So then, since this diverse reason [ratio] whereby, to our mind, God’s many virtues differ from one another is nothing in God but only takes place in us, it is proved that the many and various names do not actually have any kind of conflict with God’s unity and simplicity. For God does not intend for these many and various names to signify that many and various virtues are in Him but rather a single one—indeed, such a one as actually has the force of all the other virtues and properties, and infinitely so.

In this, our best Parent has accommodated Himself to our capacity. Perhaps He could have found a single name that was so perfect that it embraced all these and an infinite number of additional perfections. Yet, since we would not have been able to understand them by that one name, for that reason and for our sake, He determined to explain what and of what sort is that singular and most simple thing [rem] (namely, the divine essence) with many and various names.

Is it not the case that the sun is the cause of light, heat, the bearing of fruit and animals, liquefying wax, and hardening clay? And that the singular power of all these things is also in the sun? Yes, it is. For by its singular light, the sun causes all these things and a nearly infinite number of others in those inferior things. And because it causes these things, the sun is often said to be of the same force as are its effects, albeit more perfectly. For it is called shining and hot, not so much because it causes heat and dryness in nature as because it is actually the force behind such things or because the force in the sun is similar to heat and dryness—and so on with regard to the others.

Accordingly, because many and various adjectives are predicated of the sun, do they come into conflict with the singular and simple force of the sun? The same things should be said and thought with regard to God’s many and various names.

In summary, our weakness was the reason for the many and various names in God. For they were not imposed in order to signify that many virtues really are in God—for just one is appropriate and sufficient for all—but on account of our capacity. What we would not have been able to perceive with one name, we are able to perceive with many, namely, who our God is and what He is like. For if we could, at a single glance or by a single act of the intellect, perceive God’s essence as it is, then many and various names would not have been at all necessary to indicate it. Instead, a single name would have sufficed for us, which God Most High would easily have found and revealed. But the weakness of our nature is such that this would have been useless to us. Therefore, He appointed many names, since one would not do. Hence, the diversity of God’s names does not come into conflict with His simplicity.