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Welcome back! Last week, we discussed God’s goodness, and goodness in general. This week, we are discussing God’s infinity and his omnipresence. For infinity, the idea is that God has no limits; there is nothing that God cannot do or be that does not involve a contradiction.
For omnipresence, the idea is simply that God is everywhere. But as you will see, “everywhere” is a tricky concept for an immaterial being.
These questions continue to build out the theory of God’s nature that is commonly described as “Classical Theism.” And as these Questions show, there are good reasons, and important implications, to back up the attributes of God that are detailed in Aquinas’s theory.
As always, here are some resources you might find helpful as we move forward:
The Summa Theologiae itself. Buy Prima Pars here, and the whole Summa here. Read it for free here.
If you have never read the Summa, it can be a little intimidating. But I put together a roadmap so that anybody can read it and understand it. Get it here.
Here is the commentary I will be using from Walter Farrell, O.P.
Here is the commentary I will be using from Brian Davies, O.P.
Now, let’s dive into God’s infinity and omnipresence.
Question 7: The Infinity of God
Many people think it to be an obvious, almost trivial, aspect of what it is to be God that he is infinite, which is to say that he has no limits. But why would we think that? What kind of implications derive from God’s infinity? And is God the only truly infinite being?
1. Is God Infinite?
Aquinas’s reasoning here works in a straightforward way:
Either God is finite or infinite.
God is not finite.
Therefore, God is infinite.
Pretty obvious, right? To justify his claim that God is not finite, Aquinas points out that there are two ways a thing can be made finite: by form or by matter. In the case of form, matter is given its particular identity by its form, and thus is made what it is, and differentiated from what it is not. So because I have the form of human being, I am not, and cannot be, a dog or tree or bird. Thus there are certain limits to my being. Even “pure forms” like angels are differentiated from other angels because their form is different from other angels.
In the case of matter, however, a form is given limits because the form applies to that particular matter in which it inheres. So within the form of dog, there are limits because each dog is itself and not another dog with different matter.
However, neither of these limitations apply to God, who is being itself and therefore the most formal of all things. Because God is present in all things and contains all things, he has no limitations. Therefore, he is unlimited, i.e. infinite.
Now, you could object that there is an obvious way that God is limited: he is not other things! He is not you, me, or a rock, or a tree! But Aquinas points out that, as being, the way that God is differentiated from those things is actually the limitations of those other beings, not from some limitation in God. In other words, what makes God different from human beings is the way that human beings are limited, not any limit in God.
Here is Walter Farrell, O.P.’s explanation:
Limitation is essentially a declaration of potentialities achieved or potentialities capable of achievement; without potentiality limitation is a contradiction in terms. And there can be no potentiality in God, for potentiality is a declaration of dependence. God has not received existence within the limits of a human, an animal or an angelic nature; He has not received at all, He is.1
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Blogs on the philosophy of religion (God, evil, free will, etc.) like this one about art and the problem of evil.
Reader’s Guides on the great works of Catholic philosophy, like last month’s guide on Jacques Maritain’s Art and Scholasticism.
Further reading recommendations on many posts, including free posts.
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