The answer
G. L. Prestige44 says that some early Church Fathers, such as Clement and Dionysius of Alexandria, followed Herodotus45 in linking theos meaning “god” and thentes, meaning “management.”
St. Clement says, “For God is called Θεός [theos], from θέσις ([thesis] placing), and order or arrangement.”46 This is in contrast to Aristotle who said that God is the first mover, who moved the world and left it to natural laws. We believe that God is infinite love, the movement of His love emanating from within Him through the eternal relationship of the Holy Trinity. God’s love for His creation has revealed the world, and this love still operates, and continues even after the second coming of Christ.
The Alexandrian Fathers strongly affirm that God, who is incomprehensible, cares for the human being through his unique love, because the kingdom of his heavenly love is established in the depths of the human soul: “for indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). The power of God is that love that is always in motion. Pope Athanasius says, “but God is self-existent, enclosing all things, and enclosed by none; within all things according to His own goodness and power, yet outside all things in His proper nature.”47
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
44 G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (SPCK, 1936).
45 Herodotus, The History of Herodotus 2.52.
46 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata, or Miscellanies 1.29 (ANF 2:341).
47 St. Athanasius of Alexandria, De Decretis or Defence of the Nicene Definition 3.11 (NPNF II/4:157), amended.