On the Trinity 4

He is the one whom the Lord rightly declares alone to be good; to whose goodness the whole world is witness, which he would not have established had he not been good. For if all things are very good, then consequently and rightly the things established, being good, have proved their Establisher good; and things that come from a good Establisher cannot be other than good. Hence let all evil be far from God. For it cannot be that he should be the originator or the artisan of any evil work who claims for himself the name of the perfect one, of Father and of Judge, especially since he is the avenger and judge of every evil work; for evil does not befall man from any other source than his having departed from the good God. And this is marked in man himself: not because it was necessary, but because he himself so willed. From this it has plainly appeared both what evil is, and it has shone out clearly, so that envy should not seem to be in God, from whom evil would then have arisen.

This God, then, is always like himself; he never turns or changes himself into any forms, lest by change he should seem to be mortal as well. For the change of alteration is understood to be a portion of a kind of death. Therefore no addition of any part or honor ever comes to him, lest anything should ever seem to have been lacking to the perfect one; nor is any loss incurred in him, lest he should seem to have taken on a step toward mortality. But what he is, he always is; and who he is, he himself always is; and of what kind he is, of that kind he always is. For increases show an origin, and losses prove death and destruction. And therefore he says, “I am God, and I have not changed”, always keeping his condition, since what is unborn cannot be changed. For whatever that is in him which is God must always exist, so that he may always be God, preserving himself by his own powers. And therefore he says, “I am who I am.” For what is has this name because it always keeps the same quality of itself. For change takes away that name “is”: for whatever is at some time changed is shown to be mortal by the very fact that it is changed. For it ceases to be what it had been, and consequently begins to be what it was not. Therefore his condition rightly remains always in God, since, without the loss of alteration, he is always both like and equal to himself. For what is not born cannot be changed either: only those things come into change which are made or begotten, since things that once were not learn to be by being born, and therefore by being born to be changed. But those things that have neither birth nor maker have shut out change from themselves, since they do not have an origin, in which lies the cause of change.

Therefore he is also declared to be one, since he has no equal. For God, whatever God can be, must be supreme. But whatever is supreme must be supreme precisely because it is beyond compare. And therefore he must be alone and one, to whom nothing can be compared, since he has no equal. For there cannot be two infinite beings, as the very nature of things dictates. And whatever has neither origin at all nor end is infinite. For whatever has taken up the whole excludes the beginning of another. For if it did not contain all that is, whatever it is, then, being found within that by which it is contained, and so found less than that by which it is contained, it would cease to be God, brought under the power of another by whose greatness, as the lesser, it had been enclosed; and so what contained it would rather have begun to be God. From this it follows that no proper name of God can be spoken, since he cannot even be conceived. For what is contained in a name is whatever is grasped from the condition of its nature. For a name is the meaning of that thing which could be grasped from the name. But when the one we are speaking of is such that he cannot fittingly be gathered up even by the understanding itself, how will he be worthily pronounced by the word of a name, since, being beyond understanding, he must also be above the meaning of a name? So when God, for certain reasons and occasions, adds and puts forward his name, we should know that it is not so much a proper appellation that has been expressed, as a certain meaning that has been set, to which men may have recourse and so be able to obtain God's mercy by it.

He is therefore both immortal and incorruptible, experiencing no loss at all, and no end. For because he is incorruptible, he is therefore immortal; and because he is immortal, he is surely incorruptible: each is entwined with the other in mutual connection, and carried forward to the state of eternity in alternating linkage, immortality coming down from incorruption and incorruption coming from immortality.