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The Presence of God in All Creatures as Their
Active Principle or Efficient Cause
Before broaching the interesting yet difficult question
of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the souls of
the just, and of the mysterious union He thus effects
with them; before going into the proofs of the presence
both substantial and extraordinary of the three Divine
persons in the just soul which thus becomes a living
temple wherein the adorable Trinity finds delight, it
will be useful, and, to a certain extent, even necessary,
to grasp a few preliminary notions on the ordinary
way in which God is present in all things. Nothing, indeed,
could be more unreasonable than to expound the
doctrine of the extraordinary or special presence of God
in the souls of the just, before we know quite clearly
what is His ordinary presence in all creation.
To be in a fit position to speak in precise terms of
these two kinds of presence, and to distinguish one
from the other, we must first of all become acquainted
with their respective characteristics, and see in what
they agree and in what they differ. This may be
achieved by carefully examining, defining and comparing
their natures. Were we to follow a different course
of action, plunging at once into a more or less scientific
explanation of the indwelling of God in the soul by the
life of grace, without having, at the outset, firmly established
and clearly explained that such an indwelling is
to be found nowhere else in nature, we should be in
danger of imparting very incomplete notions, and of
leaving the reader in a state of vagueness that could not
but be regrettable. On the other hand, it will not be
necessary to dwell at length on the proofs for the divine
omnipresence, since all Catholics believe in it; we shall,
however, insist on the way in which it is to be understood
in order to convey an exact idea of God's immensity,
and so to prepare the way for a clear understanding
of the special presence of God in the souls of the just.
It is a dogma of faith, as well as a truth of reason,
that God is everywhere — in heaven, on earth, in all
things and in all places: that He is present in a very
intimate manner in everything created. This truth is
known to all, not only to the philosopher and theologian,
but even to the little child whose intelligence is
but awakening; it is one of the first lessons it receives
at its mother's knee — one of the first truths it learns
from any Christian teacher.
This doctrine, which the simplest Christian holds at
the beginning of his moral life, and which he continues
to hold without always understanding its full bearing,
nor suspecting what deep truths it expresses, was
preached long ago by the Apostle St. Paul, before the
most illustrious audience in the world. He was addressing,
not an ignorant populace, but the official representatives
of human wisdom, the members of the Areopagus of Athens,
when, referring to the existence of God in every creature,
the Apostle exclaimed : "That they should seek God, if
haply they may feel after Him or find Him, although
He be not far from every one of us; for in Him we live,
and move, and are."
Centuries before, the Psalmist had made this same
divine omnipresence the theme of his song: "Behold,
Lord, Thou hast known all things, the latest and
those of old; Thou hast formed me, and hast laid Thy
hand upon me. Thy knowledge has become wonderful
to me; it is high, and I cannot reach to it. Whither
shall I go from Thy spirit? or whither shall I fly from
Thy face? If I ascend into heaven. Thou art there; if
I descend into hell, Thou art present. If I take my
wings early in the morning, and dwell in the uttermost
parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hand lead
me, and Thy right hand shall hold me."
Finally, in order fully to convince us that we cannot
escape His ever-vigilant eye, God Himself, using our
weak human language, with infinite condescension, says
to us through the mouth of His prophet : "Shall a man
be hid in secret places, and I not see him, saith the
Lord? Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?"
It is not necessary to cite other testimonies in proof
of a point of doctrine admitted by all who believe in the
existence of an infinite Being, the Author of all things;
yet, on account of its extreme importance, we should
like to set down here the philosophical proof of the
omnipresence of God, given by St. Thomas. God, he
says, "is present in all things, not as part of their essence,
or as an accidental element, but as the active
principle is present to the thing on which it acts;
for it is essential that the efficient cause be united with
the object upon which it exercises an immediate activity,
and that it comes into contact with this object, if
not bodily, then, at least, by the exercise of its power
and energies."
We may compare God's action with that of the sun.
Although vastly distant from our planet, it still comes
into contact with it through its rays, else how could it
give light and heat to the earth? But God works in
every created thing, not only through the medium of
secondary causes as the sun acts upon the earth, but also
in a direct and immediate way, by Himself bringing into
existence and preserving in things that which is most
intimate and deep-rooted in them, namely, their very
being. For, as the characteristic effect of fire is to burn,
so the characteristic effect of God, Who is Being itself,
is to cause the being of creatures. "And so God is intimately
present to all things as their efficient cause — as
causing the being of all things."
God, then, is not present to the world like the artisan
or the artist; he is external to his work, and does not
often touch it in a direct way, but rather through his
instruments, or is present to his work when he produces it,
but later on withdraws from it without endangering its existence.
God is so intimately united to the works of His hands that if,
after calling a created thing into being. He should withdraw from it and cease
to sustain it, it would immediately fall into the nothingness out of which it was made.
And if you question the Angelic Doctor as to how
God, an immaterial, unextended and indivisible substance,
can be present in all places, and in the inner
depths of beings occupying material space, he will answer
you with a comparison borrowed from nature and
already employed by the Fathers, namely: He is present
in three ways: "By His power, by His presence, and by
His essence. By His power, because all things are subject to
His sovereign command: He is present everywhere
like a king who, while residing in his palace, is
by a fiction deemed present in all the parts of his kingdom
where he exercises authority. By His presence,
that is to say most intimately, because He knows all
things and sees all things; and nothing, however hidden
it may be, can escape His attention; all things are present
to Him as objects are said to be in our presence, although
they may be situated at a slight distance from
our person. Finally by His essence, for He is as really
and in His very substance present to all created things
as a monarch is present in person to the throne on
which he is seated."
The reason for this substantial presence of God in
His creatures is that not one of them could dispense
with the divine action preserving its existence and actuating
its operations; and since substance and action are
not really distinct in God, it follows that "He is substantially — in His
actual reality — present wherever He
works, I. e., in all things and in all places."
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." » 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 omni-
presence 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.
St. Augustine conceived a similar picture of the divine
immensity in his early days before his conversion: "So
also I thought of Thee, O God, O Life of my life," he
says in his Confessions, "so also I thought of Thee, as
stretched out through infinite spaces, interpenetrating
the whole mass of the world, reaching out beyond in all
directions to immensity without end, so that sea, sky,
all things are full of Thee, limited in Thee, while Thou
art not limited at all. As the body of the air above the
earth does not bar the passage of the light of the sun,
but the light penetrates the air, not bursting or dividing
it, but filling it — in the same way, I thought, the body of
heaven, and air, and sea, and even of earth was all
pervious to Thee, penetrable in all its parts great or
small, so that it can admit the hidden interjection of
Thy presence, which from within or from without
orders all things that Thou hast created. This was my
fancy, for I could shape no other; yet it was false. For
in that way a greater part of the earth would contain a
greater part of Thee, a less part a less. All things would
be full of Thee in such a sense that there would be more
of thee in the elephant than in the sparrow, inasmuch
as one is larger than the other, and fills a wider space.
And thus Thou wouldst unite Thy limbs piecemeal with
the limbs of the world, the great with the great, the
small with the small. This is not Thy nature, but as
yet Thou hadst not lightened my darkness."
Further on, speaking on the same subject, he adds:
"I marshaled before the sight of my spirit all creation,
all that we see, earth, and sea, and air, and stars, and
trees, and animals; all that we do not see, the firmament
of the sky above, and all angels, and all spiritual things;
for these also, as if they were bodies, did my imagination
arrange in this place or in that. I pictured to myself
Thy creation as one vast mass, composed of various
kinds of bodies, some real bodies, some those which I
imagined in place of spirits. I pictured this mass as
vast, not indeed in its true dimensions, for these I could
not know, but as large as I chose to think, only finite on
every side. And Thee, O Lord, I conceived as lapping it
round and interpenetrating it everywhere, but as being
infinite in every direction; as if there were sea everywhere,
and everywhere through measureless space nothing
but illimitable sea, and within this a sponge, huge,
but yet finite; the sponge would be pervaded through all
its particles by the infinite sea. In this way, I pictured
Thy finite creation, as filled with Thy infinity."
After his conversion and accession to the episcopal
see of Hippo, Augustine's language is entirely different:
"When we say that God is everywhere we must withdraw
from our mind every grossness of thought, and
disengage ourselves from sensible images, lest we should
imagine God as diffused everywhere, like some greatness
spreading itself in space, as does the earth, the sea,
the air or light; for all such things are less in one of
their parts than in the whole; but we rather should
conceive God's greatness as we think of great wisdom
in a man who happens to be of small stature."
The notion of the diffusion and expansion of God's
being, was entirely disapproved by St. Augustine, and
dealt with by him as a carnal conception to be rejected.
The advocates of such a theory do not, it is true, fall
into Augustine's error whilst he was a Manichean, of
supposing that a greater part of the earth can contain
a greater part of the divine substance; for they know
and teach that a pure spirit being indivisible and without
parts does not occupy space like earthly bodies, but
can be wholly in the whole being and wholly in each and
every part of that being. They do, however, seem to
share the ideas of Augustine's pre-conversion days, but
which he reformed later, in the general trend of their
argument and in the manner in which they conceive of
the divine ubiquity.
Far more spiritual, and therefore much more in accordance
with the divine nature, is the notion of God's
immensity given by St. Thomas. Instead of admitting,
with the advocates of the theory we are now refuting, a
kind of diffusion of the divine substance, so that God
would still he in His most real substance present to
created things scattered through space, even though by
an impossibility His action exercised no influence upon
them, the Angelic Doctor teaches that the formal reason
of God's presence in all created things is none other than
His infinite activity and operation, just as the reason of
His immensity is His omnipotence.
The Divine substance occupies no determined space,
either great or small; it does not need space to display
itself, and enters into no relation of proximity or remoteness
with beings that exist in space. If we speak
of a relation of the Divine substance with these beings,
we mean only a relation of power and operation; i. e.,
God is intimately present to all things because He produces
and preserves the being of all things: "God is not
determined to space great or small by the necessity of
His essence, as if He need be present in any place, since
He is from all eternity before all place; but by the im-
mensity of His power He reaches into all things which
are in place, because He is the universal cause of being,
Thus He is wholly wheresoever He is, because by His
simple power He reaches into all things." If then God
is present in all places and in all creatures, it is because
no actual space and no created being can escape His
direct and immediate influence, for His power, and consequently
His substance, reaches out to them all.
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 causae. 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." If, therefore, God fills the heavens and
the earth, it is by the presence and exercise of His power
and not by the necessity of His nature," for God's
greatness is one of power and not of bulk. St.
Thomas seems manifestly to have taken his inspiration
from these different passages.
St. Fulgentius, a disciple of St. Augustine, speaks in
much the same terms as his master. Likewise, St.
Gregory of Nyssa.
That the basis for the presence of God by very substance
in all created things is the divine activity, can be
clearly seen from all these passages, and from many
others we could easily adduce. An earthly body is
present in the place it occupies neither by its action nor
even directly by its substance, but by its dimensions, by
the contact of its parts with the parts of the body surrounding
and containing it; since, therefore, it is quantity
that gives parts and dimensions to a body and enables
it to come into contact with another body and to
occupy a determined part of space, such or such a body
is, properly speaking, present in space by its quantity:
per quantitatem dimensivam.
Far different is the way in which a spirit is present
in space. As it is a simple, that is to say, an indivisible
substance and without parts, it cannot of itself occupy
any space, either great or small, and does not need space
to display itself. If, however, a spirit wishes to enter
into relation with a place or with the things present in
that place, it can do so by the exercise of its activities
and its energies. Hence the proposition, looked upon as
an axiom by all Scholastics : spirits are present in space
by contact of power — per contactum virtutis.
What, therefore, quantity is to bodies — i. e., a property
distinct from their substance and extending it
through space — active power is to spirits, which it
places in contact with space and the things situated in
space.2
This is why St. Thomas, when asking the question
whether ubiquity is a property becoming God from all
eternity, utrum esse ubique conveniat Deo ab aeterno,
instead of answering, like some theologians, that God
is not, of course, present from all eternity to things
which did not as yet exist, but that His substance is,
nevertheless, really and eternally present in the spaces
which the different created beings are to occupy in time,
answers "that the Divinity is present only temporarily
in created things according as by His creative act He is
present by His power during their temporary existence."
And if you question the Fathers as to where God was
before the creation of the world, instead of answering
that He was in these incommensurable spaces occupied
by the present universe, spaces which thousands of
other worlds far greater than ours could not fill, they
will answer you differently, saying through the mouth
of St. Bernard: "We need not trouble to ask where He
was, for besides Him nothing existed, and He was then
in Himself alone."
Hence, to summarize, in the mind of St. Thomas and
the Fathers of the Church, the basic reason, the true
ground, the definitive "why" of the presence of God in
creatures is the divine operation, formally immanent,
since it neither issues forth from, nor is even distinct
from, the principle whence it emanates, yet producing
outward created effects and, therefore, called "virtually
transitive," virtualiter transiens.~excerpted from THE INDWELLING
OF THE HOLY SPIRIT IN THE SOULS OF THE JUST ACCORDING TO THE TEACHING OF ST THOMAS AQUINAS.
