Thirty Seventh Distinction

Single Question. Whether God’s Omnipotence necessarily entails his Greatness

1. About the thirty seventh distinction I ask whether the fact that God is present everywhere by his power entails that he is everywhere by his essence, - that is, whether omnipotence necessarily entails greatness.

That it does:

Every agent is present to what it acts on (according to the Physics 7.1.242b24-27, 2.243a3-6), and this immediately, if it can immediately act on it, - or mediately, if it acts on it mediately; but an omnipotent thing can act on anything immediately; therefore it is present to anything immediately.

2. The opposite:

It can cause anything outside the universe, and yet it is not there by its essence.

I. To the Question

3. Response.

A created agent can act where it is not; yet commonly it must be immediate to any affected thing next to it that it acts on, although sometimes it does not act on the affected thing by an action of the same idea as the action by which it acts on a remote thing - just as a fish [in a net] that kills the hand of the fisherman does not kill the net.

4. But sometimes it does not act on the proximate affected thing with the same active power as it acts on a remote thing, although it acts by some active power, - just as the celestial body, generating a mineral in the bowels of the earth (or some mixed thing, animate or inanimate, here below), acts by its substantial form, because a non-substance cannot generate a substance, nor can any accident in between be the reason for generating substance.

5. The form then of a celestial body is an active power on a remote object, without the body acting on what is next to it by the same active power as it acts on a remote object, although it act on what is next to it by some other active power. But this happens either because of the conjunction of these two active powers in the same thing, each of which is active (and one has the proximate thing for proportionate affected thing, and the other active form has the remote thing for proximate affected thing), or this happens because of the imperfection of the agent, in which there is a defect of active virtue, because of which defect it acts according to the more imperfect form before according to the more perfect one - as that which generates something corruptible causes alteration before it generates, because of the imperfection of the agent, from which fact the ‘prior in origin’ is more imperfect.

6. If we take away first the coming together of two such powers from the created agent, and if we take away second the imperfection from it (that it need not first produce a more imperfect thing), there seems no reason why it will not be present by its power to something remote according to the way it is now present to itself in idea of active power; and yet it will not act on a thing nearby either with that power (just as it does not now) or with another power, and this above all if the power according to which it acts on a remote thing is a simply perfect active power; for the more perfect the form is in creatures, the more remote the thing to which the principle of acting seems to extend.

7. From these results to the issue at hand: it seems that omnipotence - which is an active power simply perfectly - does not require, either because of diverse powers coming together in the agent or because of a prior generation of something more imperfect, that there be action on one thing before action on another thing. Such omnipotence seems to be a principle of acting on anything and of producing anything possible, although per impossibile it not be everywhere - and in this respect the negative side of the question [n.1] seems it needs to be held.

8. There is a confirmation too: for if omnipotence is a will on whose willing the being of a thing follows, since the will can will a distant thing as equally as a proximate one, it seems that if the omnipotent being were per impossibile present in some determinate place and not everywhere, it could will something - in another place - to exist, to which thing existence was not repugnant, and consequently by its willing it would have ‘being’ in that place, - and consequently the thing would be made by the omnipotent being without the omnipotent being having presence there by its essence.

9. There is another confirmation, that one should not imagine there was an infinite empty space before the creation of the world, as if God was present there in his essence before he produced the world; nay, it is not as being present anywhere in his essence that God was able to make the world. So just as the presence of his greatness was not there pre-required for the presence of his power, as it is power (nay as power it had its term before he was present in his essence), so it seems that there is no need now to preunderstand God existing in any part of the universe so as to cause something, but rather -quasi conversely - he is there by his power first so as to cause something there; and then, even if per impossibile he were not present there in his essence, yet he could there cause something.

II. To the Principal Argument

10. To the argument for the opposite [n.1] one can say that that statement of the Philosopher is true about natural agents, which act through natural qualities or active natural forms, and these are only principles of acting on something remote if there are other concurrent forms that are principles of acting on something nearby; but it is not so about the will by which an omnipotent being acts.