Scotus Academicus, Tomus primus: De Deo in se subsistente

Note 1. This is the distinction among the presence, ubiquity, and immensity of God: immensity is the infinite power and capacity of the divine entity by which God from his own nature has the power to place himself intimately present to all creatures, even if they existed infinite in number and species: ubiquity, however, is the very actual influx of God into all existing creatures, and, as it were, his substantial diffusion into each part of the world: but presence is not only that intimate substantial influx of God, but also his special assistance and operation somewhere. Thus 2. Machabaeorum, cap. 15. Judas, and his soldiers prostrated no fewer than thirty-five thousand, delighting magnificently in the presence of God.

Note 2. Since four grades and orders of beings can be distinguished, namely, nature, grace, glory, and divinity, so too a fourfold residence and existence in another, or presence, of God can be distinguished: The first is entitative, and is effected through the exuberant outpouring of his divine entity into each part of the world, as he himself says, Ieremia 23.: I fill heaven and earth. The second is sanctifying, which is effected through the diffusion of charity and grace, by which God inexists in just souls in a special way, as Christ says, Ioannis 14. If any one loves me.... My Father will love him, and we will come to him, and will make our abode with him. The third is beatifying, which is effected through the efflux of divine happiness and delight into all the Blessed; concerning which David, Ps. 5.: They shall rejoice forever, and thou shalt dwell in them. The fourth, finally, is divine, and is effected through the special inexistence of the divine Persons. This again can be distinguished as twofold: namely, personal, by which the divine Word is specially present to the humanity which he assumed through the hypostatic union; for in Christ, says St. Paul, ad Colossenses 2., dwelleth all the fulness of the Divinity corporally; but the other is essential, by which the divine Persons exist mutually in one another, as Christ says, Ioannis 14: I am in the Father, and the Father is in me.

Note 3. Natural presence and residence can again be distinguished as threefold, according to the three ways in which God is customarily said to be in all existing things, namely, by Essence, Power, and Presence. These ways of existing St. Thomas so interprets, Prima parte, q. 8. art. 3., that God is said to be in things by Essence because he immediately gives being to all: by Power, however, because all things are subject to his power and command: finally, by Presence, because all things are naked and open in his sight, and nothing escapes him. He explains this with the example of a King, who is present by power in his whole kingdom, for all the inhabitants of the kingdom are subject to his command: he is present, however, by presence in the royal chamber, because all things that are done there lie open to his eyes: but he is present by essence and substance on his throne, for in it his whole substance resides. But Durandus and Aureolus not undeservedly reject this explanation; for if God's being in things by Presence were the same as having things in his sight, it would follow that God is in things not only when they exist, but also before they exist, since the divine intellect apprehends and calls the things that are not as though they were. Add that the thing known is in the knower, not, however, the knower in the thing known. The same must be said of Power, for it extends not only to present things, but even to future ones. This explanation is likewise rejected as regards the mode of existing by Essence, because for a thing to be substantially present to another is not only to communicate being to it, otherwise the Sun would be in all sublunary things to whose production it concurs, but beyond that the non-distance of substance is required. — Therefore, for God to be present to things by Essence is nothing other than to inexist substantially with all things: by Power, however, the same as to produce all things and to conserve them by a continuous influx: finally, by Presence, the same is to have all existing things in his sight and to penetrate them intimately through his knowledge. But whether God truly inexists in all things in this threefold way is to be resolved in this Question.

First conclusion. — God is truly immense, and present everywhere by Essence, Power, and Knowledge.

Part 1 is proved from Sacred Scripture: Ps. 138. Whither shall I go from thy spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face? If I ascend into heaven, thou art there; if I descend into hell, thou art present, etc.; which words Anastasius Constantin. lib. 2. De incircumscriptione Dei rightly affirms are to be understood of the substance of God: For that Deity, he says, permeates and extends through all things, filling all things with the greatness of its nature. This God himself confirms, Ieremiae 23: Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. Thus Isaiae 66.¹: Thus saith the Lord. Heaven is my seat, and the earth the footstool of my feet: what is this house that you will build to me? and what is this place of my rest? With this also agrees that saying of Solomon, lib. 3. Regum, cap. 8.: If the heavens of heavens cannot contain thee, how much more this house which I have built? The same Sophar Naamathites intimates, apud Iobum, cap. 11. He is higher than heaven, and what wilt thou do? deeper than hell, and how wilt thou know? the measure of him is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea.

The holy Fathers inculcate the same, especially Augustine: God is everywhere wholly, he says, libro 7. De Civit., cap. 30., included in no places, bound by no bonds, divisible into no parts, changeable in no part; filling heaven and earth with a present power, not an absent, not a needy nature. And 5. De Trinit., cap. 1.: He is everywhere present without any position, containing all things without habit, everywhere wholly without place, everlasting without time. And lib. De Praesentia Dei ad Dardanum: Since God is by nature incorporeal and unchangeably living, he remains in himself with eternal stability, he is present wholly to all things and to each single one. Whence he rightly concludes in the same place: It must therefore be acknowledged that God is everywhere by the presence of the Divinity; but not everywhere by the grace of indwelling. The rest of the holy Fathers confirm the same opinion with various arguments, of whom — Some prove the Divinity from the immensity of the divine Persons. Thus St. Basil, in

the beginning of the Gospel of John gathers that the Father and the Son are truly God: Neither the Father, he says, nor the Son is contained in any enclosed or defined region: but the Father is immense, and the Son likewise immense: whatever whole you have grasped in your mind, and wherever you have penetrated in spirit, that very thing you will find full of God, everywhere at once you will find the hypostasis of the Son extended. With the same argument St. Athanasius, Epistola ad Serapionem, proves that the Holy Spirit is God: But if the Son, he says, for this reason that he is not in distinct places, but while he is in the Father is everywhere, and is outside all things, is not a creature; consequently, neither will the Holy Spirit be a creature, since he is not in distinct places, but fills all things, remaining outside all things; for so it is written: The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world. — Some gather from immensity that God is a Spirit: Thus St. Hilary, lib. 2. De Trinit., Because God, he says, is invisible, incomprehensible, immense; the Lord said that the time had come that God is to be adored not on a mountain, or in the Temple; because God is a spirit; and a spirit is neither circumscribed, nor held: because by the power of his nature he is everywhere, and is nowhere absent, overflowing all things in all things. — Some, from the substantial presence of God everywhere, demonstrate that the existence and union of the divine Word in the flesh of man has in it nothing shameful nor unbelievable: Thus St. Gregory Nyssenus, in the book Catechetico, cap. 25., when he had said: Who is of so childish a mind that, looking at the universe, he would not believe God to be in the universe: entering into it, and containing it, and sitting in it? For from that which is all things hang, nor can it happen that anything should exist which does not have being in that which is: he concludes: wherefore if all things are in him, and he is in all things, why are they ashamed of that mystery which is placed in the Incarnation, and which teaches that God dwelt among men, who is not believed even now to be outside man? For although the mode of presence by which God is in us is not the same as that one, nevertheless all confess this very being in us equally, both now and then. — Others, finally, gather that God is in all creatures, because he is the Maker of all: Thus St. Fulgentius, lib. contra sermonem Fastidiosi, cap. 4. From our God, he says, that is, from the holy Trinity itself, nothing can be locally separated, because the same supreme, true, and good God, just as he made all things, so he contains all things, and fills them being immense. And cap. 6.: But the Trinity, one God, just as it is eternal, and no times are co-eternal with it, so it is immense, whom no creature can enclose: and because it is immense, it is everywhere wholly, because it is neither contained by a place, nor stretched out, or contracted by space. To the same effect St. Ambrose, lib. 1. De Fide, cap. 4. et 7. God, he says, filling all things, is himself nowhere confused: penetrating all things, nowhere himself to be penetrated: everywhere wholly, and at the same time; present whether in heaven, or on earth, or in the lowest sea. With these agrees Cyrillus Hierosolymitanus, Catechesi, 6.: In no place, he says, is he defined, but the maker of places, existing in all things, and circumscribed by none: heaven is a throne to him, but he who sits exceeds and transcends it; and the earth is the footstool of his feet, but his power reaches even to the subterranean places. Whence he is everywhere present.

The second and third parts suffer no difficulty in their proof, for as St. Paul speaks, ad Hebreos 4., Neither is there any creature invisible in his sight, but all things are naked and open to his eyes; whence the Wise Man, Ecclesiasticus, cap. 23., mocking and reproving the impious man who says: Who seeth me? darkness compasseth me about, and the walls cover me, and no man seeth round about me; Whom do I fear? the most High will not be mindful of my sins; he subjoins: And he understandeth not that his eye seeth all things.... and he knew not that the eyes of the Lord are much brighter than the sun, beholding round about all the ways of men, and the bottom of the deep, and looking into the hearts of men, in the hidden parts. The same is evident also of the presence of power; since creatures can bring about nothing except with God co-acting, for God works all things in all, or, as Isaias speaks, Thou hast wrought all our works for us, O Lord; whence St. Paul rightly concludes, Actorum 7., that God is not far from every one of us, for in him, he says, we live, and move, and are. That is, as St. John Chrysostom explains, he is so near that without him one cannot live.... Just as the air diffused everywhere cannot be unknown, which is not far from every one of us, or rather is within us; so neither can the maker of all things. This comparison Anastasius Sinaita also employs, in the second of the contemplationum in Hexameron, As the air, he says, fills all things, and no place is empty of it, etc.; so also the God of all things fills all things, and no place is empty of him.

Second conclusion. — The immensity of God can also be proved by natural reason. This is against our Smisingus, who in Tractatu 2. Disput. 5. num. 56. affirms that the immensity of God is rather believed by faith than demonstrated by reason.

The conclusion is proved: The divine essence must be no less infinite and unlimited in its power and capacity of existing substantially everywhere than in itself and in its other perfections; for a property is commensurate with the nature: but in the others it is so infinite that it has absolutely no limits: therefore neither should it have limits in the capacity of existing everywhere. The minor is evident. The major is proved; both because no reason appears why one property of the divine essence should be infinite rather than another: and because if the divine essence were limited in its presence, it would not be infinite: for by this, says Anastasius Patriarcha Antiochenus, lib. De incircumscripta Dei essentia, that it is terminated by another declares the substance of him who is encompassed to be circumscribed; but it is certain that the divine substance is infinite and uncircumscribed; and that by natural reason, as we demonstrated above in treating of the divine Infinity: therefore in like manner it is established by natural reason that it is immense. — Then, it is clear to all that every perfection redolent of no imperfection is to be attributed to God, and that in the greatest and supreme degree: but for a thing to be present to another is a perfection, and God is deemed the more perfect the wider a place he occupies, whether by the extension of quantity, or by the diffusion and application of his power and operation: therefore the greatest presence is to be attributed to God. But ubiquity is the greatest of all presences: therefore it is to be attributed to God. — Finally, if God were not immense, but only in a determined place, he could be moved from place to place, and so would be mutable: but by natural reason it is established that God is not mutable: therefore it is established that he is immense.

He replies 1. That immensity cannot be concluded from infinity, except because a property must be commensurate with the essence, and the more perfect the essence is, the more excellent in like manner the property must be: but this principle, he says, is false; for although man excels brutes in essence, brutes nevertheless surpass men in properties; since the properties, or sensitive faculties, are far more excellent in some brutes than in men, for The boar excels us in hearing, the lynx in sight, the ape in taste, The vulture in smell, the spider in touch.

On the contrary: Infinity is related to the essence and divine properties in the same way as finiteness is related to the essence and created properties: but the latter so limits the properties of creatures that none is nor can be infinite: therefore in like manner infinity brings it about that no perfection of God can be finite: but his presence would be finite if it were not immense, as is evident: therefore etc. — Then, if the divine presence were not immense, the divine essence would not be infinite simply, but only secundum quid; for that is infinite only secundum quid which is not infinite according to every mode of it, and every perfection really identified with it: but the essence would not be infinite according to the perfection of presence, and of the capacity of existing in others: therefore it would be infinite only secundum quid. Nor do his arguments avail anything; since the sensitive faculties are not identified with the human essence, but are really distinguished from it; and since they depend on the disposition of the organs, it is no wonder if they are not commensurate with the perfection of the human essence. — Add that, although perhaps in created things the inference of a more perfect property from a more perfect essence would not hold, because since created things admit of more and less, one of them can have a greater perfection, another a lesser, even if they are really identified; for to a different diversity of perfection the formal distinction suffices: for the intellect, in the opinion of the Doctor, is more imperfect than the will, although it is really identified with it in the soul; but it is otherwise in divine things, where all things are infinite, and the infinite does not admit of greater or less; and accordingly from the infinite perfection of the one the infinite perfection of the other is rightly inferred.

He replies to the second argument, that a greater presence does not argue a more excellent perfection in a thing; for the rational soul and the Angels occupy a smaller place, and accordingly have a smaller presence than corporeal things, nor are they on that account more imperfect than corporeal things.

On the contrary: Greater presence argues greater quantity, whether of bulk or of power; although greater quantity of bulk does not always imply greater perfection — for man is more excellent than a mountain, even though he is smaller than it — nevertheless quantity of power points to a more perfect essence: therefore, since the Angels and the rational soul have a greater quantity and presence of power, it is rightly inferred as well that they are more excellent, and from their more excellent nature and power a greater presence is also rightly inferred.

They subsume: Indeed, a greater presence, and a diffusion of power and of activity, is rightly inferred from the greater quantity of power; but not of nature and of substance: and hence from this it would indeed be inferred that God, as being infinite, has power, but not substance, everywhere diffused.

On the contrary: From this it follows that a more excellent nature ought to have a more excellent and nobler mode of presence not repugnant to itself: but the mode of being present everywhere through the diffusion of substance and of power is more excellent than the presence of power alone; nor is either of these modes repugnant to God, but rather they most greatly ennoble Him: therefore both of these modes of being everywhere through essence and power are to be attributed to God. — The aforesaid reasons are confirmed: Either God is nowhere, or only somewhere, or everywhere: but it cannot be said that He is nowhere, nor only somewhere: therefore He is necessarily everywhere. The major is evident. The minor is proved as to its first part, both from that common saying of the philosophers, that what is nowhere, is not; and because being present to another is a perfection, and consequently is not to be denied to God. — The same minor is also proved as to its second part: What is only somewhere is there either by nature and necessarily, or by will and freely: but in neither way can God be said to be in some determinate place. Not indeed freely: otherwise He could move Himself from place to place; and thus He would be mutable. Nor necessarily and naturally; for some substance can be necessarily and naturally in a determinate place for only a threefold reason, namely, either that it may be conserved there and rest, or that it may be perfected in it, or that it may operate, and produce certain effects which it could not produce elsewhere; but in none of these ways can God be in some determinate place. Not indeed to be conserved, because since He is the first cause, He is altogether independent. Nor to be perfected, since He Himself is the fount and origin of all perfections. Finally, not to operate, because, as will be proved in the following Question, on the hypothesis that He were not in some place, He could nonetheless operate in it. Therefore, since God is neither nowhere, nor only somewhere, it is necessary that He be everywhere.

You will say 1. From St. Augustine, lib. 83. Quaestionum, q. 20.: in God all things are rather than He is anywhere: therefore if God is in all things, all things are in all things; and thus the same thing will be in itself; but this is absurd: therefore God is not immense.

I answer, that all things are in God in one way, but in another way God is in all existing things: for all things are in God, as effects in a cause, as the known in the knower, and as participated being in the most excellent and first being: but God is in things not as in a place, but through the real presence and indistance of His substance; and thus it does not follow that the same thing is in itself, because things are not in God in the same way as God Himself is in things. Whence Augustine adds in the same place: Yet they are not so in Him that He Himself is a place. For a place is in space, which is occupied by the length, breadth and height of a body; and God is not anything of the kind. And so all things are in Him, and He is not a place.

You will say 2. If God were in all things, He would be changed: but the consequent is against that saying of Malachi: I am God, and I change not: therefore He is not in all things. The sequel of the major is proved: Many things are newly produced and perish: therefore if God in-exists in them, He acquires and loses a new presence.

I distinguish the antecedent: That He would be changed wholly extrinsically, and only terminatively, I concede: intrinsically, and formally, I deny: for since He has no real respect to a place, nor to the things to which He is present, as creatures have, both corporeal and spiritual, therefore at the change of place, or of things, He is not really changed, but only the things are changed, which either begin or cease to be

present to God, no change nonetheless being made in God, in the manner in which He is called Creator without any real change in Himself.

You will say 3. If God were everywhere, it would follow that God is not only in foul places, but also in the demons and the damned: but the consequent seems absurd: therefore so is the antecedent. — I distinguish the consequence of the major: That He would be in foul places, so as to be defiled in them, and that He would be in the demons through the conferral of His grace, or of beatitude, I deny: that He would be through the indistance of His substance, I concede; For just as the rational soul, says St. Augustine, lib. De agone Christiano, cap. 18., is not defiled even in a leprous body, because it is a spiritual substance; much less can God, since He is set apart far from all matter, contract any filth from His presence in corporeal things. Or as St. Macarius answered, homil. 7., to those asking whether God was in Satan: Since the Sun, he says, although it be a creature, pours its light over muddy places, and is in no way harmed, much more can the divine numen so dwell with Satan that it is neither defiled, nor contracts any stain from him.

You will say 4. He who is said to approach or to withdraw, or to descend and to walk, to stand afar off and to know, is not to be deemed to be everywhere: but Sacred Scripture predicates all these things of God. Psalmo 9.: Why, O Lord, hast Thou withdrawn afar? Proverbiorum 13.: God is far from the impious. Genes. 3. the first Parents are said to have heard the voice of God walking in Paradise, etc. — I answer: All these things are to be understood metaphorically, and that Sacred Scripture, for the sake of easier instruction, exhibits God to us through these adumbrations, so as to teach us either how greatly God detests sin, or that He brings forth His sentence not with precipitate, but with temperate judgment, and with the cause known and examined: whence Augustine, Sermone 70. De tempore, See, he says, that you do not perceive ascent and descent as local. It is unworthy to think this of the incorporeal Substance, whole everywhere: but God is said to descend when He deigns to have care for human frailty. — Philo the Jew went in the same opinion, lib. De confusione linguarum, where, explaining those words by which God is said to have descended, to see the tower which the sons of Adam were building, he affirms that these things are written in human fashion, not from the truth of the matter; For who, he says, does not know that he who descends must leave one place, and occupy another? But God fills all things, encompassing, not encompassed; to whom it happens that He is everywhere, and nowhere; whence he concludes: Therefore none of the names which signify progression and motion befits God, such as above, below, to the right, to the left, before, behind; for in none of the things that have been said is He thought of, as one who, never changed, has turned his place.

You will say 5. God is said to be in heaven specially, by exclusion of His presence elsewhere. Thus Psalmo 113.: The heaven of heaven is the Lord's, but the earth He has given to the sons of men: therefore He is not everywhere. — I answer, that these things are to be understood not absolutely, but comparatively, or, says St. Athanasius, book contra Sabellianos, so that His infinite dignity might be more easily explained to rougher men from the majesty of His dwelling. Or that it might be suggested to the idolaters that heaven is not God, For heaven is called the house and throne of God, says Justin Martyr, in his response to q. 5. Graecorum, not because God has need of it for dwelling, or for sitting, as one who is in no way circumscribed, and needs nothing, but lest, looking to His amplitude of substance, and incorrupt essence, we suspect that God Himself, or one equal in honor, is God. Or, as Theodoret says in Psalmum 122.: God is said to dwell in the Heavens, not as circumscribed by place, but as conversing with the heavenly powers which inhabit the Heavens; or because, says Alcuin, lib. 2. De Trinit., cap. 5., there is in the Heavens a greater knowledge of that supreme majesty and essence, among the Angels, or in the holy souls of the Saints, than among the Saints dwelling on earth. Or finally, says St. Damascene, lib. 5. e. 16., God is said to dwell in the Heavens, because that place is more a partaker of His operation and grace. For in it are those who do His will.

You will say 6. Several of the holy Fathers judge that God is present in heaven alone in substance, but elsewhere only in knowledge and power; thus St. Clement of Alexandria, lib. 2. Stromatum: God, he says, "I am a God at hand," says the Lord: far indeed in substance: for how would that which is begotten approach the unbegotten? But He is near in power, by which He embraces all things in His bosom. And lib. 5., refuting the Stoics, who affirmed that God is a body and a spirit; they, he says, assert that God permeates every substance: but we say that He alone is the maker. Likewise Justin Martyr, in his response to the eleventh question of the Orthodox, says: Other things, which are said to contain something, are contained by this essence: but God alone contains this whole universe by His will. Lactantius agrees with them, lib. De Opificio Dei, cap. 16., where he seems to circumscribe God to Heaven: For the mind, he says, which holds the dominion of the body, seems to be established in the top of the head; as God in Heaven; therefore they judge that God is not everywhere. — I answer, that this was not precisely the opinion of the aforesaid Fathers: not indeed of Clement of Alexandria, since in lib. 7. Stromatum, speaking of the good and holy man, Such, he says, is he who is persuaded that God is present everywhere, and is not concluded within certain and definite places. Nor likewise was this the mind of St. Justin, both because he is not himself the author of the aforesaid book of questions and responses to the Orthodox, but some anonymous writer; and because it appeared above that he most constantly professes God present everywhere. Lactantius likewise can also be conveniently explained, as wishing only to overturn the stupid fiction of the Stoics, who asserted that the world is the body of God, and that He is diffused through the elements, and the other parts of the universe, as into so many members which He would move and animate: which that he might refute, he says that God is in Heaven, as the soul of man is in the brain. Not that he thinks the soul resides substantially in the brain alone, but only that it fulfills there its nobler operations: by which reason we also said above that God specially resides in Heaven.

You will say lastly. If divine immensity could be proved by some natural reason, it would not have escaped the more skilled Philosophers: but it wholly escaped them, as was said above: therefore it is not naturally known. — I answer by distinguishing the minor; that divine immensity escaped the more skilled Philosophers who misused the natural light, I concede: that it escaped those who used natural reason rightly, so as to uncover the divine perfections to the extent of their powers, I deny. For Pythagoras the Philosopher, says Salvianus, at the beginning of the first book De providentia, whom Philosophy herself received as her own teacher, discoursing on the nature and benefits of God, spoke thus: God is a mind passing through and diffused through all the parts of the world, from which even all the animals that are born receive their life. To the same effect is what Trismegistus says, when he says that God is an intelligible sphere, whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere. Indeed Aristotle himself, book 1. De Anima, cap. 5., indicates that God is present everywhere, for he praises the saying of Heraclitus, who, when he had shut himself in a baker's oven in the wintertime, and saw that his arriving friends took it ill, and for that reason did not wish to come nearer to him, urged them to enter boldly, Since, he says, here too God is present. Those sayings of the Poet Virgil, Georgicorum 4, are also well worn: For God goes through all the lands, the tracts of the sea, and the deep heaven. And also that of Aratus: Jupiter is whatever you see: all things are full of Jupiter: or as St. Prosper sang more fittingly to piety and Catholic truth, in the book De providentia: But that God is nowhere is not; for whole He is everywhere. And free He penetrates and encompasses all the members of the world.