CHAPTER 19

INFINITE POWER OF GOD

The further inference is drawn that God is infinite in power. For power is consequent upon a thing's essence; anything whatever possesses a power of activity consonant with its manner of being. Therefore, if God is infinite in His essence, His power must be infinite.

             This is clear to anyone who will inspect the order of things. Whatever is in potency, is thereby endowed with receptive and passive power; and so far as a thing is in act, it possesses active power. Hence what is exclusively in potency, namely, prime matter, has an unlimited power of receptivity, but has no part in active power. And in the scale of being above matter, the more a thing has of form, the more it abounds in the power of acting. This is why fire is the most active of all the elements. Therefore God, who is pure act without any admixture of potency, infinitely abounds in active power above all things.