Direct, Indirect, and Trinity

Richard Swinburne describes God’s omnipresence in these terms: “God is supposed to be able to move any part of the universe directly; he does not need to use one part of the universe to make another part move. He can make any part move as a basic action . . . . The claim that God controls al things directly and knows about all things without the information coming to him through some causal chain, e.g., without light rays from a distance needing to stimulate his eyes, has often been expressed as the doctrine of God’s omnipresence.”

Is it true that God controls and knows all things “directly”? That seems to assume a unitarian God who has only two choices: working directly, or working through created mediation. But the Triune God works and knows mediately and immediately, equally so all the time. The Father works through the Son and Spirit, who are themselves fully God and yet are rightly described by Irenaeus as God’s “two hands.” The Father knows through the Son and Spirit, and perichoretically vice versa.

Does this mean, as Augustine feared, that the Father is “in Himself” an empty-head layabout? Not at all. The Father is filled with knowledge because He is in the Son by the Spirit, and the Son in Him by the Spirit. The Father does all things, because of the same perichoretic reality.