What is it that confines angels, so that they cannot be omnipresent?

[Daniel Haley]

This answer is sufficient: because God is omnipresent alone

I just wanted to get some other thoughts if there are any out there.

Thanks.

 

[VictorBravo]

Daniel, you might want to rewrite your question.

I can't tell if you are asking "what is it that..." Are you asking how or why spirits are confined? Also, which spirits? Ours?

And clarify what "God's to one place at a time" means.

I don't think anybody can follow what your asking.

 

[Pergamum]

Why aren't we all omnipresent? Why aren't other angels omnipresent?

 

[Daniel Haley]

That's what I get for posting without my glasses on. The question restated is: What is it that confines spirits, namely angels, so that they cannot be omnipresent?

 

[Pergamum]

Isn't omnipresence an attribute of God? They cannot be omnipresent because they are not God.

 

[Tim]

They are creatures.

 

[MLCOPE2]

Isn't omnipresence an attribute of God?

While the communicable/incommunicable distinction isn't always the best, I think it helpful here. Omnipresence falls into that category of God's attributes that he does not pass on, or communicate, to his creatures. Therefore angels, as created beings, are incapable of being omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, or any other attribute that is essential to God alone. It must also be noted that Satan, being a disgraced and fallen angel, also is not omnipresent, etc., etc., like some pentecostals tend to believe.

 

[Pergamum]

What is it that confines spirits, namely angels, so that they cannot be omnipresent?

God's creative authority. He didn't design them that way.

Josh, couldn't it be said that God COULD not design them this way.

 

[py3ak]

The problem in trying to speak to this, is that we are thinking about space; and trying to imagine the relation of unextended spirit to space always ties us in knots. After all, all the angels can dance on the head of a pin, and yet they cannot simultaneously be dancing on a pin head on another planet. God is immense: he fills, and indeed contains, heaven and earth. He is capable of being attentive, so to speak, at every point simultaneously. He is unlimited with regard to space. While an angelic spirit has no extension, it is not similarly unlimited: it can attend, it can be present, only to one location at a time: so if focussing on Greece, it cannot simultaneously focus on Guam.

But our thinking, and especially our imagining, are so spatially oriented that it is difficult to wrap our heads around these things.