EARLY CHURCH FATHERS (100-600 AD)
Augustine of Hippo (354-430)
“And how shall I call in my God, my God and my Lord? For surely, I will call Him into myself when I invoke Him. And what room is there in me into which my God might come? … Everywhere God wholly filleth all things, but neither heaven nor Earth containeth him.“
—Confessions, Book I, Chapters 2-3 (E.B. Pusey, trans. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907)
“Since, then, Thou dost fill the heaven and earth, do they contain Thee? Or, dost Thou fill and overflow them, because they cannot contain Thee? … Or rather, is it that Thou art wholly everywhere whilst nothing contains Thee wholly?“
—Confessions, Book I, Chapter 3
Gregory of Nazianzus, “The Theologian” (329-390)
“And how shall we preserve the truth that God pervades all things and fills all – as it is written, ‘Do I not fill heaven and earth?’ says the Lord (Jeremiah 23:24); and ‘The Spirit of the Lord fills the world’ (Wisdom 1:7) – if God partly contains and partly is contained?“
—Second Theological Oration (Oration 28), Section 8 (Stephen Reynolds, trans. 2011)
“Filling all with His Essence, containing all things, filling the world in His Essence, yet incapable of being comprehended in His power by the world; good, upright, royal, by nature not by adoption; sanctifying not sanctified; measuring not measured; shared not sharing; filling not filled; containing not contained; inherited, glorified, reckoned with the Father and the Son.”
—Fifth Theological Oration (Oration 31), Section 29
John Chrysostom (347-407)
“I know that God is everywhere, and I know that he is everywhere in his whole being. But I do not know how he is everywhere. I know that he is eternal and has no beginning. But I do not know how.”
—De incomprehensibili Dei natura, Homily 1, Section 19 (Paul W. Harkins, trans. The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 72. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1984)
Athanasius (296-373)
“For being the Image and Radiance of the Father, and Light from Light, He is always with the Father…The Father being everywhere, the Word would be everywhere too, and in all things.“
—Against the Arians, Discourse 2, Chapter 24 (NPNF Second Series, Vol. 4)
MEDIEVAL THEOLOGIANS (600-1500)
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
“But yesterday and to-day and to-morrow thou art; or, rather, neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow thou art; but simply, thou art, outside all time…thou, although nothing exists without thee, nevertheless dost not exist in space or time, but all things exist in thee. For nothing contains thee, but thou containest all.“
—Proslogion, Chapter 19 (Sidney Norton Deane, trans. Chicago: Open Court, 1903)
“The supreme Nature is more appropriately said to be everywhere, in this sense, that it is in all existing things, than in this sense, namely that it is merely in all places.“
—Monologion, Chapter 23
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)
“Since therefore the divine being is not a being received in anything, but He is His own subsistent being as was shown above (I:3:4), it is clear that God Himself is infinite and perfect.“
—Summa Theologica I, q.7, a.1 (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1920)
“God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power…Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being…Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being…Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.”
—Summa Theologica I, q.8, a.1
“God is in all things by His power, inasmuch as all things are subject to His power; He is by His presence in all things, as all things are bare and open to His eyes; He is in all things by His essence, inasmuch as He is present to all as the cause of their being.“
—Summa Theologica I, q.8, a.3
“God fills every place; not, indeed, like a body, for a body is said to fill place inasmuch as it excludes the co-presence of another body; whereas by God being in a place, others are not thereby excluded from it.“
—Summa Theologica I, q.8, a.2
REFORMATION THEOLOGIANS (1500-1700)
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
“The right hand of God is everywhere, but at the same time nowhere and uncircumscribed, above and apart from all creatures. There is a difference between his being present and your touching. He is free and unbound wherever he is, and he does not have to stand there like a rogue set in a pillory.“
—Luther’s Works, Vol. 37: Word and Sacrament III, ed. Robert H. Fischer (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961), 68.
“When Christ, the Son of God, was to be conceived in his mother’s womb and become incarnate, he certainly had to be already present in essence and in person in the Virgin’s womb, and had to assume humanity there. For the Godhead is immutable in itself and cannot pass from one place to another as creatures do.“
—Luther’s Works, Vol. 37, 62.
John Calvin (1509-1564)
“His immensity surely ought to deter us from measuring him by our sense, while his spiritual nature forbids us to indulge in carnal or earthly speculation concerning him…It is true, indeed, that as he is incomprehensible, he fills the earth also, but knowing that our minds are heavy and grovel on the earth, he raises us above the worlds.”
—Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, Chapter 13, Section 1 (Henry Beveridge, trans. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845)
“When we say that God is infinite, we mean that he is not confined to any place, and that his essence is diffused though all things.”
—Commentary on Jeremiah 23:24
POST-REFORMATION ERA (1700-1900)
John Wesley (1703-1791)
“The great God, the eternal, the almighty Spirit, is as unbounded in his presence as in his duration and power. This God ‘filleth heaven and earth;’ heaven with his glory, and earth with his bounty…God acts everywhere, and, therefore, is everywhere; for it is an utter impossibility that any being, created or uncreated, should work where it is not.”
—Sermon 111: “On the Omnipresence of God,” Section II.1 (The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 4. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996)
“God acts in heaven, in earth, and under the earth, throughout the whole compass of his creation; by sustaining all things, without which everything would in an instant sink into its primitive nothing.“
—Sermon 111, Section II.1
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
“The triune God of the Bible is eternally and fully satisfied, possessing in himself alone all existence, beauty, power, knowledge, truth, goodness, and happiness.“
—The End for Which God Created the World (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 8. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989)
“Another emanation of divine fullness, is the communication of virtue and holiness to the creature: this is a communication of God’s holiness…as truly as a brightness of a jewel, held in the sun’s beams, is a participation or derivation of the sun’s brightness.“
—The End for Which God Created the World, Chapter 1, Section 3
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
“Here omnipresence is the theme,—a truth to which omniscience naturally leads up…His mind is in our mind; himself within ourselves. His spirit is over our spirit; our presence is ever in his presence.“
—The Treasury of David, Commentary on Psalm 139:7 (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1885)
“The presence of God’s glory is in heaven; the presence of his power on earth; the presence of his justice in hell; and the presence of his grace with his people. If God be everywhere, we may well expect to find traces of his presence in every place.”
—The Treasury of David, Commentary on Psalm 139:8
“This makes it dreadful work to sin; for we offend the Almighty to his face, and commit acts of treason at the very foot of his throne.“
—The Treasury of David, Commentary on Psalm 139:7
Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)
“Infinity in the sense of not being confined by space is synonymous with God’s omnipresence. While heaven and earth cannot contain God, neither can he be excluded from space. Rather, he fills heaven and earth with his presence. This omnipresence includes God’s being as well as his power.“
—Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 159.
“God relates to space as the infinite One who, existing within himself, also fills to repletion every point of space and sustains it by his immensity…God is not present in creation as a king in his realm or a captain aboard his ship.“
—Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, 160.
MODERN THEOLOGIANS (1900-PRESENT)
Louis Berkhof (1873-1957)
“‘Immensity’ points to the fact that God transcends all space and is not subject to its limitations, while ‘omnipresence’ denotes that He nevertheless fills every part of space with His entire Being. The former emphasizes the transcendence, and the latter, the immanence of God.“
—Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938), Part One, Chapter VI, 60.
A.W. Tozer (1897-1963)
“Few other truths are taught in the Scriptures with as great clarity as the doctrine of the divine omnipresence…God is our environment as the sea is to the fish and the air to the bird.“
—The Knowledge of the Holy (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), Chapter 14.
“The doctrine of the divine omnipresence personalizes man’s relation to the universe in which he finds himself. This great central truth gives meaning to all other truths…Apart from God nothing has any meaning.”
—The Knowledge of the Holy, Chapter 14.
J.I. Packer (1926-2020)
“Living becomes an awesome business when you realize that you spend every moment of your life in the sight and company of an omniscient, omnipresent Creator.“
—Knowing God Devotional Journal (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 88.
Wayne Grudem (1948-)
“God does not have size or spatial dimensions and is present at every point of space with his whole being, yet God acts differently in different places.“
—Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), Chapter 11, 173.
Millard Erickson (1932-)
“God is not limited in scope or space…He was there before space. He cannot be localized at a particular point.“
—Introducing Christian Doctrine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 91.
Carl F.H. Henry (1913-2003)
“The living God of the Bible is everywhere present in the universe, yet not diffused throughout it pantheistically but present to it at every point in the fullness of his being.“
—God, Revelation and Authority, Vol. 5 (Waco: Word Books, 1982), 53.
Warning Against Dake’s Errors
Note: The unanimous testimony of orthodox Christianity stands against Finis Dake’s teaching that God has a physical body and is limited to one location at a time. Dake’s view that God “goes from place to place like anybody else” contradicts 2,000 years of consistent Christian teaching on divine omnipresence and reduces God to a finite, corporeal being—a view more aligned with Mormonism than biblical Christianity.
Application for Believers
The consistent witness of the church brings tremendous comfort: The infinite God is fully present with His people at all times. He is not a distant deity who must travel to hear prayers or intervene. As these theologians testify, God fills all space with His entire being, making Him intimately available to every believer while remaining transcendent over all creation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anselm of Canterbury. Proslogion. Translated by Sidney Norton Deane. Chicago: Open Court, 1903.
———. Monologion. Translated by Sidney Norton Deane. Chicago: Open Court, 1903.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 5 vols. London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1920.
Athanasius. Against the Arians. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892.
Augustine. Confessions. Translated by E.B. Pusey. London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1907.
Bavinck, Herman. Reformed Dogmatics. Vol. 2: God and Creation. Edited by John Bolt. Translated by John Vriend. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004.
Berkhof, Louis. Systematic Theology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845.
Chrysostom, John. De incomprehensibili Dei natura. Translated by Paul W. Harkins. The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 72. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1984.
Edwards, Jonathan. The End for Which God Created the World. In The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 8. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Erickson, Millard J. Introducing Christian Doctrine. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001.
Gregory of Nazianzus. Second Theological Oration (Oration 28). Translated by Stephen Reynolds, 2011. New Advent. https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/310228.htm.
———. Fifth Theological Oration (Oration 31). Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 7. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1894.
Grudem, Wayne. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994.
Henry, Carl F.H. God, Revelation and Authority. Vol. 5. Waco: Word Books, 1982.
Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works. Vol. 37: Word and Sacrament III. Edited by Robert H. Fischer. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961.
Packer, J.I. Knowing God Devotional Journal. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009.
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon. The Treasury of David. 7 vols. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1885.
Tozer, A.W. The Knowledge of the Holy. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.
Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley. Vol. 4: Sermons IV (103-141). Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996.
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