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{"id":6834,"date":"2011-09-14T16:21:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T16:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=834"},"modified":"2011-09-14T16:21:26","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T16:21:26","slug":"divine-spatiality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2011\/09\/divine-spatiality\/","title":{"rendered":"Divine Spatiality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

<\/p>

Timothy Gorringe ( A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption <\/a> $\"\"$ ) summarizes Barth\u2019s idea of \u201cdivine spatiality\u201d: \u201cGod\u2019s \u2018eminent spatiality\u2019 . . . grounds our own created spatiality. Space, in other words, is not something contingent, something which will one day be annihilated and \u2018be no more,\u2019 because it has its true and intrinsic ground in God. God is present to other things, and is able to create and give them space, because God in Godself [ugh! -PJL] possesses space apart from everything else. What truth, Barth asks, could correspond to phrases like \u2018in Christ,\u2019 \u2018in God,\u2019 and \u2018in the Spirit\u2019 if God were not genuinely and primordially spatial? \u2018If it is not an incidental or superfluous belief that we can obtain space from God and find space in him, but a truth which is deceisive for the actuality of creation, reconciliation and redemption and the trustworthiness of the Word of God, we cannot evade the recognition that God himself is spatial.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

Barth of course has a Trinitarian account of spatiality: \u201cThe origin of all space, according to him, is to be found in the Trinitarian relations. It is the fact that God is present to Godself [ugh! again PJL], that there is a divine proximity and remoteness, which is the basis and presupposition of created proximity and remoteness. God\u2019s omnipresence is to be understood primarily as a determination of God\u2019s love, in so far as God is not only one, unique and simple but as such is present to Godself [dittos] and therefore present to everything which by God is outside God.\u201d In Barth\u2019s words, \u201cGod\u2019s omnipresence is the perfection in which he is present, and in which he, the One, who is distinct from and preeminent over anything else, possesses a place, his own place,which is distinct from all other places and also preeminent over them all . . . God\u2019s presence necessarily means that he possesses a place, his own place, or . . . his own space . . . If God does not possess space, he can certainly be conceived as that which is one in itself and in all. But he cannot be conceived as the One who is triune, as the One who as such is the Lord of everything else.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"