Is God Inside Everything? How Thomas Aquinas Out-PanENtheists the Panentheists
A See–Judge–Act reflection on divine presence, classical metaphysics, and what it means for how we live
A note on the method: The See–Judge–Act approach, rooted in Catholic social thought and associated with Cardinal Joseph Cardijn, invites us first to observe reality honestly, then to evaluate it through the lens of scripture, reason, and faith, and finally to respond with concrete action or a renewed understanding. It’s a way of thinking that refuses to stop at the abstract.
SEE: A Puzzle That Won’t Go Away
Here is a tension that has quietly bothered philosophers and believers for centuries: How can God be completely other — infinite, unchanging, beyond the universe — and yet somehow be intimately present inside every blade of grass, every human heartbeat, every atom of matter?
This is not a fringe question. It is the central riddle of philosophical theology. And it has split thinkers into two seemingly opposed camps.
On one side stands Classical Theism, associated above all with Thomas Aquinas. God is transcendent, immutable, and self-sufficient. He does not need the world. He is not changed by it.
Panentheism holds that the universe exists within God and that God and the world are intertwined. Modern versions, like Process Theology, add that God grows with the world and needs creation to be fully God.
Textbooks call these views opposites, but Aquinas’s account achieves panentheism’s intimacy without its main flaw. Some even call Thomism “Classical Panentheism”—a label worth examining.
JUDGE: What Does Aquinas Actually Say?
Now that we’ve framed the philosophical tension, we turn to Aquinas himself: how does he resolve this ancient puzzle?
1. God Is Literally at the Center of Everything
The most startling passage in Aquinas on this topic comes from the Summa Theologiae (I, Q. 8), where he asks, quite directly: Is God in all things?
His answer is unequivocal — and more radical than many Christians realize:
“Being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things... Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.”
Read that again. Not near all things. Not governing all things from a distance. Innermost in all things.
Aquinas says God, as pure existence (Ipsum Esse Subsistens), continuously causes all things to exist. Nothing exists independently, even for a moment; God sustains all beings at every instant.
Aquinas uses a vivid analogy: light and air. A room is bright only because sunlight is streaming in. The moment the sun withdraws, the light vanishes instantly — not gradually, but instantly. Creation works the same way. If God were to “pause” his sustaining act of love for even a moment, the entire universe would not slowly decay. It would simply cease — drop into absolute nothingness without a trace.
This means that God is not a cosmic clockmaker who designed the universe like a Swiss cuckoo clock, wound it up, and stepped back to watch. He is more like the light itself: the reason anything is here at all.
2. The Threefold Presence
To make this still more precise — and to distinguish his position from outright pantheism, where God is the world — Aquinas identifies three distinct ways in which God is present in all things:
* By Power: Every creature exists under God’s sovereign governance. Nothing acts outside his causal reach. Don’t confuse this with humans and free will to do evil.
* By Presence: Every creature is entirely open, bare, and immediate to God’s knowledge. Nothing is hidden from him, because nothing exists apart from him.
* By Essence: God is present as the direct, immediate cause of being. Aquinas argues that a cause must be in contact with its effect — not merely at the beginning, but continuously. God’s own essence, therefore, “touches” the inner fabric of every existing thing.
If you define panENtheism, not to be confused with pantheism, as the view that the divine presence completely saturates, fills, and sustains every corner of reality, then Aquinas, on these three points alone, satisfies that definition.
3. Where the Roads Diverge: Asymmetry vs. Interdependence
Here is where Classical Theism and standard panentheism part ways — and the distinction is not minor.
Feature
Standard Panentheism
Aquinas’ Classical Theism
Feature: Relationship
Standard Panentheism: Mutual and symmetrical: God affects the world, and the world affects and changes God.
Aquinas’ Classical Theism: Asymmetrical: God creates and sustains the world, but the world cannot change God.
Feature: Divine Need
Standard Panentheism: God needs the world to fully realize his nature, express his love, or grow through experience.
Aquinas’ Classical Theism: God is entirely self-sufficient ~ Pure Actuality, with no unrealized potential and no need.
Feature: “World in God”
Standard Panentheism: The universe is ontologically inside God, sometimes described as God’s “body.”
Aquinas’ Classical Theism: The universe is “in” God because it is held within his knowledge, power, and sustaining will — not as a physical container.
Modern panentheism, especially Process Theology (think Richard Rohr, Teilhard de Chardin, and others), sees God as evolving and affected by creation. This appeals to some: a God who changes and feels with us.
Aquinas rejects this: if God could change, he would not be truly God but another becoming being. For Aquinas, God is Pure Act—fully realized, lacking nothing, unaltered by the world.
Aquinas calls God immutable and impassible. For him, these traits assure us that God’s love and sustaining presence are unchanging, not a response to us, but are.
4. The Synthesis: “Classical Panentheism.”
If panentheism means God fully sustains the universe, Aquinas fits. He describes God as innermost in everything: a radical intimacy often missing in panentheism.
If panentheism entails mutual vulnerability—suggesting God and the world are truly codependent—then it offers a different picture entirely. His God is intimately present, even more so than panentheism often claims, but is wholly free, needing nothing from creation to exist, to love, or to be complete.
The label “Classical Panentheism” captures this synthesis well: all the immanence, none of the mutual dependence.
ACT: What Do We Do With This?
Having traced the debate from tension to solution, it’s time to consider practical implications.
This is not merely an academic debate. It has direct consequences for how we pray, how we suffer, and how we understand the world around us.
If Aquinas is right, then everything you experience—ground, air, your own awareness—is actively maintained by God right now. God’s presence is not distant or abstract. Yet, unlike in some versions of panentheism, this intimacy does not entail God needing creation. Contemplative traditions that seek God “within” are, in light of Aquinas, making a metaphysical—not merely metaphorical—claim.
But God’s presence is not a dependency. This matters enormously. A God who needs creation to complete himself would be a kind of cosmic codependent — codependent for us would carry a shadow of self-interest. Aquinas’ God needs nothing. His sustaining presence is therefore a pure gift, given with complete freedom, from a fullness that cannot be diminished.
Three practical implications follow:
1. Prayer becomes less of a long-distance call and more of a turning inward. If God is already innermost in you, prayer is less about reaching upward and more about becoming aware of what is already, always, there.
2. Suffering can be faced without the conclusion that God is absent. The God who is impassible is not indifferent — classical theology is careful about this distinction. Rather, his sustaining love does not waver depending on circumstances, which is precisely what makes it reliable when everything else is falling apart.
3. The material world deserves reverence. Every created thing — every person, every ecosystem, every seemingly insignificant corner of existence — is being directly held in being by God. That is a foundation for genuine care of creation, not as a sentimental add-on, but as a metaphysical reality.
A Final Question Worth Sitting With As You Scratch Your Head About What I Have Said So Far…
Does the distinction between God being innermost in things and God being interdependent with things change how you understand the lived experience of divine presence? (Don’t jump to a conclusion here, sit with that question)
Does it matter, in your prayer or your daily life, whether God’s closeness to you is a gift from infinite fullness — or a mutual need you and God share? Or do you really care?
These are not merely philosophical puzzles. They are questions about the kind of God we actually believe in, and the kind of life that belief makes possible.
Now ask yourself, are your mind, heart, and gut all in sync?
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References I used in this blog post: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 8 (translation from New Advent); on Process Theology, see Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929) and Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (1948): Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, all of Chardin’s works.