Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

St. Thomas, q. 8.

[You ask whether God is immense.

Note 1. The immense is spoken of as it were as without measure. Hence, if it be considered as to the divine being, it is infinity; if as to duration, it is eternity; if as to place, it is incircumscribability. Here the discussion is about immensity taken in this last sense.

Note 2. Immensity and ubiquity, although they are sometimes taken for the same thing, are nevertheless not altogether the same. Immensity signifies actus primus, ubiquity actus secundus. Therefore, immensity is the aptitude or capacity of existing in all things and places, even infinite ones, if they were given. Ubiquity, however, is actual existence in all things and places that are. Wherefore immensity is an attribute of God, because it belongs to Him naturally and necessarily, and He possesses it from eternity and before the creation of things; ubiquity, however, is not an attribute of God, because it belongs to Him hypothetically and in time: namely, after creation and the existence of things He is everywhere, that is, in all created things, in which He was not before, not indeed through defect of Himself, but through defect of things.

I answer that, God is immense.

That God is immense is of faith. This was expressly defined in the Fourth Lateran Council, chapter Firmiter, where the council professes that it believes that God is immense. The Athanasian Symbol must be added, in which it is said: The Father immense, the Son immense, the Holy Spirit immense.

Concerning the mode of this immensity, the Angelic Doctor says ¹: “He is in all things by power, insofar as all things are subject to his power; he is by presence in all things, insofar as all things are naked and open to his eyes; he is in all things by essence, insofar as he is present to all things as the cause of being.”

I say therefore, first: God is everywhere by power.

It is against the Manichaeans, who said that spiritual and incorporeal things, as being good, are subject to the divine power, but not visible and corporeal things, which they posited to exist from a principle supremely evil.

Proof 1 from Scripture. From the Apostle, Ⅰ Cor., xii, 6: God works all things in all. And Acts, ⅩⅦ, 27 and 28: He is not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move, and are.

Proof 2 from the Fathers. St. Augustine, book IV On Genesis according to the letter, ch. 12, n. 23: « Since we are other than God himself, we are not in him for any other reason than because he effects this, and this is his work whereby he contains all things, and whereby his wisdom reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things sweetly, Wis., VIII, 1; through which ordering we live, and are moved, and are. » St. Anselm, in the Monologion, ch. 22: « Since nothing can exist or be preserved without God, we are compelled to say that God is everywhere and always. » Hugh of St. Victor, book VII of the Theological Instruction, ch. 19: « Since we discern that the effect of the divine power is nowhere lacking, why do we doubt that this same power of God is present in all things? »

Proof 3 by reason. God created all things by His power, and all things are subjected to His power, as necessarily conserved in being by Him; otherwise the divine power would not be infinite. Therefore God is in all things through His power.

I say secondly: God is everywhere by presence².

It is against the Deists, who, although they admit that all things are subject to the divine power, nevertheless deny that all things are administered by divine providence; in whose person it is said Job., xxii, 14: Clouds are his hiding-place, nor does he consider our affairs, and he walks about the hinges of heaven.

Prob. 1º from Scripture. Ps. ⅭⅩⅩⅩⅧ, 7 and 8: Whither shall I go from thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from thy face? If I shall ascend into heaven, thou art there; if I shall descend into hell, thou art present. The Apostle, in Hebr., Ⅳ, 13: All things are naked and open to his eyes.

Proof 2 from the Fathers. St. Augustine, sermon 132³, ch. 2, n. 2: “You fear God alone... He himself is to be feared in public, he himself in secret. You go forth, you are seen; you enter, you are seen; the lamp is burning, he sees you; the lamp has been extinguished, he sees you; you enter your chamber, he sees you; you are occupied in your heart, he sees you. Fear him, him whose care it is that he see you, and even by fearing, be chaste. Or, if you wish to sin, seek where he may not see you, and do what you will.” So say many.

Proof 3 from reason. To be everywhere, or in all things, by presence, is nothing other than to cognize all these things. But God cognizes all things with most perfect cognition; for He is infinite in every genus of perfections, among which is cognition. Therefore God is in all things by presence.

I say thirdly: God is everywhere by essence.

It is against certain philosophers, “who, although they said that all things pertain to the providence of God, nevertheless held that not all things were created immediately by God, but that he immediately created the first creatures, and those created the others⁴.” It is also against the gentiles, who imagined God to be corporeal. It is moreover against the Socinians and certain Calvinists, among whom Vorstius, to whom from among Catholics Augustine of Gubbio is to be added, in Psal. ⅭⅩⅩⅩⅧ. For these teach that God indeed is everywhere by power and operation, but that according to substance he is only in heaven, in the manner in which the sun, existing substantially in its own sphere, has an influence on sublunary things.

*It is proved, first, *from Scripture. Job, XI, 8 and 9: He is higher than heaven, and what will you do? deeper than hell, and whence will you know? the measure of him is longer than the earth, and broader than the sea. Jeremiah, XXIII, 24: Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord. Other texts will be found below cited by Augustine.

Proof 2 from the Fathers. Augustine, Epistle 187⁵, c. 4, n. 14: “God is diffused through all things; for He Himself says through the Prophet: I fill heaven and earth... God is everywhere diffused substantially.” St. Bernard, On the Song of Songs, sermon 3, n. 4: “You are wholly everywhere among creatures, creating and containing; but no creature can express Your infinity, although there is none that cannot in some part indicate Your power. You are wholly everywhere by existence, but not equally in all things by efficiency.” The same author again splendidly, Sermon iv on diverse matters: “Where is He? What have I said, wretch that I am? But where is He not? He is higher than heaven, deeper than hell, broader than the earth, more widely diffused than the sea. He is nowhere and He is everywhere, because He is absent from none, nor is He contained by any place. He Himself is here, but I am not here. How much more likely it would seem that You were not here, and that I were here, O Lord!” Let these two stand for all.

*It is proved thirdly *by reason. The divine virtue or power which bestows existence on all things that are and continually preserves them is not in God an accident, but is really the very essence or substance of God itself. But God is in all things by his power, as has been said. Therefore God is in all things by his essence or substance. St. Anselm thus renders this argument, de Incarnat., ch. 4: “The being of God and his power are the same. Therefore, just as the power of God is always and everywhere, so whatever God is, is also everywhere and always.”

How the immensity of God ought to be understood, Augustine explains most wisely, at the same time forestalling the difficulties that can present themselves to the mind, Epist. 187⁶, on the presence of God to Dardanus, chap. 4, no. 11 and 14: “In the very fact that God is said to be diffused everywhere, a carnal thought must be resisted, and the mind must be withdrawn from the senses of the body, lest we suppose that God is diffused through all things by a kind of spatial magnitude, just as earth, or moisture, or air, or this light is diffused (for every magnitude of this kind is less in its part than in the whole); but rather in this way, as wisdom is great, even in a man whose body is small. And if there are two wise men, of whom one is larger in body, neither is wiser; that wisdom is not greater in the larger, smaller in the smaller, or smaller in one than in two; but it is as great in this one as in that one, and as great in each one as in both together: for if they are altogether equally wise, the two do not know more than each singly, just as if they are equally immortal, the two do not live more than each singly...”

God, therefore, is diffused through all things. For He Himself says through the Prophet, Jerem., xxiii, 24: I fill heaven and earth; and what I set down a little before concerning His wisdom, Wis., viii, 1: She reaches mightily from end to end, and disposes all things sweetly; and likewise it is written, ibid., i, 7: The Spirit of the Lord has filled the orb of the earth; and to Him it is said in a certain psalm, Ps. cxxxviii, 7. 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. But God is thus diffused through all things, not so that He may be a quality of the world, but the substance creating the world, ruling the world without labor and containing it without burden. (Yet not through spaces of places, as though diffused by bulk, so that in one half of the world He should be half in body, and in the other half half,) and thus wholly through the whole; but wholly in heaven alone, and wholly in earth alone, and wholly in heaven and in earth, and contained by no place, but wholly everywhere in Himself.