Novatian — On the Trinity 4

IV. 1. Whom alone the Lord deservedly pronounces good, whose goodness the whole world witnesses, whom he would not have founded unless he had been good. For if all things are very good, consequently and deservedly both the good things founded have proved a good founder and those that are from a good founder cannot be other than good, from which every evil withdraws from God. 2. For it cannot be that he be initiator or craftsman of any evil work, who claims for himself the name of perfect one and parent and judge, especially since he is avenger and judge of every evil work, because evil also does not meet man from elsewhere than that he withdrew from the good God. 3. But this itself is noted in man not because it was necessary, but because he himself so willed. Whence it clearly appeared both what evil was and, lest envy seem to be in God, from whom evil had arisen, it shone forth. 4. This one therefore is always like himself and never turns or changes himself into any forms, lest through change he also seem mortal. For change of turning is understood as a portion of a certain death. Therefore neither does any addition of any part or honor ever accrue in him, lest anything ever seem to have been lacking to the perfect one, nor is any loss worked in him, lest a step of mortality seem received, but what he is, that he always is, and who he is, he always himself is, and such as he is, he always is such.

5. For both increases show an origin and losses prove death and destruction. And therefore I, he says, am God and I am not changed, always holding his standing, while that which is not born cannot be turned. 6. For this in him, whatever that can be which is God, must always be, that he always be God, preserving himself by his virtues. And therefore he says: I am who I am. For what is, for that reason has this name, because it always obtains the same quality of itself. For change takes away that name ‘what is’; for whatever is sometime turned is shown mortal by this very fact that it is turned. For it ceases to be what it had been and consequently begins to be what it was not. 7. Therefore also deservedly his standing always remains in God, while without loss of change he is always like and equal to himself. For what is not born also cannot be changed; for those things alone come into turning which are made or which are begotten, while things that sometime had not been learn to be by being born and therefore by being born are turned. But those things that have neither birth nor craftsman have shut change out from themselves, while they do not have an origin in which the cause of turning is. 8. Therefore he is also pronounced one, while he has no equal. For God, whatever he can be that is God, must necessarily be highest. But whatever is highest must finally be highest while it is without a peer. And therefore he must necessarily be alone and one, to whom nothing can be compared, while he has no equal. 9. Since neither can two infinites exist, as nature itself of things dictates. But infinite is whatever has neither origin at all nor end. For whatever has occupied the whole excludes another’s beginning. Since if it does not contain all that which is whatever is, while it is found within that by which it is contained, found less than that by which it is contained, it will have ceased to be God, reduced into another’s power, enclosed by whose greatness, by which it was lesser, and therefore what contained it will already have begun rather to be God. 10. From which it has come about that God’s own name also cannot be uttered, since it cannot even be conceived. For whatever is also comprehended from its nature’s condition is contained by a name. For a name is the signifying of that thing which could be comprehended from the name. But when that about which it is treated is such that it is not worthily gathered even by the intellects themselves, how will it be pronounced worthily by a vocabulary of appellation, which, while it is outside understanding, must necessarily also be above an appellation’s signifying? 11. So that deservedly when God for certain reasons and occasions adds and prefers his name, we may know that not so much a lawful property of appellation has been brought forth as a certain signifying has been established, to which while men run they may seem able to obtain God’s mercy through it itself. 12. He is therefore both immortal and incorruptible, sensing neither losses at all nor an end. For both because incorruptible, therefore also immortal, and because immortal, certainly also incorruptible, each intertwined with the other by mutual connection in itself and produced to eternity’s standing by reciprocal chaining, immortality descending from incorruption and incorruption coming from immortality.