Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him?
says the LORD.
Do not I fill heaven and earth?
says the LORD.
All Commentaries on Jeremiah 23:24 Go To Jeremiah 23
Gregory the Theologian
AD 390
This is all common sense, surely, but now that we have proved deity incorporeal, we shall take the examination a stage further. The problem is this: is deity located in space or not? If it is not, then your shrewd critic might ask how it can even exist at all. Granted that what does not exist has no spatial location, it may well be the case that what has no spatial location does not exist. But if deity is spatially located there are two possible consequences: either the universe contains it, or it is located above the universe. Taking the first alternative, then, it is either contained in a part of the universe or the whole of it. Supposing deity is contained in a part of the universe, it will be delimited by something smaller; if in the whole, by something larger, quite different in relative scale, I mean, as between deity inside and the surrounding universe, granted the universe is going to be contained by the universe and all spatial location to have its bounding line. These consequences follow the hypotheses that the universe contains God. Again, where was it before the universe was created? This produces a considerable problem, you see. If, on the other hand, deity is located above the universe, what is the dividing line between it and the universe? Where is this higher place? How are higher and lower levels to be recognized; where there is no dividing line between to separate them? There will have, surely, to be something in between, something to bound the universe off from what lies above it. In that case this something in between must have the very spatial location we rejected. I do not now insist on the fact that deity must be delimited if it be mentally comprehended, for comprehension is one form of delimitation.
Why have I made this digression, too labored, I dare say, for the general ear but in tune with the prevalent fashion in discussions, a fashion that despises noble simplicity and substitutes tortuous conundrums? I did it to make the tree known by its fruits, to make the darkness that activates dogmas like these, I mean, known by the obscurity of their expression. I did not do it to gain a reputation for startling oratory or extraordinary wisdom as a marvelous Daniel for “showing hard sentences and dissolving doubts.” No, I wanted to make plain the point my sermon began with, which was this: the incomprehensibility of deity to the human mind and its totally unimaginable grandeur. Not that deity resents our knowledge: resentment is a far cry from the divine nature, serene as it is, uniquely and properly “good,” especially resentment of its most prized creation. What can mean more to the Word than thinking beings, since their very existence is an act of supreme goodness? It is not that he treasures his own fullness of glory, keeping his majesty costly by inaccessibility. It would be utterly dishonest, utterly out of character not merely for God but also for an ordinary good person with anything of a proper conscience about him to get himself the senior place by keeping others out.
