Prima Pars
Lecture 33: God's Presence in All Things and Omnipresence

Transcript
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us. And help us to understand all that you're with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. And it's kind of funny, I was reading Thomas on the Incarnation, right? And of course, what he does in the Summa Cane Gentiles will have a refutation of the heresies about the Incarnation, right? And bringing out scriptural texts, you know, that bring out, gradually, what the Incarnation is. And then you'll have a chapter where he gives arguments from reason against the article of faith. Of course, one of the objections is that the human nature of Christ is not everywhere, right? So if God takes on the human nature of Christ, he's not ubiqui, right? And of course, Thomas is saying, well, he's still God, though, so he still is ubiqui. He still is everywhere, right? You know? Even though his human nature is not everywhere. That's kind of interesting, though. It's kind of funny that this happened to be one of the objections I was reading this morning when I was going to go in and talk here about whether God is ubiqui, everywhere. We say where in the second part of everywhere, and they say in the first part, ubi is where, right? Ubiqui. Okay. So let's look at the premium again here. Because it seems to belong to the infinite, that it'd be everywhere, right? And even the infinite in the sense of a, what, bodied-ing infinite would be everywhere, huh? Okay? And of course, the ancient Greeks who thought that there was some body that was infinite, that body would be everywhere, right? In length and width and depth. And therefore, there wouldn't be any motion anymore, right? If it's everywhere, you can't move from one place to another. And, but, it kind of struck me here, you know, the way Thomas has arranged these, consideration of the attributes, because he has the infinity of God in between his, what, perfection, right, and his, what, being unchangeable, right? And, of course, the Greeks would see, you know, even in that way they understood the infinite, the connection between being infinite and being unchangeable. If you're infinite in extension, there's no place for you to go. You're everywhere. And if you're infinite, of course, in perfection, there's nothing you lack, there's nothing you could change, ground, or move to try to get, huh? But, on the other hand, the infinity of God is related to his, what, perfection, right? Because God is universally perfect, and that means his perfection is not limited to any one kind of thing, huh? But he contains perfections of every kind of thing in a, what, superior way and in a simple way, huh? So, it's kind of appropriate that he has infinity in between the perfection of God and his being, what, unchangeable. In other words, is the infinity of God more closely related to his perfection and to his being unchangeable, right? And then the perfection and God being unchangeable are to, what, each other, right, huh? Well, you know, I just throw that out as an end, right? Of course, Thomas is always talking about how the circle is perfect because the beginning is the end, okay? And it's kind of interesting the way these five are related, because God being simple and God being one are very close together. And I think I mentioned how in the compendium of theology, he considers the unity of God among the little chapters dealing with the simplicity of God, so I don't know how close they are. But in a way, he begins with the simplicity of God instead of the unity of God. It's like, what, he ends where he began, huh? Kind of interesting, huh? So, without being so presumptuous as to say why he's got them in this order exactly, right, it makes me stop and think about the order. At least remember the order, you know, and I try to see some reasons for it, huh? Now, about this, he says, four things are sought, whether God is in all things, secondly, whether God is everywhere, and the third in particular, whether he's everywhere by essence and power and presence, huh? And Thomas will make that distinction of what those three mean, huh? But essence might refer to as being everywhere as, what, giving things existence, right? And power, maybe he's being everywhere, he's moving things to do what they do, right? And maybe presence is that he sees all, hears all, knows all, right, huh? All things are open to him, as scripture says, huh? And then the fourth article is whether to be everywhere is private, huh? To God, huh? Now, the word proprium sometimes, people will translate it proper, and proper is, as opposed to what? Improper, see? But sometimes, you know, proprium has a sense of private as opposed to what? Common, right? So you speak of the bonum commune, the common good, and the bonum proprium, the private good, huh? And I don't think it's to be called the bonum proprium the proper good, because then the common good would be the improper good or something, right? And so, but a lot of times people will translate it that way, right? And of course, when you study logic there, you have the so-called property, right? Well, property in the strict sense belongs to only one species, to every member of it and always. So it's kind of unique to that one thing. So, in a sense, what you're asking here is whether to be everywhere is something that belongs to God alone, right? That only God is everywhere, right? That's just a separate thing, right? It's one thing to see that God is everywhere. And it's another thing to see that maybe this is something that he alone and no one else has, huh? Okay? So I think Greeks would say God is wise, and sometimes they'd say God alone is wise, right? That's adding something to it, right? You say it alone, huh? But it's kind of appropriate that you take that up last, huh? Because you want to see, obviously, that to be everywhere belongs to God. And it's presupposed to saying that belongs only to God, if that's what he's going to conclude in the fourth article. Now, to the first one proceeds thus. It seems that God is not in all things, huh? For what is above all things is not in all things, huh? But God is above all things, according to those words of Psalm 112. The Lord is, what, raised up above all the nations, huh? Okay? Therefore, God is not in all things, huh? That's a good objection, right? That's the objection of Protestants Jews for denying the real presence. In other words, how could Jesus be up there and over here at the same time? Yeah, yeah. More, what is in something is contained by it. And that's when it goes back to the first sense of being in, huh? We are in this room, we're contained by the four walls of this room. But God is not contained by things, but he more contains things. Therefore, God is not in things, but more things are in him, huh? Whence Augustine, in the book of the 83 questions, says that in him, rather, are all things, then he, what? Somewhere, right? Now, of course, the words to be in have many senses, right? And Aristotle, in the fourth book of actual hearing, the physics, as the multitude call it, who distributes his eight senses of being in, right? Which Thomas, in his commentary, orders, huh? But those, even, are not all the senses, but maybe the central senses. Moreover, the more powerful an agent is, huh? The more, to a greater distance, does his action proceed? But God is the most, what? Powerful agent, huh? A lot of times, you know, virtue is more translated by power than by virtue, right? In English. Therefore, his action is able to, what? Arrive even at those things which are distant from him. Therefore, it is not necessary that he be in all things, huh? Arrive even at those things, right? Arrive even at those things, right? Arrive even at those things, right? Arrive even at those things, right? Fourth objection. Moreover, the demons are some things. But God is not in the demons, for there is no coming together of light to darkness. As is said in the second epistle to the Corinthians. Therefore, God is not in all things. But against this, wherever something operates or does something, there it is. But God operates, acts in all things, according to that of Isaiah 26.12. All are, what, doings God has done in us. That's a very important text that Thomas is always quoting. That we don't do anything without God in some way doing in us. It raises all kinds of difficulties about understanding free will, right? But even free will. And of course, it's interesting that Aristotle, in the language of the medieval ethics there, where he talks about the beginning of our deliberation and so on, and willing comes from outside, comes from God. So even Aristotle, the pagan, if you want to call him that, sees that down, that God is the beginning of our doings. So he says, I answer, it should be said that God is in all things. And he starts to first negate the ways in which he is, what? Not in things, right? Before he arrives at the way in which he is in all things. So he's not in all things as a part of their, what? Yeah. So God is not the soul of the world, or something like that. Okay? Nor is he in all things as an accident, right? So he's not in me, like my quantity is in me, my knowledge is in me, my shape is in me, my health is in me, right? Now the other accidents. Not in us and those, that way either. Neither my soul, nor my body, nor my accidents, right? But as an agent is present to that in which it, what? Acts, right? Okay? For it is necessary that every agent be joined to that in which it immediately acts. Unless it's acting through an intermediary. And by its power, it necessarily, what? Touches that thing, right? Okay? Now sometimes Thomas will explain this word touch a bit, right? Because when a body acts upon another body, it physically touches it, right? Okay? But then we keep the idea of touch for acting upon something, even if you don't bodily touch it, huh? And so, you know, Thomas always pointed to our way of speaking there, when we say, I was touched by his situation, or whatever it was, right? Sorry for somebody, right? They were not touching in the sense that the bodies are touching, right? But that they're acting upon your, what? Your heart was acted upon by their misery, or whatever it was, right? And you felt pity or something for them, right? Okay? So, you could say there's a contact of power, but not necessarily of services. In fact, God doesn't have a service. There can't be that kind of contact, right? But there can be that kind of contact of power. Once in the seventh book of natural hearing, which we multitude call the physics, he proves that the moved and the mover are necessarily, what? Together, right? Now, Einstein's talking about wonder, right? He talks about how his wonder was aroused as a little boy when his father brought home a magnet. And the magnets seemed to be moving the metal filings without being in contact with them. And that seemed damn strange, right? And, of course, maybe there are things that we don't know about, right? What they call fields and so on, right? And physics. So, you don't really have action without contact, but it appears to be that when you see this. And so, or like when a magnet, you know, sometimes you bring a magnet up and the other one turns around or something and runs away, right? But the surfaces of the two medians haven't come in contact, but there is, what, like a magnetic field is in there, right, huh? And so, but Einstein is wondering because it seems, you know, strength is going on here. So the mover and the mover must be together. If you're talking about what is immediately, you know, working into a medium, right, huh? Okay, okay, but if I use this loaf of radio every instant to move that cup, right, then I don't have to be in contact with the cup because I'm working through an intermediary, right? Okay. Now, that immediate idea has got to be kept here, huh? Since God is, what, to be itself, right, to his very nature, to his very essence, it is necessary that created being be his proper effect. Just as to be ignited is the proper effect of, what, fire, huh? To be fired up is something that fire does. Okay? But this effect God causes in things not only when they first, what, begin to be, but as long as they are conserved in being, huh? And then there's a little comparison there. Just as light is caused in the air by the sun and, what, as long as the air is, what, illuminated, it remains, huh? When, therefore, things have being, it's necessary that God be, what, present to it according to the way in which it has been. So he's saying that to be of things is an immediate effect of God, right? Therefore, God, as the cause, has to be present to all things and in a most intimate way because he says to be is that which is most intimate to each thing, huh? And which is more profound in all things. And the reason for that is that it be formal with respect to all the things which are in the thing, huh? It's the actuality of them all. Well, once it is necessary that God be in all things and most, what, intimately, or you could say most, what, maybe in English, most inwardly, right? Oh. Okay? In the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in the book, in It's a very interesting way of speaking of a film, and Thomas Aquinas says, he says, the inward disciplines of philosophy, he means logic and wisdom, see, why in actual philosophy, in geometry, you can, you have something more sensible, right, or imaginable, and I suppose, you know, ethics and politics, where you're dealing with human experience and so on, that's more outward philosophy, right, but logic, which is dealing with things inside the mind, right, and wisdom, which is dealing with immaterial things, and things you can't sense, therefore, right, which you have to attain and know through your mind, that you can't sense the way they are, or imagine the way they are, that's inward philosophy. That was Belichius? Yeah, yeah, and the Intuitate. The Intuitate. Yeah, so, I think, intime, you can translate intimate, but you can translate inwardly, no? Sure, yeah. And you kind of see this in, in, um, um, St. Teresa of Avila, you know, the, what do they call it, the interior castles, in the name of one of the books? And so, like, you're kind of going inside yourself, right, to what's most inward in you, Yeah. And if you get, all together, into what's most inward in you, then you might find God, right? Yeah. Okay? But there might be a lot of monsters on the way in this. Yeah. As she says, right, uh, dragons and all those things on the way in. Uh, all, all your, uh, your defects and sins, as well as something. Okay? Hmm. So God is said to be in all things and most inwardly, right? Mm-hmm. Because he's the source of their being, and their being is most intimate and inward in them, right? Mm-hmm. And the cause must be, you know, together, right, with its effect, huh? So God is in all things. Now, the first objection is saying, hey, but, Scripture tells us that God is above all things, huh? Yeah. So how can he be in all things, right? Well, he says God is above all things through the excellence of his, what? Nature. And nevertheless, he is in all things as what? Causing the being of all things. So it's not the same way you have this in mind. It's interesting how we use the, where we borrow these prepositions from space, right, to talk about things. We tend to say that what is better, we put above, right? Oh, yeah. I put this student above that student, or I put this thing above that, meaning it's better than that, okay? And we tend to think of the agent as what? Acting upon the patient, right? So acting upon, it's above, and the patient is under, right? And since the effect of the agent acting upon, say, the matter, is that the matter be formed, right? Then we imagine the form to be above the, what? Yeah. Yeah. I was starting to tell a little story about my nephew there, when he was a little small kid there, and I was kind of babysitting him, and I was kind of building things for him at the museum. And I'd build a little tower or something that blocks, and he'd like to knock it off and laugh at me, right? But he was distracted, and I could build the tower that was actually taller than him. And he'd go, oh, oh, with a little finger pointing, and he'd point it like this, kind of awe or wonder, you know? Oh, oh, oh. And he didn't, you know, have that laughter and knock it down. But because it's above him, and maybe it would come down upon him, it might act upon him. It's easy to know if it's going to act upon it. But you kind of see how those words begin. Do you know, is there any special reason, I've always wondered, is why St. Thomas uses the infinitive essay instead of, like, maybe ends or something? Is there any significant? Well, it's more precise, because ends, E-N-S, would mean sometimes what is, right? Is there any sense? Now, English is an equivocation there, I suppose, when you say being, right? By being, do you mean what is, or do you mean the existence of what is, right? Okay. You can use it in both ways in English, I suppose. But when we say that wisdom is about being as being, we mean it's about what is, right? As it is, huh? Okay. Now, the second thing about the, what is in something is contained by it, right? So it says, the second it should be said, that although bodily things are said to be in something, as in a container, right? Nevertheless, spiritual things contain those things in which they are, as the soul contains the body. So when the soul leaves the body, when you die, the body starts to fall apart, right? Oh, man. So what's holding together the body is the soul, really. And so though the soul is said to be in the body, right, huh? It's not in the body, it's in a place, right? It's in it as the form, and the form is really, you might say, holding together the body, huh? Okay. Whence also God is in things as containing things, huh? Nevertheless, to a certain likeness of bodily things, all things are also said to be in God, insofar as they are, what, contained by Him, right? I've done a lot of mileage out of knowing that text in the fourth book of natural hearing, the eight senses of in and out, right? Because I'll notice that people, when they are deceived by the equivocation of in and out, they'll tend to fall back upon an earlier sense, which is not correct, huh? So, you know, the first three senses of in that you have in the fourth book of natural hearing, what is in something is actually there. So, you and I are actually in this room, that's the first sense of in. And the second sense of in is part in a whole, like my teeth in my mouth, they're actually in there, right? And the third sense is the way the genus is said to be in the species, it's actually in there. But then, you get to the fourth sense, where the species is said to be in the genus. See, is man an animal? Well, an animal is able to be a man, but is man actually an animal? Well, if it was, then when they said the dog is an animal, I'd be saying the dog is a man, right? See? So dog is not in animal, actually, but only in ability. And then he comes to form in, what? Matter and so on, right? Okay? Now, you'll find people fall back upon the earlier sense. Like people sometimes say, suppose you have a piece of clay in the shape of a sphere, and you mold it into a cube. What has changed? The clay or its shape? What do people say? Yeah, yeah. Now, has its shape changed? Is the shape, the subject undergoing this change? From sphere to cube? No. No. It's the clay that's changed, right? But shape is actually the genus, as we're called, and cube, right? So you're falsely imagining the genus of the two species to be the subject of the change from one to the other, rather than the, what, clay. So you're falling back from the fifth sense to the fourth sense. And likewise, when Anxagos is trying to understand how you can't get something out of nothing, right? And we have the old saying, you can't get blood out of a term. Well, why not? There's no blood in there, right? And so he falsely imagines that what you can get out of something must be actually in there. And it may actually be in there in some cases, but in other cases, there's only an ability, right? He wants to put everything that's in the ability of matter actually in there. And then he gets into all kinds of problems that Aristotle points out because of this. So people will often be falling back upon an earlier sense. So, you can see here some of the senses of him in this reply here. Now, the sense in which things are said to be in God, this could be taken to be the, what, seventh sense in the fourth book of Natural Ray. I've got you in my power. You know? And the opposite of that is it's out of my hands, we say, right? I don't have any control over it, right? So when I get you in my power, that's in the agent, right? So in that sense, all things are in God in the sense that they're, it's in God's hands, we say, right? It's not in mine. It's in his power, right? But in other sense, God is said to be in things as containing them, right? Holding them into existence. Now, the third thing is about acting at a distance. And the more powerful an agent, the more distance its action goes. To the third, it should be said that if no agent, no matter how virtuous or powerful it is, does its action proceed to something at a distance, except insofar as it acts upon that thing through, what? What is in between, huh? Through the needles. But this pertains to the, what? The greatest or the fullest or the maximum power of God that he acts immediately in all things. Once nothing is distant from him, as if it in itself, huh? Does not have God, right? But things are said to be distant from God through the unlikeness of their nature or through their lack of grace, huh? Just as he is said to be above all things by the excellence of his, what? Nature, right? So God could be said to be very close to me, in fact, closer to me than I am to myself. But another way, being that I am a sinner or something, then we might say that there's a great unlikeness between me and God, right, huh? And the more distance between me and God than there is between the saint, let's say, and God, right, huh? Okay. Now what about the demons, huh? What Thomas says, to the fourth it should be said that in the demons there's understood both the nature, which is from God, right, and the deformity of what? Guilt, huh? Which is not from him, right? And therefore it ought to be Not to be absolutely conceited that God is in the demons, but with this addition, insofar as there are certain things, huh? But in things which name a nature not deformed, absolutely one ought to say that God is, right? So maybe the word demon already includes in its meaning this deformity of will and so on that's in these demons. And therefore you don't say that God is there causing that deformity of will, right? But he's responsible for the existence of their nature. So now we know that God is in all things, huh? Now, what about God being everywhere? To the second thus one proceeds, it seems that God is not everywhere. For to be everywhere signifies to be in every place. But to be in every place does not belong to God, to whom it does not belong to be in place. For bodiless things, as Boethius says in the book Dehebda Maribus, are not in place, huh? Therefore God is not, what? Everywhere, right? Only bodies are in place, right? I think I quoted a famous opinion of the early Greeks before Aristotle. Aristotle, and when Aristotle takes up place in the fourth book of natural hearing, he says, it's a common opinion of the early philosophers, that whatever it is must be somewhere. And it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist. But to be somewhere, to be contained in some place, is a property of the natural body, right? So they're thinking that everything must be a body, or in a body, and if it isn't in a body, right? It isn't. And bodies are in place, right? So whatever it is must be somewhere, and somewhere it doesn't exist, right? It's like when they shopped the cosmonauts there, the Russians, you know, and they had them calling back to the earth. There's no God up here! However, I see a lot of attacks upon God, but at least I kind of take the kick, you know, kick, kick, I should say, you know. You see, there's occasion to say, I don't be surprised if he's up there in the sense in which the asteroids or the comons and so on are up there. Moreover, as time has itself to successive things, so has itself placed to things that, what, persist or remain. But one indivisible of action or emotion is not able to be in diverse times. So one now, right, so on, can't be in diverse times, right? And one indivisible of the action of motion can't be. Therefore, neither can one indivisible in the genus of permanent things be able to be in all places. But the divine being, to be, is not successive but permanent. Therefore, God is not in many places, and thus he is not everywhere. A lot of times people, you know, mix up the, what, indivisible that has a position in the continuous, right, with the indivisible that has no position in the continuous, huh? And if you're talking about the indivisible in the sense of a point, that's either here or there, right? But is God indivisible in the way that a point is? No, no. He's entirely outside the genus, you might say, of the continuous, huh? So, it belongs to geometry. We talk about the point as well as the continuous, because it's something in the continuous, right? But God is not something in the continuous like the point is, entirely outside the genus. And that problem comes up, you know, before, when we talk about the soul. And the whole soul is in every part of the body, right? And you say, well, but the soul is indivisible, how can it be? But you're thinking of the soul as being indivisible in the way that a point is, right? But the soul is indivisible in the genus of substance, not in the genus of quantity, huh? The point is indivisible in the genus of quantity, and the genus of continuous quantity in particular, right? But there you see the necessity of what? Of transcending the imagination, right? See? You're trying to imagine the way in which God is indivisible in the way that the indivisible is imagined, huh? So you might imagine, you know, like a line, and you co-imagine, you might see the endpoints of the line, right? And so one's here and one's there. But God is not indivisible in that way, huh? It's not in the genus of continuous quantity, it's something of it, something outside of all the genre. Moreover, what as a whole is somewhere, nothing of it is outside that place. But God, if he's in some place, the whole of God would be there. It could be part of him here and part of him there, because he doesn't have any parts, right? For he has no parts. Therefore, nothing of him is outside that place. Therefore, God is not, what? Everywhere, right? I can see, you know, what Thomas means when he speaks of the false imagination being the beginning, you know, of the stake and error. And false imagination can be imagining something other than it is, right? Which is a very common thing we do, right? You know, C.S. Lewis starts one of those stories where he goes to some part of England to visit, and he's picked up by an uncle or somebody, you know, and they're driving along in the car to be picked up at the train station or wherever it is. And you mark him, you know, C.S. Lewis to his uncle, that this part of England looks much different than he thought it was, right? And the way he imagined it to be, right? And you probably had this experience going to some place that you heard about all your life or something. And you get there, and it's not the way you imagined it to be, right? And of course, the father or the uncle or whatever it is, is saying, well, what rights did you have to imagine it to be that way, right? But your imagination does these things, right? You know, if you're going to meet a famous person, you imagine the way they're going to look, right? And you don't look the way you imagine them to be, huh? And so, but if you try to imagine something you can't imagine, right? Then necessarily, you have false imagination, huh? And of course, we never think without imagining, huh? And so, we have to negate what we imagine when we talk about that which cannot be imagined. So, we say God is not a body, right? Okay? But God is not in the continuous, huh? Even though we're imagining something continuous when we say this. Of course, you have that problem in logic, too, right? When they try to understand the universal, and Socrates is trying to understand the universal, and the parmenides, the dialogue. And you imagine the universal would be like a big sail covering things, right? But you'd have only parmenides. So, you'd be part of man, I'd be another part of man, another part of man. The whole, what a man is would not be found in each one of us. So, you're trying to imagine the way the universal is, and then you get falsehood, right? So, that's why logic kind of disposes for wisdom, because to really do logic, you have to transcend the imagination to understand the universal. But then you get to these modern magicians, and they'll want to substitute class for universal, right? Well, the class is like a collection you can kind of imagine like a crowd, right? So, instead of understanding what man means, something, one, common to all men, right? Instead of all men, you imagine a multitude of men, right? That's what man means. But it doesn't. They resolve it into something imaginable, right? But against this is what is said in Jeremiah's, huh? In the Council of the Commentary in Jeremiah's, chapter 23, verse 24. I, meaning God, fill, what? Heaven and earth, huh? Can't escape from this guy, huh? So, I answer, it should be said, that since place is a certain thing, for something to be in place can be understood in two ways. Either in the way of other things, that is, just as something is said to be in other things in some way, as accidents of place are said to be in place, or in the way that is private to place, as things, what, placed are in place, right?