When Diving Into Sacred Doctrina - 1243 Words

Before diving into sacred doctrina, Aquinas explains sacred doctrina as the science of God and how His creation related back to him. In order to study sacred doctrina, one can either look at the causes first and make sense of what follows or he can look to the effects in order to draw conclusions about the cause. The latter is the method of St. Thomas Aquinas in explaining sacred doctrine in his Summa Theologiae. Aquinas looks to creation in order to make conclusions about the Creator. In order to discus what God is, Aquinas looks to creation to examine what God is not. God’s infinity is one of the many arguments of Aquinas that show his method of argument. In his argument concerning the infinity of God, Aquinas explains how in order for something to have number, something must have given it quantity. This thing must be greater than any quantity it gives and thus must be infinite. He goes on to discus how all things which have number also have form. Until matter receives its f orm, it is in a way infinite, but once it receives its form it receives quantity and can be counted. On its own, matter has the potential to be countless objects but it is not made perfect without it form. This form grounds matter and allows it to be a countable object. Something outside of matter and form however must exist in order to produce them. This being because it is not composed of matter and form, it cannot be counted because it cannot be quantified. In this way God is separated from his