universe,” and Weisse speaks of infinite space as being immanent in God.86 For in the nature of
the case, space is a mode of existence that is characteristic of finite creatures and not of God, the
infinite One. But the relation of God to space is such that as the infinite One, existing within
himself, God fills to repletion every point of space and sustains it by his immensity.
To be avoided here, certainly, is the pantheism that reduces God’s being to the substance of things
and thereby also makes the divine being spatial. Equally to be resisted, however, is the Deism that
pictures God as omnipresent in power but not in essence and nature. Though God is essentially
distinct from his creatures, he is not separate from them. For all parts of existence and every point
of space require nothing less than the immensity of God for their existence. The deistic notion
that God dwells in a specific place and from there governs all things by his omnipotence is at war
with God’s nature. Actually, it negates all his attributes, his simplicity, his immutability, and his
independence; it reduces God to a human and renders creation independent. God is present in his
creation, but not like a king in his realm or a captain aboard his ship. His activity is not a form of
remote control. As Gregory the Great put it, he is present in all things: “By his being, presence,
and power God is internally, presently, and powerfully present here and everywhere.” His
omnipresence is right at hand: in hell as well as in heaven, in the wicked as well as in the devout,
in places of impurity and darkness as well as in the palaces of light. Because his being, though
omnipresent, differs from that of creatures, he is not polluted by that impurity. Anselm,
accordingly, stated that it is better to say that God is present side by side with time and space
than that he is present in time and space.87
Nevertheless, this does not alter the fact that in another sense God is present in his creatures in
different ways. There is a difference between his physical and his ethical immanence. To suggest
an analogy: people, too, may be physically very close to each other, yet miles apart in spirit and
outlook (Matt. 24:40–41). The soul is present throughout the body and in all its parts, yet in each
of them in a unique way, one way in the head and another in the heart, in the hands differently
from in the feet.
“These things the one true God makes and does, but as the same God—that is, as he who is wholly
everywhere, included in no space, bound by no chains, mutable in no part of his being, filling
heaven and earth with omnipresent power, not with a needy nature. Therefore he governs all
things in such a manner as to allow them to perform and exercise their own proper movements.
For although they can be nothing without him, they are not what he is.”88 God’s immanence is
not an unconscious emanation but the conscious presence of his being in all creatures. For that
reason that presence of God differs in accordance with the nature of those creatures. Certainly all
creatures, even the tiniest and least significant, owe their origin and existence solely to God’s
power, to nothing less than the being of God himself. God dwells in all his creatures, but not in
all alike.89 All things are indeed “in him” (in eo) but not necessarily “with him” (cum eo).90 God
does not dwell on earth as he does in heaven, in animals as in humans, in the inanimate as in the
