self-evident. For we conceive of the humanity common to human beings, other intelligible universals, and other things, yet these are neither inside the world nor outside it. Moreover, Aristotle and his followers among the philosophers, together with a group of speculative theologians, affirmed that the rational soul is likewise neither inside the world nor outside it, as are the intellects and souls. They were not asserting something whose falsity is self-evident.
Furthermore, sound reason recognizes a division of things into those that are separate, those that share a locus, and those that are neither separate nor share a locus; into those that are inside, those that are outside, and those that are neither inside nor outside; and into those that occupy space, those that inhere in something occupying space, and those that neither occupy space nor inhere in something occupying space. It is not self-evidently known that this classification is false, in the way that it is known that one is half of two.
Moreover, your claim that things must be either separate or share a locus, either inside or outside, is intelligible only with regard to bodies that occupy space. If we suppose two things that occupy space, one must necessarily be either inside the other or outside it. But if we suppose an existent that is neither a body nor something occupying space, nothing would preclude its being separate from another, while neither sharing its locus nor being inside it or outside it. Rather, both categories would be denied of it. This division and claim to exhaustiveness would therefore entail that the Creator is a body occupying space in a direction, and that is false.
By occupying space, we do not mean that He is encompassed by an actually existing ‘spatial region,’ as addressed in the poet’s response. Nor, by direction, do we mean that He is in an actually existing ‘location,’ as likewise addressed in the poet’s response. Rather, by occupying space in a direction, we mean that He can be pointed to through sense perception as being here or there.