In 1832, Joseph Smith received a revelation which elucidated God’s immanence—the doctrine that God is present to but is not identical with all realities. Immanence is more than omnipresence or being present at all places. Immanence includes the notion that God is: (1) present in terms of power and awareness at all places; (2) able to effectuate his will at all places without intermediary; and (3) the experience or information of every reality is included within God’s experience and knowledge. Put another way, all things indwell in God and God indwells in all things. Immanence, as concerned by Joseph Smith, is preeminently a reciprocal relation, for it is as true that God is in and through all things as that all things are in and through God. A revelation to Joseph Smith referred to God’s power and knowledge in terms of supreme relatedness and immediacy to all aspects of the physical universe: “He comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth. . . . Which light proceedeth forth from the presence of God to fill the immensity of space” (D&C 88:6, 12).
. . .
[commenting on D&C 88:6-13] Both God’s power and his
knowledge are understood in terms of his participating immediately in all
things. Hence, even though God is confined in space-time by virtue of his
“material” body, he nevertheless acts upon and experiences all realities
immediately by virtue of his spirit or light which proceeds from his corporeal
presence to “fill the immensity of space.” God participates immediately in
every moment of becoming, analogous to the way light from the sun radiates from
the presence of the sun to influence things located at a distance in space. As
Burton Z. Cooper noted, the notion that God knows through experience is
precisely the opposite of the Thomist view that God is absolutely unrelated and
knows, not by knowing the things themselves, but by knowing his own essence.
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: The Attributes
of God (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2001), 75, 311
