I think that Aquinas’s formulation is still accepted.
This sort of issue can be a bit problematic. There are those of the Agnostic persausion who will demand that the believer ‘show him god’ as though he is a star that could be seen, perhaps with a telescope. Even Fulton Sheen had to warn us that we shouldn’t think of the acension like a rocket launch, with Christ moving further from us in a physical sense, passing the orbit of the moon and planets.
But when discussing God’s presence in created reality, it’s wise to understand that while he permeates creation, he also exceeds it.
This is central to why we think of God in masculine terms. Most religions with a female deity come to think of the material of creation as being the very stuff of the goddess who created it. And if we [and everything else, animate or otherwise] are of the same flesh as the goddess, then we are essentially equal in worth and dignity.
While the ‘everything is sacred’ routine dovetails nicely with today’s real and laudable concern to safeguard the environment, in practice a world where everything is sacred is very much like a world where nothing is sacred-- sacrifice a bushel of corn, sacrifice a bull, sacrifice a baby-- all pretty much the same. A difference in degree at most, not a difference in kind.
Sorry, I seem to have gotten a bit off the track…
