28. (i) GOD IS INFINITE, BECAUSE HE-IS AND COMES INTO BEING IN HIMSELF, AND EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE IS AND COMES INTO BEING FROM HIM.
It has so far been shown that God is one and is the very and first Being of everything, and that all things which are, come into being and subsist in the universe, are from Him. It follows from this that He is infinite. In the following pages it will be proved that human reason can see the truth of that from very many things in the created universe. But although these things can lead the human mind to acknowledge that the prime Entity (Ens) or first Being (Esse) is infinite, it still cannot know its nature; and therefore cannot define it except as the total infinite, subsisting in itself and thus the very and sole substance; and since nothing can be predicated of substance without form, that it is the very and sole form. Yet where does this get us? This still does not show what the infinite is like. For the human mind, for all its loftiness and superb analytical power, is finite, and there is no way of rendering it anything but finite. Therefore it is incapable of seeing the infinity of God as it is in itself, and so seeing God; but it can see God in shadow from behind, as Moses was told when he begged to see God: he was placed in a cleft in the rock and saw His back parts (Exod. 33:20-23). The 'back parts of God' mean what is visible in the world, and in particular what can be perceived in the Word.
[2] This will prove that it is futile to want to know God as He is in His Being or in His Substance; but it is enough to acknowledge Him by finite things, that is, His creation, in which He dwells infinitely. A person who seeks to go further can be likened to a fish out of water, or a bird put into a vacuum chamber, which, as the air is pumped out, chokes and eventually dies.
He may also be likened to a ship overwhelmed by a storm and no longer answering the helm, which is driven upon rocks or sandbanks. This is what happens to those who want to know the infinity of God from within, and are not content to acknowledge it by its plain indications from without. The story is told of a certain philosopher among the ancients, who threw himself into the sea because his mental enlightenment did not enable him to see or comprehend the eternity of the cosmos; what would he have done, if it had been the infinity of God he wished to see?