In the treatise On the Divine Names, the author applies the term "Ancient of Days" as a title to the Godhead:
Let then the self-existent
Goodness be sung from the Oracles as defining and manifesting the whole supremely-Divine-Subsistence
in its essential nature. For, what else is there to learn from the sacred
theology, when it affirms that the Godhead Itself, leading the way, says,
"Why dost thou ask me concerning the Good?----None is Good except God
alone." Now, this, we have thoroughly demonstrated elsewhere, that always,
all the God-becoming Names of God, are celebrated by the Oracles, not
partitively, but as applied to the whole and entire and complete and full
Godhead, and that all of them are referred impartitively, absolutely,
unreservedly, entirely, to all the Entirety of the entirely complete and every
Deity. And verily as we have mentioned in the Theological Outlines, if any one
should say that this is not spoken concerning the whole Deity, he blasphemes,
and dares, without right, to cleave asunder the super-unified Unity. (On
the Divine Names, chapter 2, section 1)
SECTION I.
The time, then, is come for our discourse, to sing the God of many
Names, as "Sovereign Lord," and as "Ancient of days." For
He is called the former, by reason that He is an
all-controlling basis, binding and embracing the whole, and establishing and
supporting, and tightening, and completing the whole. Continuous in itself, and
from itself, producing the whole, as it were from a Sovereign root, and turning
to itself the whole, as to a sovereign parent stock, and holding them together
as an all-embracing basis of all, securing all the things embraced, within one
grasp superior to all, and not permitting them, when fallen from itself to be
destroyed, as moved from an all-perfect sanctuary. But the Godhead is called
Sovereign, both as controlling and governing the members of His household,
purely, and as being desired and beloved by all, and as placing upon all the
voluntary yokes, and the sweet pangs of the Divine and Sovereign, and in
dissolvable love of the Goodness itself,
SECTION II.
But Almighty God is celebrated as "Ancient of
days" because He is of all things both Age and Time,----and
before Days, and before Age and Time. And yet we must affirm that He is Time
and Day, and appointed Time, and Age, in a sense befitting God, as being
throughout every movement unchangeable and unmoved, and in His ever moving
remaining in Himself, and as being Author of Age and Time and Days. Wherefore,
in the sacred Divine manifestations of the mystic visions, He is represented as
both old and young; the former indeed signifying the "Ancient" and
being from the beginning, and the latter His never growing old; or both
teaching that He advances through all things from beginning to end,----or as
our Divine initiator says, "since each manifests the priority of God, the
Elder having the first place in Time, but the Younger the priority in number;
because the unit, and things near the unit, are nearer the beginning than
numbers further advanced.
SECTION III.
But we must, as I think, see from the Oracles the nature of Time
and Eternity, for they do not always (merely) call all the things absolutely
unoriginated and really everlasting, eternal, but also things imperishable and
immortal and unchangeable, ' and things which are in like fashion, as when they
say, "be ye opened, eternal doors," and the like. And often they
characterize the things the most ancient by the name of Eternity; and again
they call the whole duration of our time Eternity, in so far as the ancient and
unchangeable, and the measurement of existence throughout, is a characteristic
of Eternity. But they call time that concerned in generation and decay and
change, and sometimes the one, and sometimes the other. Wherefore also, the
Word of God says that even we, who are bounded here by time, shall partake of
Eternity, when we have reached the Eternity which is imperishable and ever the
same. But sometimes eternity is celebrated in the Oracles, even as temporal,
and time as eternal. But if we know them better and more accurately, things
spiritual are
spoken of and denoted by Eternity, and things subject to generation by time. It
is necessary then to suppose that things called eternal are not absolutely
co-eternal with God, Who is before Eternity, but that following unswervingly
the most august Oracles, we should understand things eternal and temporal
according to the hopes recognized by them, hut whatever participates
partly in eternity and partly in time, as things midway between things
spiritual and things being born. But Almighty God we ought to celebrate, both
as eternity and time, as Author of every time an'd eternity, and "Ancient
of days," as before time, and above time; and as changing appointed
seasons and times; and again as being before âges, in so far as He is both
before eternity and above eternity and His kingdom, a kingdom of all the Ages.
Amen. (On
the Divine Names, chapter 10)
