#747 God and Space

Dr. craig’s response

I was so delighted to receive this question because I just happen to be working at this very moment on the section of my systematic philosophical theology which is devoted to the subject of divine omnipresence. Christians believe that God, as a spiritual being Who created the physical world, does not have a body, and therefore the biblical descriptions of God as having bodily parts or seated on a throne are anthropomorphic in nature. They are descriptions of God in human terms which are figurative and therefore not to be taken literally. Thoughtful Muslims, I believe, would say the same thing, in contrast to the wooden literalists. That God is not spatially circumscribed in heaven is especially evident from the biblical passages concerning God’s omnipresence, that is to say, the doctrine that God is everywhere.

The Scriptures firmly insist that God is not confined to any localized place. At the dedication of the Temple Solomon prays, “I have built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever,” but then adds, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built!” (I Kings 8.13, 27). Solomon recognizes that though heaven, not the Temple, is God’s proper dwelling place (v 30), even heaven cannot circumscribe God.

The Psalmist affirms that God is everywhere:

Where can I go from your spirit?
    Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
    if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
    and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me fast (Psalm 139.7-10).

God is here described as present throughout the world as well as in heaven and in the nether realm of the dead.

Similarly, the prophet Jeremiah declares, “Am I a God at hand, says the Lord, and not a God afar off?  Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord” (Jer 23.23-24). God is both near and far and fills heaven and earth, much as water fills a vessel.

In the New Testament one of the most striking affirmations of God’s unlimited spatial presence comes in Paul’s Areopagus address, where he contrasts the pagan goddess Athena’s dwelling place with God’s all-pervading presence:

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all men life and breath and everything.  And he made from one every nation of men to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him. Yet he is not far from each one of us, for

‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17.24-28).

The Scriptures thus present God as everywhere present, not confined in just one place.

Rather the controversial question among Christians is the theological weight to be ascribed to these passages. Just as an eternal God can be conceived to be either temporal or atemporal, so an omnipresent God can be conceived to be either spatial or aspatial, that is to say, either God may exist in space or God may transcend space. If God does exist in space, then His omnipresence requires that He exist everywhere in space or omnispatially.

Now the biblical data pertinent to divine omnipresence almost one-sidedly support God’s omnispatiality, not His transcending space. But here we do well to recall the point of the Christian philosopher Paul Helm respecting God’s relationship to time, that the biblical writers may have lacked the reflective context for raising questions about divine temporality vs atemporality—the same goes for God’s spatiality vs aspatiality. The purpose of the above cited scriptural passages is not to teach metaphysics but to assure us of God’s universal sovereignty, inescapability, and accessibility.

Indeed, the thrust of passages about God’s dwelling in heaven is to emphasize His transcendence, not His spatial location! In saying that even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain God, Solomon’s prayer actually leans in the direction of God’s transcending space. Even though God’s heaven, like the physical heavens (the skies) are described in spatial language, so that God may be said to sit on His throne in heaven, look down from heaven, and descend from heaven, such language is on any account grossly anthropomorphic and is plausibly metaphorical language indicative of God’s transcendence. Biblical authors were well aware that Genesis 1.1 teaches that in the beginning the transcendent God created the heavens and the earth, so that everything that exists apart from God was created by Him (John 1.1-3).

So many, probably most, Christian theologians and philosophers construe God’s omnipresence in terms of His omnipotence and omniscience: God, while transcending space, is causally active at and cognizant of every place in space and can in that sense be said to be omnipresent. It is interesting how God’s knowledge and activity are so intimately associated with God’s presence in scriptural passages like those above on God’s universal presence (cf. Psalm 139.1-6, 11-18; Hebrews 4.12-13). The transcendent God is certainly active in space and knows what is going on everywhere in space; but is He literally in space Himself? The biblical data are underdeterminative, putting the question in the hands of the philosophical theologian.