The Indwelling Of The Holy Spirit In The Souls Of The Just. Part 5.

According To The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas

PART FIRST. 

THE ORDINARY PRESENCE OF GOD IN ALL CREATURES ⁴

In his commentary on Peter Lombard's first book of Sentences, St. Thomas explains this threefold presence in slightly different words. Not that it excludes the explanation we have just given, nor that it is in contradiction with it, but it brings out better the thought of the Angelic Doctor relative to the substantial presence of God in His capacity of efficient cause. Here are his words: "God is in created things by His presence, inasmuch as He is there in action, for the worker must in some manner be present with his work; and, furthermore, because the Divine operation cannot be separated from the active force from which it flows, it must be held that God is present in all things by His power; finally, since the force or the power of God is identical with His essence, it follows that God is in all things by His essence." (St. Thomas, Sententiae, dist. XXXVII., q. i., a. 2.) These words are highly significant.

There are some theologians who explain the divine omnipresence by saying that God is present everywhere by His essence, because the divine substance, being infinite, fills the heavens and the earth. To them, the immensity of God is a property by which the divine essence is, so to speak, distributed ad infinitum in all existing and possible spaces; that is to say, God's omnipresence is the actual diffusion of the divine being, penetrating all real things and places without blending with them. According to this opinion, the divine immensity might be compared to a sea without shores, capable of containing an infinite number of beings of every nature and dimension. Within this sea is a sponge which the waters interpenetrate and then flow over on all sides: a figure of this world, that God's immensity pervades and then flows over on all sides; with this difference, however, that God is wholly in the world and wholly in each of its parts, whereas each portion of the water of the sea occupies a distinct place.