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This chapter introduces the main themes of the book and explains its structure. It notes how the concerns of the book can be related to two other bodies of literature: first, the literature in religious epistemology, which has sought to compare knowledge of God to ordinary perceptual or scientific kinds of knowledge; and second, the literature on divine omnipresence. By contrast with the first literature, this book takes knowledge of place as an analogue for knowledge of God, and by contrast with the second, it supposes that God's relationship to place is not simply uniform, or at any rate, it supposes that there is differentiation in the religious meaning of place.

The problem of evil can sometimes seem to be a special case of a more general problem, the seeming absence of God from the world, the conviction that some people sometimes feel that, if there is a God at all, he is ‘hidden’. This chapter considers the question: What does it mean to say that God is hidden? It contends that the answer to this question turns on an understanding of the divine attribute of omnipresence. Consideration of the implications of the omnipresence of God shows that there can be only one sense in which God is ‘hidden’: he does not present human beings with (or at least presents very few of them with) unmistakable evidence of his existence in the form of ‘signs and wonders’. The fact that God does not present all human beings with such evidence suggests an argument for the non-existence of God that is of the same form as the global argument from evil: ‘If there were a God, he would present all human beings with unmistakable evidence of his existence in the form of signs and wonders. And yet no such evidence exists. There is, therefore, no God’. This chapter presents a response to this argument that is parallel to the response to the global argument from evil in Chapters 4 and 5.

According to Frege, truth is at best a very strange kind of property. I expound Frege's redundancy/omnipresence thesis according to which the two sides of an instance of the Denominalization Schema express the same proposition, argue that this thesis is compatible with the assumption of truth‐value gaps, and begin to raise (Bolzanian) doubts about it. According to truth‐theoretical nihilism, truth isn’t a property even in the most liberal sense of this word. I explain that sense and give a detailed critical exposition of several versions of nihilism including the so‐called performative theory and three prosentential theories. The fact that some truth‐candidates have names plays a key role in my argument against nihilism.

God is supposed to be a person without a body, present everywhere.A person is a being with sophisticated mental properties. The identity of a person over time is unanalysable (it does not depend on physical or psychological continuity). God has no body because he is not tied down to acting or acquiring knowledge through a body. Being omnipresent, he knows what is happening and acts everywhere, without depending on some intermediate process for the efficacy of his actions or the truth of his beliefs.

This chapter explores the role of God’s omnipresence in Newton’s natural philosophy, with special emphasis placed on how God is related to space. Unlike Descartes’ conception, which denies the spatiality of God, or Gassendi and Charleton’s view, which regards God as completely whole in every part of space, it is argued that Newton accepts spatial extension as a basic aspect of God’s omnipresence. The historical background to Newton’s spatial ontology assumes a large part of our investigation, but with attention also focused on the details of Newton’s unique approach to these traditional Scholastic conceptions.

This chapter introduces the common experiences which are fixed or acquired since birth in the life of a person. The chapter gives a name to these experiences, and it calls them odyssey experiences. It uses a step by step process in discussing these experiences, and these are as follows: an inkling is given of their omnipresence; the names they go by are identified; the perils in naming them are noted; an ideal type of odyssey's essential characteristics is generated; some intellectual debts are recorded; the range of subject matter to be elucidated in the remainder of the book is examined; and the methods of inquiry employed are indicated.

This chapter begins by describing a ferment of mundane governance, investigating routines, processes, and outcomes of ordinary activities newly opened to moral reclassification, everyday objects, and people that are being reclassified, the focus of indignation, and target of legal action. It draws on a wide range of studies to help make sense of it all: accountability, governmentality, materiality, ontological multiplicity, evidence, space, ordinary and everyday objects, science and technology. Yet delving into these literatures raises more questions than answers. What exactly are accountability relations? How are the ontologies of governance constituted? How do entities, objects, and things become of the world? Is it better to think that people and things are governed in spaces or that spaces are themselves governed into being? What is the import of noticing how objects are constitutively linked with their people? Through what processes are things and people and continuously reclassified?

Because God is not merely a prescriptive entity but, by virtue of his omnipresence, also a place, Milton implies that knowledge, vitality, and meaningful action depend upon one’s sense of location. For philosophy, one’s understanding (one’s language) determines one’s world; for the religious poet it is the other way round: what one experiences as one’s location, shapes what one knows. A contrast is drawn between the philosopher who begins by denouncing the perceived world, returning to it after a stage of withdrawal into contemplation, and the religious poet who begins with perception of the right kind. Differences between philosophy and religion over the connection between meaningful existence and living an examined life are traced.

To understand Augustine’s mature account of contemplation, we need to begin where he began, with the pagan Platonism that catalyzed his recognition of an ultimate first principle beyond space and time. This initial chapter examines the pagan monotheism of the Roman Platonists and the role of contemplation in that theology. The role of apophatic or negative theology in the framing of that tradition of monotheism and its representation of the soul’s descent into the body are reviewed. Particular attention is accorded to the nature of the human soul and its spiritual mobility. The chapter closes with a discussion of the place of interior contemplation in the soteriology of pagan Platonism.

This chapter offers a broad taxonomy of models of divine omnipresence in the Christian tradition, both past and present, before examining that recently proposed by Hud Hudson and Alexander Pruss—ubiquitous entension—and flagging a worry with their account that stems from predominant analyses of the concept of ‘material object’. It then attempts to show that ubiquitous entension has a rich Latin medieval precedent in the work of Augustine of Hippo and Anselm of Canterbury, arguing that the model of omnipresence explicated by these Latin thinkers has the resources to avoid the noted worry by offering an alternative account of the divide between the immaterial and the material. In conclusion, a few alternative analyses of ‘material object’ are considered that make conceptual room for a contemporary Christian theist to follow suit in thinking that at least some immaterial entities are literally spatially located when relating to the denizens of spacetime.

The divine attributes of Omnipresence and Eternality are at the center of a number of puzzles concerning God’s power, knowledge, creative activity, and the possibility, scope, and manner of God’s interaction with the world and its denizens. Equipped with the Hypertime Hypothesis, this chapter joins the debates on how best to understand the divine attributes of Omnipresence and Eternality, first by critically discussing the views championed by Anselm and Aquinas, then by reviewing twentieth-century developments and modifications, and finally by exploiting recent work in analytic philosophy on the metaphysics of location as the key to one remarkable and unified interpretation. With the assistance of the Hypertime Hypothesis, the chapter shows how this interpretation can plausibly confront traditional problems of preserving divine simplicity and freedom, of avoiding objectionable multilocation and co-location of objects, of addressing problems of divine timelessness and incorporeality, and especially of making sense of divine creative agency.

Many theists stress the importance of God’s omnipresence in the world. Though this quality responds to a desire for God’s immanence, it is at tension with a belief in a transcendent God. This chapter begins with an examination of pantheism and panentheism as attempts to delineate omnipresence. It then turns to Aquinas’s account, which is a sophisticated kind of panentheism, according to which God is present in all things in his entirety, not as a component, but as conferring and sustaining their being. Aquinas’s account makes some progress in reconciling immanence with transcendence, but it leaves unexplained why God seems hidden from us. After rejecting some attempts to explain God’s hiddenness, the chapter presents an explanation based on human cognitive resources that are adept at dealing with the created world but ill equipped to encounter God. Meister Eckhart’s claims about mystical experience as direct acquaintance with God are discussed.

This chapter examines the problems that arise for the divine timeless research program from presentism, creation ex nihilo, and divine sustaining. The two main problems to be discussed are as follows. First, the timeless God cannot create a presentist temporal universe out of nothing. Second, the timeless God cannot sustain a presentist universe in existence. As the chapter lays out, classical Christian thinkers in the past were aware of these issues. What the chapter does is examines the ways that classical Christians in the past have dealt with the problems that arise from presentism and divine timelessness with regard to creation. In particular, the chapter examines thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas who deny that God is really related to creation. It also examines thinkers like John Philoponus who do not make such a denial. The chapter argues that their solutions to the problems are not successful, and that presentism is not compatible with the divine timeless research program.

God is supposed to be a spirit—that is, a person without a body, present everywhere. A person is a being with sophisticated mental properties. The identity of a person over time is not analysable in terms of physical or psychological continuity. Even if we were not able to distinguish between spirits by the different effects of their actions, two spirits could still be different; each could have a different ‘thisness’. An omnipresent person knows what is happening everywhere and can act everywhere, without depending on a body for the efficacy of his actions or the truth of his beliefs. It is logically possible that there is such a person.

This chapter argues that traditional concepts of God as pure act, impassible, atemporal, and simple should be rethought in light of the canonical claims the Christian tradition makes about divine action. First, it examines why we should hold to a strong account of divine agency. On this basis, it argues that we cannot avoid predicating such concepts as choice, mercy, rational deliberation, love, suffering, wrath, and patience to God. The chapter calls this divine “agentism.” Second, it argues that the central claims of agentism are incompatible with the thought of Thomas Aquinas (“Thomism”) and some of its major exponents. Third, it argues why Thomism is unpersuasive. Finally, it indicates some directions for future research in this area.

A simple consideration of God’s relation to space is insufficient to elucidate God’s omnipresence. God can be not just present at a space but also present with and to a person occupying that space. In addition, the assumption of a human nature ensures that God is never without the ability to empathize with human persons and to mind-read them. In the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God can be more powerfully present with a human person in grace than any human person could be. In the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God’s union with a human person is a matter of God’s being present with a human person in grace as much as eternal divine power permits and mutual love allows. The implementation of this union to the fullest degree possible in this life (and the next) is the end to which the atonement is the means.

This chapter argues that the process of salvation has three parts. There is justification, the beginning of the process that depends ultimately on the human person in the process. Then there is sanctification, the extended part of the process in which a person cooperates with God to bring about her increased closeness with God through integration in goodness. And then there is perseverance in sanctification. Perseverance is as essential to the process of salvation as the original surrender to God is, and it is almost as difficult to maintain as the original surrender was difficult to elicit. On Christian theology, both the rite of the Eucharist and the experience of suffering have the power to support perseverance throughout the life of a person in grace. This chapter also shows that the connection between theodicy and the doctrine of the atonement is as intelligible as it is powerful.

This chapter shows that Luther’s Christology follows the basic structure of Ockham’s, both in terms of the metaphysics and the semantics. It demonstrates that Luther accepts the supposital-union theory, and shows how to read complex texts that have sometimes been taken to show the opposite. It is shown that Luther’s most distinctive and original claim is that the divine person is the bearer of his human accidents. The chapter contextualizes Luther’s claims about Christ’s bodily omnipresence in Medieval debates, and shows that Luther did not hold bodily omnipresence to amount to the possession of a divine attribute. It also provides a detailed account of Zwingli’s Christological semantics. It shows how Luther misunderstood Zwingli’s claims about the communicatio, and concludes that Zwingli’s Christology, contrary to Luther’s appraisal, is in no sense Nestorian.