An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 9

1 BOOK I — CHAPTER 9: Concerning what is affirmed about God.

2 The Deity is simple and uncompound. 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.

3 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 has 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.

4 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 visible. Again, goodness and justice and piety and such like names belong to the nature, but do not explain His actual essence.

5 God then is called Mind and Reason and Spirit and Wisdom and Power, as the cause of these, and as immaterial, and maker of all, and omnipotent. And these names are common to the whole Godhead, whether affirmative or negative. For when I think of one of the subsistences, I recognise it to be perfect God and perfect essence: but when I combine and reckon the three together, I know one perfect God. For the Godhead is not compound but in three perfect subsistences, one perfect indivisible and uncompound God.