God's Infinity: A Christian-Mormon Comparison

Paul Derengowski, ThM

The Christian Perspective

If God’s aseity is a difficult theological concept for the human mind to grasp, when one turns his attention to the idea of God’s infinity the difficulty does not receive a reprieve.  In fact, God’s infinity may be an even more difficult attribute to grasp simply because the human constitution thinks in finite terms, plus the concept of God’s infinity has a direct bearing upon other attributes such as omnipresence and omnipotence, whereby they are often confused with it.  Nevertheless, as will be seen, the God of Christianity has revealed himself as infinite, and one may be safe to assume that because God has revealed himself as such, one can know and understand, at least in part, his revelation.

Before turning to the Scriptures which discuss God’s infinity, and to avoid possible misconceptions as to what infinity involves, it will be good at this point to define just what is meant by the term infinite.  First of all, the word infinite is an English translation stemming from the Latin word infinitus which means “not enclosed within boundaries, boundless, unlimited…without end, endless, infinite...without bounds, without end, infinitely.”¹  The idea is that when something or someone is infinite, they are beyond finite means of measurement.  When infinity is applied to the person of God one is saying that he is beyond the fixation of time and space, since he transcends both.  Hence, there is no possible way or means to fully describe an infinite being by using finite means.  James Daane adds,

The infinity of God must be “defined” and understood as best we can, in terms of God himself, and not in terms of those created realities that are not God.  God’s infinity is not comprised or constituted by the finitude of the created universe.  Being circumscribed by His own internal qualities, God’s infinity is not limited by any aspect of the finite creation—neither by mankind’s logical, conceptual thought as rationalism is prone to forget, nor by mankind’s free will as Arminian theology tends to ignore.  The finite cannot contain or delimit the infinite.²

Second, the word infinite is more implied in scripture than explicitly appears in scripture.³  In fact, depending on the translation, one may not see the word at all (the New International Version and Revised Standard Version are prime examples).  Yet, because of certain contexts, to translate some Hebrew or Greek words and expressions as “infinite” is appropriate.  For instance, in Job 22:5, the King James Version renders the verse as follows: “Is not thy wickedness great? and thine iniquities infinite?”  Although the KJV is the only translation among the most modern translations⁴to translate the final Hebrew phrase ’en qēs (אֵיןֿקֵץ) as “infinite,” such a translation is acceptable, although possibly hyperbolic as well,⁵given that the basic meaning of the negative adverb ’ayin (עִָין) “followed by a noun can form a sort of asyndetic curtailed relative clause which serves as an attribute of the preceding noun.”⁶

The Septuagint (LXX) translation of the same verse uses the Greek word anarithmetos (ἀναρίθμητος), which is actually a verbal adjective with an affixed alpha privative on the front of the word, which means “innumerable,” or unable to calculate.  In other words, there are grammatical clues available to the translator when translating a phrase or word as “infinite.”  One must merely be aware of the context when doing so, for such clues ultimately have a direct bearing upon the subject’s character.  Therefore, despite the obvious absence of the English word “infinite” in a particular translation does not negate the concept or idea being taught or implied in the text.  One must merely consider the context.

The Biblical Witness to God’s Infinity

There are several passages in scripture that speak to the attribute of God’s infinity, but for the sake of space, only five will be dealt with here.  They are 1 Kings 8:27, Psalm 147:5, Isaiah 40:28, Acts 7:49, and Romans 11:33.  In each instance, the author is describing a particular aspect of God’s infinity, which once again affects, or even overlaps, his other attributes.

1 Kings 8:27 states, “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain Thee, how much less this house which I have built!”  The setting is that King Solomon has built the long-promised temple that his father, David, had been assured would be built earlier by God himself.  The ark has been brought and placed in the Holy of Holies and during the dedicatory speech Solomon rhetorically asks whether God will dwell on earth, and then proceeds to answer his question in the negative.  His rationale is that because of who God is, as an infinite, immeasurable, immense being, he cannot.  In fact, even the highest heaven cannot contain him.  His existence exceeds all that humans may conceptualize as existence, including God’s heavenly abode that few mortals have ever been privy to enjoy.  Iain Provan notes, “Being utterly transcendent, God cannot be ‘placed’ at all; all human language about dwelling must be qualified constantly, so that attempts to describe do not in fact minimize.”⁷  Dale Ralph Davis adds,

In verse 13 Solomon had referred to the temple as ‘a place for Your dwelling forever’ (NASB).  But in verse 27 Solomon acknowledges that that was only ‘relatively speaking.’  Here he confesses the uncontainability, the unboxability, of God.  Here is the God who bursts all our categories and frustrates all our attempts to surround his majesty.  Here is the immensity of God.  Will God really dwell upon earth, let alone in a temple?  Why, the heavens, even the highest heavens, cannot contain him!  The words drip with our happy failure to get a grip on the massive majesty of God.⁸

A second reference is Psalms 147:5.  The Psalmist wrote, “Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite.”  Although there might be some who contend that the verse is not speaking directly to God being infinite himself, such a contention is without warrant, given that one must be infinite in order to possess an infinite understanding.  It is part of God’s greatness that he is not infinite, but that his understanding, or literally his prudence or discernment of all situations, is equally great, to the point of healing the brokenhearted (v. 3),  counting and naming all the stars (v. 4), and supporting the afflicted, while abasing the wicked (v. 6).  There is no fathoming his wisdom,” writes the late C. H. Spurgeon, “or measuring his knowledge.  He is infinite in existence, in power, and in knowledge, as these three phrases plainly teach us.  The gods of the heathen are nothing, but our God filleth all things.”⁹  Moreover as John Phillips points out concerning this passage,

God understands all about us and our circumstances, feelings, hopes, yearnings, ambitions.  He understands us better that we understand ourselves.  Better still, His omniscient perception is linked to His omnipotent power.  The word for “Lord” is Adonim, which has to do with God as Lord and ruler of earth, God as the one who blesses His people.  This thought is emphasized by the use of the pronoun our—“Great is our Lord.”  God makes use of His infinite knowledge to look out for His own, as the next verse emphasizes.¹⁰

Our third biblical witness comes from prophet Isaiah, chapter 40, verse 28.  He has just concluded announcing impending judgment upon the nations and then turns his focus upon the God of Israel in an attempt to awaken Israel from its spiritual stupor concerning just who God is.  They were apparently under the impression that God was somehow aloof over their oppression, and negligence; that somehow God managed to allow injustice to take place with impunity.  Isaiah asks rhetorically, “Do you not know?  Have you not heard?  The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth does not become weary or tired.  His understanding is inscrutable.”  The idea of God’s “inscrutable” understanding hearkens back to our previous verse (Ps. 147:5), meaning that there is no possibility of being able to comprehend it.  Hence God’s understanding cannot be discovered by searching it out through human reasoning .  Edward J. Young expands upon God’s inscrutability by noting, “The language can only be understood as referring to the incomprehensibility of God.”  He continues,

The people, while they might to a certain extent understand the ways of God, could never fully understand them.  In bringing His promises of salvation and deliverance to fulfillment God exhibited a wisdom the Israelites could never wholly grasp.  When God's redeemed people behold His understanding, they may to a degree understand that wondrous insight of God, but they cannot comprehend it.  The understanding of man is the understanding of a creature; it is therefore circumscribed and finite; the understanding of God is that of the Creator, and is therefore infinite.  The finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite.  Whereas, therefore, the finite mind can know God and can apprehend Him as He has revealed Himself, nevertheless it cannot comprehend Him.  In His understanding there is a depth and length and breadth that man's mind cannot grasp.  God in all His attributes is incomprehensible.  The insight that is to bring salvation to Israel is not that of a mere man; it is God's insight.  Though he should live forever, man inasmuch as he is but a creature, will never comprehend it.¹¹

Turning to the New Testament, Luke writes in the Book of Acts, 7:49-50, concerning the infinite God: ‘Heaven is My throne, and earth is the footstool of My feet; What kind of house will you build for Me?’ says the Lord; Or what kind of place is there for My repose?  ‘Was it not My hand which made all these things?’  The passage is a quotation of Isaiah 66:1-2a, although as Dennis Sylva argues, the idea of God’s transcendence in the temple found in Acts 7:46-50 has support starting with the building of Solomon’s temple found in 1 Kings 8:14-30, of which 1 Kings 8:27 was previously discussed above.¹²  The point before is the same one as before, with God being non-containable.  In fact, in anthropomorphic terms, if God could be pictured as one would a human king, he would be seated in heaven and use earth as a footrest.  And to further dispel the idea that finite humanity can actually facilitate the presence of the infinite God, God is quoted as asking, “Was it not My hand which made all these things?” demonstrating that God not only precedes that which is finite, but also is “bigger” than creation.  John Calvin commented,

For whereas he saith, that heaven is his seat, and the earth his footstool, it must not be so understood as if he had a body, or could be divided into parts, after the manner of men; but because he is infinite, therefore he saith that he cannot be comprehended within any spaces of place; therefore, those men are deceived who esteem God or his worship according to their own nature; and because the prophet had to deal with hypocrites, he doth not only dispute about the essence of God, but also teacheth generally, that he is far unlike to men, and that he is not moved with the vain pomp of this world as they are.¹³

Finally, in Romans 11:33 the apostle Paul wrote: “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!”  Here Paul is concluding the “mystery” (v. 25) of God’s dealing with the nation of Israel, how in the plan of God it has been “hardened,” or put on hold until He has dealt with the Gentile nations to bring them into His kingdom.  From a human perspective it is beyond our reasoning capacity to comprehend either the why or how God is doing what He is in respect to either people group, which is why Paul calls such wisdom, knowledge and judgment “unsearchable” and “unfathomable,” which are synonyms.  The first adjective is actually a hapax legomenon, meaning that its only occurrence in scripture is found here, with “the exact connotation of the term impl[ying] the abandonment of all attempts to solve theoretically the question of the meaning of the judgment on Israel, so that Paul describes even his own answer as an attempt for which he cannot claim absolute validity.”¹⁴The latter term appears one other time in the NT (Eph. 3:8) and describes the “unfathomable riches of Christ,” and twice it is translated avnexicni,astoj from the Hebrew ’ayin found at Job 5:9; 9:10 and lō’hāqar at Job 34:24, with each reference carrying the connotations “unfathomable,” “unsearchable,” or “without inquiry.”  In essence, Paul is implying in Romans 11:33 that God’s wisdom, knowledge, and judgment are infinitely beyond the understanding of finite human reasoning.  Commentator John Stott appropriately sums up Paul’s thoughts by stating:

Moreover, God's wealth and wisdom are not only deep; they are actually unfathomable (33b).  His decisions are unsearchable, and his ways inscrutable.  This is the New Testament equivalent of Isaiah 55:8f. where God declares his thoughts to be higher that our thoughts, and his ways than our ways.  But of course!  How could finite and fallen creatures like us ever imagine that we could penetrate into the infinite mind of God?  His mind (what he thinks) and his activity (what he does) are altogether beyond us.¹⁵

Clearly the Bible reveals the infinity of God.  There is nothing, nor anyone, that can limit Him in any fashion.  And though the doctrine of God’s infinity may not be explicitly stated in scripture the same capacity as some of his other attributes, the implication of God’s infinity is replete throughout scripture and modifies those same attributes to an infinite degree.  Nevertheless, let not this finite attempt to prove God’s infinity be the only and last word on the subject.  Let us now turn our attention to the Early Church witness and see what the Church Fathers thought about God, and whether or not they thought He was indeed infinite.

The Early Church Witness to God’s Infinity

As was the case with God’s aseity in the previous chapter, and the Early Church witness, so it is with God’s infinity.  For the Early Church Fathers wrote extensively and with conviction that God was an infinite spirit being, who possessed certain attributes of power, intelligence, and presence in such perfection that the human mind could not possibly comprehend Him.  And since they frequently alluded to the infinity of God space will not allow the numerous citations given throughout their writings.  Yet those that are provided will demonstrate the proposition that the Early Church believed that God was infinite in his being.

Ante-Nicene Fathers

What shall we do, then, brethren?  Shall we become slothful in well-doing, and cease from the practice of love?  God forbid that any such course should be followed by us!  But rather let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work.  For the Creator and Lord of all Himself rejoices in His works.  For by His infinitely great power He established the heavens, and by His incomprehensible wisdom He adorned them.¹⁶

If, however, any one do not discover the cause of all those things which become objects of investigation, let him reflect that man is infinitely inferior to God; that he has received grace only in part, and is not yet equal or similar to his Maker; and, moreover, that he cannot have experience or form a conception of all things like God; but in the same proportion as he who was formed but to-day, and received that beginning of his creation, is inferior to Him who is uncreated, and who is always the same, in that proportion is he, as respects knowledge and the faculty of investigating the causes of all things, inferior to Him who made him.  For thou, O man, are not an uncreated being, nor didst thou always co-exist with God, as did His own Word; but now, through His pre-eminent goodness, receiving the beginning of thy creation, thou dost gradually learn from the Word the dispensations of God who made thee.¹⁷

This discourse respecting God is most difficult to handle.  For since the first principle of everything is difficult to find out, the absolutely first and oldest principle, which is the cause of all other things being and having been, is difficult to exhibit.  For how can that be expressed which is neither genus, nor difference, nor species, nor individual, nor number; nay more, is neither an event, nor that to which an event happens?  No one can rightly express Him wholly.  For on account of His greatness He is ranked as the All, and is the Father of the universe.  Nor are any parts to be predicated of Him.  For the One is indivisible; wherefore also it is infinite, not considered with reference to inscrutability, but with reference to its being without dimensions, and not having a limit.¹⁸

The object of our worship is the One God, He who by His commanding word, His arranging wisdom, His mighty power, brought forth from nothing this entire mass of our world, with all its array of elements, bodies, spirits, for the glory of His majesty…The eye cannot see Him, though He is (spiritually) visible.  He is incomprehensible though in grace He is manifested.  He is beyond our utmost thought, though our human faculties conceive of Him.  He is therefore equally real and great.  But that which, in the ordinary sense, can be seen and handled and conceived, is inferior to the eyes by which it is taken in, and the hands by which it is tainted, and the faculties by which it is discovered; but that which is infinite is known only to itself.¹⁹

Canst thou believe that in heaven there is a division of the supreme power, and that the whole authority of that true and divine empire is sundered, when it is manifest that God, the Parent of all, has neither beginning nor end — that He who gives birth to all gives perpetuity to Himself — that He who was before the world, was Himself to Himself instead of the world? He orders everything, whatever it is, by a word; arranges it by His wisdom; perfects it by His power. He can neither be seen — He is brighter than light; nor can be grasped — He is purer than touch; nor estimated; He is greater than all perceptions; infinite, immense, and how great is known to Himself alone.²⁰

But between God the Maker of all things and that which is made, between the infinite and the finite, between infinitude and finitude, there can be no kind of comparison, since these differ from each other not in mere comparison (or relatively), but absolutely in essence…For the divine is just the same after the incarnation that it was before the incarnation; in its essence infinite, illimitable, impassible, incomparable, unchangeable, inconvertible, self-potent, and, in short, subsisting in essence alone the infinitely worthy good.²¹

Thus God the Father, the Founder and Creator of all things, who only knows no beginning, invisible, infinite, immortal, eternal, is one God; to whose greatness, or majesty, or power, I would not say nothing can be preferred, but nothing can be compared; of whom, when He willed it, the Son, the Word, was born, who is not received in the sound of the stricken air, or in the tone of voice forced from the lungs, but is acknowledged in the substance of the power put forth by God, the mysteries of whose sacred and divine nativity neither an apostle has learnt, nor prophet has discovered, nor angel has known, nor creature has apprehended.²²

None but the Almighty God can preserve souls; nor is there any one besides who can give them length of days, and grant to them also a spirit which shall never die, except He who alone is immortal and everlasting, and restricted by no limit of time.²³

What shall we do, then, brethren?  Shall we become slothful in well-doing, and cease from the practice of love?  God forbid that any such course should be followed by us!  But rather let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work.  For the Creator and Lord of all Himself rejoices in His works.  For by His infinitely great power He established the heavens, and by His incomprehensible wisdom He adorned them.²⁴

I say, then, that God is not born, not made, an ever-abiding nature without beginning and without end, immortal, perfect, and incomprehensible.  Now when I say that he is "perfect," this means that there is not in him any defect, and he is not in need of anything but all things are in need of him.  And when I say that he is "without beginning," this means that everything which has beginning has also an end, and that which has an end may be brought to an end…The heavens do not limit him, but the heavens and all things, visible and invisible, receive their bounds from him…He requires not sacrifice and libation, nor even one of things visible; He requires not aught from any, but all living creatures stand in need of him.²⁵

Post-Nicene Fathers

Chrysostom: Homilies

And if any of the events which happen pass our understanding, let us not from this consider that our affairs are not governed by providence, but perceiving His providence in part, in things incomprehensible let us yield to the unsearchableness of His wisdom.  For if it is not possible for one not conversant with it to understand a man's art, much rather it is impossible for the human understanding to comprehend the infinity of the providence of God.²⁶

We acknowledge too that the Godhead is without beginning, and that the manhood is of recent origin; for the one nature is of the seed of Abraham and David, from whom descended the holy Virgin, but the divine nature was begotten of the God and Father before the ages without time, without passions, without severance.²⁷

God," so far as the human mind can form an idea, is the name of that nature or substance which is above all things.  "Father" is a word expressive of a secret and ineffable mystery.  When you hear the word "God," you must understand thereby a substance without beginning, without end, simple, uncompounded, invisible, incorporeal, ineffable, inappreciable, which has in it nothing which has been either added or created.²⁸

Such are the Master's words, and by them he teaches us this: that the Divine Life is essentially single and continuous with Itself, starting from no beginning, circumscribed by no end; and that the intuitions which we possess regarding this Life it is possible to make clear by words.  That is, we express the never having come from any cause by the term unbeginning or ungenerate; and we express the not being circumscribed by any limit, and not being destroyed by any death, by the term imperishable, or unending; and this absence of cause, he defines, makes it right for us to speak of the Divine life as existing ungenerately; and this being without end we are to denote as imperishable, since anything that has ceased to exist is necessarily in a state of annihilation, and when we hear of anything annihilated, we at once think of the destruction of its substance.  He says then, that One Who never ceases to exist, and is a stranger to all destruction and dissolution, is to be called imperishable.²⁹

First then let there be laid as a foundation in your soul the doctrine concerning God; that God is One, alone unbegotten, without beginning, change, or variation; neither begotten of another, nor having another to succeed Him in His life; who neither began to live in time, nor endeth ever: and that He is both good and just; that if ever thou hear a heretic say, that there is one God who is just, and another who is good, thou mayest immediately remember, and discern the poisoned arrow of heresy.³⁰

VII.  For what will you conceive the Deity to be, if you rely upon all the approximations of reason?  Or to what will reason carry you, O most philosophic of men and best of Theologians, who boast of your familiarity with the Unlimited?  Is He a body?  How then is He the Infinite and Limitless, and formless, and intangible, and invisible? or are these attributes of a body?  What arrogance for such is not the nature of a body!  Or will you say that He has a body, but not these attributes?  O stupidity, that a Deity should possess nothing more than we do.  For how is He an object of worship if He be circumscribed?  Or how shall He escape being made of elements, and therefore subject to be resolved into them again, or even altogether dissolved?  For every compound is a starting point of strife, and strife of separation, and separation of dissolution.  But dissolution is altogether foreign to God and to the First Nature.  Therefore there can be no separation, that there may be no dissolution, and no strife that there may be no separation, and no composition that there may be no strife.  Thus also there must be no body, that there may be no composition, and so the argument is established by going back from last to first.³¹

Let us glorify the supreme Articifer for all that was wisely and skillfully made; by the beauty of visible things let us raise ourselves to Him who is above all beauty; by the grandeur of bodies, sensible and limited in their nature, let us conceive of the infinite Being whose immensity and omnipotence surpass all the efforts of the imagination.³²

We, therefore, both know and confess that God is without beginning, without end, eternal and everlasting, uncreate, unchangeable, invariable, simple, uncompound, incorporeal, invisible impalpable, uncircumscribed, infinite, incognisable, indefinable, incomprehensible, good, just, maker of all things created, almighty, all-ruling, all-surveying, of all overseer, sovereign, judge; and that God is One, that is to say, one essence…³³

It is a pious saying that the Father is not limited by times: for the true meaning of the name of Father which He bore before time began surpasses comprehension.  Although religion teaches us to ascribe to Him this name of Father through which comes the impassible origin of the Son, yet He is not bound in time, for the eternal and infinite God cannot be understood as having become a Father in time, and according to the teaching of the Gospel the Only-begotten God the Word is recognized even in the beginning rather to be with God than to be born.³⁴

To Thee now, Almighty Father, do I direct my words with tears.  I indeed have readily called Thee inapproachable, incomprehensible, inestimable; but I dared not say Thy Son was inferior to Thyself.  For when I read that He is the Brightness of Thy glory, and the Image of Thy Person, I fear lest, in saying that the Image of Thy Person is inferior, I should seem to say that Thy Person is inferior, of which the Son is the Image; for the fulness of Thy Godhead is wholly in the Son.  I have often read, I freely believe, that Thou and Thy Son and the Holy Spirit are boundless, unmeasurable, inestimable, ineffable.  And therefore I cannot appraise Thee so as to weigh Thee.³⁵

Medieval Witness to God’s Infinity

By reading these books of the Platonists I had been prompted to look for truth as something incorporeal, and I caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures.  Though I was thwarted of my wish to know more, I was conscious of what it was that my mind was too clouded to see.  I was certain both that you are and that you are infinite, though without extent in terms of space either limited or unlimited.  I was sure that it is you who truly are, since you are always the same, varying in neither part nor motion.³⁶

The fact that the being of God is self-subsisting, not received in any other, and is thus called infinite, shows Him to be distinguished from all other beings, and all others to be apart from Him.³⁷

Since therefore the divine being is not a being received in anything, but He is His own subsistent being…it is clear that God Himself is infinite and perfect.³⁸

On the contrary, The infinite cannot have a beginning, as said in Physic. iii.  But everything outside God is from God as from its first principle.  Therefore besides God nothing can be infinite.³⁹

Thou was not, then, yesterday, nor wilt thou be to-morrow; but yesterday and to-day and to-morrow thou art; or, rather, neither yesterday nor to-day nor to-morrow thou art; but simply, thou art, outside all time.  For yesterday and to-day and to-morrow have no existence, except in time; but thou, although nothing exists without thee, nevertheless dost not exist in space or time, but all things exist in thee.  For nothing contains thee, but thou containest all.⁴⁰

Do you ask where he is if all things are in him?  I can say no more than this: What place can hold him?  Do you ask where he is not?  That, too, I cannot say.  What place is without God?  God is beyond understanding (Jer. 32:19).  But you have grasped something if you have realized this about him: that he who is not enclosed in any place is nowhere and he who is not excluded form any place is everywhere.  In his own sublime and incomprehensible way, just as all things are in him (Col 1:16-17), so he is in all things (1 Cor 15:28).  As the Evangelist says, "He was in the world" (Jn 1:10).  Yet he is now where he was before the world began.  There is nowhere further to ask about.  There was nothing but God and so he was in himself (Jn 1:3).⁴¹

Reformation Witness to God’s Infinity

“Our Father…in heaven”…From this we are not immediately to reason that he is bound, shut up, and surrounded, by the circumference of heaven, as by a barrel enclosure.  For Solomon confesses that the heaven of heavens cannot contain him [I Kings 8:27].  And he himself says through the prophet that heaven is his seat, and the earth, his footstool [Isa. 66:1; Acts 7:49; cf. ch. 17:24].  By this he obviously means that he is not confined to any particular region but is diffused through all things…God is set beyond all place, so that when we would seek him we must rise above all perception of body and soul.⁴²

Infinity of Being is a pre-eminent mode of the Essence of God, by which it is devoid of all limitation and boundary, (Psalm cxlv, 3; Isai. xliii, 10), whether from something above it or below it, from something before it or after it.  It is not bounded by anything above it, because it has received its being from no one.  Nor by anything below it, because the form, which is itself, is not limited to the capacity of any matter whatsoever that may be its recipient.  Neither by anything before it, because it is from nothing efficient: nor after it, because it does not exist for the sake of another end.  But, His Essence is terminated inwardly by its own property, according to which it is what it is and nothing else.  Yet by this no limits are prescribed to its Infinity; for by the very circumstance, that it is its own being, subsisting through itself, neither received from another nor in another, it is distinguished, from all others, and others are removed from it.⁴³

The infinity of God follows his simplicity and is equally diffused through the other attributes of God, and by it the divine nature is conceived as free from all limit in imperfection: as to essence (by incomprehensibility) and as to duration (by eternity) and as to circumscription, in reference to place (by immensity).⁴⁴

Scripture teaches us that God's right hand is not a specific place, at which a body is to be found or may be found, as in a chair of gold, but that it is the omnipotence of God, which can be nowhere and yet must be everywhere at the same time…But divine omnipotence may not and cannot be so contained and confined; for it is incomprehensible and infinite, outside and above all that is or may be.⁴⁵

We believe and confess with the holy Scriptures that there is an only, eternal, and true God, who is a Spirit; the God who created heaven and earth, the sea and all that is therein; the God whom the heaven and earth and the heaven of heavens cannot contain, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth . . . who is higher than heaven and deeper than hell, lower than earth and broader than the sea; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see; who is an Almighty, powerful, and an ever-ruling King, in the heavens above and on the earth beneath; whose strength and power none can stay; a God above all gods, and a Lord above all lords; there is none like unto Him, mighty, holy, terrible, majestic, wonderful, and a consuming fire; whose kingdom, power, dominion, majesty, and glory is eternal, and shall endure forever.⁴⁶

Post-Reformation Witness to God’s Infinity

Infinity is not a negative but a positive concept; it means, not that God has not distinct being of his own, but that he is not limited by anything finite and creaturely.  Of course, such a denial of creaturely limitation can be variously construed.  If one means that God cannot be confined by time, his infinity coincides with his eternity.  If one means that God cannot be confined by space, then his infinity coincides with his omnipresence.  This in fact is how God's infinity is often defined.  But infinity can also be construed in the sense that God is unlimited in his virtues, that in him every virtue is present in an absolute degree.  In that case infinity amounts to perfection...God is infinite in his characteristic essence, absolutely perfect, infinite in an intensive, qualitative, and positive sense.  So understood, however, God's infinity is synonymous with perfection and does not have to be treated separately.⁴⁷

Infinitude means the absolutely limitless character of God's essence.  Immensity the absolutely limitless being of His substance.  His being, as eternal, is in no sense circumscribed by time; as immense, in no wise circumscribed by space.⁴⁸