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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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