One seeing That as it really is will lay aside all reasoning upon it and simply state it as the self-existent; such that if it had essence that essence would be subject to it and, so to speak, derived from it; none that has seen would dare to talk of its "happening to be," or indeed be able to utter word.With all his courage he would stand astounded, unable at any venture to speak of This, with the vision everywhere before the eyes of the soul so that, look where one may, there it is seen unless one deliberately look away, ignoring God, thinking no more upon Him.So we are to understand the Beyond-Essence darkly indicated by the ancients: is not merely that He generated Essence but that He is subject neither to Essence nor to Himself; His essence is not His Principle; He is Principle to Essence and not for Himself did He make it; producing it He left it outside of Himself: He had no need of being who brought it to be.Thus His making of being is no "action in accordance with His being."20.The difficulty will be raised that God would seem to have existed before thus coming into existence; if He makes Himself, then in regard to the self which He makes He is not yet in being and as maker He exists before this Himself thus made.
The answer is that we utterly must not speak of Him as made but sheerly as maker; the making must be taken as absolved from all else; no new existence is established; the Act here is not directed to an achievement but is God Himself unalloyed: here is no duality but pure unity.Let no one suspect us of asserting that the first Activity is without Essence; on the contrary the Activity is the very reality.To suppose a reality without activity would be to make the Principle of all principles deficient; the supremely complete becomes incomplete.To make the Activity something superadded to the essence is to shatter the unity.If then Activity is a more perfect thing than essence and the First is all perfect, then the Activity is the First.
By having acted, He is what He is and there is no question of "existing before bringing Himself into existence"; when He acted He was not in some state that could be described as "before existing." He was already existent entirely.
Now assuredly an Activity not subjected essence is utterly free;God's selfhood, then, is of his own Act.If his being has to be ensured by something else, He is no longer the self-existent First: if it be true to say that He is his own container, then He inducts Himself; for all that He contains is his own production from the beginning since from the beginning He caused the being of all that by nature He contains.
If there had been a moment from which He began to be, it would be possible assert his self-making in the literal sense; but, since what He is He is from before all time, his self-making is to be understood as simultaneous with Himself; the being is one and the same with the making and eternal "coming into existence."This is the source also of his self-disposal- strictly applicable if there were a duality, but conveying, in the case of a unity, a disposing without a disposed, an abstract disposing.But how a disposer with nothing to dispose? In that there is here a disposer looking to a prior when there is none: since there is no prior, This is the First- but a First not in order but in sovereignty, in power purely self-controlled.Purely; then nothing can be There that is under any external disposition; all in God is self-willing.
What then is there of his content that is not Himself, what that is not in Act, what not his work? Imagine in Him anything not of his Act and at once His existence ceases to be pure; He is not self-disposing, not all-powerful: in that at least of whose doing He is not master He would be impotent.
21.Could He then have made Himself otherwise than as He did?
If He could we must deny Him the power to produce goodness for He certainly cannot produce evil.Power, There, is no producer of the inapt; it is that steadfast constant which is most decidedly power by inability to depart from unity: ability to produce the inapt inability to hold by the fitting; that self-making must be definite once for all since it is the right; besides, who could upset what is made by the will of God and is itself that will?
But whence does He draw that will seeing that essence, source of will, is inactive in Him?
The will was included in the essence; they were identical: or was there something, this will for instance, not existing in Him?
All was will, nothing unwilled in Him.There is then nothing before that will: God and will were primally identical.
God, therefore, is what He willed, is such as He willed; and all that ensued upon that willing was what that definite willing engendered: but it engendered nothing new; all existed from the first.
As for his "self-containing," this rightly understood can mean only that all the rest is maintained in virtue of Him by means of a certain participation; all traces back to the Supreme; God Himself, self-existing always, needs no containing, no participating; all in Him belongs to Him or rather He needs nothing from them in order to being Himself.
When therefore you seek to state or to conceive Him, put all else aside; abstracting all, keep solely to Him; see that you add nothing; be sure that your theory of God does not lessen Him.Even you are able to take contact with Something in which there is no more than That Thing itself to affirm and know, Something which lies away above all and is- it alone- veritably free, subject not even to its own law, solely and essentially That One Thing, while all else is thing and something added.
NINTH TRACTATE.
ON THE GOOD, OR THE ONE.
1.It is in virtue of unity that beings are beings.
