Question 2: Whether God is also outside of this world?
1. I have shown that God, according to his substance, is ubiquitous in this world. Now I add that he is not defined nor circumscribed by the area of this world, but is also outside this world in accordance with 1 Kings 8:27: “the heaven of heavens does not contain you” and Job 11:8: “He is higher than the heaven, and deeper than the abode of the dead.” The reason is taken from his infinity. From this, it is rightly said by some that “God is nowhere and everywhere.” He is nowhere because he is not circumscribed by any place. He is everywhere, because he is shut out of no place. It is in this sense that the Thrice-Great Hermes said: “God is a circle, whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere.” For he is wholly everywhere and defined by no boundary.
2. First it is asked: Seeing that outside this world nothing is real, how is God able to really be there? I respond. He is there in himself, just as he was in himself before the creation of the world. Whence Tertullian in his book against Praxeus, ch. 5: “Before everything, God existed alone, being in himself for himself a world, a place, and everything.” And Augustine in Psalm 122: “Before God made the saints, where did he dwell? He lived in himself.” And Bernard in book 5 Of Consideration to Eugenius: “It is not necessary to ask what you asked above, ‘where he was?’ Outside himself, nothing was.” And Denis the Carthusian in 1 d. 37 cites these verses: “Say, where was he then, given that outside of him, there was nothing? Then, where he is now, in himself, because he is sufficient in himself.”
3. It is asked secondly: Whether it can also be said that God really exists in that imaginary space which is outside this world? I respond. Two things are able to be considered when we say that a thing exists somewhere or in some place or space. One is intrinsic and absolute presence which a thing has in itself at that place. The other is a habit or relation to the space itself in which it exists. In the first way, one is able to say that God really exists in space outside of this world. This cannot be said in the latter sense. The reason is because there an intrinsic and absolute presence by which he really exists in himself. But he does not receive a real condition or property from the space in which he exists because that space is not something real.
4. It is asked thirdly: Whether God exists outside of this world in the same way that he exists in it? I respond. In this world there are three ways to exist, as I said: 1. by substance. 2. by operation. 3. by cognition. Outside this world, there is only one way, namely by substance, but not by operation, because nothing is worked there, nor by cognition because nothing is there which is able to be known by him except God himself.