God in the early church · Sophia Scriptura

The existence, nature, and attributes of God: unity, eternity, immutability, impassibility, knowledge, power, goodness, and how God can be known.

Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate 1.1 (26.1)Hermas · ca. 100–150 · Believe that God is one, the Creator who contains all and is contained by nothing.
To Diognetus 8.8Anonymous · ca. 150–200 (disputed) · God is always kind, good, and true; he alone is good.
Apology 1Aristides of Athens · ca. 125–145 · Aristides tells the emperor how the order of the world led him to know God, the eternal and self-sufficient mover and sustainer of all.
On the Sole Government of God 2Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Aeschylus, Sophocles, Philemon, Orpheus, and Pythagoras are quoted as witnesses to the one invisible God.
Sentence 25 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Never be persuaded that the being of God is without perception.
Sentence 26 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · God, inasmuch as he is self-moving mind, in that very respect also subsists.
Sentence 27 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · You would not find out the greatness of God even if you flew on wings.
Sentence 28 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · Do not seek the name of God, for you will not find it. Everything that is named is named by something superior, so that the one may call and the other obey. Who, then, has named God? “God” is not God's name, but an opinion about God.
Sentence 30 (Greek)Anonymous · 2nd-early 3rd cent. · God is wise light, which admits no opposite.
Dialogue with Trypho 3.5Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The old man asks what God is, and whether knowledge of God is like knowledge of an art.
Dialogue with Trypho 3.7Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin answers that God is seen by the mind alone, as Plato says.
Dialogue with Trypho 5.4Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Only God is uncreated and imperishable; everything else exists by his will, as Plato hints in the Timaeus.
Dialogue with Trypho 5.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · There can be only one uncreated being, the cause of all.
Dialogue with Trypho 127.1Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The unbegotten God does not literally come down or go up.
Dialogue with Trypho 127.2Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · The Father is everywhere present by power, uncontained by any place.
Oration to the Greeks 4Tatian · ca. 165–172 · Christians obey rulers and pay taxes but fear God alone, who is spirit, without beginning, known through creation, and in need of nothing.
16Anonymous · ca. 161–180 or 249–251 · The eternal God contrasted with man-made, perishable gods.
Martyrdom of Justin, Chariton and Companions (Acts of Justin, recension B) 2Anonymous · ca. 165 · Justin states the Christian belief in one Creator and in Christ foretold by the prophets.
To Autolycus 1.2Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God is seen only by the eyes of a pure soul; sin clouds them, as rust clouds a mirror.
To Autolycus 1.3Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God's form cannot be described; every name we give him names only one of his attributes or works.
To Autolycus 1.5Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God, like the soul in the body or a pilot on a ship, is invisible but known by his works; creation is enclosed in God's hand like seeds in a pomegranate.
To Autolycus 1.7Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · God, the Creator and Lord of all, can be seen only by a heart healed by him; the believer will see him when raised immortal in body and soul.
To Autolycus 2.3Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · If the gods were born, why are no gods born now? The true God is everywhere and contained by nothing; Zeus had a home on Ida and a tomb in Crete.
To Autolycus 2.36Theophilus of Antioch · ca. 180–185 · Long quotations from the Sibyl proclaim the one invisible Creator, mock the worship of animals and images, and foretell fire for idolaters and paradise for those who honor the true God.
A Plea for the Christians 6Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · Pythagoreans, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics all in effect teach one God; the Christian God is the one who made all things by his Word and holds them together by his Spirit.
A Plea for the Christians 8Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · A philosophical proof that there can be only one uncreated God: a second god would have no place to be and nothing to do.
A Plea for the Christians 21Athenagoras · ca. 176–180 · The gods of Homer rage, grieve, are wounded, commit adultery, and serve men for hire; beings with such passions are not gods.
On the Resurrection of the Dead 2Athenagoras · ca. 177–180 (if by Athenagoras) · Those who deny the resurrection must show that God cannot or will not raise the dead; but God, who knew every element of our bodies before they existed, cannot be ignorant of where they go after death.
Fragment 10Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Definitions ascribed to Clement: God as eternal, incorporeal divine substance and cause of all; substance; will as natural appetite; and self-determination as the soul's free intellectual motion.
Fragment 17Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd–early 3rd century · Further fragments ascribed to Clement: on generation and death, the definition of spirit, the true temple of Christ's body, definitions from On Providence, short scattered sayings, and notes on 2 Cor 6:11–13 and on Paul's silence about his name in Hebrews.
Fragment 37 (On Providence; Maximus Confessor (definitions of substance and nature))Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · Definitions of essence and nature, with God's essence described as eternal, bodiless, and the cause of all.
Fragment 39 (On Providence; "What is God?")Clement of Alexandria · late 2nd-early 3rd century · God is spirit, a bodiless and uncircumscribed essence, whole in all things.
The Instructor 1.8.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Christ's prayer in John 17 shows the one God to be both good and righteous: the Father is called good and the Son, his Word in the Father, just.
Exhortation to the Greeks 6.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Seeking God, not his works, Clement turns to Plato, who admits God is hard to find and beyond words; the Word, the sun of the soul, alone reveals him.
Exhortation to the Greeks 7.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The tragedians and even Orpheus, in his late recantation, confess that there is one God who made all things.
Exhortation to the Greeks 8.79Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · The prophets proclaim that the world will pass away but the one God, the only savior, remains; idols and their worshipers will howl.
Against Heresies 2.1.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God must contain all things; if anything were outside him, he would be bounded by something greater, which would then be God.
Against Heresies 2.1.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Either one God contains all, or there are many limited gods, none of whom is truly God or Almighty.
Against Heresies 2.13.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The heretics project human mental processes onto God, who is simple, wholly mind and light, and unlike man.
Against Heresies 2.13.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God is above all our names for him; even in man the mind is not emitted from itself, much less in God.
Against Heresies 2.13.8Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God is wholly Mind and wholly Word; to model the Word's generation on human speech gives the eternal Word a beginning.
Against Heresies 2.17.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If all the Aeons share the Father's light, the fall of the youngest is inexplicable unless the Father himself can suffer.
Against Heresies 2.28.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Calling the Creator a product of ignorance is blasphemy; the heretics wrongly ascribe human processes of thought and speech to God.
Against Heresies 2.28.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God is wholly Mind and Word without parts; those who describe the Word's generation like human speech know neither God nor man.
Against Heresies 2.30.9Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · There is one God, Creator and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, revealed through his Son, and no Pleroma or second God.
Against Heresies 2.35.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The various Hebrew names of God, such as Sabaoth, Eloe, and Adonai, are titles of the one God, not of different gods.
Against Heresies 4.3.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God is not contained by heaven and earth; when they pass away he and his servants endure, as David and Isaiah say.
Against Heresies 4.6.7Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · All, friend and foe, testify that Christ is truly man and truly God; the Son has revealed the Father from the beginning, not only since his birth from Mary.
Against Heresies 4.14.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God made man not out of need but to bestow his benefits; serving God profits man, not God, and is man’s glory.
Against Heresies 4.20.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Scripture teaches one God who made all things; the Father gave all things to the Son, the Lamb who alone opens the book and through whose flesh the Father’s light reaches us.
Against Heresies 4.20.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · God, invisible in his greatness, is seen through his love: prophetically through the Spirit, adoptively through the Son, and paternally in the kingdom; to see God is life.
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 8Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–200
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 15Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Orpheus, the first teacher of polytheism, later proclaimed one self-begotten God and spoke of the Father's voice, that is, his Word.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 17Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Homer, though he names many gods, shows his belief in one God through the words of Phoenix and Odysseus.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 19Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Pythagoras, having been in Egypt, taught through the monad that God is one, the mind and soul of the whole.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 20Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Plato learned of the one God in Egypt but, fearing Socrates' fate, spoke ambiguously about the gods.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 21Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · God has no proper name; his self-designation "He Who Is" distinguishes him from the non-existent gods that the devil taught men to believe in.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 22Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Plato, fearing the Areopagus, borrowed Moses' "He Who Is" as "that which always is", and called God the craftsman, not the maker, of the gods.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 24Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Homer, like Plato, learned of one God in Egypt and pointed to him with the word "himself", as the oracle also does.
Hortatory Address to the Greeks 25Anonymous · 2nd–3rd century (disputed) · Plato blamed Homer for changeable gods yet made his own craftsman changeable; he learned God's eternity from Moses' "He Who Is" and called Moses' law "the ancient word".
Prophetic Extracts 21.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · No thought of God is worthy of him, but we may think of him as unapproachable light, all-good, compassionate, impassible, and all-knowing.
Miscellanies 2.2.6Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Moses, knowing God cannot be known by human wisdom, entered the darkness, that is, the formless thoughts about God, who is beyond place and time and cannot be contained.
Miscellanies 2.16.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Critics say joy and pity are passions; but we err if we read Scripture's language about God in a fleshly way, for the prophets spoke as we could hear, the Lord accommodating himself to human weakness.
Miscellanies 5.11.68Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Most people imagine God to be like themselves, but God gives us birth, food, and growth without sharing them; the Hebrew Scriptures' talk of God's hands, eyes, and anger is to be read allegorically.
Miscellanies 5.11.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · As in the Greek mysteries purification comes before contemplation, so we approach God by stripping away everything bodily until we know what he is not; God is beyond place, time, and name, and is known only by the grace that comes through the Son.
Miscellanies 5.11.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · We see God now only as in a mirror; Moses allowed one temple and no image, showing that God is invisible and uncircumscribed, and the prophets reject temples and sacrifices as containing God.
Miscellanies 5.12.78Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Plato said the Maker of all cannot be declared to all, having learned from Moses, who entered the thick darkness where God was; Orpheus too says that no mortal sees God, for a cloud surrounds him.
Miscellanies 5.12.81Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Solon, Empedocles, and John agree that God cannot be seen or grasped; God is the first principle, beyond every category, indivisible, infinite, without form or name.
Miscellanies 5.12.82Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The names we give God are not his proper name but aids to thought; God cannot be reached by demonstration and is known only by grace through the Word, as Paul told the Athenians about the unknown god.
Miscellanies 5.14.109Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Xenophanes taught that God is one, not like mortals, and mocked the human habit of picturing the gods in their own image.
Miscellanies 5.14.133Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Pythagorean, Orphic, and comic writers speak of one first principle and one Father of all; Plato's philosophy is the turning of the soul toward the Good; and every nation has a natural preconception of the one Maker.
Miscellanies 7.5.29Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · God, who needs nothing, has no need of a temple; his true temple is the church, the assembly of the elect, and the righteous soul of the one who knows is his holy statue.
Octavius 18.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · As nature has single rulers, so the one eternal God rules all by his word.
Octavius 18.10Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · God needs no personal name, since human titles would make him seem earthly.
Octavius 32.4Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · God is invisible but perceived in his works in nature.
Octavius 32.7Minucius Felix · ca. 197–250 · God is not distant but fills everything and is within us.
Apology 17Tertullian · ca. 197 · Christians worship the one Creator, who is known both from his works and from the testimony of the soul, which naturally calls on God.
To the Nations 2.2Tertullian · 197 · Philosophers, lacking the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom, disagree endlessly about the gods, borrowing scraps of Scripture and distorting them.
The Testimony of the Soul 2Tertullian · ca. 197–198 · Common sayings such as “If God wills” and “God will judge between us” show that the soul naturally knows one good God who judges, even while it worships idols.
Against Hermogenes 3Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Answering the argument that God was always Lord and so always had matter to rule, Tertullian distinguishes God, the name of his substance, from Lord, the name of his power, which Scripture gives him only after creation.
Against Hermogenes 4Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Tertullian argues that eternity, having no beginning and no end, is the mark proper to God alone, so to make matter eternal is to make it a second god.
Against Hermogenes 6Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Tertullian argues that Hermogenes makes God a liar, since God's claims to be alone, first, and unrivalled all apply equally to eternal matter, which is thus set on a level with God.
Against Hermogenes 7Tertullian · ca. 200–206 · Tertullian argues that eternity admits no degrees, so eternal matter cannot be inferior to God, and he imagines matter itself claiming equality with God.
Against Marcion 1.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Tertullian argues that God by definition is the supreme great being, which can have no equal, so there can only be one God: “God, if he is not one, is not.”
Against Marcion 1.4Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The analogy of many kings, each supreme in his own realm, fails: nothing can be compared with God, and even among kings supremacy finally belongs to only one.
Against Marcion 1.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If two gods are admitted, there is no reason not to admit many; two equal gods would be pointless and would make worship itself impossible to get right.
Against Marcion 1.6Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's two gods are in fact unequal (a harsh judge and a merely good god), but if both are truly God, neither can be less than the other, so inequality between them is impossible too.
Against Marcion 1.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · That Scripture calls others “gods” proves nothing: supreme greatness belongs to God's eternal substance, not to the name, and so two gods can be neither equal nor unequal.
Against Marcion 1.9Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god, unknown until Christ, is at best uncertain; and since both gods are claimed to share the same divine nature, the uncertain one must be tested by the pattern of the known Creator, who was never unknown.
Against Marcion 1.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator has been known since creation, not only since Moses: every human soul naturally speaks of God, so he was never unknown, even in Pontus.
Against Marcion 1.15Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's god has no visible world of his own; and if he made one, the place and matter it required would themselves be gods, so that Marcion's system actually implies nine gods, not two.
Against Marcion 1.17Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Saying that Marcion's god saved mankind proves nothing until his existence is shown from works; and a good god who waited so long to reveal himself would be either ignorant, hesitant, powerless, or unwilling.
Against Marcion 1.22Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Real goodness in God must be natural and eternal, acting as soon as there is need; a god who let the human race suffer and perish for ages before helping would be malicious, like a doctor who lets a disease worsen to earn a bigger fee.
Against Marcion 1.25Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god of goodness alone, free of all feeling, is the idle god of Epicurus; yet by willing to save mankind Marcion's god already shows desire, care, and rivalry, and so must have the other emotions Marcion denies him.
Against Marcion 1.26Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · A god who forbids sin but never judges or punishes it in effect permits it; true goodness must hate and punish evil in order to protect the good.
Against Marcion 2.2Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Heretics put the Creator on trial because they cannot grasp him, like blind men wishing for a gentler sun; but Scripture teaches that God's ways are beyond human judgment, and even Adam, the first to choose his own opinion over God's, never blamed his Maker.
Against Marcion 2.3Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · The Creator's goodness is eternal: before anything existed he willed to make a world through which he could be known, so his goodness is older than time itself, unlike the late-arriving goodness of Marcion's god.
Against Marcion 2.7Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Having given man free will, God rightly did not snatch it back to prevent the fall; had he done so, Marcion would have called him fickle and faithless.
Against Marcion 2.11Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's severity after the fall (pain in childbirth, the cursed ground, death) followed his original goodness as a response to sin; justice is not evil but the safeguard of goodness.
Against Marcion 2.12Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Goodness and justice cannot be split between two gods: from the first days of creation the Creator's justice was at work, separating light from darkness and ordering every part of the world.
Against Marcion 2.16Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Anger and jealousy in God are the just instruments of a good judge, like a surgeon's tools; God's feelings share names with ours but, like his “hands” and “eyes,” exist in him in a divine, incorruptible way.
Against Marcion 2.24Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · When Scripture says God “repented” of making Saul king or of destroying Nineveh, it does not mean God erred; it means a just change of sentence in response to changing human conduct, since God “is not a man, that he should repent.”
Against Marcion 2.25Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's questions to Adam and Cain were not ignorance but invitations to confess, and his “going down” to Sodom was a threat, not uncertainty; Marcion's own god also “came down.”
Against Marcion 2.27Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · God's human-like actions in the Old Testament belong to the Son, the Word who from the beginning dealt with patriarchs and prophets and was preparing to become man; the invisible Father is never seen, and God's humility is the means of human salvation.
Against Marcion 2.29Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Marcion's Antitheses, which set Christ's mercy against the Creator's severity, actually show one God who is both good and just, gentler once his people had been trained; the world itself is built of harmonized opposites made by one Creator.
Against Praxeas 29Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · Christ died in his human, not his divine, substance; the Monarchians blaspheme by making the Father suffer and be accursed, and even their claim that the Father “suffered with” the Son makes him passible.
On First Principles 1.1.2Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God as consuming fire consumes sins in the soul, and Scripture calls “spirit” what is opposed to body, as in the spiritual sense of the law.
On First Principles 1.1.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God is incomprehensible: whatever we understand of him, he surpasses it as the sun surpasses a spark.
On First Principles 1.1.6Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God is a simple intellectual nature, a unity known through his works, needing neither place nor bodily size, as the human mind itself shows.
On First Principles 1.1.8Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Scripture confirms that God is by nature invisible; between Father and Son there is not seeing but knowing.
On First Principles 1.2.10Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · God has always been almighty, so there have always been beings over whom he rules; the Son shares the glory of omnipotence, by which all things are subjected through reason, not force.
On First Principles 2.4.3Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The heretics' claim that the Creator was seen while the Father is invisible fails: God is incorporeal and invisible, and between Father and Son, as for Moses, there is knowing rather than seeing.
On First Principles 4.3.15Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Meaning matters more than words: the Greeks' “incorporeal” is Scripture's “invisible,” and the Trinity is wholly incorporeal; Scripture must be judged by the Spirit who inspired it, not by its humble language.
Fragments on Genesis, column 57Origen · ca. 220-254 · God's foreknowledge is shown from Susanna, the prophecy naming Josiah long before his birth, and Isaiah's prophecy naming Cyrus.
Fragments on Genesis, column 93Origen · ca. 220-254 · Against those, including Melito, who place the image of God in the body, Origen shows that a literal reading of God's members contradicts itself.
Fragments on Luke, column 363Origen · ca. 220-254 · The excuses in the parable of the great supper are false doctrine, love of the senses and love of pleasure; God is likened to a man only for our sake, until we can see him as he is.
PG 12:1053Origen · ca. 220-254 · Origen sets out philosophical definitions of “end” (from Aristotle and the Stoics, via Herophilus) and of “God,” as background to the psalm titles.
PG 12:1099 (Ps 1–2 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · God “knows” the way of the righteous, Christ, and does not know evil, as his questions to Adam and in the Gospel show; Psalm 2 opens with Origen’s note that some Hebrew copies join it to Psalm 1, as Acts 13:33 does.
PG 12:1103 (Ps 2 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On the divine names: Adonai, Iah, and the unpronounced four-letter name written in the old Hebrew script, rendered “Lord” in Greek; and on the Septuagint’s use of the past tense for prophecies about Christ.
PG 12:1105 (Ps 2 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · The first verses of Psalm 2 are the angels’ words and the reply is the Son’s, who breaks the bonds of sin; God speaks in wrath to bring sinners to repentance, as at Nineveh; anger and wrath are distinguished.
PG 12:1163 (Ps 4 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · On Ps 4:6, God is light to the pure and consuming fire to vice; as the sun’s light reaches whoever turns to it, so God’s light is imprinted on the mind turned to him, as with Moses’ shining face.
PG 12:1655 (Ps 138 LXX)Origen · ca. 220-254 · Notes on Psalm 139:8–16 (LXX 138): God's presence everywhere compared with Deuteronomy and Amos, the darkness that cannot overcome the light, and God's book as the contemplation of bodies and incorporeals.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.19.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Aristotle defines the soul as the actuality of an organic body, and God, cause of all good things, is harder still to know.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.19.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Aristotle defines God as thought thinking itself, which Hippolytus calls inconceivable, and holds the world to be eternal.
Fragment 13 on John 1:18Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 1:18: God is invisible not because unseen but because by nature incorporeal; the pure in heart approach him with the mind, but no one ‘ever’ sees him while bound to material life; he alone fully knows himself.
Fragment 49 on John 3:36Origen · ca. 226-254 · On John 3:36: ‘the wrath of God’ means the punishments he sends on the wicked, not a passion in the impassible God.
Commentary on John 2.172Origen · ca. 230–248 · The darkness around God in Exodus and Psalm 18 means the unknowability of God's depths.
Commentary on John 13.123Origen · ca. 230–248 · Philosophers dispute whether God is bodily, incorporeal, or beyond being; what does Scripture say?
Commentary on John 13.124Origen · ca. 230–248 · Scripture calls God spirit, consuming fire, and light.
Commentary on John 13.125Origen · ca. 230–248 · Taken literally, these texts would make God a body, with absurd consequences that those who hold it cannot answer.
Commentary on John 13.127Origen · ca. 230–248 · If God were a material body, he would be changeable, since matter can take any quality.
Commentary on John 13.128Origen · ca. 230–248 · Some even say God is a perishable body who never perishes only because nothing can destroy him.
Commentary on John 13.129Origen · ca. 230–248 · If God were literally fire or breath, he would be perishable or changeable, which is absurd.
Commentary on John 13.132Origen · ca. 230–248 · “Light” is either bodily or spiritual, which Scripture calls invisible and the Greeks incorporeal.
Commentary on John 13.135Origen · ca. 230–248 · Does God as light illumine bodily eyes or the eyes of the mind?
Commentary on John 13.136Origen · ca. 230–248 · God, as light, illumines the minds of the worthy, not bodily eyes like the sun.
Commentary on John 13.137Origen · ca. 230–248 · God as light is intelligible and incorporeal; so too as consuming fire, which burns wood, hay, and stubble.
Commentary on John 13.139Origen · ca. 230–248 · God is called light and consuming fire by transferring these bodily terms to spiritual realities.
Commentary on John 13.147Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon: “God is spirit” means his nature is pure and invisible.
Commentary on John 13.149Origen · ca. 230–248 · It is impious to call worshipers “of the same substance” as the unbegotten God, especially when Heracleon says one of them fell into immorality.
On Prayer 23.3Origen · ca. 233–234 · To think God is in a bodily place implies he is a body, divisible and corruptible; so passages like God walking in paradise must not be taken literally.
Homily on 1 Samuel 1.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · From the words “one man” Origen teaches that the sinner is divided into many selves, while the righteous, imitating the unchangeable God who is one, become one, individually and together.
Homily on 1 Samuel 1.11Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · “None holy as the Lord” allows that people can become holy, though never as God is; “none besides you” means that God alone has being of himself, while creatures exist by his will.
Homilies on Exodus 6.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · No one called “god” by grace is like God, for none but the Father with the Son and the Holy Spirit is invisible, incorporeal, unchangeable, without beginning or end, and Creator of all.
Homilies on Ezekiel 6.6Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · The reborn soul must be salted with grace and swaddled like the infant Christ; and Christ, and even the Father, suffer the passion of love in pity for humankind.
Homilies on Judges 2.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God, who is beyond passion, is said to be provoked to anger because sinners store up wrath for themselves.
Homilies on Numbers 16.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · God is not deceived like a man, because he speaks without passion; and if he terrifies, it is not out of boasting but to correct sinners before punishment comes.
Homilies on Numbers 16.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Discussing whether God always does what he says, Origen examines Jonah’s preaching to Nineveh and Gad’s message to David, distinguishes God’s words from a prophet’s (as with Moses’ permission of divorce), and finally prefers Jeremiah’s teaching that God relents.
Homilies on Numbers 23.2Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The offerings God commands are his own gifts returned to him; God’s true feast days are the conversions of sinners, in which the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and the angels rejoice, while sin brings mourning, though such language about God is figurative, since the divine nature is impassible.
Homilies on Psalms 36-38 8.5Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Like athletes, the perfect feel no pain at insults, imitating the impassible God, while those still advancing feel the old wound reopened, yet hold their tongue.
Homilies on Jeremiah 18.6Origen · ca. 240 · Scripture's talk of God “repenting” or being angry is accommodation, like adults speaking baby talk to children: God neither changes his mind nor feels passion, but speaks so as to preserve our free will and correct us.
Homilies on Jeremiah 20.1Origen · ca. 240 · God's anger, wrath, and repentance share only their names with ours: like his Word, which is unlike any human word, they are purposeful and corrective, as his “repentance” over Saul gave Israel David.
To Philagrius on the Consubstantiality, section 1Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Gregory answers Philagrius's question whether the divine nature of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is simple or compound, and sets out to show from Scripture how three names fit one simple being.
To Philagrius on the Consubstantiality, section 6Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · As one spring feeds two rivers without losing anything, the Father sends grace through the Son and the Spirit without diminution, for the divine essence is indivisible.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 1Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Theopompus asks Gregory before a gathering of friends whether God is impassible, and argues that if God's nature is impassible, it would prevent him from suffering even if he willed it.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 2Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Gregory warns against subjecting God's will to the necessity of his nature, since God alone is free; Theopompus grants God's freedom but presses whether an impassible nature can take on human suffering.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 3Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Gregory explains that man, a compound of body and soul bound by his Creator's law, cannot do all he wills, whereas the indescribable divine nature is subject to no necessity and can do all things.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 4Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Gregory argues that in God, who is simple and one in essence and will, nature and will cannot conflict, unlike man, who is composed of body and soul whose wills differ.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 5Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Theopompus accepts God's freedom and lordship but asks whether God ever intended to subject himself to human sufferings, since his impassible nature never changes.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 6Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Gregory answers that it is no suffering for God willingly to humble himself and serve men for their healing and salvation, since his impassible nature proves its impassibility in suffering.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 7Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Using the image of a physician who willingly humbles himself to serve the sick without losing his dignity, Gregory argues that God's willing entry into suffering defeats suffering itself.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 8Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Like a diamond struck by iron, God remains unharmed when he enters suffering and death, so that his entry into death was the death of death.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 13Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · As the salamander, a mortal creature, endures fire unharmed, so God truly came to death and remained impassible, becoming like mortal men without losing anything of his Godhead.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 15Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · As a sword passes through fire without dividing it, so the divine nature, finer than all bodies, entered sufferings without being divided or harmed, and so revealed its impassibility.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 17Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Only a God who does not fear fire, iron or death is truly free; and God, who willingly takes on human sufferings without suffering their pains, alone is impassible.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 21Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · God, who is life and above death, can go into death without suffering from it, and hastens gladly into death in order to destroy it.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 23Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · Things like the salamander, the diamond and talc keep their nature in contact with what harms them, so God remains impassible in suffering; and a God who did nothing for men would not be blessed, since true impassibility kills men's sufferings.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 25Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · As an artist is known by his works, so God's perfection becomes known through the deeds that reveal it.
To Theopompus on the Impassibility and Passibility of God, section 27Gregory Thaumaturgus · if authentic, ca. 240-275 · As men's character is known only from their deeds, God's perfection is known from the good works he performs, the visible bearing witness to the invisible.
On the Trinity 2Novatian · ca. 240–250 · God contains all things, has neither beginning nor end, and exceeds every thought and word; whatever we say of him names something of his rather than himself.
On the Trinity 3Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Scripture shows God as the one Creator who measures heaven and earth, admits no rival, cannot be contained in a temple, and is known from his works though unseen.
On the Trinity 4Novatian · ca. 240–250 · God alone is good, so evil comes not from him but from man's free turning away; he is unchanging, one, infinite, beyond any proper name, immortal and incorruptible.
On the Trinity 5Novatian · ca. 240–250 · When Scripture speaks of God's anger or hatred, it does not mean human passions: God, simple and incorruptible Spirit, threatens only to heal and correct us.
On the Trinity 6Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Scripture speaks of God's eyes, hands, and feet to suit the people's understanding; these describe his workings, for God is Spirit, simple, everywhere, and needs no members.
On the Trinity 7Novatian · ca. 240–250 · Calling God “Spirit,” “Love,” “Light,” or “Fire” does not define his substance; these are figures that lead the mind beyond them to a God greater than all.
Commentary on the Song of Songs 0.70Origen · ca. 240–245 (Rufinus's translation ca. 410) · The charity that is God loves only incorruptible things, makes every person our neighbour as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and is misnamed when applied to money or vice.
Against Celsus 1.23Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus mocks the Hebrews' faith in one God, but the Greek gods are fictions; the order of the one world points to one Maker, who is neither a part nor a whole.
Against Celsus 3.70Origen · ca. 248 · God can do all things consistent with being God, good, and wise; he cannot do injustice, just as sweetness cannot make bitter or light cannot darken.
Against Celsus 4.5Origen · ca. 248 · God fills heaven and earth, so his coming in Jesus does not mean leaving his place; he “departs” only from the wicked soul and fills the virtuous one, and the only change he brings is moral transformation.
Against Celsus 4.14Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus argues that God cannot descend without changing for the worse; Origen replies that God remains unchangeable in his being while descending by providence, unlike the Epicurean and Stoic gods, which are bodily and changeable.
Against Celsus 5.23Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not claim the decayed body returns as it was, as the Stoics do; like wheat from a grain, a new incorruptible body rises from a principle in the old; and God's power, though limitless, never acts shamefully or against reason.
Against Celsus 6.17Origen · ca. 248 · Against Plato's lofty words Origen sets the Scriptures' teaching that God hides in darkness and depth, known fully only by the Son and by those to whom the Son reveals him.
Against Celsus 6.62Origen · ca. 248 · God has no literal mouth or voice; his “voice” is perceived spiritually, and none of our categories fit him, for, as the prophets say, God does not change.
Against Celsus 6.64Origen · ca. 248 · God has no shape, colour, or motion; he is not a partaker of being but is partaken of, and Origen raises the question whether God is even beyond being, with the Son as the being of beings.
Against Celsus 6.65Origen · ca. 248 · Origen qualifies Celsus's claims that God cannot be reached by reason or named: God is known through the divine Word, and though no name captures him, words can point toward him.
Against Celsus 6.69Origen · ca. 248 · The Son shares the Father's greatness and is as hard to see as the Father, who can be seen only by the pure in heart; the Son did not come as an easier substitute for an invisible God.
Against Celsus 6.71Origen · ca. 248 · When Christians call God “spirit” they do not mean, like the Stoics, a bodily breath pervading the world; God, the Word, and even the rational soul are incorporeal and imperishable.
Against Celsus 7.27Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus attacks the idea that God has a human-shaped body, but Christians hold that God is incorporeal, as Scripture says.
Against Celsus 7.34Origen · ca. 248 · Christians do not expect to see, hear, or touch God with bodily senses; Scripture speaks of spiritual eyes, ears, and hands, and of a “divine sense.”
Against Celsus 7.42Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus quotes Plato's Timaeus that the maker of the universe is hard to find and impossible to declare to all; Origen answers that the Word became flesh to reach everyone, and that God can only be found with God's own help.
Against Celsus 7.43Origen · ca. 248 · Plato does not say God is nameless, only hard to declare to many; Christians say God is seen by the pure in heart and through Christ, the image of the invisible God, not by bodily sight.
Commentary on Matthew 15.10Origen · ca. 246–248 · Only God is good in the proper sense; others are called good by extension, and Origen compares the Saviour, the image of God’s goodness, with the Father and with lesser goods.
Commentary on Matthew 15.11Origen · ca. 246–248 · Against those who slander the God of the Law, Origen argues that God’s striking, wounding, and wrath are works of his goodness, like a physician’s or a father’s discipline.
Commentary on Matthew 16.4Origen · ca. 246–248 · The request of the sons of Zebedee, taken literally, seems slight; gathering the biblical texts on God’s and Christ’s sitting and enthronement, Origen argues that such sitting, right and left, is spiritual, not bodily.
Commentary on Matthew 17.17Origen · ca. 246–248 · Turning to a deeper reading, Origen sets out who in the parable reigns and who is ruled, and asks why God is likened to a “man” and king, recalling an earlier allegorist’s two texts on God as like and unlike a man.
Commentary on Matthew 17.18Origen · ca. 246–248 · Against those who reject the God of the Old Testament for his human-like passions, Origen points out that the Gospel parables also call God a man and show the king who gives the wedding feast as angry.
Commentary on Matthew 17.19Origen · ca. 246–248 · God is likened to a man, a panther, a lion, or a consuming fire only for the sake of sinners; at the restoration of all things he will be seen as he is, as light.
Commentary on Romans 1.16Origen · ca. 244–246 (Rufinus's translation ca. 405–406) · The philosophers knew the truth by God's revealing but suppressed it; God's wrath is the power that punishes, revealed 'from heaven' against those who sin knowingly; God's knowable works are manifest, his nature unknown save as the Son reveals.
Acts of Achatius (Disputation of Achatius) 4Anonymous · ca. 250–251 · Achatius explains the Son of God as the Word proceeding from God's heart.
Acts of Fructuosus, Augurius and Eulogius 2Anonymous · 259 (21 January) · After a baptism in prison, the governor Aemilianus interrogates the bishop and his deacons, who confess one God, and sentences them to be burned alive.
On Free Will 5.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The Orthodox speaker argues that two unbegotten beings cannot coexist: God must be either separate from matter or united with it.
On Free Will 5.2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If God and matter are united, they form one unbegotten being, not two.
On Free Will 6.1Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · If God is in matter as in a place, he is contained and bounded by it.
On Free Will 12.3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · Matter, once non-existent, cannot be unbegotten.
Creat. 3Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · In a short dialogue Methodius argues that God is perfect, almighty, and Maker through himself, not because of the world, so the world need not be eternal.
Against the Nations 1.31Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius breaks into a prayer to the supreme, unknowable God, asking pardon for persecutors, and sets aside atheists and atomists as not worth refuting.
Against the Nations 1.32Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius refuses to prove the existence of the supreme God by argument, as though it were in doubt.
Against the Nations 1.33Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Knowledge of the supreme God is inborn in all people, and even nature would proclaim him if it could speak.
Against the Nations 2.35Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · God can make souls immortal, and even the gods, having been produced by the one unbegotten Father, are of a middle nature.
Against the Nations 2.55Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius declines to explain why God permits evil, holding only that nothing harmful comes from God, who does only what is good.
Against the Nations 3.8Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · The masculine name for God does not imply sex; gods with sexes would have to be bodies.
Against the Nations 3.12Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius denies that God has any bodily form; anthropomorphic language in Jewish scriptures either does not concern Christians or must be interpreted spiritually.
Against the Nations 3.17Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Christians do not know God's form, if he has one, but can still show that the pagan conception of it is false.
Against the Nations 3.18Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If God sees, hears, and speaks, he does so in his own way, not with human organs.
Against the Nations 3.19Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Even human virtues cannot properly be attributed to God; the surest knowledge of God is that he cannot be expressed in human words.
Against the Nations 6.2Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · True gods, if they exist, must be perfect, passionless, and equally good to all; this is a higher view of divinity than the pagans hold.
Against the Nations 7.9Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · Arnobius imagines a sacrificial ox protesting that it is unjust to kill an innocent animal to atone for the crimes of guilty human beings.
Against the Nations 7.28Arnobius of Sicca · ca. 297–303 · If gods enjoyed smells they would have nostrils and breathe, and so be mortal; incorporeal gods cannot perceive odors at all.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 27Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes says the good God set the firmament as a wall; Archelaus argues that a walled God is weak, and that whoever threw the wall down, God or the evil one, Manes's system fails.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 28Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes tells a parable of a shepherd who traps a lion with a kid thrown into a pit; Archelaus argues that this makes God betray a soul and use tricks out of weakness.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 33Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Manes cites John 8:44 and "death reigned from Adam to Moses" for his two principles; Archelaus answers that a death that began in time and will be swallowed up is not unbegotten.
Homilies 2.45Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter gives Clement the true doctrine of God as the one good, just, and merciful Creator of all.
Homilies 6.24Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement argues that neither the elements nor any part of the world can be God, since their ordered combination requires a craftsman mind.
Homilies 6.25Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Clement concludes that there must be an unbegotten craftsman, not love or any changeable force.
Homilies 10.10Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Only the unbegotten is God, and the serpent within deceives people with promises of better reasoning.
Homilies 10.19Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · What is proper to God alone is to be the maker of all and greater than all, so nothing made can compare with him.
Homilies 16.7Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter answers with texts from the Law and the Prophets that declare God to be one.
Homilies 16.17Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter argues that the name God belongs only to the one who is unbegotten, infinite, and incomparable.
Homilies 17.7Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter teaches that God has a most beautiful form, after which man was molded, so that whatever is done to a human being is done to God.
Homilies 17.8Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter argues that place is nothing and that, like the sun in the air, God can have a form and yet extend his power infinitely.
Homilies 17.9Anonymous · 4th century (reworking earlier material) · Peter describes God as the center and heart of the universe, from whom six infinite directions extend, corresponding to the six days of creation.
Recognitions 2.43Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter quotes Deuteronomy to show that there is no God besides the Creator, the God of the Jews.
Recognitions 2.44Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Peter cites further Scriptures for the worship of one God and links polytheism with the serpent, who first spoke of 'gods'.
Recognitions 3.3Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · In the bracketed passage, Peter teaches that God alone is the principle without beginning and unbegotten, and rejects calling him 'self-father' or 'self-begotten'.
Recognitions 3.6Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · In the bracketed passage, Peter cites Isaiah to show that God is first, without beginning and unbegotten.
Recognitions 8.9Anonymous · Greek original 3rd–4th century; Rufinus's Latin translation before 407 · Niceta distinguishes the simple, which is one, unbounded, and uncreated, from the composite, which requires a maker, and identifies the simple with God, Father in goodness and Founder in power.
Divine Institutes 1.3.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The work begins with whether the world is ruled by one God or many; reason shows there is one.
Divine Institutes 1.3.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Belief in many gods implies weak gods, whereas God, eternal Mind, is perfect in power.
Divine Institutes 1.3.7Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Many gods would each be weaker; a perfect God must be one.
Divine Institutes 1.3.9Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Divine power cannot be divided, because what is divisible is perishable.
Divine Institutes 1.3.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · If the gods share offices, none is perfect; ruling the world needs the perfect power of one.
Divine Institutes 1.3.12Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The one God who made the world can also rule it.
Divine Institutes 1.3.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Since one God created the world from nothing, one God can more easily rule it.
Divine Institutes 1.3.14Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Whatever power one ascribes to many gods, Lactantius ascribes all of it to one God.
Divine Institutes 1.3.16Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Many all-powerful gods are impossible, since each would limit the others.
Divine Institutes 1.3.18Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The world must be ruled by one will, just as an army needs one commander.
Divine Institutes 1.3.20Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Saying many gods rule the world is like saying one body has many minds.
Divine Institutes 1.3.21Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · One mind rules the body; polytheists themselves admit one supreme ruler over the gods.
Divine Institutes 1.5.3Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The poets often admit that one spirit or mind rules all things.
Divine Institutes 1.6.15Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · The Sibyl proclaims one unbegotten God who made heaven, sun, stars, earth, and sea.
Divine Institutes 1.7.13Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God, having nothing before him, exists from himself, as Apollo, the Sibyl, and Seneca attest.
Divine Institutes 1.8.1Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Many witnesses prove one God rules the world, whose power Plato says cannot be conceived or expressed.
Divine Institutes 1.8.2Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · Nothing is impossible for God, who made and sustains all things.
Divine Institutes 2.8.44Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God alone is unmade, self-existent, and indestructible.
Divine Institutes 4.4.11Lactantius · ca. 303–311 · God alone is Father and Lord; not to worship him is folly and impiety.
Apology for Origen 2.1Pamphilus of Caesarea · ca. 308–310 (Rufinus's Latin about 397) · Origen, quoted from On First Principles, teaches that God is incorporeal and incomprehensible, and that the God of the Old Testament is the Father of Jesus Christ.
On the Anger of God 1.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Many, following some philosophers, think God is never angry, either because he only does good or because he cares for nothing.
On the Anger of God 4.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · A god without movement, will, or action would be no god at all.
On the Anger of God 5.2Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Their popular argument is that anger is a disturbance of mind, unworthy of the calm and holy God.
On the Anger of God 5.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · An angry ruler destroys cities; an angry God, with power over all, would destroy everything.
On the Anger of God 6.1Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · Since the other views fail, the truth must be the one no philosopher defended: God shows favor and therefore also anger.
On the Anger of God 6.2Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · This is the hinge of religion: without favor God deserves no honor, and without anger no fear.
On the Anger of God 11.3Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · God is one, with complete power; many gods would each lack what the others had.
On the Anger of God 11.4Lactantius · ca. 313–314 · As a house, ship, herd, or hive has one ruler and the sky one sun, the world has one ruler.
Preparation for the Gospel 2.6.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God implanted in every rational soul the natural notion that God is good and beneficial.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.6.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Neither Greek nor Egyptian physical theology knew any truly divine incorporeal beings.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.6.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The gospel teaches the worship of the one incorporeal divine power that pervades and governs all things.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius calls it impious to identify God or his parts with the world.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is the maker of the world, distinct from it, not its soul.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture teaches God's presence and providence in the world without making him part of it.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture sets God above the world while extending his providence to earth.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Orphic hymn's description reveals ignorance of the true God.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.10.11Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · True theology holds that the heavens and the world are God's works, inferior to the invisible rational powers.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Even if the gods are invisible powers, there should be one divine power, not many.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · As one soul moves a body of many parts, so one creative power made it.
Preparation for the Gospel 3.13.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The unity of the world points to one creative power, the power and wisdom of God.
Preparation for the Gospel 5.10.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry argues that impassible gods could not be summoned, appeased, or compelled.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.9.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses begins from the one God, not from the many gods of the nations.
Preparation for the Gospel 7.11.12Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God reveals himself to Moses as 'He Who Is.'
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses made Israel a theocracy, teaching that God gives all good and sees all.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses taught God is unbegotten, unchangeable, and unknowable in essence.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.8.24Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The first precept: God is all-sufficient, beginning and end, evident in works but invisible in form.
Preparation for the Gospel 8.9.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses taught that God is one and sees all, even the future.
Preparation for the Gospel 10.1.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Eusebius promises to show that the Greeks took their teaching about the one God from the Hebrews.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.9.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses: God is “He who is.”
Preparation for the Gospel 11.9.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Christians divide reality into intelligible and sensible, under one uncreated cause.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.9.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s Timaeus distinguishes eternal being from becoming.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.10.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plutarch agrees with Scripture that God does not change.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.11.14Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God alone truly is, in a timeless eternal now.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.11.15Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · God is to be addressed as “You are One.”
Preparation for the Gospel 11.12.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Hebrews teach God is ineffable; Plato agrees.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.13.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Moses teaches one God; Plato agrees.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.13.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Plato’s letter to Dionysius shows he believed in one God.
Preparation for the Gospel 11.21.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Scripture teaches that God alone is the Good.
Preparation for the Gospel 13.12.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · An Orphic poem proclaims one invisible creator God, seen only by a Chaldean (Abraham) and by the one born of the water (Moses).
Preparation for the Gospel 14.15.2Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · If mind orders all, the cause of each thing is what is best for it.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Socrates and Plato: God is the One and the Good, pure mind.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristotle: the highest God is a separate form above the ethereal spheres.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Stoics: God is craftsmanlike fire and spirit pervading the world.
Preparation for the Gospel 14.16.10Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Epicurus: the gods are human in form and made of fine particles.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.14.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Aristocles: for the Stoics, fire is the element, and God and matter, both bodies, are principles.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.15.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · The Stoics call the whole world God, one and living.
Preparation for the Gospel 15.16.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 313–324 · Porphyry: the Stoics make God a consuming fire yet call him everlasting.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 2.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Reason shows there can be only one Lord and Father of all.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 2.6Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Many gods with divided powers could not be almighty.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 3.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · There is one God, perfect, eternal, beyond human thought and speech.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 3.2Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Besides the prophets, poets, philosophers, and seers testify to one God.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 4.1Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Plato taught one God who ordered the world.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 4.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Many Greek and Roman philosophers affirmed one highest God who rules the world.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 4.4Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · Hermes Trismegistus praised the one God as nameless, unbegotten Lord and Father.
Epitome of the Divine Institutes 5.3Lactantius · ca. 314–320 · The Sibyls testify that there is one self-existent God who alone should be worshipped.
Demonstration of the Gospel 3.3.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · Jesus taught devotion to the one Creator God.
Demonstration of the Gospel 4.1.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · The prophets teach that there is one God, beyond every name, the source and cause of all things.
Demonstration of the Gospel, Book 8, preface 7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 314–324 · People knew by nature that a divine power exists but could not grasp the transcendent God.
Oration to the Assembly of the Saints 3.2Constantine the Great · ca. 325 (dated variously 317–325) · There is one ruler of all; rule by many gods would destroy the harmony of the world.
Against the Heathen 6Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Against Greeks and heretics who give evil its own existence, Athanasius argues from Scripture and reason that there is one God, Lord of heaven and earth.
Against the Heathen 22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · The mixed and contradictory forms given to the gods, and the bodily shapes that need human repair, show that idols cannot represent the incorporeal and immortal God.
Against the Heathen 28Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Neither the parts of creation nor the cosmos as a composite whole can be God, since God is not composed of unlike parts but is the maker of all composition.
Against the Heathen 29Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · Since the parts of creation hinder and overcome one another, they cannot be gods; having refuted error, Athanasius turns to the Word of the Father, through whom the Father is known.
Against the Heathen 35Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · God, invisible by nature, ordered creation through his Word so that he might be known from his works, as Paul teaches in Romans 1 and Acts 14.
Against the Heathen 38Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · As an orderly city implies a ruler and a harmonious lyre one musician, the ordered cosmos shows one ruler, the Word, not many gods.
Against the Heathen 39Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 318–325 · There is one world, and so one maker; many makers would imply weakness, vanity, and disorder, like a ship with many helmsmen.
Theophany 1.21Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.22Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Theophany 1.27Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Demonstration 13.10Aphrahat · 337-345 · God's 'rest' on the seventh day does not mean he was tired, for he creates by his word without labour; the expression, like his 'repenting', is accommodated speech.
Life of Constantine 2.48.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Constantine's letter to the East begins: nature leads the wise to God, and virtue is crowned by God's judgment.
Catechetical Lecture 4.5Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · God the Father is uncircumscribed, greater than all he made, all-knowing and almighty, unchanging, and judge of sinners and the righteous.
Catechetical Lecture 6.6Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Angels see God only as far as they can; only the Son and the Spirit know the Father fully, so no human need be ashamed to confess ignorance.
Catechetical Lecture 6.7Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · It is enough to know that God is one, eternal, unchanging, and perfect in every respect; images of God with wings or seven eyes misread Scripture; God is beyond comprehension.
Catechetical Lecture 9.1Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · God cannot be seen with bodily eyes: even the prophets fell down at the mere likeness of his glory or at the sight of an angel.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 11Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · God creates and begets in a way unlike men: the Son is begotten without division or passion, eternally, as radiance from light and a stream from a fountain.
On the Decrees of Nicaea 22Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 350–356 · Since God is simple, “God” signifies his very essence, so “from the essence of God” means the same as “from God,” said of the true Son.
On the Divine Generation 3Candidus the Arian · ca. 355–360 · Candidus argues that God, the simple first cause in whom being, living and understanding are one, is without beginning or end and so can neither beget nor be begotten.
On the Divine Generation 8Candidus the Arian · ca. 355–360 · Candidus argues that a work made by will and action is not consubstantial with its maker, and that God, being simple, is beyond substance, so nothing can be consubstantial with him.
On the Trinity 1.5Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · In the books of Moses Hilary found God's name “I am who I am,” which fittingly expresses God's eternal being.
On the Trinity 1.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Isaiah and the Psalm show that God holds and fills all things, present everywhere and contained by nothing.
On the Trinity 2.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · The Father is self-existent, infinite, and eternal, beyond understanding, and is truly known only through the Son.
On the Trinity 4.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Hilary lists the texts the Arians cite to reserve to the Father alone the titles one, wise, true, good, powerful, unchangeable, immortal, invisible, and unbegotten.
On the Trinity 9.61Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God is love and wholly Father, so the Son has all that is the Father's, including the divine foreknowledge of the future.
On the Trinity 9.72Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God, being simple and almighty, has no speech after silence or change; the Son shares this omnipotence (John 5:19).
On the Trinity 10.53Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Like the sun, divine mysteries must be received within our capacity; reaching beyond it loses even what we could grasp (1 Tim 1:3–4).
On the Trinity 11.44Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · God, being perfect fullness, cannot advance or become fuller; the heretics' reading would make him forever lacking.
On the Trinity 11.45Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Paul's doxology in Rom 11:33–36 confesses that God's depth cannot be searched out by human minds; only the Son knows the Father.
On the Trinity 11.47Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · Since all things are from, through, and in God and he does not change (Rom 11:35–36; Mal 3:6), the Son's subjection cannot make God more perfect.
Letters to Serapion 1.19Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 357–360 · Scripture’s images—Father as fountain and light, Son as river and radiance—show the Spirit in the Son, in whom we are enlightened and from whom we drink.
Letter 233Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Answering a question of Amphilochius about the mind, Basil explains that the mind, made in God's image, can be led astray by demons or raised by the Spirit to perceive divine things, and that God can be truly known, though only in part.
Letter 234Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil answers the Eunomian dilemma 'Do you worship what you know or what you do not know?': God is known from his activities, not in his essence, which remains inaccessible, and faith rests on knowing that God is, not what he is.
Letter 235Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil explains that knowledge of God's existence from creation precedes faith, that 'knowledge' has many senses, and that the Eunomian demand to know God's essence confuses them, as Scripture's own uses of 'know' show.
Against Arius 4.24Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus explains that in God knowledge and the knowable are one, knowledge becoming knowable by turning upon itself, and describes God as resting at the centre of all things, seeing all at once; he then states that contraries arise from contraries.
To Justinus the Manichaean 4Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the one God is distinct from the many things from him, and, as almighty, is the origin even of contraries, as one matter takes many forms, while he himself has no likeness.
To Justinus the Manichaean 5Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that an infinite God cannot coexist with another kingdom, and that the Manichaean war between light and darkness implies that the defeated darkness has perished, so the flesh belongs to the victor.
To Justinus the Manichaean 6Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author mocks the Manichaean picture of a victorious God troubled by his captives, arguing that two eternal, self-existent principles cannot be conquered or subjected without contradiction.
To Justinus the Manichaean 11Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · The author argues that the one almighty God is the infinite whole, beside whom “nothing” has no substance and no place, so that a rival principle would make space itself greater than God.
Homilies on the Psalms 29.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · Basil explains that Scripture speaks of God sleeping, turning away or forgetting according to our own condition, and that God “upholds” us like a swimmer or a wrestler, so that afflictions do not give the enemy joy unless we give in, as Job did not.
Homilies on the Psalms 32.8Basil of Caesarea · ca. 360-378 · On Ps 33:13–15 Basil contrasts God's overseeing from heaven with his “coming down” to Sodom and Babel, stresses that nothing escapes his eye, and teaches that the creator of the once-simple heart understands all our works and intentions.
On the Holy Spirit 45Didymus the Blind · Greek ca. 360-390; Latin 387-391 · Against heretics who divide a good God from a just one, Scripture calls the one God both good and just; the salvation Isaiah speaks of is brought by Christ.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 4Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author answers the Arian objection that God cannot be called “substance,” arguing that God’s substance is his own simple being, and that the Son, born of it, is homoousios with the Father.
On the Orthodox Faith against the Arians 6Gregory of Elvira · ca. 360-392 · The author argues that God cannot be defined or compared, and explains the many Scriptural names of the Son (Word, Wisdom, rock, lamb, lion, way, and others) as pointing to his works, not defining his majesty.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.13Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Before explaining God's anger, Hilary insists that God is unchangeable and free of passions, being wholly self-sufficient.
Tractates on the Psalms 2.17Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's anger is not a passion in him but the appointed punishment as felt by those who suffer it.
Tractates on the Psalms 52.2Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · The fool denies God only in his heart, ashamed to say it aloud, since creation shows God plainly; vice persuades us of what reason cannot accept.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.19.8Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God is near because he is wholly present everywhere, as the soul is present throughout the body yet does not go with a diseased limb that is cut off.
Tractates on the Psalms 118.19.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · No comparison fits God, but the sun, present everywhere yet shut out by closed windows, suggests how God is present to all yet absent from the corrupt.
Tractates on the Psalms 129.1Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · Following Paul's 'O the depth', Hilary confesses that God's judgments and the mysteries of creation, providence, and Scripture are beyond human knowledge.
Tractates on the Psalms 129.3Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God is incorporeal spirit; his 'eyes' and 'ears' are names for his one undivided power, and though he hears all by nature, faith asks to be heard.
Tractates on the Psalms 144.6Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 360–367 · God's greatness has no end: it is bound by no place, name, or time, and exceeds all understanding.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 1.13Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Opposition belongs to qualities, not to substances, and God, who is simple, has no qualities; two unbegotten beings cannot be opposite.
Titus of Bostra, Against the Manichees 2.37Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · God, who is light and truth itself, freely and unchangeably never wills to lie; falsehood is a human invention, while darkness is a useful work of the Creator.
Oration 32.12Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · Gregory applies the order of the body to the Church, urging each to keep his place, learning rather than teaching when not fitted for it, since God hides himself in darkness and is known now only in part.
Oration 45.3Gregory of Nazianzus · ca. 362–383 · God is eternal Being, “He who is”, an infinite sea of essence, partly grasped and partly beyond grasp, so that he draws us, purifies us and makes us godlike.
Tractates 2.2.1Zeno of Verona · ca. 362-380 · Zeno refutes the view that matter is eternal and teaches that God alone is the principle, the Father begetting the Son with the Spirit in one co-eternity, illustrated by two seas joined by a strait.
Against Eunomius 1.10Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil explains that no single name expresses God's nature; some names affirm what belongs to God and others deny what does not.
Against Eunomius 1.11Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers Eunomius's argument by elimination that God is 'unbegotten essence,' granting that God's essence is unbegotten but denying that 'unbegotten' is the essence.
Against Eunomius 1.12Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil rebukes the claim to know God's essence, citing David, Isaiah, and Paul, and challenges the Eunomians to say what even the essence of the earth is.
Against Eunomius 1.13Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil notes that Moses did not inquire into the essence of the earth and that God did not reveal even his name to the patriarchs, so that claiming to know God's essence is the height of conceit.
Against Eunomius 1.14Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that God's essence is known only to the Son and the Spirit, that we know God from his activities, and that reading the biblical images of God literally leads to absurd notions of his essence.
Against Eunomius 1.15Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that 'unbegotten' answers how God is, not what he is, using Luke's genealogy, which names origins rather than essences.
Against Eunomius 2.12Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil argues that God is eternally Father, so the Son eternally exists, with nothing between them; the Father is prior only as cause.
Against Eunomius 2.29Basil of Caesarea · ca. 364 · Basil answers the charge that God would be composite unless 'light' and 'unbegotten' were identical: God is wholly light, life, and goodness, and 'unbegotten' indicates a property, as do the other divine names.
Hexaemeron 2.2Basil of Caesarea · ca. 370 · Basil rejects the view that "invisible and unformed" means an eternal, uncreated matter: God created matter together with form.
Homilies 3.7Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Heeding oneself curbs anger and lust, keeps reason ruling the passions, and leads from the soul and the marvellous structure of the body to the knowledge of God.
Homilies 15.1Basil of Caesarea · ca. 363-378 · Speech about God always falls short; Basil leads the hearer in thought beyond the senses, the cosmos and the angels to contemplate the simple, unchangeable divine nature.
Commentary on Romans 1:18Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God’s wrath is revealed against those who, seeing the Creator in his works, did not worship him alone as the law of nature taught.
Commentary on Romans 1:19Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God made the visible world so that its invisible Maker could be known through it.
Commentary on Romans 3:4Ambrosiaster · ca. 366–384 · God is truthful and keeps his promises though people disbelieve; Ambrosiaster rejects the reading of Ps 51:4 that makes human sin serve God’s righteousness, since then God could not justly punish or judge.
Letter to the Africans 8Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 369 · The bishops argue that the Son has all that the Father has by essence, not by virtue, since God is simple and without qualities, and that he is therefore of the same essence with the Father.
Question 1, section 1Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God exceeds every mind; each rank of creature, from humans to seraphim, knows him only according to its capacity, and none comprehends him fully.
Question 1, section 2Ambrosiaster · ca. 370–384 · God is described as simple spirit, infinite, eternal, and almighty, good in creating, just in giving free will and law, merciful in bearing with sinners, and severe so that his patience is not despised.
On Virginity 10Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 370–371 · The true Good, the archetypal beauty, cannot be described in words; only a purified heart sees it, as David did in ecstasy, yet we must not despair but be led toward it through things known to the senses.
Letter 25.1Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome answers Marcella's request to explain the ten Hebrew names of God, prompted by the word Shaddai in Ps 91.
Letter 98.18Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Theophilus continues that God's power is not limited by the matter or number of creatures he made.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 23.5.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Satornilus must admit one God, Creator of all.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 25.6.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · For Christians there is one God.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.2.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God, unlike Ptolemy's Depth, wills and thinks at once.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 33.2.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God is wholly mind and light, free of passion, unlike Depth or Zeus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 36.6.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God's goodness and power overturn Heracleon.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 38.6.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · God's wrath is not a passion.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 39.10.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Their own system requires a single first cause.
Apostolic Constitutions 7.35.9Anonymous · ca. 380 · God alone is holy, and his attributes are without limit; he is the Father of Christ, through whom he created all things.
On the Christian Faith 1.2Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that Christ, as God, has all the attributes of the divine nature, and that the scriptural titles Word, Son, Power, and Wisdom show one divinity in Father and Son with a distinction of generation.
On the Christian Faith 1.9Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that if the Father became Father at some point, he would have changed, so the Son’s eternal generation follows from God’s unchangeability.
On the Christian Faith 1.16Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that “begotten” and “created” differ, that Paul forbids serving the creature yet calls himself Christ’s servant, and that a creature cannot exist in the simple nature of God.
On the Christian Faith 2.3Ambrose · ca. 378–380 · Ambrose argues that Christ cannot be counted among the so-called gods, since God is one and Father and Son are distinct but not divided in divinity.
Psalm 17Apollinaris of Laodicea · uncertain (fourth to sixth century) · A paraphrase of Psalm 17 of the Septuagint (Psalm 18): David’s song of deliverance, describing God’s descent in storm and fire and the victory he gives his king.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 3Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Like Moses in the cleft of the rock, Gregory sees only God’s “back parts,” his majesty in creation, not the divine nature itself.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 4Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Correcting Plato, Gregory says that God can neither be expressed nor, still less, fully conceived by any created mind.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 5Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The divine nature is incomprehensible: we can know that God is, but not what he is.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 6Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Creation shows that God exists, as a lyre points to its maker, but no one has grasped what God is.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 7Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God cannot be a body, for bodies are limited, composite, and subject to dissolution.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 8Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God cannot be a body of any kind, not even Aristotle’s fifth element, since he fills all things and moves all things.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 9Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Calling God incorporeal or unbegotten says only what God is not; it does not state his substance.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 12Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God may have hidden himself so that knowledge of him is prized, pride is avoided, and a reward is kept for the pure; bodily life always clouds our vision.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 13Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · The names given to God are drawn from created things; the mind, unable to grasp God, either idolizes creation or rises through it to God.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 17Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · No one has found what God is in his substance; that knowledge awaits the life to come, when we shall know as we are known.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 19Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Elijah, Manoah, Peter, Isaiah, and Ezekiel saw appearances of God but not his nature.
Theological Oration 2 (Or. 28), On the Doctrine of God 21Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · Knowledge of God is the hardest of all: Solomon, Paul, and David all confessed that his ways surpass understanding.
Theological Oration 4 (Or. 30), On the Son 17Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God’s substance cannot be named; the best theologian gathers the fullest partial image of the truth from God’s works.
Theological Oration 4 (Or. 30), On the Son 18Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · “He who is” is the most proper name of God, since it expresses being in itself, while “God” and “Lord” are relative terms.
Theological Oration 4 (Or. 30), On the Son 19Gregory of Nazianzus · 380 · God’s common titles express his authority or his saving plan; the proper names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit distinguish the three.
Not Three Gods, to Ablabius, part 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–385 · Gregory argues that calling those who share one nature "many men" is a loose habit of speech, since the nature is one and undivided, and that in speaking of God such looseness is dangerous; he adds that "Godhead" names not the divine nature itself, which is unnameable, but something understood about it.
Not Three Gods, to Ablabius, part 3Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–385 · Divine names signify what God does or is not, not what he is; Gregory derives "Godhead" (θεότης) from "beholding" (θέα) and shows from Scripture that seeing belongs equally to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Not Three Gods, to Ablabius, part 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–385 · All providence is one work of the Trinity, not cut three ways; as the one God is called Saviour of all though the Son saves in the grace of the Spirit, so there are not three Gods; and since the divine nature is infinite and above every name, "Godhead" cannot name it.
To the Greeks, on common notions, part 1Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · Gregory argues that "God" names the one divine essence, not the persons, so that while we say "Father and Son and Holy Spirit" we never say "God and God and God," and the three are one God as they are one essence.
To the Greeks, on common notions, part 2Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 380–394 · We say "three men" only by a loose habit caused by human births, deaths, and changing numbers and by each man's coming from a different parent; none of this applies to the Trinity, whose persons never increase or decrease and come from the one person of the Father, so the three are one God.
Book of Heresies 155.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Literally, the passage teaches God's invisibility.
Expositio fidei 1Eunomius of Cyzicus · 383 · Eunomius opens his confession, made at the emperor's command, with faith in the one true God, who alone is without beginning and shares his Godhead with no one.
Catechetical Oration 0Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · Gregory explains that instruction in the faith must be adapted to each hearer's errors, and begins with the pagan: perfect divinity admits no distinction, so there can be only one God.
Catechetical Oration 20Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–390 · God's goodness, wisdom, justice, and power must all be present together in the incarnation; goodness moved him to save us, and wisdom made that love effective.
On the Life of Moses 301Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Since the divine Good is unlimited, participation in it can never come to rest, so human perfection lies in always growing in the good; Scripture offers examples, as Isaiah points to Abraham and Sarah.
On the Life of Moses 317Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Left alone, Moses enters the darkness where God is, receives the teaching about God’s incomprehensibility and the moral law, and is shown the pattern of the tabernacle with its gold, silver, and bronze.
On the Life of Moses 333Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Loosing the sandals means putting off the “garments of skin” given after the fall; then one learns that only God truly is and all else exists by participation. Such a one can free others, as Moses did with the changed hand and the staff, which figure the Incarnation.
On the Life of Moses 377Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Seeing God consists in not seeing, for God is beyond all knowledge, as Moses learned in the darkness; any concept that claims to grasp God is an idol; Moses rises from peak to peak, from the darkness to the heavenly tabernacle.
On the Life of Moses 399Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · Gregory asks why Moses, who already spoke with God face to face, asks to see him; the request to see God and the answer about the rock and God’s back cannot be taken literally, since a God with front and back would be a body and so corruptible.
On the Life of Moses 403Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 385–395 · God grants Moses’ request by refusing it: to see God is never to stop desiring him, since God, the true life, is beyond all knowledge and without limit; a bounded God would be enclosed and overpowered by evil, which is absurd.
On the Duties of the Clergy 1.14Ambrose · ca. 386–390 · From Psalm 94 and the Gospels, and by the likeness of the sun’s light and heat, Ambrose shows that nothing is hidden from God.
Exposition of Psalm 118 20.57.1Ambrose · ca. 386-397 · Believe in one God, and distinguish the one Father and one Lord Jesus.
On the Happy Life 11Augustine of Hippo · 386 (November) · The group agrees that happiness requires possessing something that always remains and cannot be lost, and concludes that whoever has God is happy.
On the Happy Life 21Augustine of Hippo · 386 (November) · Monica distinguishes having God from not being without God, and Augustine concludes that those who have found God are happy, those who seek him have him favorable but are not yet happy, and sinners have neither.
Letter 92.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine argues that God, who is not in place, cannot be seen by bodily eyes, but will be seen by the inner man as he is renewed in God’s likeness.
Letter 92.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine refutes those who claim that God will be seen with bodily eyes, even by the wicked, arguing from Scripture that only the pure in heart will see God, and that with the inner man.
Letter 118.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine shows that one who knows that God is present everywhere whole, like truth, and that the Word is begotten in a unique way, need not trouble about Anaximenes' view that air is God.
Letter 147.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine quotes Ambrose: God is seen only when and in the form he wills, not in his nature; in the resurrection only the pure in heart will see him, by the mind and not the eyes.
Letter 147.20Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The godly long to see God not in the forms he assumes but in his own substance, as Moses asked; this is promised for the next life, when we shall see him as he is.
Letter 147.22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · If angels see God as he is, we shall too when made equal to them; Ambrose's 'form is seen, power is declared' points to an ineffable vision of the mind.
Letter 147.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God is not heard by the ears either; the Son declares him as the inner Word, and God, who fills all things, is seen by the pure mind even when thought absent.
Letter 147.37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine summarizes: God is invisible by nature but appears in chosen forms; his children will see him as he is, as the angels do, with the eyes of the heart.
Letter 147.46Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine lists the truths of faith about God's invisibility, the Trinity, and the resurrection body, from which the spiritually mature have learned that mental sight surpasses bodily sight.
Letter 160.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Evodius argues to Augustine that reason is eternal and coeternal with God, since it shows that God must exist.
Letter 160.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Evodius asks whether reason or God is prior, concluding that reason is either God or God's, and coeternal with him.
Letter 160.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Evodius speculates that God and reason are mutually dependent and coeternal, like Father and Son, or like a seed and the fruitful principle within it.
Letter 162.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine refers Evodius to his books on the Trinity, Genesis, the greatness of the soul, free will, and true religion, and corrects his notion that God "must" exist by reason: God simply is.
Letter 162.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · That God cannot be seen with bodily eyes, even Christ's, is not a hidden mystery but plain reason, since God is not a body.
Letter 162.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Whatever is hidden about bodies, it is plain that bodies occupy space, so God, who is whole everywhere, cannot be seen with bodily eyes; Augustine asks for a copy of Evodius's lost letter.
Letter 187.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God is not spread through the world like a physical mass but whole everywhere, as wisdom is equally present in a small or a large man.
Letter 187.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God fills heaven and earth not as a quality or a mass but as the creating substance, whole in each place and whole everywhere.
Letter 187.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · The three persons of the Trinity do not divide the world among them but are each and together everywhere, since they are not bodies.
Letter 187.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God is present everywhere by his divinity but dwells only in some by grace, which is why we pray 'Our Father, who are in heaven'.
Letter 187.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · God is everywhere because nowhere absent and in himself because not contained or needing the things to which he is present.
Letter 187.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine concludes: think of God's presence without bodily images, of his dwelling as the gathering of the saints, and of Christ as everywhere as God and in heaven as man.
On Order 2.22Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Augustine asks whether God was just before evil existed; Monica sees the difficulty, and Trygetius answers that God was always just, as Cicero's virtues existed before Catiline gave them occasion to act.
Soliloquies 1.1Augustine of Hippo · 386–387 · Reason urges Augustine to write down what he finds, and he opens with a long prayer to God as the source of truth, wisdom, life and happiness, asking to be healed and to return to him.
On Fleeing the World 36Ambrose · ca. 387-391 · God himself is the supreme good, above all mind, from whom every good comes; we must cleave to him and become like him.
Explanation of Twelve Psalms 37.19.2Ambrose · ca. 387-397 · God is impassible; his "anger" is his punishing.
On Free Choice of the Will 1.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine recalls that this question drove him to the Manichaeans and sets out the faith from which the inquiry starts: one good, almighty Creator, who is not the author of sin, and his begotten Son.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Reason judges everything below it and is the highest thing in human nature; if something eternal and unchangeable is found above reason, it is God, or God is whatever is higher still.
On Free Choice of the Will 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–395 · Augustine concludes that God exists, either as truth itself or as what is above it, adding that by faith the begotten Wisdom is equal to the Father; Evodius, not yet wise, already knows something of wisdom.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · From Christ's command to love God with all one's heart, soul, and mind, and from Paul's words in Romans 8, Augustine concludes that God is the highest good.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Augustine replies that the catholic Church does not read the Old Testament as describing a repenting, envious, cruel, or bodily God, and that it leads believers from childish to mature understanding of God.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · Catholic teaching distinguishes God, good by his own nature, from creatures, good by participation and able to fall short; evil is a privation, not an essence, and God is not its author.
On the Catholic Way of Life and the Manichaean Way of Life 2.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 387–389 · The Manichaean seal of the mouth forbids blasphemy, yet by calling the soul a part of God they make God corrupted, changed, needy, weak, wretched, and enslaved, worse than any blasphemy; even the laws of number are more inviolable than their God.
On Genesis against the Manichaeans 2.29Augustine of Hippo · ca. 388–390 · Augustine closes by setting the Manichaean doctrine that God's own nature suffers, sins, and is changed against the catholic doctrine that a nature made from nothing fell by its own will, that no nature is evil, and that God is unchangeably good.
Homily 3Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · Expounding Song 1:9–14, Gregory interprets the bride's likeness to the mare that overthrew Pharaoh's chariots, the turtledove cheeks and necklaces as virtues, the 'likenesses of gold' as the limits of all language about God, and the myrrh, nard and henna cluster as Christ dwelling in the purified soul.
Homily 6Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · Expounding Song 3:1–8, Gregory teaches that the soul's every attainment is the beginning of a higher desire, that God is found in the divine darkness only by faith beyond every name and created thing, and that the sixty armed men around Solomon's bed are the senses armed by self-control in the one church.
Homily 11Gregory of Nyssa · ca. 390–394 · On Song 5:2–4 Gregory urges wakefulness against the dreams of worldly life, describes the soul's ascent from light through cloud into the divine darkness, reads the keys "sister, close one, dove, perfect one" and the putting off of the tunic of skin as the opening of the soul to the Word, and interprets the hand through the opening either as God known only by his works or as the incarnation.
Sermon 7.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · "I am who I am" names God's eternal, unchangeable being, far beyond human reach; "the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob" names his mercy toward us.
Sermon 12.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Scripture does not say the devil saw God, only that he came into God's sight and heard him, as a blind man can speak with one he cannot see; God is present to every conscience, to the good as father, to the wicked as judge.
Sermon 21.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God is not a body to be approached by climbing high, but spirit, near to the humble; he is love, and whoever loves has him near, for every good we enjoy, sin alone excepted, comes from him.
Sermon 23.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God is not contained in a place; the believer becomes his temple, and when he comes to dwell he does not cramp the heart but enlarges it by love.
Sermon 23.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God walked in Eden, appeared at Mamre, and spoke with Moses face to face, yet Moses still asked to see him: God appears in a form while his nature stays hidden.
Sermon 29.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God alone is good of himself and the source of all made goods; “confession” in Scripture means praise as well as confession of sin, as when the sinless Christ confesses to the Father.
Sermon 47.30Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God belongs whole to each who says “My God,” as a word or the light belongs whole to all; rich and poor reach him alike by loving him, and he possesses us as his field while we possess him as our God.
Sermon 52.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Like the psalmist who in ecstasy glimpsed God’s light and fell back, we cannot comprehend God: whatever is comprehended is not God.
Sermon 53.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God has no bodily face, hands, or feet; these words mean his knowledge, power, and presence; God is to be sought with the heart, which is his temple and seat.
Sermon 53.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God cannot both sit on heaven and measure it with his palm if he has a body; “heaven” means the saints, whose hearts are lifted up and who are God’s seat.
Sermon 68.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Some pagan philosophers did come to know the Creator through creation, as Paul acknowledged at Athens.
Sermon 69.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The summit of the building is the vision of God, who sees everything; those who do evil thinking God does not see them labor in vain.
Sermon 117.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word is the unformed form of all things, beyond time and place, unchanged whether we approach or depart; unlike bodies, which are less in their parts than in the whole, the Word is not less in a part than in the whole.
Sermon 117.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Devout ignorance is better than presumptuous knowledge, for God cannot be comprehended, any more than the eye grasps a whole body at once; the pure heart can only touch him and is made blessed thereby, while God gains nothing, and those who turn from him are already punished with blindness.
Sermon 117.7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Fleshly people transfer the order of human generation to God; it would be better to keep silent about the ineffable, but silence would let weak brothers think the Arians unanswerable.
Sermon 119.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The incarnate Christ is eternally God with the Father; John, who drank from the Lord’s breast, proclaimed that in the beginning the Word was, not was made, and was God.
Sermon 120.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Word of God is not like the sun, which cannot pass through walls and is in one place at a time, but is whole everywhere and penetrates everything; the preacher sees this dimly but lacks words to convey it.
Sermon 197.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Expounding Romans 1:18–25, Augustine argues that pagans knew God from creation but through pride turned to idols and to worship of creatures such as the sea and the sun.
Sermon 213.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The first article confesses God as Father in goodness and almighty in power, so that no sinner should despair of forgiveness; his almightiness means he cannot die, sin, lie, or be deceived.
Sermon 215.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God the Father almighty made all things from nothing and is a perfect eternity beyond thought and speech.
Sermon 241.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The philosophers came to know the Creator from his works, as Romans 1 teaches, and so are without excuse for not glorifying him.
Sermon 241.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The beauty of creatures confesses their Creator; the philosophers, finding both body and soul changeable, rose beyond them to seek the unchangeable God.
Sermon 261.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Like Paul, who said he had not yet laid hold of it, the preacher cannot point to his God with a finger, as to an idol or star, but only stretch out the mind toward him in faith.
Sermon 261.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · God cannot be pointed out but is known from his works; to see him the heart must be cleansed of phantoms and of avarice, which drags mud into it.
Sermon 277.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · We should not define the spiritual body rashly; but God is not a body, is not seen in a place, and is whole everywhere at once, as the Word is whole with the Father, in the Virgin, and in the infant.
Sermon 277.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Whether spiritual eyes will see God is not settled in Scripture as far as Augustine knows; but eyes that see only across space cannot see God, who is in no place, unless they are given another power.
Acts of the Debate with Fortunatus the Manichaean 1Augustine of Hippo · 28–29 August 392 · Augustine opens by charging that Manichaean doctrine makes God violable, and Fortunatus asks him, as a former member, to testify to the Manichaeans' way of life.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine defends God's “jealousy” in Exodus as a figurative word for his just providence, comparing Cicero's use of “mercy,” and shows that both Testaments speak of God's jealousy and righteousness.
Against Adimantus, a Disciple of Mani 13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 394 · Augustine answers Adimantus's contrast between the “devouring fire” and “jealous God” of Deuteronomy and “no one is good but God,” showing that both Testaments speak of God's goodness, severity, and fire.
Confessions 1.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine praises God as the source of all being and life, whose years are one eternal “today” through which all our days pass.
Confessions 7.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Now in his early thirties, Augustine firmly believed God to be incorruptible and unchangeable, but still could only imagine him as something extended in space.
Confessions 7.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine recalls imagining God as a vast presence permeating the world like sunlight through air, a view that would absurdly give an elephant more of God than a sparrow.
Confessions 7.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Turning inward, Augustine glimpses the unchangeable light above his mind and hears God say, "I am who I am."
Confessions 7.23Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine ascends from bodies through soul and reason to a momentary glimpse of unchangeable Being, but falls back under the weight of habit.
Confessions 11.41Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · God knows past and future not as a singer knows a song, with expectation and memory, but unchangeably and eternally.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 21.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine says the Manichaeans invent an evil god because they cannot see that one God shows both mercy and judgment, goodness and severity.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that “jealousy” and “anger” are said of God by a loose use of words or a Hebrew idiom, meaning his watchful care for his people's fidelity and his just punishment.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 22.21Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine sums up his answer to each of Faustus's charges about God and concludes that both Testaments must be defended against the Manichaeans as against pagans.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 25.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine refuses to debate God’s finitude with those who think only in bodily terms, and turns the mockery of circumcision back on the Manichaean belief that God is mixed with all flesh.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 26.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that God never acts against nature itself, only against the course of nature known to us, which is what we call a miracle.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 26.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine explains that even God does not make the past not to have been, since that would make truth false, and that God’s omnipotence does not include dying, though he could change Elijah as he willed.
Against Faustus the Manichaean 26.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 398–400 · Augustine answers that God’s unchangeable nature cannot die, though Christ died in the flesh he took, and that Catholics believe Elijah’s translation and Christ’s real birth and death because Scripture testifies to them.
On the Trinity 1.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine describes three kinds of error about God (thinking of him as a body, as a created spirit, or as something found nowhere at all) and explains why Scripture uses lowly images and why the mind must be cleansed to see God.
On the Trinity 2.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine notes that although the Lord spoke with Moses 'face to face,' Moses still asked to see God himself, showing that what he saw bodily was not God's substance, which cannot be seen with bodily eyes.
On the Trinity 4.0Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · In the prologue to Book 4 Augustine praises the self-knowledge that recognizes its own weakness above knowledge of the heavens, prays that he may write nothing false, and affirms that God's essence is wholly unchangeable in eternity, truth and love.
On the Trinity 5.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Augustine begins his reply to the Arians by asking God's help and the reader's patience, and teaches that God must be thought of without the categories of bodily things.
On the Trinity 5.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · An accident is something that can be lost or changed; since nothing in God can be lost, increased, or decreased, there is no accident in God.
On the Trinity 5.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · What is said of God absolutely is said of each person and of the Trinity in the singular (one God, one great, one good, one Almighty); Augustine notes that the Greeks say “one ousia, three hypostases.”
On the Trinity 5.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · God is not great by sharing in greatness but is his own greatness, so we speak of one greatness and one great one, and likewise for goodness, eternity, and omnipotence.
On the Trinity 5.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Names said of God from a point in time, such as Lord, refuge, or Father of the adopted, are relative and imply change only in creatures, never in God's unchangeable substance.
On the Trinity 6.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · As the virtues in a mind cannot be unequal one by one, so in the simple divine substance the Son, equal in one thing, is equal in all and of one substance with the Father.
On the Trinity 7.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Strictly, “substance” fits changeable things that underlie accidents; God is called substance only loosely and is properly essence, so “three persons” may be more fitting than “three substances.”
On the Trinity 8.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Unlike bodies, God's greatness is his truth; Augustine urges the reader to reject every bodily or changeable image and hold for a moment the thought “God is truth.”
On the Trinity 8.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · All things we love are good, but beyond this or that good is good itself, which is God; the mind becomes good only by turning in love to this unchangeable good.
On the Trinity 15.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · The whole of nature, as well as Scripture, proclaims a Maker who must be confessed to be supremely living, wise, unchangeable, spiritual, and good.
On the Trinity 15.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · Since everything said of God applies to the whole Trinity and to each person, and in God's simple nature all attributes are his substance, Augustine reduces the many attributes to three: eternal, wise, and happy.
On the Trinity 15.13Augustine of Hippo · ca. 399–419 · God learns nothing through senses or messengers but knows all things eternally, and creatures exist because he knows them; so our knowledge and word are far unlike his knowledge and the Word born of the Father's essence.
Commentary on Daniel 2, scholion 19Polychronius of Apamea · ca. 400-430 · Polychronius sees in Daniel's praise a summary of God's eternity, creative power, and incorporeality, against Babylonian pride in wisdom and power.
Verses to the Grace of the Lord 1–30Pomponius · 5th century(?) · In a Christian cento made of Virgil's lines, Meliboeus greets the shepherd Tityrus, who begins to sing of the one almighty God who fills and rules all things.
Exposition of the Right Faith 8Anonymous · early 5th century (probably Theodoret) · The author confesses that the manner of the Trinity is beyond human knowledge, citing Paul's partial knowledge and David's wonder.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 2Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how God can be God if the world is unbegotten; the Greek answers that nothing is temporal with God, who eternally makes and guards the world; the Christian replies that making is temporal, that God's activity can begin and end without change in his power, and that the world exists by God's will.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 3Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how a God who makes by his very being, as fire heats, can be simple yet make many different things; the Greek answers that God's being and will are identical and that he makes all things timelessly as things co-subsisting with him; the Christian replies with a long series of arguments that God's essence and will differ and that the world is made and begotten, not co-eternal with God.
Christian Questions to the Greeks 4Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Christian asks how a begotten world can be co-eternal with God; the Greek answers that the ancients, rightly understood, taught an unbegotten world, since craftsman and product, exemplar and image, are relatives that exist together; the Christian replies that the example of right and left is inappropriate and that God is not made imperfect by creating the world when he willed.
Greek Questions to the Christians 1.0Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The Greek questions: whether there is an incorporeal being, what God is and how he makes, whether what is made can be imperishable, and how the dead can rise if their flesh has been eaten by others.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.2Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · The soul, which gives life and thought to the body and knows truth, exists by itself; God is called incorporeal and uncreated not because he belongs among incorporeal creatures but because he is beyond both body and the incorporeal.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.3Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · God's existence is known from the order and endurance of creation and from the teaching of the prophets, the Lord, and the apostles, confirmed by miracles.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.6Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · God differs from the soul as Creator and Master from creature, and as what is beyond being from what is.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.7Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · God makes without instruments, since what he wills comes to be at once; and he knows his works by reason, needing no deliberation, since he neither gains nor loses knowledge.
Greek Questions to the Christians 2.9Anonymous · 5th century (disputed) · What is imperishable by another's will is not unoriginated: God alone has immortality by nature, while imperishable creatures, composed of originated elements, remain originated.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · From Wisdom 11:20 Augustine asks where measure, number, and weight existed before creation, and suggests that in their highest sense God himself is measure, number, and weight.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Measure, number, and weight exist also in actions, souls, and loves, and point to a measure, number, and weight without measure that is not itself created.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Even if Wisdom 11:20 means only that things were made to have measure, number, and weight, their reasons were in God's Wisdom, and his counsel does not change as they do.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God's rest on the seventh day does not mean he was tired; he is said to rest when he gives the rational creature rest in himself, as he is said to know when he makes us know.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · By sanctifying the day of his rest God showed that he did not need his works nor gain blessedness from them; he who is always at rest showed his rest to us on the seventh day.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God's rest is that he needs no good besides himself, not even the good things he made; it is set forth on the seventh day, after the perfection of six, so that we may long to rest in him.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 4.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Our true rest is not in ourselves or our works but in God, after good works that are his gift; God sanctified the day of rest because he is blessed in himself, not in his works.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 5.16Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · God, who is “I am who am,” is ineffable, yet nearer to us than many created things; it is better to perceive him even a little than to comprehend all creatures.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 7.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine rejects the view that the soul is part of God's substance, since God is unchangeable and the soul changes.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.11Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Scripture first calls God “Lord God” when he places man in paradise, to teach man that it benefits him to live under God's dominion, since God needs nothing from us.
Literal Commentary on Genesis 10.24Augustine of Hippo · ca. 401–415 · Augustine warns traducianists not to think the soul a body, since that leads to thinking God a body; justice and wisdom too are bodiless.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 4Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · On 'God the Father': God is beyond understanding, and the Father's begetting of the Son is to be believed, not pried into, as even created analogies show.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 5Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · 'One God' means one without any other; 'almighty' applies also to the Son; 'invisible and impassible' were added at Aquileia against the Patripassians.
Against Felix the Manichaean 1.19Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Mani's letter describes the Father of light fearing the race of darkness; Augustine asks how it could harm an incorruptible God, Felix replies that otherwise baptism and the Eucharist would be pointless, and asks for time.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.7Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Augustine sets out what he calls the Manichaean beginning, middle, and end — God's substance mingled with darkness, its shameful liberation in the sun, and the final condemnation of what could not be cleansed — and presses his question.
Against Felix the Manichaean 2.15Augustine of Hippo · December 404 · Felix concedes that the part of God mixed with darkness is God; Augustine uses John 1:5 to show that Mani, who says the light was comprehended and polluted by darkness, falls under the anathema Felix accepted.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Human words sound and pass away, but the inner word, the thought they signify, remains; by this analogy Augustine begins to show that the Word of God is not a passing sound.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 2.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The Word is unchangeable Being, which no changeable mind can reach by its own strength; it is seen as a far-off homeland across the sea of this world, which can be crossed only on the wood of Christ's cross.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 3.17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Moses did not see God himself but created figures of him, a cloud, fire, an angel; only the Son, who is in the Father's 'bosom', that is, his secret, has declared the Father.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 13.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Righteousness, the food of angels, nourishes without being consumed, like light for the eyes; God is all things to the soul, and no name is worthy of him.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.12Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Augustine leads the hearer upward past the body, the heavenly bodies, and the changeable mind itself, to the unchangeable God.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The soul gives life to the body but is made blessed only by participation in God; this is why the Christian religion worships the one God, not many gods.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 23.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Unlike signs between father and son, the Father's showing begets the Son; if we cannot grasp what God is, we can learn what he is not: not body, not changeable spirit.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 38.8Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Christ's unqualified “I am” recalls God's name to Moses, “I am who am,” which no mind can grasp; God therefore added the name we can grasp, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 38.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Only God truly is, without change, past, or future; Christ's “I am” means “I am God,” which we cannot grasp but must believe.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 99.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · God has no bodily senses in different places; seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching are in him one and the same knowing.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 99.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · In God, who is simple, knowing is being; so the Spirit "hears" from him from whom he proceeds, because he is not from himself, while remaining equal to the one from whom he is.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 99.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · Verbs of any tense may be used of the eternal God; the Spirit's hearing is eternal knowing, from him from whom he proceeds.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 102.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The promised plain speech is the spiritual understanding of God as incorporeal; the spiritual know that Christ as man intercedes for us and as God hears us with the Father.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 106.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · The name Christ made known is God's name as Father of Christ; God as Creator is known to all nations, God as the one God was known in Judea.
Tractates on the Gospel of John 106.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 406–420 · "They were yours, and you gave them to me" is said of Christ as man; as God he chose them with the Father, for Father and Son are equally almighty and have all things together.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 1.4Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · The message of the incarnate Word is that God is light, far beyond all created light; we, being darkness, are enlightened by approaching him and confessing our sin.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 7.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God, being love, is to be 'seen' not with bodily images but by having love, whose feet, hands, eyes, and ears are works of mercy; this treasure costs nothing.
Homilies on the First Epistle of John 8.14Augustine of Hippo · ca. 407 · God is love: whoever abides in love abides in God, who contains us and needs nothing from us, as the true Lord who sought us and adopted us as brothers of his only Son.
City of God 7.30Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine lists the works that Varro divided among many gods and ascribes them all to the one true God, present everywhere, from whom alone eternal life is hoped.
City of God 8.4Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine praises Plato for uniting the active and contemplative parts of philosophy in a threefold division, and suggests that in God are found the cause of being, the light of knowing, and the rule of living.
City of God 8.6Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains how the Platonists rose above bodies and changeable souls to the unchangeable, simple God from whom all form comes, as Paul says in Romans 1.
City of God 9.5Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine teaches that Christian discipline asks not whether one feels anger, sadness, or fear but why, praises mercy as a virtue against the Stoics, and explains that God's 'anger' describes his punishment, not a passion.
City of God 10.13Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Augustine explains that the invisible God appeared in visible forms that were not himself, and that the giving of the law at Sinai was confirmed by public wonders.
City of God 11.10Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God, the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is simple because he is what he has; creatures, even incorruptible ones, differ from their qualities.
City of God 11.21Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God knows all times in one unchanging present; “God saw that it was good” teaches that God, through his Word, made things for no cause but his goodness, as even Plato saw.
City of God 12.15Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God created man in time by an eternal and unchanging counsel, a depth beyond human search, as the psalm says: “According to your depth you have multiplied the sons of men.”
City of God 12.18Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · Against philosophers who argue that God's infinite knowledge and unceasing goodness require eternal cycles, Augustine answers that God's unchangeable will created in time without any change in himself, out of sheer goodness.
City of God 12.19Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God knows even the infinite series of numbers, so he needs no repeating cycles in order to know or foreknow his works.
City of God 22.2Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · God's will is eternal and unchangeable; when he is said to change or to will what does not happen, the change lies in creatures or refers to the will he produces in his saints.
Commentary on Jeremiah 4.57Jerome · ca. 414-419 · God did not send the false prophets, who flatter the people with claims of sinlessness; heretics show their unbelief in the resurrection by self-indulgence. God is both near and far and fills heaven and earth (Jer 23:21–24).
Commentary on Jeremiah 6.37Jerome · ca. 414-419 · Jeremiah's prayer praises God as Creator, merciful and just, whose strength and arm are Christ and whose delayed punishments give time for repentance; it leads to his question why he must buy a field when the city is lost (Jer 32:16–19).
On Patience 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · God is called patient because he waits for sinners to be corrected, though his impassible nature suffers nothing; Augustine turns to human patience.
On Man's Perfection in Righteousness 32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 415 · “No one is good but God” means that created goodness is nothing compared with God's, or that God's children are good yet still in part evil until perfected.
Apologetic Book 9.2Orosius · ca. 415–416 · To deny God's power would be blasphemy.
Apologetic Book 9.4Orosius · ca. 415–416 · God can do all things.
Apologetic Book 10.1Orosius · ca. 415–416 · Only God can do all things.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.1Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Every human mind is drawn toward the knowledge of God.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 6.1.18Orosius · ca. 417–418 · The known and unknown God is grasped only through Christ.
On the Soul and Its Origin 2.9Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Victor avoids Tertullian’s corporeal God but makes the incorporeal God breathe out a corporeal soul from himself, unlike the Son who is begotten of the same nature.
On the Soul and Its Origin 4.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Incorporeal does not mean empty, since Victor admits God is incorporeal; air is a body, as vessels pressed into water show.
The Institutes 8.3John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · If God's anger is taken literally, so must his sleeping, sitting, drunkenness, and bodily limbs, which is absurd.
The Institutes 8.4John Cassian · ca. 419–426 · Scripture's language of God's limbs and anger is figurative; God's "anger" means his just judgment, which the guilty experience as wrath.
The Conferences 1.15John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · God is contemplated in many ways, in his creation, justice, providence, mercy, and incarnation, but no one in whom fleshly affections still live can hold such contemplation permanently.
The Conferences 6.14John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · The mind cannot stand still: like a boat rowing upstream, it either progresses or is carried back, for only God is unchangeable.
The Conferences 7.13John Cassian · ca. 426–429 · Only the Trinity can penetrate a soul, for only God is incorporeal; angels and souls have subtle bodies of their own, and God alone sees the heart.
Part 8Eutherius of Tyana · ca. 431-440 · The author rejects the formula 'God suffered as he willed', arguing that will cannot overturn nature and that Scripture nowhere says the impassible God suffered by his will.
Poem on Genesis 1–30Hilary of Arles · ca. 440-449 · The poem opens with thanks to God the Father, eternal and uncreated, who before the creation was at work within the formless chaos.