The psalmist asks God,

Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
                        (Psalms 139: 7-8, NRSV)

Philosophers and theologians have taken such texts to affirm thatGod is present everywhere. This passage suggests, first, that God isreallypresent at orlocated at various particularplaces. Second, it suggests that there is no place where God is notpresent, that is, that God is presenteverywhere. This is theclaim that God isomnipresent. Divine omnipresence is thusone of the traditional divine attributes, although it has attractedless philosophical attention than such attributes asomnipotence,omniscience, orbeing eternal.

Philosophers who have attempted to give an account of omnipresencehave identified several interesting philosophical questions that anadequate account of omnipresence must address: How can a being who issupposed to beimmaterial be present at or located in space?If God is located in a particular place, can anything else be locatedthere, too? If God is present everywhere, does it follow that he hasparts in each of the particular places in which he is located?Various philosophers have proposed accounts of omnipresence in termsthat are supposed to apply to an immaterial being. This essay willexamine some of these proposals.

• 1. Some Issues Involving Omnipresence and Historical Background
• 2. Power, Knowledge, and Essence
• 3. Two Recent Traditional Treatments
• 4. The World as God's Body
• 5. Some Recent Alternative Proposals
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Some Issues involving Omnipresence and Historical Background

According to classical theism, God is omnipresent, that is, presenteverywhere. But classical theism also holds that God isimmaterial. How can something that is not, or does not have, a body belocated in space? Early discussions of divine presence typically beganby distinguishing God’s presence in space from that of materialbodies.Augustine (354-430) wrote,

Although in speaking of him we say that God is everywhere present, wemust resist carnal ideas and withdraw our mind from our bodily senses,and not imagine that God is distributed through all things by a sortof extension of size, as earth or water or air or light aredistributed (Letter 187, Ch. 2).

Elsewhere Augustine continued this theme and introduced a new element,namely, the suggestion that divine presence might be understood byanalogy with the presence of the soul:

[Some people] are not able to imagine any substance except what iscorporeal, whether those substances be grosser, like water and earth,or finer, like air and light, but still corporeal. None of these canbe wholly everywhere, since they are necessarily composed ofnumberless parts, some here and some there; however large or howeversmall the substance may be, it occupies an amount of space, and itfills that space without being entire in any part of it.Consequently, it is a characteristic of corporeal substances alone tobe condensed and rarified, contracted and expanded, divided into smallbits and enlarged into a great mass. The nature of the soul is verydifferent from that of the body, and much more different is the natureof God who is the Creator of both body and soul (Letter 137).

Augustine adds two further points: God “knows how to be whollyeverywhere without being confined to any place” (Letter137). In contrast to material objects, which, having parts invarious parts of the space they occupy, are not wholly present at anyof those regions, God iswholly present wherever he is.Moreover, God is notcontained in or confined by any of theplaces at which he exists. Augustine is thus explicit that God is notpresent in the way corporeal substances are present, but his positiveproposal for divine presence is less well developed. He notes thatGod’s light, strength, and wisdom reach everywhere (Letter187, Ch. 7), and he holds that “God so permeates all things as tobe not a quality of the world, but the very creative substance of theworld ruling the world without labor, sustaining it without effort.”Rather than going on to explain these ideas, however, this passagesimply ends with a familiar formula:

Nevertheless, he is not distributed through space by size so that halfof him should be in half the world and half in the other half of it.He is wholly present in all of it in such wise as to be wholly inheaven alone and wholly in the earth alone and wholly in heaven andearth together; not confined in any place, but wholly in himselfeverywhere.

Anselm (1033–1109) also distinguishedGod’s presence from the way in which material objects arecontained in space, and he, too, appealed to the concept of beingwholly present. In hisMonologion Anselm discussedomnipresence in a series of chapters with paradoxical titles. Inchapter 20 he stated that “the Supreme Being exists in everyplace and at all times.” But in the following chapter, he arguedthat God “exists in no place and at no time.” Finally, hetried to reconcile these “two conclusions—so contradictoryaccording to their utterance, so necessary according to theirproof”, by distinguishing two senses of “being wholly in aplace.” In one sense those things are wholly in a place“whose magnitude place contains by circumscribing it, andcircumscribes by containing it.” In this sense, an ordinarymaterial object is contained in a place. God, however, is not thuscontained in space, for it is “a mark of shameless impudence tosay that place circumscribes the magnitude of Supreme Truth.” Onthe other hand, God is in every place in the sense that he is presentat every place. According to Anselm, “the Supreme Being must bepresent as a whole in every different place at once.” LikeAugustine, then, Anselm denies that God is contained in space. Alsolike Augustine, he seems to leave unexplained this second relation ofbeing “present as a whole” in every place.

In his (1988) Edward Wierenga attempted to supply the missing details.He noted that Anselm thought that souls could be wholly present inmore than one place, provided that they sensed in more than one place,and that Anselm (in hisProslogion) thought that perceptionfor God was a matter of having direct or immediate knowledge.Combining these two ideas, Anselm could say that God is presenteverywhere in virtue of having immediate knowledge of what ishappening everywhere. Brian Leftow (1989) objected to the details ofthis interpretation and proposed instead that, for Anselm, God iseverywhere in virtue of his power. We will explore this idea below.First, it should be noted, as Christopher Conn (2011) emphasizes, thatAnselm himself discusses time in conjunction with space; perhaps anadequate interpretation of Anselm would exploit this idea and developan account, as Conn suggests, according to which God “contains” all ofspace-time.

The two ideas of knowledge and power figure prominently in theaccount of omnipresence given byThomas Aquinas (1225–1274), which we will take up in the next section. Section 3 will considertwo 20th century proposals very much in the spirit of Aquinas’s. Sometreatments of the problem of omnipresence seem to have the consequencethat God is related to the world as though it is his body. That willbe the subject of Section 4. In the final section we will considerseveral recent proposals that depart from the traditionalformula.

2. Power, Knowledge, and Essence

Thomas Aquinas held that God's presence is to be understood in termsof God's power, knowledge and essence. (In this view he followed aformula put forth by Peter Lombard (late 11th C.-1160) in hisSentences, I, xxxvii, 1.) He writes, “God is in allthings by his power, inasmuch as all things are subject to his power;he is by his presence in all things, inasmuch as all thingsare bare and open to his eyes; he is in all things by his essence,inasmuch as he is present to all as the cause of their being”(Summa Theologica I, 8, 3). Aquinas attempts to motivate thisclaim with some illustrations:

But how he [God] is in other things created by him may be consideredfrom human affairs. A king, for example, is said to be in the wholekingdom by his power, although he is not everywhere present. Again, athing is said to be by its presence in other things which are subjectto its inspection; as things in a house are said to be present toanyone, who nevertheless may not be in substance in every part of thehouse. Lastly, a thing is said to be substantially or essentially inthat place in which its substance is.

Perhaps there is a sense in which a king is present wherever his powerextends. In any event, Aquinas seems to have thought so. Hedistinguished two kinds of being in place: by “contact of dimensivequantity, as bodies are, [and] contact of power” (S.T.I, 8, 2, ad 1). InSumma contra Gentiles he wrote that“an incorporeal thing is related to its presence in something byits power, in the same way that a corporeal thing is related to itspresence in something by dimensive quantity,” and he added that“if there were any body possessed of infinite dimensivequantity, it would have to be everywhere. So if there were anincorporeal being possessed of infinite power, it must beeverywhere” (SCG III, 68, 3). So the first aspect ofGod's presence in things is his having power over them. The secondaspect is having every thing presentto him, having everything“bare and open to his eyes” or being known to him. Thethird feature, that God is present to things by his essence, isglossed as his being the cause of their being.

This way of understanding God's presence by reference to his power andhis knowledge treats the predicate ‘is present’ as appliedto God asanalogical with its application to ordinaryphysical things. It is neither univocal (used with the same meaning asin ordinary contexts) nor equivocal (used with an unrelated meaning).Rather, its meaning can be explained by reference to its ordinarysense: God is present at a place just in case there is a physicalobject that is at that place and God has power over that object, knowswhat is going on in that object, and God is the cause of that object'sexistence. Nicholas Everitt (2010, p. 86) objects to this analogicalapproach, stating instead "if this is how omnipresence is interpreted,one might well think that it would be clearer to say straightforwardlythat God is not omnipresent at all," and he cites Joshua Hoffman andGary Rosenkrantz (2002, p. 41)) as agreeing with him. But Hoffman andRosenkrantz in that passage merely say that "there is noliteral sense in which [God] could be omnipresent," whichleaves it open that there is an analogical sense in which God isomnipresent. Hud Hudson (2009) also denies that God's presence isanalogical, but that is because he thinks that there is a literal wayin which God is present everywhere. We will consider Hudson'sproposal in Section 5.

This account of omnipresence has the consequence that, strictlyspeaking, God is present everywhere that some physical thing islocated. Perhaps, however, this is exactly what the medievals hadintended. Anselm had said, for example, that “the supreme Natureis more appropriately said to be everywhere, in this sense, that it isin all existing things, than in this sense, namely that it is merelyin all places” (Monologion, 23).

3. Two Recent Traditional Treatments

More recent philosophers have agreed that God's presence is to beunderstood analogically.Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), for example, claimed that “the relation of God tothe world must necessarily be conceived, if at all, by analogy withrelations given in human experience” (Hartshorne, 1941). Ratherthan taking the relations to be knowledge of and power over things,however, Hartshorne assumed that God's relation to the world isanalogous to that of a human mind's relation to its body.

Hartshorne developed this idea by making distinctions between kinds ofknowledge and kinds of power. Some things that human beings know areknown immediately, by “vivid and direct intuition”, whileother things are known only indirectly or throughinference. Hartshorne held that the former kind of knowledge isinfallible, and it is the kind of knowledge human beings have of theirown thoughts and feelings. Since this kind of knowledge is the highestform of knowledge, it is the kind God has, and he has it with respectto the entire cosmos.

Similarly, some things human beings have power over they controldirectly; other things can be controlled only indirectly. Human beingshave direct control only over their own volitions and movements oftheir own bodies. Again, since this is the highest kind of power, itis the kind of power God has— and he has it over every part ofthe universe.

Thus far Hartshorne may be seen as developing the medieval view ofdivine presence. God is present everywhere by havingimmediate knowledge anddirect power throughout theuniverse (with the addition that his presence extends to unoccupiedregions of space). But Hartshorne endorsed a surprising addition. Heheld that whatever part of the world a mind knows immediately andcontrols directly is, by definition, its body. The world, therefore,is God's body.

Richard Swinburne (Swinburne, 1977, rev. 1993) also begins hisdiscussion of omnipresence by asking what it is for a person to have abody. Although he insists that God is an immaterial spirit, hesupposes this claim to be compatible with a certain “limitedembodiment.” Swinburne develops his account by appeal to thenotions of a “basic action” (an action one performs,perhaps raising one's arm, without having to perform another action inorder to do it) and of “direct knowledge” (knowledge thatis neither inferential nor dependent on causal interaction). He thensays that “the claim that God controlsall thingsdirectly and knows aboutall things without the informationcoming to him through some causal chain, e.g., without light rays froma distance needing to stimulate his eyes, has often been expressed asthe doctrine of God's omnipresence.” Swinburne's account isthus, as he notes, in the spirit of that of Aquinas.

4. The World as God's Body

As we have seen, Hartshorne explicitly endorses as a consequence ofthe doctrine of divine omnipresence that the world is God's body, andSwinburne is willing to accept a “limited embodiment.” Butsome philosophers have been loath to accept divine embodiment as aconsequence of omnipresence. Charles Taliaferro, for example, whileendorsing this overall account of omnipresence, notes that the basicactions human beings perform “can involve highly complexphysical factors…[including] many neural events and musclemovements, whereas with God there is no such physicalcomplexity” (Taliaferro, 1994). Taliaferro then adds that thisimmediacy in the case of God's action is precisely a reason to say that“the world does not function as God's body the way materialbodies function as our own.” Edward Wierenga adds a secondobjection. He holds that as Hartshorne and Swinburne develop accountsof God's power and knowledge, God would have the same knowledge of andcontrol over what happens in empty regions of space as he does withrespect to those regions occupied by material objects (Wierenga, 2010).In other words, Hartshorne's and Swinburne's accounts of omnipresence,unlike that of Aquinas, do not interpret God's presence as presencein things. But it would be implausible to count a thing aspart of God's body on the basis of his knowledge of and power over theregion of space that thing occupies, when God's knowledge and powerwould extend in the same way to that region if it were unoccupied. Soit seems as though one could accept the traditional account of divineomnipresence without having to conclude that the world is God'sbody.

5. Some Recent Alternative Proposals

Although conceiving of omnipresence in terms of power, knowledge, andessence is the traditional approach, with continued adherents, inrecent years several philosophers have proposed quite differentaccounts of omnipresence.

Robert Oakes (2006) suggests that space is “constitutedby” God’s omnipresence. He holds that things located inspace and the world itself are therefore distinct from God. Oakesthen draws on these claims to argue that divine omnipresence isincompatible withpantheism.

Some recent work appeals to esoteric concepts from metaphysics. LucoJohan van den Brom (1984; see also 1993) suggests that “God hasa spatial dimensionof his own which he does not share withthe created cosmos.” Brom’s idea is that just as atwo-dimensional surface “transcends” a line on thatsurface but is present at every point on the line, and similarly for athree-dimensional space and a two-dimensional plane in that space,“God, by existing in a higher dimensional system, is alsopresent in the places of all the objects in the three-dimensionalspace of created cosmos without being contained by thatthree-dimensional space” (1984, 654). Brom even conjecturesthat God possesses at least two extra dimensions, making it impossiblefor our space to bisect his.

Other recent work draws on contemporary discussions on the metaphysicsof material objects and their relation to spacetime. Hud Hudson(2009) describes several possible “occupation”relations. One of these relations is “entension”, where anobjectentends a regionr just in case it is whollyand entirely located atr and at every proper subregion ofr. An object is entirely located at a regionr justin case it is located atr and there is no region disjointfromr at which it is located. And an object is whollylocated atr just in case it is located atr and noproper part of it is not located atr. The typical way inwhich an object is located at a region of space is by having variousof its parts at different subregions of that region; that is,typically material objects are “spread out” or distributedthrough a region they occupy (they “pertend”, to use atechnical term). In contrast, if an object entends a region, then itis locatedas a whole throughout that region. Hudson thenproposes a “literal occupation account of omnipresence asubiquitous entension” (2009, 209). Omnipresence is location at“the maximally inclusive region” plus being wholly locatedat every subregion there is. Alexander R. Pruss (2013) also endorsesa version of this account, with slightly different details to allowexplicitly for divine timelessness.

Eleonore Stump (2010, see also 2008, 2011, 2013) has defended addingadditional conditions to the traditional understanding of omnipresencein terms of knowledge and power. She writes, “I … think,however, that the attempt to capture personal presence in terms ofdirect and unmediated cognitive and casual contact misses somethingeven in the minimal sense of personal presence” (2010, 111).She continues, “what has to be added to the condition of directand unmediated casual and cognitive contact … are twothings––namely, second–person experience and sharedattention” (2010, 112). Second–person experience involvesbeing aware of and attending to someone else as a person when thatother person is conscious and functioning as a person. Sharedattention requires that two persons be aware of each other and awareof their awareness, whether of each other or a third object.Stump’s goal is to provide an understanding of the kind of unionto be desired in love. It may be, then, that her real topic is thenature of God’s offer of love to people. But she explicitlyapplies her remarks about personal presence to omnipresence when shewrites, “in order for God to be omnipresent, that is, in orderfor God to be always and everyherepresent, it also needs tobe the case that God is always and everwhere in a position to shareattention with any creature able and willing to share attention withGod” (2010, 117). Perhaps, then, Stump can be seen not only asattempting to analyze omnipresence but to identify what is requiredfor it to be of religious or theological importance.

Bibliography

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