God is none of these — the two names that belong to him alone
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Asclepius — Τί οὖν φῂς τοῦ μὴ εἶναί ποτε;
Hermes — ὁ οὖν θεὸς οὐ νοῦς ἐστιν, αἴτιος δὲ τοῦ εἶναι νοῦν, οὐδὲ πνεῦμα, αἴτιος δὲ τοῦ εἶναι πνεῦμα, οὐδὲ φῶς, αἴτιος δὲ τοῦ φῶς εἶναι· ὅθεν τὸν θεὸν δυσὶ ταύταις ταῖς προσηγορίαις σέβεσθαι δεῖ, ταῖς μόνῳ αὐτῷ προσῳκειωμέναις, καὶ ἄλλῳ οὐδενί. οὔτε γὰρ τῶν ἄλλων λεγομένων θεῶν οὔτε ἀνθρώπων οὔτε δαιμόνων τις δύναται κἂν καθ' ὁποσονοῦν ἀγαθὸς εἶναι ἢ μόνος ὁ θεός, καὶ τοῦτό ἐστι μόνον καὶ οὐδὲν ἄλλο· τὰ δὲ ἄλλα πάντα χωριστά ἐστι τῆς τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ φύσεως· σῶμα γάρ εἰσι καὶ ψυχή, τόπον οὐκ ἔχοντα χωρῆσαι δυνάμενον τὸ ἀγαθόν.
What, then, do you say of never being? — God, then, is not Mind, but the cause of Mind's being; nor spirit, but the cause of spirit's being; nor light, but the cause of light's being. Wherefore God must be revered by these two names, which are appropriated to him alone and to no other. For none of the so-called gods, nor of men, nor of daemons, can be good in any degree at all, except God alone; and he is this only, and nothing else. But all other things are separate from the nature of the Good, for they are body and soul, having no room able to contain the Good.
Hermes refines the transcendence. God is not Mind, but the cause of Mind's being; not spirit, but the cause of spirit's being; not light, but the cause of light's being. Wherefore God must be revered by two names that belong to him alone — the Good and the Father — and to no other. For no one among the so-called gods, nor men, nor daemons, can be good in any degree at all, except God alone; he is this only, and nothing else. All other things are separate from the nature of the Good, for they are body and soul, having no room able to contain the Good.
Having said in II.12 that God is 'not even one' of the highest realities, Hermes now spells out the pattern: God is not Mind, not spirit, not light — but the αἴτιος, the cause, of each one's being. This is the engine of negative theology stated as a formula and repeated three times: whatever exalted thing you name, God is not it, but the reason it exists. The interlinear keeps the drumbeat of αἴτιος τοῦ εἶναι ('cause of being') visible, because the doctrine lives in that exact refrain — transcendence and causality locked together.
From this follows a rule of worship. God is to be honoured under 'two names appropriated to him alone (μόνῳ αὐτῷ προσῳκειωμέναις)' — in the treatise these are the Good and the Father — and by no other title, because goodness in the strict sense belongs to God alone: not to the 'so-called gods,' not to men, not to daemons. The reason is beautifully physical, tying the whole cosmology back in: everything else 'is body and soul,' and a composite thing has 'no room (τόπον οὐκ ἔχοντα) able to contain the Good.' The Good is too great to be housed in anything made — a thought II.15 will complete by measuring the Good's magnitude against the whole extent of being. The reveal layer catches what a plain 'God is good' would bury: the Greek denies goodness to everything that is not God, and grounds the denial in the sheer un-containable magnitude of the divine.
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Corpus Hermeticum CH2.14 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/hermetica/CH2.14/