Divine Immensity and Participation: Platonic and Christian Sources

In this paper, I recover platonic and Christian sources on divine immensity and argue that immensity is crucial to any resolutely theistic participatory metaphysics. The paper involves three movements. First, I outline a version of immensity drawn from key sources of classical theism, including Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, and Frances Turretin. On this view, immensity describes, not merely the limitless presence of effective divine power, but properly the reality of divine presence as the essence that surrounds and undergirds the essences of all actual and possible creatures. Second, I argue that such a view of immensity guards against the deistic impulse, on the one hand, and the pantheistic/panentheistic impulse on the other hand - and yet allows for a sufficiently robust account of divine presence for a participatory metaphysics. Finally, I conclude by addressing philosophical objections to divine presence as outlined in the doctrine of immensity.