BOOK I CHAPTER IX
Concerning what is affirmed about God.
The Deity is simple and uncompound. But that which is composed of many and different elements is compound. If, then, we should speak of the qualities of being uncreate and without beginning and incorporeal and immortal and everlasting and good and creative and so forth as essential differences in the case of God, that which is composed of so many qualities will not be simple but must be compound. But this is impious in the extreme. Each then of the affirmations about God should be thought of as signifying not what He is in essence, but either something that it is impossible to make plain, or some relation to some of those things which are contrasts or some of those things that follow the nature, or an energy.
It appears
then that the most proper of all the names given to God is "He that
is," as He Himself said in answer to Moses on the mountain, Say to the
sons of Israel, He that is hath sent Me. For He keeps all being in His own
embrace, like a sea of essence infinite and unseen. Or as the holy Dionysius
says, "He that is good." For one cannot say of God that He has
being in the first place and goodness in the second.
The second
name of God is o qeos , derived from qeein, to
run, because He courses through all things, or from aiqein , to burn:
For God is a fire consuming all evils: or from qeasqai , because
He is all-seeing: for nothing can escape Him, and over all He keepeth watch.
For He saw all things before they were, holding them timelessly in His thoughts;
and each one conformably to His voluntary anti timeless thought, which
constitutes predetermination and image and pattern, comes into existence at the
predetermined time.
The first
name then conveys the notion of His existence and of the nature of His
existence: while the second contains the idea of energy. Further, the terms
'without beginning,' ' incorruptible,' 'unbegotten,' as also 'uncreate,'
'incorporeal,' 'unseen,' and so forth, explain what He is not: that is to say,
they tell us that His being had no beginning, that He is not corruptible, nor
created, nor corporeaI, nor visible. Again, goodness and justice and piety
and such like names belong to the nature, but do not explain His actual
essence. Finally, Lord and King and names of that class indicate a relationship
with their contrasts: for the name Lord has reference to those over whom the
lord rules, and the name King to those under kingly authority, and the name
Creator to the creatures, and the name Shepherd to the sheep he tends.
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