Emery says that for Aquinas the diversity of creation is founded in the personal plurality of the divine relations: “One cannot emphasize more forcefully the positive value of the multiplicity of creature; Saint Thomas does not conceive of plurality as a decline from unity, but to the contrary, as a participation in the fullness of the trinitarian life of God. This theological audacity expresses the consequences of the revolutionary idea of a ‘transcendental multitude’ that Saint Thomas recognizes in the Trinity.”

“Transcendental multitude” translates multitudo secundum quod transcendens from ST 1, 30, 3.