do not simply mean that he is not exclusively some particular where, then the same thing may be said from the other side; that is, if he is nowhere, he is excluded from place and therefore limited. Therefore it is necessary for God to be everywhere or ubiquitous or omnilocal, because he cannot be excluded from any places there might be. Instead, God fills every place, not like a body is said to fill place by excluding the co-presence of another body, but by giving being to the things that fill every place and to the whole cosmos. This we saw noted previously; Clement says (1 Clem 28:4), Whither shall one depart, or where shall one flee, from Him who embraces the universe? And as Turretin says (Institutes 3.9.6), "wherever he is, he is wholly; wholly in all things, yet wholly beyond all; included in no place and excluded from none; and not so much in a place (because finite cannot comprehend infinite) as in himself." Further, if God were not everywhere then it seems that He could not be immutable, since He could then change places, i.e., change in such a way that His change was measurable by different boundaries. St. Anselm says (Monologion 22), Whatever is not at all bound by the containment of place and of time is not bound by the law of place or the law of time with respect to multiplicity of parts, or is not prevented from being present as a whole at the same time in many places or at many times. Therefore God must be, as Augustine says (Ep 187.14), whole in the heavens alone and whole on the earth alone and whole in the heaves and in the earth, contained in no place, but whole everywhere in himself.
This conclusion is somewhat more robust than that reached by Maimonides (Guide 1.19), in which takes claims like (Is 6:4) The whole earth is full of his glory to be interpretable along the lines of "'All the earth gives evidence of his perfection', i.e., leads to knowledge of it." This is true, being a form of mediate presence such as we will discuss below, but it is because God is repletively present as first cause and actuality that all the earth is able to give evidence of His perfection.
Because God is repletively present in any place as precondition for all actual places, we can go farther than this. If we were to suppose that the world were limited, in such a way that there is some boundary beyond which there is no further boundary, then all actual places must be within this boundary. However, we can think of the possibility of places beyond this boundary, not in the sense that there are ghostly non-actual places outside the boundary, but in the sense that the boundary could be more permissive than it is, and therefore could contain as actual some places that are not actual. This is what is known as imaginary space. Imaginary space, constituted by such merely hypothetical places, is a being of reason, sometimes useful for thinking about real space, and we can think of imaginary space because there is nothing about the concept of place itself can prevent the possibility of always having a more expansive place. Because God is precondition to any place at all, however, we can say that God is present not merely to real space, that is all the actual places whatever they may be, but even if these are limited and finite, to imaginary space, that is, all the hypothetical places that could possibly be. God is present not merely to actual places but also to possible places, not, of course, as actual, but as possible, in that without his already existing presence they could not be possible. Whatever number of places might be supposed, even if an infinite number be supposed besides what already exist, it would be necessary that God should be in all of them; for nothing can exist except by Him, and his presence therefore does not depend on the place, but the place on his causally prior presence. This could perhaps be called God's hypothetical ubiquity. However, this must not be misunderstood; it means not merely that God would hypothetically be present in any place that might be, but that God is present in such a way that in any place that might be He would be present. Therefore to be everywhere primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever number of places be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, but as to His very self. All possible places presuppose His actual presence; the divine presence cannot be limited by the distinction between actual and possible borders or places. Likewise, we can say that if there were separate spaces, so that there was no boundary such that the places of one could be related to the places of the other, that God would be everywhere in both by repletion, and, by hypothetical ubiquity, all possible places of all possible spaces presuppose the divine presence.
Someone might say, of course, that something that exists anywhere does not transcend space, but God must do so to be God; therefore, God cannot exist anywhere, and therefore a fortiori cannot be omnipresent. But, as we have noted, when we say that God exists somewhere, we say that He does so, not by being contained or limited to a place, but as the precondition for anything being in that place. To say that God transcends space is to say that He is not circumscribable and limitable by spatial measures, not that He is excluded from what is measured by such measures.
(2.2) Presence may also be restricted because it has, so to speak, a boundary or limitation in time, as determined by some change that functions as a clock. What is present sometimes implies that there be something present always, for what is sometimes is understood as such in relation to other things that are sometimes, and the possibility of having this relation depends on those things that are sometimes sharing something that gives them this relation. For instance, if we have A, which is sometimes, and B, which is sometimes, either they have no relation at all to each other or, if they are part of one series or system of times, must have something that unites them into one series or system, such as the universe of which they are apart. Therefore every series or system of things that are sometimes present requires that there be something or some set of things that are always present, where what is always present is that which has temporal measurement that is not only sometimes present. Further, what is only sometimes present is something that begins to be and ceases to be. If everything began to be, including the series or system of things that begin to be, then there would at some point have been nothing; but if nothing exists, nothing can begin to be, because the cause of something beginning to be must always be something that is. Since things do begin to be, then, there must be something of some sort that is not only sometimes present. This, however, must either have its being in and of itself, or must receive it from another, in which case there cannot be an infinite regress. In either case, there must be something that is always, not merely because it receives the ability to be from another, but because it exists in such a way that by its very nature it is not merely sometimes present. This is what all call God, and by virtue of this, and in this particular sense, we may say that God is always or omnitemporal, his presence not being subject to a restriction to anything that measures him as only being sometimes.
This makes sense in general. Temporality is a form of incomplete actuality, namely, that incomplete actuality whose incompleteness can be measured by another incomplete actuality that functions as a clock measuring it. Incomplete actualities must participate actuality itself or pure act, which is God, but actuality itself is not incomplete actuality, and therefore has no incompleteness at all that can be measured by a clock. Further, given that there are times, God is present either only sometimes, or never at all, or always. He cannot be present only sometimes, because then he would be limited in not being present at other times. Neither can it be said that he is present at no time, or never, simply speaking, because then the same thing may be said from the other side; that is, if he is never present, and this is not taken figuratively to mean merely that he is not exclusively at any particular time, the divine presence is limited in not ever being present at any time. Therefore it is necessary to say that God is present always, because if anything exists at any time, God cannot be so limited as sometimes not to be present.
Just as with places in space, however, we may say that God is eternally present in such a way as to be present even to merely possible times. If we suppose that the world is limited in a way measurable by time, so that there is a beginning or ending to the world as measured by time, we can still think of the possibility of times before the beginning or after then ending, not in that they actually exist, but in the sense that the beginning of the world could have been, by temporal measurement, earlier, or that the ending of the world could have been, by temporal measurement, later. As time is a numerical measurement of change by change, nothing about its nature as a measurement requires that the world begin or end at a certain point, for the same reason that nothing about the nature of numbers requires that negative or positive numbers be finite. The possible but not actual times that are implicit in the nature of time as a measurement are known as imaginary time. Imaginary time, constituted by such merely hypothetical times, is a being of reason, sometimes useful for thinking about real time, and we can think of imaginary time because there is nothing about the concept of time itself that prevents having more expansive temporal measurements. Because God is precondition to anything temporal at all, however, we can say that God is present not merely to things as measured by real time, but even if there is a beginning and ending to them, to imaginary time. For nothing can exist except by Him, and his presence therefore does not depend on the time, but the time on his causally prior presence. This could perhaps be called God's hypothetical omnitemporality. To be always primarily and absolutely belongs to God and is proper to Him: because whatever times may be supposed to exist, God must be in all of them, not as to a part of Him, but as to His very self. All possible times presuppose His actual presence.
However, because of this God may also be called, and in a sense more fittingly, atemporal and pretemporal, because the manner of his presence lies in being not intrinsically measured by any temporal measurement but in being a precondition for anything that is temporally measured. To say that something is itself temporally measured is to say that it is a change and related to another change that, conceived as a cycle, functions as a clock for it, indicating how much it has changed by the comparison to the other change. God, however, is immutable, and therefore cannot be measured by any cyclical change at all. Rather, as he is first unmoved mover, or the first unchanged changer, all changes and all clocks presuppose his causal act. Further, as he is being itself, ipsum esse, all things that are participate him, having being in a more restricted way that does not apply to him; and one of these participating restrictions is temporal. Things that are temporal by nature therefore presuppose his presence, but no clock properly measures the divine presence because it is the precondition for any such measurement at all. God is therefore said to be omnitemporal, that is, at every time, because he is pretemporal, that is, before time, where the 'before' is not temporal but indicates a logically prior condition, and precisely as he is said to be pretemporal he is timeless or atemporal, that is, beyond or outside of time and free of temporal restriction. Thus Ignatius says (Polyc 3:2) that God is above all time, eternal and invisible, and the Psalmist says (90:2): Before mountains were brought forth and you had ever formed land and habitable place, from perpetuity to perpetuity you are God.
An objection that is sometimes made to this is that then the divine eternity co-exists with one moment and time and also with another, so that times would then co-exist each other, and thus all distinction among times would vanish. However, it does not follow that if the eternal is coexistent with everything temporal that the temporal is coexistent with the eternity as such according to the measure of time, nor that if the external is coexistent with each time that every time is coexistent with each time, because times are limited by measure, and therefore cannot have relations to each other that are not so limited. Times are not eternal with respect to other times. Thus the coexistence objection could only succeed if eternity and times were themselves commensurable, that is, if eternity were a temporal measurement. As Turretin says, (Inst. 3.10.10), "Although time coexists with the whole of eternity, it is not therefore eternal because that coexistence is not adequate (as if they were of the same duration and nature), but inadequate (of a thing evidently heterogeneous both as to nature and as to duration)."
An objection against omnipresence, taking this to include both omnipresence and omnitemporality has also been put forward by Matt McCormick, based on ideas from Kant, which may be summarized as follows. If some being is able to distinguish the object of a representation and representation itself and has the ability to apply concepts and form judgments, then it must be able to distinguish itself from what is not itself. A being that is omnipresent and omnitemporal is present in all places and times. Therefore it cannot distinguish self and not-self; but it is absurd that God, who is said to have intellect and be omniscient, would be unable to do so. This assumes, of course, that the only ways in which we can distinguish self from what is not self is by difference in place or difference in time; but this is false. As Aquinas says (ST 1.7.1 ad 3), The fact that the being of God is self-subsisting, not received in any other, and is thus called infinite, shows Him to be distinguished from all other beings, and all others to be apart from Him.
(2.3) Presence may also be restricted because there are countable things to which its presence does not extend, so that we may partition countable things into those to which it is present and those to which it is not. Every count is in respect of units, which classify the count; thus, measuring by count in this way is a way of using classification to measure something. If I say, 'There is one apple on the table', the unit of 'apple', which is a classification, then frames and makes possible the count of 'one'; the unit that makes counting possible is in this sense more fundamental than the counted one. However, anything that exists so as to be classifiable in this way, presupposes divine presence; an agent cause must be present to its proximate and immediate effect, but in everything there is a proximate and immediate effect of God, namely, its being. Further, every creature must be co-existent with God, and thus such that God is present with it, as to its duration and capacity to be, for every limited capacity to be derives from God's unlimited capacity to be. Therefore, every creature is such that God is present to it. As Aquinas says (ST 1.8.1), God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. The Sri Guru Granth Sahib says something similar (177): "The One who holds all creatures in His hands is never separated from them; He is with them all." God may be said then to be universally compresent with all countable things, so that there can be no countable thing to which he is not present.
Reasoning similar to that which we have given for places and times also applies here. Given that there are other things, God is either with some, or with none, or with all. God cannot be only with some, because then he would be limited like other things that are only with some but not others. Neither can he be with none, because then the same thing may be said from the other side; that is, if he is nowhere, he is limited by the number of things he is with. Therefore it is necessary to say that God is with all, because, if there are things, he cannot fail to be with them. Likewise, as there are things that could exist but do not, we can say that those things that do not exist but might constitute imaginary multitude, which is a being of reason by which we better reason about the things that exist even if they might not. With these things, the divine presence will have hypothetical compresence, in the sense that all possible countable things and multitudes presuppose God's actual presence as a necessary precondition.
(2.4) It is clear from what we have said about place, time, and count or tally, that the argument can be generalized to a broader field of modalities. We may distinguish between modalities that are purely mind-dependent and those that concern, directly or indirectly, mind-independent things; we set aside the former here and focus on the latter, the real modal states of being. As we are here considering the ways in which divine presence is immeasurable, we will also consider only those real modal states of being that, like place, time, and tally, are determined with some respect to some measure. Given such modalities, God is either present with regard to only some, or none, or all. He cannot be present with regard to only some and not others, because then he would be limited by exclusion from those modal states to which he was not present. For instance, if some possibilities are not accessible to him, then he is limited in the same way as anything else to which only some possibilities are accessible. Neither can it be said that God is present to none of them, because then the same thing may be said from the other side. For instance, as said above, he is limited if he is excluded from all places or times. Therefore it is necessary to say that God is present with regard to all real modal states of being that are metrical, whatever they may be, whether possibilities as measured by other possibilities, or places, or times, or spacetime regions, or measurable states of change like beginning (incipit) and ending (desinit), or or countable subjects measured by states of real classification like genera. Likewise, we recognize that, as God is that than which no greater can be thought, the divine presence cannot be measurable in itself by any means of measuring, which would imply that something greater than he could be thought, namely, what was without the restrictions or limitations involved in those measurements. The divine presence may therefore be said to be supermodal or premodal.
III. Subjective divine presence by action. In all of this we attribute to God a presence by being, and thus it may be said that (Acts 17:27-28) he is not far from any of us, for in him we live and move and have our being; but we attribute to God presence by acting or operating, as well. This operative presence is often described by the metaphor of God 'dwelling' in creation or among creatures. Thus God says (Ex 25:8), And let them make a sanctuary that I may dwell among them and God is said (Dt 33:16) to have dwelt in the burning bush; likewise, the people of Israel are commanded (Dt 12:11) to bring sacrifices to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. This likewise gave rise to the later rabbinical term for the divine presence in the world, Shekhinah, which comes from the verb meaning 'to dwell or to inhabit'.The Revelator also tells us (Rv 7:15), And the One Seated on the Throne will dwell (skenosei) among them. When, however, 'dwelling' is used in the other direction, for the world or creatures dwelling in God, this is often a figurative expression for repletive presence, which we discussed above, although of rational creatures it is often an indication of objective presence, which we will discuss below, as in Jer 3:4 LXX, Have you not called me as it were a home? Sometimes the divine nature is also itself called the dwelling place of God, sometimes with Heaven being a metonymic name for God; thus to say that God dwells in Heaven is to say that God rests in God; a similar expression is found in 1 Tim 6:16, where it says that God dwells in unapproachable light, the unapproachable light being God Himself.
When 'dwelling' is used to indicate the divine subjective presence by action, it describes God's love taking some creature or creatures as a term. For 'dwelling' is closely associated with love; lovers are said to indwell each other mutually, and we dwell where we love, and, as Gregory says (Moral. 8.74), Everything that we love, we as it were make our dwelling place by reposing on it.
There are other ways that God's subjective presence by action is described. For instance, it is described as 'wrath' when it is action taking as a term those who have made themselves enemies of God, as with John 3:36, Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him, or Exodus 15:7, You send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble. However, it is called 'wrath' not because God is subject to being overwhelmed by passions, but because it is an act of justice against those hostile to God. And in general, whenever terms derived from the passions are applied to God, it indicates a kind of subjective presence by action.
IV. Objective divine presence. Besides subjective divine presence, there are several kinds of objective presence, and the differences among them can be important because people interact and connect with each other in different ways by them. St. Clement says (1 Clem 28:4-29:1), Whither shall one depart, or where shall one flee, from Him who embraces the universe? Let us therefore approach Him in holiness of soul, lifting up pure and undefiled hands unto Him, with love towards our gentle and compassionate Father who made us an elect portion unto Himself. Notice that he tells us both that the divine presence embraces the universe, so that no one can depart or flee from it, and that we may approach the presence in holiness of soul. We have so far considered how God is present through all things caused by Him, as the efficient cause is present to the effect; but we may also consider how God is present as the object of action is in the agent. This is found when we say that God is present to the soul or the mind, as the known or loved is in the knower or lover. In this way God is present to the rational being that knows and loves Him, whether actually or habitually, and thus we can consider ways in which such presence might be restricted, not on the part of the divine presence in itself, but on the part of the being to which God is present. That is to say, something may be relatively 'distant' from the divine presence through lack of knowledge of God or through lack of love of God. This distance must be 'relative' because God necessarily has remote objective presence to the intellect and will, as the infinite intelligible that is their ultimate final cause and that is the exemplar that makes possible their having objects at all. However, in terms of more proximate objective presence, as in that of which our minds are explicitly thinking, we may not be thinking of or loving God. This is due not to any limitation of the divine presence itself, what in scholastic terminology might be called 'subjective presence', i.e., presence as subject, for, as Augustine says (Ep.187.18 to Dardanus), If God is received less by one to whom he is present, he is not therefore himself less; but it is due rather to the limitation of our own intellects and wills with respect to having objects present to us.
More specific objective presence can be immediate or mediate. Immediate objective divine presence is either complete, in which case it is called the Beatific Vision, and is a divine presence only among the angels and saints, or incomplete, as when it is said of Moses (Ex 33:11), And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, in which case it is a special grace that is given as a sign of the Beatific Vision.
The other kind of specific objective presence, which we more commonly consider, is mediate objective presence. This may be general, as when the world is taken to mediate the presence of God to us, as in the book of Wisdom (13:5), From the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their creator. Or it may be through a specific action of the creature; thus in thinking of God and loving Him, God is present as object. Sometimes in the latter case, the action of the creature expresses the subjective presence of God by action, and it is that which is found in many theophanies, visions, spiritual locutions, and the like.
Mediate objective presence may be considered insofar as the medium is primarily understood to mediate the presence as an instrument mediates its principal agent, or as a sign mediates its signified.
When the rabbis discuss (Vayikra Rabbah 30) the traditional four species (cf. Lv 23:40), one of the things they do is to associate them symbolically with a form of divine presence. The es hadar, or 'trees of splendor', he associates with that described in Psalm 104:1, You are clothed in glory and majesty (= hadar). The temarim, or palm trees, he associates with Psalm 92:12, The righteous bloom like a palm. The leafy trees or myrtles, es abot, he associates with Zechariah 1:8, And He stood among the myrtles. And the willows of the brook, arbe nahal, he associates with Psalm 68:4, Extol Him who rides the clouds. What the hadar trees, the trees of splendor, directly symbolize is the hadar, splendor, that God may be said to wear as if it were a vestment. Vestments or clothes are things very closely associated with a person that are nonetheless not the person; the splendor understood here is not the divine being itself but something very closely associated with it which is an instrument of divine manifestation. Likewise, Psalm 92:12-13 talks about how the righteous are palm trees in the divine court, that is, the righteous or just considered as an instrument of the divine majesty. In Zechariah 1, the one standing among the myrtles of the ravine is the Angel of the Lord, closely associated with God as His messenger. The word for 'willow' and the word for 'cloud' are related, so the rabbis here take the willows to stand for the clouds associated in divine revelation with the divine chariot. In each case what is directly symbolized is not God but something closely associated with God by which God manifests His presence: the divine 'vestment', the divine court of the just, the divine messenger, the divine chariot. All of these things represented by the species are instruments by which the principal agent from which they work, namely, God himself, can be known and through which he reveals himself. An instrument in the most proper sense is a moved mover, by which a principal moving agent enacts a change in some moved thing, in such a way that the act of the moved mover can be attributed to the principal agent. Thus the principal agent can be said to be present to the effect by way of the instrument, in the manner of efficacy.
When people establish various kinds of moral, juridical, or ritual presence to each other, on the other hand, the mediation must be by some kind of sign. All signs involve something that provides an object to something capable of taking it as object, as when a word suggests an object to a cognitive power. However, the object of a word is distinct from the thing itself; it is the thing only insofar as it is considered in a particular way in a cognitive power. In the four species interpreted in the way noted above, we find the species themselves to be primarily signs by which the human mind itself can know God, who then is said to have ritual objective presence to the mind.
Specific things may be signs of God in a more special and illuminating way, either morally, juridically, or liturgically, due to imposition by God or by human persons. However, all creatures, as effects, can also be seen as signs of God as their Creator, as a trace or vestige of him; as the Psalmist says (148:5), Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at his command they were created. Therefore we may call this the symbolic omnipresence of God, in that through anything and everything God may be brought to the human mind, to be known and loved. This symbolic omnipresence is related to the divine glory, which we will consider on its own.
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G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, Remnant & Bennett, eds. & trs., Cambridge UP (New York: 1997), 221-222.
Matt McCormick, "Why God Cannot Think: Kant, Omnipresence, and Consciousness", Philo Vol. 3, No.1 (2000) pp. 5-19.
