God and an Infinite Universe
The Problem
Big Bang Cosmology has led the majority in the scientific community to adopt
a model of the universe that holds to a definite “end” to the material universe. If all
the energy of which the universe of things is composed was at one original “moment”
compressed into a single “point,” it follows, by definition, that beyond that “point”
there was no material being. If all matter eventually appeared from this original
energy, the universe of material things would only exist to the extent that this original
energy has reached as a result of the initial “Big Bang.”
Some who accept this model of the universe note, however, that because the
energy and, hence, matter of which the things in the universe is composed did not
exist beyond that “point,” this still does not mean that there was not “space” beyond it.
In fact, it is argued, space itself is infinite while the material things in that “space”
may be finite in extent.
This question is of relevance to theology since the claim is often implicit that
the object of theology, God, alone is infinite and the finite world cannot share in the
infinite attributes of God. To say that space is infinite may suggest that time, too, is
infinite and therefore God is not needed as a causal explanation of the world. This
brief paper is intended as a reflection on the proposal of infinite space in order to
respond to this challenge.1
God and Space
Perhaps the most important issue in discussing this problem is determining an
acceptable definition of “space.” Since space itself seems to be basic to all our
concepts, providing a framework or context in which objects are placed, it does not
seem possible for the human mind to conceptualize a non-spacial object. By
“conceptualize” I mean form a visual image of a thing. This is why, for instance, it is
so difficult for the human mind to deal with the various attributes of God (e.g.,
omnipresence). St. Augustine long ago struggled with material conceptions of God
that seemed to lead to various contradictory affirmations.2 For instance, if God is
non-spacial (and I cannot form an “image” of that which is without spacial extension)
it follows that the term God has little conceptual meaning. On the other hand, if I
think about God as stretched out through the universe like a transparent substance or
“stuff,” I am led to various absurdities. For instance, if God is an evenly distributed
substance, more of God is in the elephant than the human person.
Recognition is owed to the students of my “Augustine and Aquinas” course (Fall, 2004),
especially Gabriel Dickinson and Duncan Keen for raising this issue and offering valuable
insights and challenges to my explanations.
2
Augustine, Confessions, 7.1: “Although I did not imagine you in the shape of a human body,
I could not free myself from the thought that you were some kind of bodily substance extended
in space, either permeating the world or diffused in infinity beyond it.”
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St. Augustine was able to escape these difficulties by recognizing that God is
not a material substance and therefore is not reducible to a visual concept. Instead, the
better analogy for God is found in universal truths. The geometrical triangle, for
instance, includes an endless range of possible sizes. None of these, as geometrical
objects, is reducible to matter. Whenever a triangle is reduced to matter, it not only
becomes definite or particular in size but it also ceases to be a geometrical triangle.
(Its non-extended “lines” made of an infinite series of points become measurable
chalk, for instance.) The properties of a triangle, however (e.g., the sum of its interior
angles), are necessary and timeless. Further, they are not constricted or restricted by
space since they are true wherever they are thought. The same kind of argument may
be made with respect to any other “universal” category. Humanness, for instance,
includes an endless series of possible sizes, shapes, colors, weights, ages, etc.
Humanness cannot exist as a material object, however, since to be placed in matter
would particularize it. Particular humans have a designated weight, shape color, etc.,
but they do not individually (or collectively) exhaust the full range of meaning for the
universal category, humanness. It is nonetheless a truly meaningful idea since it
enables us to group together classes of beings that genuinely share in common those
categories embodied in the universal. Universals like these must have a spiritual or
immaterial existence in an immaterial faculty (i.e., intellect) since a material faculty is
ordered towards particular things. Like, for instance, the eye is ordered towards a
particular object (viz., objects/shapes seeable by way of light).
It is precisely the intellect, Augustine would argue, that most closely mirrors the
divine essence. There is an objectivity in those universal ideas that the intellect
considers that makes them discoveries of the mind rather than creations of it. In other
words, the properties of a triangle are not generated by the mind but are discovered as
they are deduced from its definition. For this reason, students are held accountable for
incorrect deductions from geometrical figures. If such properties were minddependent, the truths about the objects would be subjectively determined and,
consequently, none of them could be “false.”
One of the consequences of this insight is that universal objects of intellectual
contemplation have a certainty and stability about them that is not present in material
objects. Material objects are part of the changing world and undergo generation and
corruption with regularity. The greater stability and certainty of the objects of
intellectual contemplation make them aspects of a superior kind of reality: mind.
Since universals are not material, they also do not take up space. One could not peer
into the head of a thinking person, for instance, and observe the universal notion of
triangle. The notion itself takes up no space but is nonetheless “omnipresent” if by
that we understand that it is universally true and accessible to minds. Its universality
is not as extended matter.
Augustine is only one step from the existence and nature of God. Since the
universals are not dependent on human minds but are discovered by them and, further,
since the universals are properly objects of a mind, it follows that their proper “home”
is a mind that has commensurate eternality and immutability. The mind of God is,
then, the eternal abode of all unchangingly true ideas and propositions and they derive
their ultimate certainty and ground from God. The human intellect knows things by
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the “light” of the divine intellect by participating in its truths by discovery. God’s
mind is the cause of these truths but the human mind “sees” them in its contemplation
of things. When the human person sees beauty, then, in another face, a sunset and a
well-played symphony, it does so by the light of unchanging beauty that functions as
the ground of all true perception of beauty in things. The symphony is perceived as an
instance of beauty, the meaning of which is stable and enduring, although the
symphony itself, in time, will cease to exist.3
God, then, is non-spacial in the sense that He does not have the quality of being
a material object existing in a designated “location” subject to causal interaction with
other objects in His environment. God is everywhere inasmuch as all truth is present
within the divine mind (including all those things that participate in the universal,
unchanging “archetypes”). God is nowhere in space, however, inasmuch as He is not
a particular expression or participation in absolute truth but is, rather, the home of all
truth. The universe, it would seem, is the stage upon which the particular instances or
participations in divine truth are set. Since they participate in that which is higher, it
is altogether necessary to say that God’s mode of being is non-spacial.
The Problem of Space
There is no one definition of space.4 Many of the Presocratic philosophers,
especially the Atomists, thought of space as the area within a container. Others
described space in ways that suggested it was a physical substance distributed
throughout the universe and filling the area between other objects. Others, like
Aristotle, sought to define space as simply the position of things in relation to others.
The history of reflection on this topic is long and complicated. Essential to the
problem is our seeming inability to think about space directly. We always focus on
objects that exist in space. Immanuel Kant identified space as one of the necessary
categories of the mind into which all “phenomena” or sense-data is “poured.” The
mind, then, cannot think of any object without placing it in a spacial framework.
Conversely, it is difficult to think of space itself without also thinking of those objects
that exist in space.
Whenever the claim is made that the universe, including space, has a limit, the
immediate response is often that this does not make sense. What is on the other side
of the expanding universe? Assuming Big Bang Cosmology, the universe is
expanding indefinitely. Doesn’t space already exist so that the material universe has
somewhere to expand? If there is truly nothing outside the confines of the present
universe, would this not restrict the ongoing expansion of the universe?
It should not surprise us that we have difficulty thinking about nothingness
beyond the current perimeters of the universe. Nothingness has no positive contents.
Further, if the mind is ordered towards grasping real things in space, it follows that the
3
See Plotinus, Beauty. It is arguable that this particular neo-Platonic work exercised
significant influence on Augustine in escaping the grips of Manichaeism.
4
For a helpful survey of major views, see J. Smart, “Space,” in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (NY: Macmillan, Inc., 1967).
3
mind will have great discomfort when faced with absolute nothingness as an object of
thought. We tend to reify nothingness and usually this will turn into empty space.
On the other hand, we must be concerned about the fact that the universe seems
to have the potential of indefinite expansion. If we imagine the various stages of the
development of the universe, at least as modern cosmology describes it to us, the
universe has progressively spread outward in all directions. The possible range of its
expansion seems indefinite. In other words, is there anything illogical with thinking
of a universe one inch wider than the present one? If not, at what stage does it
become illogical? I can’t think of one. There is nothing illogical in thinking of a
universe a hundred billion more light years across.
The possible range of the
universe seems practically without limit. If the cosmologists are correct, however,
there is a real limit to the actual extent of the physical universe but there is no actual
limit to its potential extent.
This observation leads to a helpful insight that may lead to a working definition
of space. If we grant that the present extent of the physical universe is finite but that
there is no particular limit to its potential extent, we can say that the “space” outside
the physical universe is presently the potential setting for the universe as we know it.
As potential, it has no actual positive content but only potential content. When we
grant that there is an indefinite possible expansion and development of the universe,
we are admitting that there are no constraints on its possibilities (at least in respect to
expansion). Since space otherwise has no function or content, we conclude that it is
equal to possibility.
The difference between space within the present universe and that beyond it
would be that the former is the setting for the actual universe of things. It is not the
only possible setting for actuality, however, and therefore when the potential
expansion becomes actual, so does the space. Space is simply the term we give to the
place and framework in which existence occurs.
On the other hand, think of the following: What if the universe were
impossible? In other words, what if there were nothing at all (not even God)? In such
a scenario, there would be no space. If space is the possibility for actuality (in this
case, material actuality), if nothing could have existed, there would also be no context
in which potentialities could be actualized. If my refrigerator can only hold 100
gallons of water, it follows that it cannot hold 200 gallons of water. There is no room
for the actualizing of a potentiality that is not allowed by the nature of the case. If
there is no potential for the emergence of the universe, there is also no framework in
which such a universe could exist. This is because the framework itself only has
meaning in the face of potentiality. If the universe is not possible, then neither is
space.
God and Possibility
Since the universe does exist and since we have granted that there is nothing
contradictory or repulsive in the idea that its extent seems without boundary, are we
justified in claiming that the universe is infinite? If so, how does this relate to the
restriction of infinity to God, as was indicated at the beginning of this article?
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First, a distinction must be made between a potential infinite and an actual
infinite. When we say that space is infinite, we mean that there is no measurable limit
to the possibilities of a universe existing in space. It is always possible to think of a
universe with something more than what it currently has. This is like saying that
numbers are infinite. It is always possible to add another unit to a previous collection
of units. Numbers never become actually infinite, precisely because it is always
possible to add one more. One never reaches a stage in counting when one has arrived
at an infinite collection of units. If one has an infinite collection of books, for
instance, how many would remain if one is borrowed? The fact is that no such
collection could possibly exist. The fact that the parts comprising the collection are
finite and measurable, so must the sum total. If we can always conceive of adding an
additional book, we speak of the possibility as infinite since there is no necessary
boundary. We never reach a point in our collecting when we conclude that adding
another book is beyond conception. There is no real infinite of finite things.
What follows from this is that nothing finite can ever be actually infinite.
Infinity is a theoretical notion applicable to abstract notions (e.g., geometrical lines) or
a description of a series that has no necessary boundaries or inherent restrictions. If
nothing physical or spacial can ever achieve actual infinity, we conclude that we have
properly reserved true infinity for God alone.
In respect to God, we grant actual infinity on the basis of the observation that
the cause of the actuality of possible things (including space and matter) must be selfexplained and therefore truly boundless in duration and power. If God were limited in
the sense of duration, for instance, we would have no true explanation of the actuality
of anything at all. It is God that provides a “ground” and basis for the actual existence
of things that are potential when considered in themselves. Since the universe does
not have the attribute of infinity and self-sufficiency (as evidenced in its progressive
development towards actuality) these must belong to another. Of course, this would
not follow if the universe did not exist. If there were nothing, there would be no
reason to believe in potentiality. No worry, though. In such a case, there would be no
one to worry about such things! Since there is a universe, we are forced to affirm the
real existence of infinite self-existent being and also say that these attributes must
belong to a reality fundamentally distinct from this universe.
If, however, God is the ground of potential realities, God also turns out to be the
justification for a potential infinity of space. It is because God is unlimited in His
causal power that we also conclude that there is no limit to what God can create.
There is nothing impossible about God creating a new “universe” each moment for all
eternity. Space, in this context, is unlimited inasmuch as God’s potential creative
activity is unlimited. This provocative line of thought might actually lead us to
suggest that space and the mind of God converge. Space, as possibility for the
expansion of the universe, is unlimited precisely because of the unlimited power of
God. Since space has no real conceptual meaning apart from the notion of possibility
but possibility only has meaning in relationship to actuality (i.e., God),5 we may be
5
Possibility only has meaning in relationship to existing actuality. It would make no sense to
speak about a possible meeting with my grandmother this weekend if, in fact, she died ten
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justified in concluding that the space that envelops this universe of actual things is the
unlimited possibility that is only meaningful in the context of the infinitely actual
God.
In my garage there is a large work table. Right now it is covered with various
objects. I have no “space” to work in and therefore am restricted in what I can do
there. If space were potentially finite, we would be saying that God would have
limitations or a boundary point in what He could create. Since there is yet more that
God could create than what has been created, we must affirm that there is “space” for
divine creative activity beyond this universe and that the space for God’s creation is
without limit.
Mark McNeil, Theology Dept.
Strake Jesuit College Preparatory
September 16, 2004
years ago. Possibility for the universe only makes sense if there is some causal power that
could produce it as an effect.
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