Summa Blogologica - Question 7: The Infinity of God

So God is "big" right? Wrong. Big is a relative degree of size and God has no size and there is nothing relative to infinite. He has no measurement. As you're about to understand, only things that are finite can be measured.

Question 7 of the Summa Theologica deals with this topic, the Infinity of God. Its easy to understand up front, but some of the details get confusing. You will need to understand potential in relation to God. That can be found in Question 2, Existence of God.




... Try to (bear with me).











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God is infinite. God is not finite because things that are made of form and matter are finite. The form limits the matter, and the matter limits the form. Since God has no form or matter, He is not limited and is therefore infinite.  On the other hand, things of creation are relatively infinite as their existence is related to their potential to have an infinite number of forms. However, this is not the same infinite as that of God, who is not limited by form and matter. Bodies cannot be infinite in magnitude. Because bodies have size, they are measurable, which makes them finite. If a number has infinite potentiality, this means that a number can be divided and multiplied by any number. However, infinity itself cannot be divided and end with a real result. Infinity is limitless, endless, and is like a black hole of math and existence and power
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Thing that have potential = finite.
Things that are measurable = finite.
Things that have body = finite.
Things that can be divided = finite.
Finite = things are limited by all of the above.
God is not any of these by His, already discussed, nature and essence. God has no potential, He is simple (no body), and cannot be divided. God - is - infinite.

I hope that sort of simplifies things. These are necessary achievements in understanding God. If you cant understand this, we cannot move further to the "unchangeable" God, the "love" of God, and others.

Sorry Jr. Asparagus but God is not bigger than the Boogie Man. God, by His very nature, is not able to be compared to the finite, like the Boogie Man.

Larry the Cucumber would ask, "but isn't infinity bigger than finite?" No. Infinity has no measurement. Haven't you been paying attention, Larry? I can see why Bob gets annoyed with him, garsh.

JK, of course. When we say "God is bigger" we are referring to power, which He is bigger.






Do ask questions. Do read this more than once.

Go here for the Summa Question 7 text and go here for the simplified version.

Nature, Person Essence, Existence

Recently, I posted a small bit on "how a Catholic must think" and hopefully those who were able to read it were able to let it sink in a little, perhaps reading it more than once. You can reveiw that here.

I know that sort of information is dense, but it is vital for improving ones understanding of theology and  how better to defend the Catholic faith. Believe it or not, the Church Fathers didn't just make these things up and they didn't become popular because of their persecutions or their outspoken ways or their great sermons. The early fathers were educated very well. They debated other religious leaders (mohamadans, pagans, etc). They knew properly how to take information and assimilate it, synthesize it, or cast it out. They did it right, not because of their authority in the Church but because their teachings and marks have stood the tests of time. In philosophy we call this the Epistological problem, or the Ontological problem - which is the problem of knowledge. How do we come to know things? THAT, my friends, was the entire point of that blog entry; was to better learn, in 800 words or less, how we as people have come to have our minds formed - how we have come to learn. We now know that our knowledge MUST start with sense knowledge. This doesn't mean we know with our feelings (that would be Romanticism), but that the world can be known through the senses (after abstraction takes place).

This lesson hopefully will futher that piece, and offer some insight into gaining better ways to understand our faith, doctrine, and so-on. We need next to understand what a person and nature is, and how they relate to essence and existence. Here we go.



Okay, that was deep and complicated so let me now put it into example with Mary as the "Mother of God". God is said to be three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I said that no person is their nature with the exception of God because God is his nature (which is existence) because he is always existing. Some people dispute that Mary is not the mother of God, but the mother of Christ's human nature.  But philosophy disputes this because mother's give birth to PERSONS, not NATURE.  She is not the mother of human nature or any other nature. In other words, because Jesus is a person of the Trinity - God - and Mary gave birth to Jesus, she is rightfully called the Mother of God, theotokos (God -bearer).

800 words on how the Catholic MUST think

 The following Q&A was an assignment I recently completed in my Philosophy course. This is an IMPORTANT subject in battling the bad philosophy and theology of the world. Read this more than once!

Why is the affirmation that there are real objective metaphysical ideas so important as a basis for understanding the theology of the Catholic Church?

In order to discuss this question it is important to bring up who contributed to the rejection of real metaphysical ideas. There is first Rene Descartes who rejected the lack of certainty in sense experience. His beliefs on what existed divorced all spiritual knowledge from physical and objective experience. The origin of bad physics was Descartes. David Hume held a quite opposite philosophy and that was the rejection of any real knowledge beyond sense experience, going so far as to reject causality completely. According to Hume, God was an emotional projection, and no metaphysics is possible with his philosophy. Jean Jacques Rousseau led Romanticism in which the full use of feeling alone to discover truth was the only possible means of attaining real knowledge clearly no metaphysics here. Finally there is Immanuel Kant who is the link between rationalism and romanticism, and is still an influence today. Previously, truth was when the concept in the mind conforms to the objective thing outside the mind. With Kant this was reversed in which truth become the conformity of things in the mind. This philosophy divorced metaphysics and an objective God.

Pope Benedict XVI addressed this problem, referring to it as a “dictatorship of relativism”. The problem with the world not having an objective metaphysics in their philosophy is that secularism and dualism become dominant schools of thought. How can one maintain there are absolute truths in religion if the whole idea of absolute truth is denied or considered absurd in reason? If one does not think one can arrive at real metaphysical truths through the senses (something denied by Descartes, Hume and Kant) how can one maintain there are such truths in theology without absurdity?

The Catholic Church embraces the teachings of Thomas Aquinas which is based on Aristotle. In this, knowledge is always based on sense knowledge. Through the power of intellect the specific qualities are able to be filtered out of the object at hand. Man can separate the accidentals and then understand the nature of things. This is a metaphysical idea. With this comes the need for abstraction, which Aristotle and Aquinas embraced and developed. Abstraction refers to the mental separation of things not always separated in reality. Most important to this is the separation of the idea in the mind from the details taken in sense experience. Thus, in man, as opposed to the angels, all knowledge begins in the experience of the five senses and through abstraction from singular things arrives at definition. This is how knowledge is properly gained; a means at odds with the world. Without this how can one study a spiritual God, and if one cannot arrive at objective ideas of a spiritual God, how will skepticism be dealt with?

This is the problem of knowledge, the epistemological problem, and the Catholic must be concerned. This Catholic theologian cannot be an ancient materialist, or a platonic spiritualist.  If we cannot truth the certainty and objectivity of knowledge of the natural world, how can we truth the same in revelation or the spiritual world. The Church professes objective knowledge for physics, and this we the Church also confirms that with revelation that there is an objective metaphysics. Otherwise we end up with the desire for God being a need that begins in the subject (person), rather than the need for God (and grace) perfecting and completing man’s nature.

Pope Leo XIII addressed this problem, recommending the return to the Aquinas and Aristotle on the study of epistemology. “We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and spread it far and wide for the defense and beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of all the sciences”.[1] A realistic and objective metaphysics based on abstraction in Aristotle, advanced by Thomas Aquinas is the only way to overcome this.

In Catholic theology, what we know starts with the senses and by the power of the spiritual intellect we can know things of spiritual nature – metaphysical things and natures. Through the knowledge gained by the senses, our intellect can discover by the power of reason these metaphysical ideas.

This week’s mass reading contained a verse that the Catholic theologian must consider in this subject: “For in him were created all things in heaven and one earth, visible and invisible” (Col 1:16). For the Catholic theologian, with this philosophy we are able to understand the Eucharist and its accidents; the Eucharist has accidents but it is not its accidents which are its nature. Just as well, we are able to understand God and his nature; God and his nature are one.

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[1]Aeterni Patris, Leo XIII, 31.