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| Concerning what is affirmed about God.
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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 energy1579
| 1579 The Greek
runs:—ἢ σχέσιν
τινὰ πρὸς τὶ
των
ἀντιδιαστελλομένων,
ἢ τὶ τῶν
παρεπομένων
τῃ φύσει, ἢ
ἐνέργειαν. | .
It appears then1580
| 1580 Rendered in the
Septuagint Version, ᾽Εγώ εἰμι ὁ
ὤν. Some of the Fathers made much of the fact
that it is not the neuter form τὸ ὄν. | 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 Me1581
. For He keeps all being in His own
embrace1582
| 1582 Greg. Naz.,
Orat. 36. | , like a sea of
essence infinite and unseen. Or as the holy Dionysius says,
“He that is good1583
| 1583 Dionys., De
div. nom. c. 2, 3 and 4. This sentence and the next are
absent in some mss., and are rather more
obscurely stated than is usual with John of Damascus. | .”
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 ὁ Θεός, derived from θέειν1584
| 1584 In his
Cratylus Plato gives this etymology, and Eusebius quotes it in
his Prep. Evangel. i. Clement of Alexandria refers to it
more than once in his Strom., bk. iv., and in his
Protrept., where he says—Sidera θέους ἐκ τοῦ
θέειν, deos a currendo
nominarunt. | , to run, because He courses through all
things, or from αἴθειν, to
burn: For God is a fire consuming all evil1585
: or from θεᾶσθαι,
because He is all-seeing1586
: 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 and timeless thought1587
| 1587 κατὰ τὴν
θελητικὴν
αὐτοῦ
ἄχρονον
ἔννοιαν. See
Thomas Aquin., I., II. Quæst. 17, Art. 1,
where he says, est actus rationis, præsupposito tamen
actu voluntatis. | , which constitutes predetermination and
image and pattern, comes into existence at the predetermined
time1588
| 1588 This
sentence is absent in some mss., being added
at the end of the chapter with the mark σχόλ. | .
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 corporeal,
nor visible1589
| 1589 Dionys., De
div. nom., c. 5. | . Again,
goodness and justice and piety and such like names belong to the
nature1590
| 1590 παρέπονται
τῇ φύσει; follow
the nature, are consequents of the nature, or accompany
it. | , 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.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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