He was chiefly concerned to show that in the minute events of life God is present and observant and that there is nothing so trivial as to elude the vigilance of our Father in heaven. He did not associate omnipresence with the infinitely great, but rather with the infinitely little. To Him the distinctive conception of omnipresence was: The child of God cannot go where his Father is not. Hebrew philosophy, in the person of its supposed founder, might exclaim: ‘Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee’ ( 1 Kings 8:27) but no such thought ever came from the lips of Jesus. The Lord Jesus never associated omnipresence with infinitude.
It is always a presence to the religious consciousness, trust, prayer, and fellowship.Ģ. Christ’s conception of the presence of God is thoroughly religious. When religious experiences are reduced to terms of thought, and the religious consciousness of the individual and the community is expressed in terms which are intelligible to the intellect, it is at once recognized that the God who is so real to His people, wherever they may be,-who is the source of strength and joy and light to His people everywhere,-must have the attribute of omnipresence predicated concerning Him. In the teaching of the Lord Jesus, God is the postulate of the religious consciousness. The metaphysician seeks for proofs of the existence of God-for indications of the real behind the phenomenal, the great First Cause behind the congeries of events which seem to be effects. Reason claims satisfaction and therefore insists that God must essentially be that which will subsume mind and nature under the unity of an intelligible notion. God is a necessary assumption to explain the origination and continuance of the world. To the latter, God is a postulate of the Reason. Not only so, but Christ’s starting-point was different from that of the metaphysician. His method was rather to reveal the character of God by portraying His activities in relation to the lives of men, and especially of Christian men. With the exception of the solitary phrase ‘God is Spirit’ ( John 4:24), which is certainly rich in implications, but, when originally uttered, was meant merely to check material and local conceptions of the Deity, we have no instance in which Jesus expounded the nature or even the attributes of God as such. We do not find in Christ’s discourses any disquisition on the nature and attributes of God. Such terms as ‘the Absolute,’ or ‘the Infinite,’ or ‘the Unconditioned’ are never found on Christ’s lips, and, what is more, the ideas implied by these terms are absent from His horizon. He does not speak of God in terms of philosophy. If this be so, it is evident that Christ’s distinctive teaching on this subject was not metaphysical. He is spiritually present with all earnest, seeking souls everywhere.ġ. God’s children cannot be where He is not. OMNIPRESENCE.-The distinctive conception of omnipresence which meets us in the Gospels may briefly be expressed thus: God is able to exert His activity anywhere.
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