12. Now, then, let us pass from these spirits, if haply you too may be able to say with the spouse, ‘It was but a little I passed from them when I found him whom my soul loveth.’1 Do you ask, ‘What is His name?’ That is surely not a better question than ‘What is His character?’ The answer which God wished to be given respecting Himself, the answer which He Himself taught Moses, and which Moses at God’s command told the people was—‘I am what I am; He who is hath sent me unto you’.2 Fitly was this answer given. Nothing could better describe eternity, and God is eternal. If you say that God is good, great, blessed, wise, or any such thing, the starting-point is this—God is. Of course, the very meaning of God's existing is that all these attributes constitute existence. If you add a hundred others you have not got away from the fact of His existence. By naming them you have not added anything; if you do not name them, you have not diminished aught. If you now perceive the nature of this unparalleled, unique, supreme existence, will you not agree that in comparison thereof whatever is not included therein may more accurately be said not to exist than to exist? Do we ask further, 'What is God?' We reply, 'That without which nothing is.' We say nothing can exist without Him, just as He Himself cannot exist without Himself. He is self-existent. He is existence to all else. And so, in a certain sense, He is alone, who is the source of His own existence, and of the existence of all beside. What is God? The Beginning,3 as He Himself replied concerning Himself. In the world of sense many things are called beginnings, but in respect of things that come after. If, instead of looking forwards you look backwards, you will allow Him to be the beginning of all. Wherefore, if you wish to find the true, unconditioned 'beginning', you must discover that which has no beginning. That from which all began could not possibly have had a beginning. For if it had, there must of necessity have been some source from which it sprang, since nothing is self-originating. If it be imagined that the non-existent4 could give itself a beginning, or that something may be before it is, I reply that both these alternatives are contrary to reason, and it clearly follows that nothing was its own beginning. Moreover, whatever had not its beginning from itself was not the first beginning. The true beginning, therefore, by no means began, but was altogether the fount of its own being.
14. What is God? He for whom the ages have neither come nor gone, and yet with whom they are not co-eternal. What is God? He 'from whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things'.5 'From whom', by creation, not by propagation.6 'Through whom', lest you should suppose there is some other author and some other maker. 'In whom', not locally, but potentially. 'From whom', as the one beginning, the one author of all. 'Through whom', lest some other beginning be brought in as the originator. 'In whom', lest a third term, place, be introduced. 'From whom', not as though God were the matter of which things are made; He is the efficient, not the material cause. In vain do philosophers look to matter to solve the difficulty; God has no need of matter. For He did not seek a workshop, nor an artificer. He, through Himself, in Himself, made all things. Whence? Out of nothing; for if He made them out of anything, He did not make that, and therefore did not make all things. God forbid that out of His own incorrupt and incorruptible substance He should be thought to have made so many things that are doubtless good, but are nevertheless corruptible. You ask, 'If all things are in God, where is God Himself?' Still, I find no place which can contain Him. You ask where He is not? I cannot tell this either. What place is without God? God is incomprehensible;7 but you have apprehended not a little if you have ascertained this much about Him, that He is nowhere who is not enclosed by space, and that He is everywhere who is not shut out by space. In His own sublime and incomprehensible way, as all things are in Him, so He is in all things. In a word, as the Evangelist says, 'He was in the world.'8 But in a different way He is there, where He was before the world was made. You must not ask where He was; except Himself there was nothing. Therefore He was in Himself.