What is God? The Beginning; this is the answer he gave of himself Many things in the world are spoken of as beginnings, and this is in respect to what comes after them. Yet if you look back and see something which precedes another, you will call that the beginning. Therefore, if you seek the true and absolute beginning, you must discover that which has no beginning. That from which everything began clearly had no beginning itself, for if it began, it must have begun from some source. For nothing begins from itself, unless someone thinks that something which does not exist can cause itself to be or that something existed before it came to be, but since reason approves of neither of these it is clear that nothing exists as its own beginning. Moreover, what had its beginning from another was not first. Therefore, the true beginning in no way had a beginning, but totally began from itself.
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
