Proslogion: Chapter 21/Chapter 22
PROSLOGION
Is it because they can in no way exist without you, whereas you do not exist any less even if they return to nothingness? For in this way you are in a certain sense beyond them. And is it also because they can be thought to have an end, whereas you cannot at all? Thus they do in one sense have an end, but you do not in any sense. And certainly what does not in any sense have an end is beyond what does in some sense come to an end. And do you not also surpass even all eternal things in that both your and their eternity is wholly present to you, whereas they do not yet possess the part of their eternity that is yet to come, just as they no longer possess the part that is past? In this way you are indeed always beyond them, because you are always present somewhere they have not yet arrived—or because it is always present to you.
Chapter 21 Whether this is "the age of the age" or "the ages of the ages"
So is this 'the age of the age' or 'the ages of the ages'?39 For just as an age of time contains all temporal things, so your eternity contains even the very ages of time.This eternity is indeed 'an age' because of its indivisible unity, but it is
'ages' because of its boundless greatness. And although you are so great, Lord, that all things are full of you and are in you, nonetheless you have no spatial extension, so that there is no middle or half or any other part in you.
Chapter 22 That he alone is what he is and who he is Therefore, you alone, Lord, are what you are; and you are who you are. For whatever is one thing as a whole and something else in its parts, and whatever has in it something changeable, is not entirely what it is. And whatever began to exist out of non-existence and can be thought not to exist, and returns to non-existence unless it subsists* through some other being; and whatever has a past that no longer exists and a future that does not yet exist: that thing does not exist in a strict and absolute sense. But you are what you are, since whatever you are in any way or at any time, you are wholly and always that.
And you are the one who exists in a strict and unqualified* sense, because you have no past and no future but only a present, and you cannot be thought not to exist at any time. And you are life and light and wisdom and happiness and eternity and many such good things; and yet you are nothing other than
39 That is, is it more correct to identify God's eternity as saeculum saeculi or as saecula saeculorum? Both expressions (usually translated into English as "world without end" or "for ever and ever") were found in Scripture and in the liturgy.