I’ve been thinking about how God, as spirit, acts in the world. One often overlooked or underemphasized notion derives from God’s omnipresence. And thinking carefully about omnipresence helps resolve facets of the God of the gaps problem.
Most Christians will say God is present to all creation. The usual word to express this notion is “omnipresence.” Divine omnipresence need not and should not be equated with pantheism, however. Christians rightly distinguish between the Creator and creation. God can be present to all others without literally being all that exists.
God being present to all others includes being present to the most and least complex creatures. God is present to the subatomic particles and great whales. In God, all creation lives and moves and has its being. God is directly and immediately present to all.
God is not only present, but I propose that God exerts causal influence upon all and in various ways. To use contemporary terms, God exerts direct, top-down, lateral, and bottom-up causal influence. This multi-level causation comes in many forms, because it is multi-faceted.
In short, God’s providential activity is more than being the glue by which all things adhere. God also influences all things directly.
God of the Gaps
Affirming God’s omnipresence and omni-influence helps overcome key problems in science and theology discussions. One problem, known as the God of the gaps, has an epistemic and ontological form.
The epistemic form of the God of the gaps problem says that, except in a few cases, we can explain particular events entirely through naturalistic scientific statements. We only need refer to God for events not completely explained by science.
The ontological form of the gaps argument says that, except in a few cases, creaturely forces alone cause events to occur. Divine causation is occasionally necessary. God is an occasional add-on.
To say that God is present to all and exerts causal influence upon all, however, overcomes both forms of the God of the gaps argument. Because God is a causal influence upon all creatures, explanations purporting to be sufficient but that do not include divine causation are necessarily erroneous.
Christians should claim that, in principle, all fully adequate explanations of events will include reference to divine causation. The God who is always present to and always exerting influence upon creatures plays a role in any fully adequate explanation of a particular event.
To put it more traditional language, we all need God all the time. We should not think a fully adequate explanation can be given for any occurrence that does not include mention of God’s activity.
A Controlling God?
Unfortunately, some people think saying, “God is present to and always influences creation,” means, “God controls everything all the time.” But just as our parents influenced us without controlling us completely, so God can be always present and always influential without also being all controlling.
And, as I’ll say in later essays, this notion of a noncontrolling God seems entailed in the notion that God always acts lovingly.
For our present purposes, however, it seems wise to emphasize the classic Christian idea that God is omnipresent.