(As illustration), consider the radiance shed afar by some luminous
source that remains within itself; the radiation would represent
the image, while the source from which it issues would be the
genuine light.[196] Nevertheless, the radiation, which represents
the intelligence, is not an image that has a form foreign (to its
principle), for it does not exist by chance, being reason and cause
in each of its parts. Unity then is the cause of the cause; He is, in
the truest sense, supreme causality, simultaneously containing all the
intellectual causes He is to produce; this, His offspring, is begotten
not as a result of chance, but according to His own volition. His
volition, however, was not irrational, fortuitous, nor accidental;
and as nothing is fortuitous in Him, His will was exactly suitable.
Therefore Plato[197] called it the "suitable," and the "timely," to
express as clearly as possible that the (Divinity) is foreign to all
chance, and that He is that which is exactly suitable. Now if He be
exactly suitable, He is so not irrationally. If He be timely, He must
(by a Greek pun), also be "supremely sovereign" over the (beings)
beneath Him. So much the more will He be timely for Himself. Not by
chance therefore is He what He is, for He willed to be what He is;
He wills suitable things, and in Him that which is suitable, and the
actualization thereof, coincide. He is the suitable, not as a subject,
but as primary actualization manifesting Him such as it was suitable
for Him to be. That is the best description we can give of Him, in our
impotence to express ourselves about Him as we should like.[198]