#163 – Omnipresent & Omniscient

Jen Wilkin, JT English, and Kyle Worley discuss what it means that God is Omnipresent & Omniscient.

Questions Covered in This Episode:

• What does omnipresence mean?
• How do we reconcile the fact that God is Spirit with our understanding of God as Trinity?
• I have a spirit and I have a body, that is different from God being Spirit?
• How does technology play into the illusion of omnipresence?
• But what about the Son of God, he can’t be omnipresent can he? He’s in a body?
• Why is this good news?
• What does omniscience mean?
• If God knows everything, is he cruel or powerless?

Helpful Definitions:

• Omnipresence: Everywhere fully present.
• Deism: The belief that God created something and then stepped away from his creation. God is absent and careless about his creation. 
• Pantheism: The belief that God is a 1:1 correlation with His creation. God is powerless because he is his creation.
• Extra Calvinisticum: Teaching that Christ's divine nature cannot be enclosed or imprisoned within a human nature, but remains infinite despite being in union with a finite body.
• Trinitarianism: God eternally exists as one essence in three distinct persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each of whom is fully God, yet there is One God.
• Transubstantiation (Catholicism) - The view of the Lord’s Supper that the conversion of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the whole substance of the body and blood of Christ.  
• Consubstantiation (Lutheranism) - The view of the Lord’s Supper that the substances both of the body and blood of Christ and of the bread and the wine coexist in union with each other. 
• Memorial (Anabaptist) - The view of the Lord’s Supper that the Eucharist is merely symbolic in nature.
• Spiritual Presence (Reformed) - The view of the Lord’s Supper that teaches that in the elements and in the proceedings of communion Christ is spiritually present with his people.
• Omniscience: All things are known effortlessly and instantly.
• Eternal: Not bound by time.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Isaiah 44:20, Psalm 139:7, Psalm 74, Job 8:9
• “Enchanted Objects” by David Rose
• Heidelberg Catechism
• Belgic Confession of Faith
• Serial Podcast

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