St. Thomas Aquinas arguing the greatness of God
1 min • Digitized on February 14, 2022
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 22
By Venerable Louis of Granada
St. Thomas, in his “Sum of Theology,” endeavors by the following argument to give us some idea of the immensity of God:
We see, he tells us, that in material things that which excels in perfection also excels in quantity. Thus the water is greater than the earth, the air is greater than the water, and fire is greater than the air.
The first heaven is more extensive than the element of fire, the second heaven is more extensive than the first, the third likewise exceeds the second, and so of the others till wre come to the tenth sphere, or the empyreal heaven, to the grandeur and beauty of which nothing in the universe can be compared.
Consequently the empyreal heavens, the finest and noblest of all the bodies which compose the universe, being incomparably greater than all the rest, we may infer, adds the Angelic Doctor, how far God, the first, the greatest, the most perfect of all beings, spiritual or corporal, and the Creator of all, exceeds them, not in material quantity—for He is a pure spirit—but in every possible perfection.