Analysis Of St. Thomas Aquinas's View On God

Before St. Thomas Aquinas gave an answer to the question whether God exists in things, he, in I.7, answered that God is limitless. The characteristic of limitless things is to exist with an unending amount everywhere in everything . Then he asks about God’s existence in things, I.8.1-4. He is trying to answer the questions: Is God in all things, Is God everywhere, Is God everywhere by essence, power, and presence, and Does it belong to God alone to be everywhere? These questions and their answers are a significant component of Aquinas’s understanding of the natural world. Aquinas is building of his understanding that God is self-subsistent existence and supplying being to all of His created things.

Aquinas begins his argument by explaining

One the characteristics of a body it fills up places, and when they are in that space, they prohibit other bodies to be in those places. When we talk about what it means for God to be in a place or somewhere we must realize that the underlying question has to do with the difference of matter and spirit, including their different ways of being present. Also, shown in the article before this, God is present in things as the efficient cause of their being. Aquinas is arguing that it is true that two bodies cannot be attending the same time and place, but he does not exclude two minds or spirits in the same place and time. So, that is what Aquinas concludes about God being everywhere in the world. Because God does not have a body , contributes that He can be in a place that already has bodies there; thus, His presence makes them what they are because of His essence being made up of life itself. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge that God is in every place because He is giving the place in itself its existence with actual or potential to be a place. God is in every place, in a way, that is parallel to the way in which bodies are in places. A more relevant analogy, that is similar to how God is everywhere, would be in the case of our souls and bodies being in the same space. Another way to look at it is a man cannot impregnate a women without touching her, and a women cannot give birth to her child without touching the child. Another point that Aquinas makes comes from the reply to the second objection in article two of the eighth question saying that is essential to understanding how immaterial things relate to the material universe which he calls indivisible things like God, the soul and angels. They are in contact because of causation in a continuous sequence that is space and time but are