One of the most fought misunderstood attributes of God, Omnipresence often gets a bad rep due to how we as human beings perceive time and matter. We often hear the phrase that God is timeless and is the first cause, being outside of time, and for a lot of us, that does cause a bit of confusion. How does one exist out of time exactly? How is that possible? I think the discussion today might help.
The way we as human beings view time is linear. This means that in our limited scope, both as individuals and as a race, we are prone to understand events in three specific views; a previous event that either predates us or predates the events that are happening right now which we call the past, a current possibly continuous event that is occurring right now which we call the present, and an incoming possibly delayed event that is yet to happen which we call the future. The present and future all become the past over time and this process maintains until the day we die when time as far as we are concerned no longer holds meaning to us as individuals. It is in this sense that God is divorced from time.
Or rather, it is more accurate to say that God is not understood to exist in time as we perceive it. God is understood Biblically to be the first cause (Genesis 1:1), existing as the first possible event, meaning that there is no past event with God. The present is considered from our perspective to change over time and in order for that to be true with God, He would need to be in a position where He experiences change. The thing that we have to understand as early as possible with the series is this.
The attributes of God are not stand-alone. Though often explained one by one for ease of discussion, they are perfectly in harmony with each other. Thus one cannot present a discussion on one attribute as though the rest were not present.
For the purpose of simplicity, we relegate the difference between past and present in two ways; change in form and change in information. This means that the difference between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., with 8 being the relative past, is one the change in form as we grow (since we grow relatively older by the second) and be hungry, thirsty, tired, stimulated, entertained, and so on. The other change is information which is things like understanding something we did not prior or a relative sense of information lost with time such as lost relationships, lost opportunities, or with age, literal loss of context in certain information. Without these two indicators, time would still flow the way we understood it but we wouldn’t have enough context for it. Thus things like the need to ask for the time if you’ve not seen a clock for a while. Hold on to that.
God does not experience either. Two other characteristics of God are that He is unchanging, meaning that His encapsulation does not evolve throughout linear time and that He is omniscient, meaning that His knowledge is not subject to revelation or revision. We will hopefully explore more of the discussion in the other attributes but for now, this means that God does not have a similar relationship with our principle of past and present with every event from the start being a form of present continuous. This phenomenon runs all the way to the end of time as God remains both unchanged and fully existent, closing the chapter as the final, possible cause (Revelation 22:13). God holds the title of the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, which is logically the result of an unchanging God. Thus to God, all of the time as we would understand it has Him in a form of present continuous to a degree that it could no longer be logically linear. It would be a form of a circular. It’s not a perfect analogy but it’s a start. Rather than time as we know it encapsulating God, God encapsulates time as we know it, His existence being the brackets that not only hold linear time but justify our conviction in it being possible beyond our abilities to predict the future or rediscover the past.
But that’s not the end of omnipresence.
In order for God to be omnipresent, He would have to fulfill the premise of being existent not only in all of time as we know it but everywhere all at once. Notice that we don’t say he is in everything, as pantheism would hold, but rather exists in every place. I think this is slightly easier to get to if we understand the first position. Linear time does enclose the universe as we know it, meaning that it also encloses all matter as we know it. Thus, for anything to exist outside of linear time, it would also need to be of a form outside of our knowledge of matter as well to the degree that we would have to refer to such as immaterial, given even matter would be subject to change over time. Logically, the existence of matter cannot be under one who is also made of it and there would be a great reason to doubt God as the first cause or even outside of linear time.
Thus if God is unchanging, and encapsulates time and matter, and is also the Creator of the Universe and the First and Final cause, God has to be of a form that allows Him to be everywhere all at once.
The meticulous nature of the way our Universe was made already means that God had to be able to design each element with the level of consistency it has. From the perspective of a vast, possibly unexplorable universe, God is ever-present, and knowing that all of time is relative to Him and all of the information is available to Him to the degree that no revelation is necessary, there is no divided attention to His Universe. God is omnipresent, and that much is consistent. And yet, despite all this, there is yet a third connection that God has used omnipresence to make.
A personal connection with His Creation through the work of the Cross.
Omnipresence certainty does imply a sense of indifference because if God exists for all of time, in every factor of His Universe, why should He then make any personal bias towards any aspect of it? As Psalm 8:4 puts it,
“What are mere mortals that you should think about them,
human beings that you should care for them?”
And yet, the Bible paints a picture of such an omnipresent God doing that very thing. As we explore more attributes of God, our hope is that you will slowly understand who God is and how wonderful it is that He should deem it worthy to relate to His creation. Shalom.
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