According To The Teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas
PART FIRST.
III
THE ORDINARY PRESENCE OF GOD IN ALL CREATURES ¹⁰
Theologians, as we have seen, often explain God's omnipresence by saying that He is present everywhere because of His immensity. St. Thomas uses a different term. According to him, God is present everywhere in the capacity of efficient cause, per modum causæ. (Summa Theologica. Ia., q. viii., a. 3.)
Such an expression is profound and full of meaning, for it banishes from the mind any idea of a diffusion or expansion of the Divine substance, at the same time marking out the Divine operation as the basis of the relations existing between God and His creatures. Yet the expression was not a new one, and St. Thomas is not giving a purely personal opinion; here as ever he shows himself to be the faithful echo of tradition.
And, as we have already noticed, St. Augustine declared that God was in the world as the efficient cause of the world, "as the presence of the One by Whom the world was created; as the artisan is present to the work he handles." (St. Augustine, in Evang. Joan., tract 2, n. 10.)
