Salve fratres! This is my first post, so hello all. I don't think this concept originally spawns from Saint Augustine (similar sentiments may be found in Paul), but here are a couple quotations nonetheless:
"Si quis sie de Christo sive de eius ecclesia sive de quacunque alia re quae pertinet ad fidem vitamque nostram non dicam si nos sed quod Paulus adiecit si angelus de caelo vobis annuntiaverit praeterquam quod in Scripturis et Evangelicis accepistis anathema sit". Or, once more: "Magnus es Domine et laudabilis valde".
Augustine, being greatly influenced by Plato and Plotinus, taught that if the Bible is just (in the 29th chapter of Jeremias, I believe) in saying that God fills Heaven and Earth, he must also contain what he fills, himself being of a finite nature and his subject not sharing this (according to Plotinus, such an ideal nature cannot fully be imparted, for this would not be an act of creation, not even of 'duplication', which is a contradiction, or anything else contextually exterior), but that all nature must draw its qualities (for Aquinas, "accidents"), insofar as those which serve to qualify and therefore define, and therefore all that exists must necessarily be good, and whatsoever may be negated essentially also be good, for that it can be negated, and suffer loss, while that which (philosophically, morally) was never whole to begin with is negated - so to speak - incidentally. Catholic theology isn't my major, admittedly, nor am I an expert in anything secundis hoc but it's centuries in development.
