What are the characteristics of the One God?

St. Cyril of Jerusalem says, “God (the Father) is One, alone unbegotten, without beginning, change, or variation; neither begotten of another, nor having another to succeed Him in His life; who neither began to live in time, nor ever comes to an end: and that He is both good and just; that if ever you hear a heretic say, that there is one God who is just, and

341 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 4:3 (ANF 2:410).

342 St. Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen 10 (ANF 2:201).

343 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 1.9 (ANF 2:309–310).

344 G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought , (London: SPCK, 1936): p. 1.

345 The Histories of Herodotus 2.52.

346 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 1.29 (ANF 2:341).

347 St. Athanasius of Alexandria, De Decretis 3 (NPNF II/4:157).

another who is good,³⁴⁸ you should immediately remember, and discern the poisoned arrow of heresy. For some have impiously dared to divide the One God in their teaching: and some have said that one is the Creator and Lord of the soul, and another of the body;³⁴⁹ a doctrine at once absurd and impious. For how can a man become the one servant of two masters, when our Lord says in the Gospels, ‘No man can serve two masters’ (Matt. 4:24; Luke 16:13)? There is then One Only God, the Maker both of souls and bodies: One Creator of heaven and earth, the Maker of Angels and Archangels: of many the Creator, but of One only the Father before all ages,—of One only, His Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom He made ‘all things visible and invisible’ (John 1:3; Col. 1:16).”³⁵⁰