This is from the wonderful book, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant and Scholastic Theology (Baker, 1985). Richard A. Muller has done Christianity a great service. I have quoted him before in my articles on “infinity”, but want to quote the entire passage under the entry: infinitas.
infinitas: infinitude; especially, the infinitas essentiae Dei, or infinitude of the divine essence. By infinitas Dei the scholastics understand the limitlessness of the divine essence with the regard to two species in particular: aeternitas, or eternity, and immensitas. The divine infinitas can also be described negatively and positively. It is not an infinity of corporeal quantity or extension but rather an infinity defined by the absence of limit; positively it is an infinite superiority over all things. In addition this infinitas Dei or infinitas essentiae ought not to be viewed as an isolated attribute but as a property of the divine essence that extends to each and every one of the divine attributes, so that divine knowledge or scientia is omniscientia and the divine potentia, omnipotentia, and so forth.
Now, Muller here has completely stated our case against the denial of Full Preterism and its insistence on history “never ending”. When “infinity” is applied to God, it is “NOT” a quantity or extension (Process Theology), but rather the “absence of limit”. That is, nothing limits God in his abilities, i.e., created things. Nothing denies him absolute knowledge (of ALL things). Nothing can limit his power (save His own Nature – God never acts contrary to His own Nature). That is what is meant. However, when one posits, as do the Full Preterists, that the number of God’s people is infinitas, they mean a “qauntity of extension” – infinite procreation.
Beating a dead horse, yes….but it needs to be beaten a little more.
