The idea that something can be present at every place has engendered much discussion both in the past and at present. This Handbook explores the notion of omnipresence beyond its usual context as a divine attribute, seeking to understand the concept using contemporary philosophical tools.
The idea that something can be present at every place has engendered much discussion both in the past and at present. Typically, omnipresence is thought to be a divine attribute, but the question as to how something can be omnipresent has not been historically confined to the status of a divine being. The Oxford Handbook of Omnipresence offers an insight into historical accounts of omnipresence and its developments in ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary thought. It further widens the study of omnipresence by including less widely studied strands of thought on this topic from mystical, process theological, feminist theological, and phenomenological perspectives. Additionally, whilst the study of omnipresence has typically focused on Christian thinkers, the volume broadens the range of voices on this attribute further by including Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Sanskrit, and Donghak accounts. The Handbook provides an introduction to the main facets of omnipresence, both historical and contemporary, and opens up new avenues for research that are yet to be fully explored.
Anna Marmodoro, Damiano Migliorini, and Ben Page: Introduction
Part I: Ancient Perspectives
1: Richard Neels: Heraclitus' Theology: A Case Study of Divine Omnipresence
in Early Greek Thought
2: Barbara M. Sattler: All-Pervading or at the Edge of the Universe:
Omnipresence and Panpsychism in Plato and Aristotle
3: Gretchen Reydams-Schils: The Omnipresence of the Stoic Divine Active
Principle in Matter
4: Vito Limone and Francesca Simeoni: God's Omnipresence in Jewish and
Christian Platonism: from Philo to Origen
5: Svetla Slaveva-Griffin: The Omnipresence of Plotinus's One in its
Emanations
Part II: Medieval Perspectives
6: Scott MacDonald: Augustine on God's Presence in Creation
7: Brian Leftow: Anselm on Omnipresence
8: Jeffrey E. Brower: Aquinas on Divine Omnipresence, Spatial Location, and
Action at a Distance
9: Thomas M. Ward: Everywhere Thrice: Scotus and Ockham on God's Existence in
Creatures
10: Rachel J. Smith: Omnipresence in the Medieval Mystical Tradition
Part III: Modern Perspectives
11: Johannes Stoffers SJ: Renaissance Neoplatonic Thought, Scholastic
Tradition and Negative Theology: Cusanus on God's Constitutive Presence in
all Things
12: Christopher Shields: Everywhere and Nowhere: Suįrez on the Immensity of
God
13: Edward Slowik: Divine Omnipresence in Rationalist Theories in the
17th-18th Centuries
14: Ryan Keating and Charles Taliaferro: Omnipresence According to the
English Thinkers of the 17th-19th Centuries
15: Douglas Hedley: Divine Omnipresence in the German Idealists
16: Anne Käfer: The Ubiquitous and Incarnated God. Omnipresence in Friedrich
Schleiermacher
Part IV: Further Perspectives
17: Sandro Gorgone and Aldo Bisceglia: Presence and Absence of God. The Trace
of Heidegger's Last God and Marion's Iconic Turn
18: Donald Wayne Viney and Daniel A. Dombrowski: Divine Omnipresence in
Process Theism
19: Mark P. Hertenstein: Absolute Triune Omnipresence: The Contributions of
Barth and Pannenberg
20: Vera Tripodi: Omnipresence in the Feminist Philosophy of Religion
Part V: Other Religions
21: Olga L. Lizzini: Divine Omnipresence in the Arabic-Islamic Intellectual
Tradition
22: Samuel Lebens: On the Locations of God: Jewish Approaches to
Omnipresence
23: Elisa Freschi: Omnipresence from an Ontological to a Relational Concept,
from Nyaya to Visistadvaita Vedanta
24: Jessica Frazier: Omnipresence as Ultimate Ground: Power and Pervasion in
Srinivasa's Medieval Indian Philosophy
25: Monima Chadha: Omnipresence of Karma and Causality in the Buddhist
Universe
26: Jea Sophia Oh: Reverencing the Triune Potentials of Heaven, Earth, and
Human Becomings: Relocating the Divine Immanence via Eastern Learning
Part VI: Recent Developments
27: Joseph Jedwab: God as Derivatively Omnipresent: Some Non-Occupation
Accounts
28: Ross D. Inman: God as Fundamentally Omnipresent: An Occupation Account
29: Martin Pickup: Omnipresence and Divine Presence in the Eucharist
30: Katherine Sonderegger: The Omnipresence of Almighty God: A Theological
Account
Part VII: New Directions
31: Sam Cowling and Ley David Elliette Cray: Omnipresence and Mathematical
Reality
32: Ben Page: Omnipresence and Special Presence
33: Joshua Rasmussen: The God in All: How Constitution Theology Can
Illuminate the Divine Nature
34: Dean Zimmerman: Divine Location and the Inheritance of Spatial Structure
35: Aaron J. Cotnoir: Omnipresence: Mereology and Simplicity
Anna Marmodoro is the Leonard and Elizabeth Eslick Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University and an Honorary Professor of Philosophy at Durham University, where she held the Chair of Metaphysics between 2016 and 2024. Previously she was a Junior and then Official Fellow in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. Marmodoro specializes primarily in ancient philosophy and contemporary metaphysics. Her latest books are Properties in Ancient Metaphysics (2023) and Forms and Structure in Plato's Metaphysics (2021). She is currently working on a new monograph titled: Parmenidean Essentialism. She is also the co-editor of Dialogoi: Ancient Philosophy Today.
Damiano Migliorini specialises in three main research areas: analytical philosophy of religion, Trinitarian theology, and gender studies. He has published monographs, edited books, and journal articles in all these areas. He received his PhD in Philosophy from the Universitą degli Studi di Verona (Italy) in 2019, and his Habilitation (Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) in Theoretical Philosophy in 2023. He is currently an affiliated researcher at ISSR 'Italo Mancini' of Universitą degli Studi di Urbino while also teaching philosophy at high school level. He is also a member of the editorial board of two academic journals: Segni e Comprensione and Nuovo Giornale di Filosofia della Religione.
Ben Page is a master of Divinity at Eton College and a retained lecturer in Philosophy at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He primarily works on a diverse range of topics in philosophy of religion and metaphysics, although has published in other areas such as medieval philosophy and meta-ethics. He is the author of Modelling the Divine (forthcoming), and his research has appeared in Philosophical Studies, Faith and Philosophy, Religious Studies, Vivarium, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Res Philosophica, TheoLogica, and The International Journal for Philosophy of Religion.
