However,
given the traditional claim that God is omnipresent, how can ‘all the fullness
of God’ be pleased to dwell in a single human and still be said to be present
to all things? There is no hesitation that Christ does relate to all things:
the Son ‘is the image of the invisible God’; in him ‘all things on heaven and
earth were created’; he ‘is before all things, and in him all things hold
together’ (Col 1;15-17). The present tense (εστιν; Col 1:15, 17) that Paul uses indicates that
it is Christ the incarnate Son—risen and exalted, but a man nonetheless—who
does all these things normally attributed to divinity. That Christ the incarnate
Son is said to be the image of God, through whom all things were created
and in whom all things hold together means that it is also Christ the incarnate
Son in whom ‘the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily’ (Col 2:9; cf.
1:19). Furthermore, Christ is ‘the head of the body, the church’ (Col 1:18)
that ‘com[s] to fullness in him’ (Col 2:10). Scripture’s initial response to
the question of divine omnipresence, then, is that somehow the Church, the body
of Christ, is enabled to participate in God’s presence. It is within this
christological framework, shaped by Scripture, that ideas of God’s omnipresence
must be developed. (Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh: Divine Presence
as a Framework for a Theology of Providence [Paternoster Theological
Monographs; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 127)
