Omnipresence and the Location of the Immaterial

Abstract

I first offer a broad taxonomy of models of divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition, both past and present. I then examine the recent model proposed by Hud Hudson (2009Hudson ( , 2014 and Alexander Pruss (2013)-ubiquitous entension-and flag a worry with their account that stems from predominant analyses of the concept of 'material object'. I then attempt to show that ubiquitous entension has a rich Latin medieval precedent in the work of Augusine and Anselm. I argue that the model of omnipresence explicated by Augustine and Anselm has the resources to avoid the noted worry by offering an alternative account of the divide between the immaterial and the material. I conclude by considering a few alternative analyses of 'material object' that make conceptual room for a contemporary Christian theist to follow suite in thinking that at least some immaterial entities are literally spatially located when relating to the denizens of spacetime.At the heart of many a theistic metaphysic is the view that an exhaustive inventory of reality consists of both material and immaterial entities, and that these two domains interact in some way or other. There is, however, surprisingly little discussion at the intersection of contemporary metaphysics and philosophical theology concerning the precise nature and relationship between the material and the immaterial and its bearing on Christian theology.This was not always the case. Medieval philosophical reflection was replete with discussion on the nature of the relationship between God, angels, and the human soul and the material domain. In fact, according to Robert Pasnau (2011a), the medieval scholastics were largely in agreement that immaterial entities, though lacking in material content are, strictly speaking, spatially located or present in some sense or other when relating to material reality. The question that preoccupied medieval philosophical theologians, then, was not whether such entities were spatially located or present in their dealings with material beings, but rather, how they were located as such. This, of course, assumes an understanding of the material-immaterial divide that is largely foreign to the contemporary context. Yet it is one that is both philosophically interesting, theologically fruitful, and by my lights worthy of serious consideration once again. * For a representative writing sample please consult the introduction, §2, and §4.

The CaML model of pantheism

“…Indeed, independently of pantheism we might have similar worries. Historically, there have been issues reconciling God's omnipresence (and thus his location within spacetime) with his being immaterial (Inman [2017] has an excellent discussion of the various views on this matter). -AML COMPONENT affords a new avenue of response: God is-in some sense-material in virtue of being present in spacetime, but is also immaterial in virtue of exactly occupying Heaven.…”

“…And that's a defensible denial. If it's a fact that a exactly occupies b, that can either be a fundamental fact or a derivative fact [cfInman 2017]. For instance, an immanent universal exactly occupying a region is a derivative fact, holding in virtue of the (possibly fundamental) fact that an instance of the universal exactly occupies that region.…”

Retrieving Divine Immensity and Omnipresence

“…16 Be that as it may, there are a handful of contemporary philosophers and theologians who favor a variant of an FO model of omnipresence, including Luco J. Van Den Brom ( 1993), Hud Hudson ( 2009, 2014, Robert Oakes ( 2006), Alexander Pruss ( 2013), Richard Cross ( 2016, Ross Inman ( 2017 ), and James Gordon ( 2018 ). Some have even argued that FO models have greater historical prominence than is standardly acknowledged.…”

God’s Necessity on Anselmian Theistic Genuine Modal Realism

“…It is distinguished from fundamental omnipresence, which requires that an object be present at a spatial region in the same way that my laptop is present at a spatial region. For recent discussions of omnipresence, see Hudson (2014), Inman (2017 and Cowling and Cray (2017). 30 An anonymous reviewer thinks that the way that (B)-kind-God is not simple might not concern a classical theist: indeed, there is no threat of 'decomposition' or 'dissolution'.…”