Ricerc@Sapienza

The article analyses 12th century discussions about how God’s being everywhere should be understood. According to Abelard, Gilbert of Poitiers, and Alain of Lille, since God cannot be in any place, « God is everywhere » must be interpreted figuratively and means e.g. that we can perceive God’s power everywhere. Hugues of St. Victor, Peter Lombard, and Praepositinus from Cremona on the contrary assert that « God is everywhere » is literally true and that God is really present everywhere in the world, though in a mysterious way. At the beginning of next century the Amalricians were condemned for holding, among other theses, that « God is everywhere » is literally true since « God is everything »: an immanentist theology which might have been infl uenced in some way by the earlier scholastic debate about God’s ubiquity.