Wesley’s Samaritan well is the Arminian pastoral center: worship is no longer confined to a mountain or a city. The Father is to be worshiped at all times and in all places because he is Spirit—not a body in a shrine, and not an empty sky. Arminius’s technical word is ubiquity: the essence is entirely wherever any creature or place is, as a point is wholly present to a whole circumference without being cut into pieces.
Matthew 18 and Matthew 28 are promises, not metaphors that leave the church alone. “I am with you” is the risen Christ, not a mood. Genesis 28’s startled Jacob—“Surely the LORD is in this place, and I didn’t know it”—is how most of us meet omnipresence: we were already in his presence before we noticed. Ephesians 4 and Colossians 1 keep the doctrine from dissolving God into the world: the one who fills all is also the one who ascended and who holds all things together as Lord, not as stuff.
Pastoral Arminian notes use nearness for prayer and for holiness. You cannot outrun him, and you do not have to find a sacred ZIP code to be heard. Both camps confess this. There is no historic Wesley–Calvin fork here about whether God is present; the argument, when it comes, is elsewhere—how grace operates in the heart he already fills.
Calvin’s immensity is a fence against two errors at once: measuring God by our sense, and smearing him into every stick of the world as if the world were God. He fills the earth, and still Scripture speaks of heaven as his dwelling to lift heavy minds. Westminster’s “immense” sits with “without body, parts, or passions”: God is not a large object occupying space the way a mountain does.
Reformed nearness is therefore personal and covenantal, not spatial bulk. The God who fills also indwells the church by the Spirit. Matthew 28’s “I am with you always” is Christ’s royal presence with the mission he assigned. Colossians 1’s fullness language is Christological: in him all things hold together; he is not an item among items.
Pastoral Reformed notes use omnipresence for both comfort and the fear of the Lord. There is no godless room, and there is no godforsaken saint. The fork with Arminians is not this attribute. If a contrast appears, it is only the larger disagreement about effectual grace in the hearts of those among whom God is already present.
Key contrast Both confess that God is wholly present everywhere and is not confined to temples. There is no historic Arminian–Reformed split on the attribute itself; any remaining difference belongs to how that near God applies saving grace, not to whether he is here.