Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

The divine immensity is the eminence of God above the relations of place and space.

« As eternity stands in relation to time, so divine immensity stands in relation to place and space. This, therefore, is to be understood not only as the omnipresence of God, but as the eminence of the absolute divine Being above every relation of place and space; just as eternity is eminent above all relations of time. According to this notion, the attribute of immensity is both understood from the absolute perfection of the divine essence and deduced from the direct doctrine of the Scriptures. »

I. Just as to any thing enduring in any way time, or a succession of things, can coexist, and therefore to the eternal, time without limit can coexist: so also to any existing thing another can coexist in that relation which we call presence; and therefore for him who in his mode of existing through presence is unlimited, other things can be present, or he himself can be present to others without limit. Whoever has such a mode of presence will rightly be called immense. Just as, therefore, the first and obvious notion of eternity seems to be conceived by comparison with coexisting time without limit; so the notion of immensity that first presents itself seems to be conceived as presence without limit of place and space.

1°. Let us consider immensity under this concept, whether it is a perfection and belongs to the absolutely perfect God. The presence of spirits (for we may now rightly suppose that the spirit is God) is not in the same way as the natural and empirical presence of bodies. Those which have parts outside parts, or which are extended, can naturally be present to other extended things only in such a way that the relation of presence differs for each of the parts, and part corresponds to part and whole to whole in that space which is formed by the extension itself. Spirits, on the contrary, are wholly present (for they have no parts) and can exhibit their presence to several things at once, and so even to extended things and spaces, in such a way that the whole spirit is in the whole and whole in each of the parts. This power of presence is without doubt some perfection in a spirit, and greater the more widely the power of presenting itself extends. In a finite spirit, however, this power cannot be unlimited, but necessarily has its limits; nor perhaps is it always in act as to its whole efficacy, but can be only partly in power (cf. Suarez Metaphys. disp. 51. sect. 4. n. 32. sqq.). All limitations of this kind, however, are wholly repugnant to an infinite spirit¹.

Therefore: a) God, an infinitely perfect spiritual substance, cannot exist without being able to be present to other existing things, whatever things are supposed to exist. b) In God, an infinite spirit and pure act, a power of presence cannot be conceived as partly in act and partly in power; but it is always wholly in act, insofar as it is something real in God, since in reality it is nothing other than the existing intellectual substance absolutely perfect, which, whatever it is, is in act (cf. above p. 302.)². c) The power of presence cannot in God be restricted to certain limits, beyond which God would not be present in act; but it is an absolute power to which every limitation is repugnant; or God, formally as present substance, is absolute power and perfection without limit, even in the aspect of presence. Therefore, without doubt, immensity under this concept—that God is intrinsically determined to intimate presence in all existing things without limit—is a perfection included in the absolute perfection of God.

Let it be well noted, in order to guard against ambiguity, that presence can be said in two ways: a) as it connotes a creature really coexisting. In this way omnipresence is an attribute relative ad extra, and by reason of its contingent term is necessary only on hypothesis; but on the hypothesis of an existing creature, relative omnipresence necessarily follows from the absolute perfection of being (cf. above pp. 357. 258. 311.). We, however, are now treating not of the relative but of the absolute attribute. Thus b) presence can be understood as it is absolute perfection³ in God. In this way it is the absolute divine Esse itself, unlimited in presence, which we declare through the co-signification of a coexistence of creatures possible only indefinitely. Concerned therefore with this presence, or better absolute adsentia (cf. Suarez Metaphys. disp. 30. sect. 7. n. 35.), we say it is the divine immensity, by which God so exists that no creature is possible, no possible place, no possible space, to which God, if those created things were to exist wherever and of whatever magnitude, would not be intimately present without any of its own⁴ change. Cf. Anselm. Monolog. c. 23.

In this notion of the immensity of God which⁵ we have just given, we might perhaps rest content, without asking further what it is. In truth, however, everyone readily perceives that this notion is most imperfect. For the explanation is almost wholly drawn from the relation of reason to possible creatures or, what comes to the same, to possible places and spaces (which they call imaginary space); but the ground of this relation, which alone is properly the absolute attribute of immensity, remains most obscure. Indeed there is a danger that (as St Augustine relates happened to himself while still a young man, Confess. VII. 5.) we conceive immensity from this explanation as a certain infinite extension and diffusion; just as the error is easy by which eternity is conceived as an infinite time and infinite succession, while it is explained through the relation of reason to possible time (or imaginary time, as they say). This error of judgment may indeed be avoided by adding the negation that immensity is not by way of diffusion, just as eternity is not by way of succession; yet we must endeavour, if it can be done, to form a somewhat more polished concept of immensity, from which we may understand the very reason why it neither is nor can be after the manner of diffusion and extension.

2°. When we think of objective truth in the metaphysical order, or what is the same, when we think of the absolutely necessary laws by which whatever is or can be is subject and governed, we readily understand that these truths or laws are ontologically prior and independent of all relations of place and space; on the contrary, place and space are subject to those laws and governed by them⁶. Since therefore this independence from such relations is immediately evident to us, we judge the question absurd, whether it is true here or there, or whether it is also true beyond the limits and spaces of this universe, for example that the same thing cannot at once be and not be, or that equal things added to equal things make equal sums, and so on. Clearly, necessary and essential truths, considered in themselves, are exempt from all relations of place; and their own reason stands fast, even where there is no place, no space, nothing that is called here or there. If, however, there is some place and some space, the reason of truth will certainly hold there too, not as though truth moved to a place, or were in a place circumscriptively or definitively; but rather the reason of truth is everywhere the same, because in itself it is independent of all local limits. Now who does not see that it is equally absurd to call into question whether that which is truth itself, and the root and foundation of all truth, is here or there? Truth itself (ἡ αὐτοαλήθεια) is ontologically prior to everything that is said to be here or there: every place, every position, every space depends on it, not only in its reality, if it has any, but in its very possibility; and therefore it is above all and beyond all such relations. « And I looked at other things, and saw that they owe it to you that they are, and that in you all finite things are; yet not as in a place, but because you hold all things by the hand of truth » S. Aug. Confess. VII. n. 21. Hence if there is no place and no space and no creature, truth itself is in itself: « before all things God was alone; he himself was to himself both world and place and all things » Tertullian. cont. Prax. c. 5. But when place and space and any creature whatever is thought of, it cannot be conceived in the mind as existing somewhere, nor can it exist somewhere without truth itself, God, being there also: not as though God, truth, by some change were existing in another way than before, or began to be where previously he was not; but the change has been made in the created thing, in place or in space, which previously were not. Before, there was no here and there; but once they are, they can be only in God and with God. Thus God is nowhere locally (by position, circumscription, or limitation to some where outside of which he would not be); but he is everywhere, as belongs to truth and wisdom and is necessary from their intrinsic reason. « You have grasped little if it has been revealed to you of him (God) that he is nowhere, who is not excluded by any place. But in that sublime and incomprehensible manner of his, as all things are in him, so he is in all things » S. Bernard. Consid. V. c. 6.

Since all those things whose existence we perceive we behold under the categories of space and time (που και ποτε), and the presence of created spirits themselves is restricted within certain limits and to an intelligible place, as St John Damascene says (Fid. orthodox. II. 17.), a great difficulty arises for us in conceiving an existence free from all these relations. Yet for overcoming this difficulty no more apt means, and no reason more proper to the thing itself, seems possible to devise than—as St Augustine learned by long meditations—to think of God as he is, Truth and Wisdom. « Therefore let us not suppose, as though by spatial magnitude, that God is diffused through all things, but rather as he is, great wisdom » Augst. ep. 187. ad Dardan. c. 4. n. 11. « For is truth nothing, since it is diffused neither through finite nor through infinite spaces of places? And you cried out from afar: rather, indeed: I am who am » Id. Confess. VII. c. 10. Cf. contr. epistol. Manichaei cc. 15-19.

II. According to this reason, with the concept of immensity now established, the truth of this immensity follows from the infinite perfection of God itself, not only because the very power of presenting oneself is simply a perfection, and so unlimited presence necessarily belongs to God without limitation and in act, as was said above; but also immediately from the formal reason that God is the absolute Being itself, absolute truth and wisdom and substantial power.

1°. It is therefore evidently absurd to conceive, even in thought, the absolute Being itself, absolute truth and wisdom, as subject to any relations of place and space, such that it could be within determinate limits beyond which Being, truth, wisdom and power would no longer be. Absolute truth and wisdom and active power, absolute virtue and ἐνέργεια, by the very fact that it is, is exempt from all local limitations, and it can nowhere be something defined by place beyond which it is not; but it is everywhere, as above and beyond all place; and place, and space, and any creature whatever, if it is, is in that absolute virtue, nor can it be conceived as absent from it anywhere.

Hence it is clear, a), that it was an absurd and most wretched play of the imagination when some ancient heretics, and more recently Augustine Steuchus Eugubinus, and the Calvinian Vorstius (see Petav. l. III. c. 7.) taught that God is everywhere not by essence but only by power and operation. Did truth itself, wisdom itself, absolute power itself seem to them to be some mathematical point, from which operations are to be imagined as issuing like rays from the sun? It follows, b), from the doctrine set forth, that absolute power cannot be conceived as operating anywhere where its own essence and substance is not. This theorem follows necessarily from the fact that it is repugnant to the intrinsic nature of him who is absolute power itself, that he should be absent anywhere and so subject to the limitations of place or space; without any need to appeal to that saying, which is often used as a kind of principle: « there is no action at a distance. » For this principle, taken universally with regard to action, is at least not evident, and is denied or called into doubt by several weighty theologians, with Scotus, Gabriele Biel, Valentia, Vasquez, Franc. de Lugo, etc. Thus divine action at a distance is not given, nor can it be conceived, because nothing is, or can be conceived, distant from God, as we have proved; we do not, however, press the inference by which many, according to the axiom stated, deduce immensity from the fact that God operates, or can operate, everywhere.

2°. That the immensity of God, and omnipresence intimately bound up with it, are contained in the doctrine of the Catholic faith is manifest from universal ecclesiastical preaching. The doctrine of the Fathers not only comprehends the dogma itself, but also distinctly embraces the explanation of the dogma which we have proposed a little above, so that from them we may understand not only whether the divine immensity is, but also what it is, as far as this is granted in our present darkness. So that we may not be too long, let the declarations of the Fathers be read in Petavium, l. III. c. 7-10., from which each will see the proof of our thesis confirmed; which, since it is nothing other than a commentary on the doctrine of the Fathers, we have taken pains to make.

As for the Scriptures, in them divine immensity is described, accommodated to our manner of understanding, very much in the way that eternity is removed from the limitations of time, by opposition to the limits of place and space. a) As eternity is expressed by saying that God is at every time and before all time; so immensity is explained through God's presence in every place and space, the totality of which is commonly called « heaven and earth, » together with the declaration that God is contained by no spaces. « Since he is the Lord of heaven and earth, he does not dwell in temples made with hands…. Yet he is not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move, and are » Act. XVII. 24. 27. 28. « Do not I fill heaven and earth? » Ier. XXIII. 24. « Is it to be thought that God truly dwells upon the earth? For if heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you, how much less this house which I have built? » 3. Reg. VIII. 27 ; 2. Paral. VI. 1. « He is higher than heaven, and what will you do? deeper than hell, and whence will you know? longer is his measure than the earth, and broader than the sea » Iob XI. 8. Likewise b) as eternity is expressed by saying that in God all time, past, present and future, is one, and therefore difference and succession of time is denied; so immensity is declared by the fact that before the divine presence the far and the near are one in space, and consequently before it there is no difference of places and spaces. « Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off? If a man hide himself in secret places, shall I not see him? » Ier. XXIII. 23. « If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I go down into hell, you are present. If I should dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, for even there your hand shall lead me » Ps. CXXXVIII. 8. « God is in heaven above, and on earth beneath » Ios. II. 11. Finally c) as eternity is expressed by saying that divine duration has neither beginning nor end; so immensity is shown by the fact that divine presence has no term. « O Israel, how great is the house of the Lord, and vast (ἐπιμηκης) the place of his possession. He is great and has no end, high and immeasurable » (μεγας καὶ οὐχ ἔχει τελευτὴν, ὑψηλὸς καὶ ἀμέτρητος) Baruch III. 25.