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You notice that this is a negative in that it means God is NOT
finite.

So what does the word finitude mean?

It means to be bounded or limited. God is infinite in that He
is not bound nor does He have any limits.

We as the creature have limits. How many times have we

said to our children things like;
I am out of patience or you have worn me out.

But this is not true of God because His attributes are without
limit.
God is never out of grace, mercy, power and knowledge.
'on't confuse this with the self imposed limitations that God
chooses to put upon Himself.

For example:
God promises to Abraham that it will be through him that all
the nations will be blessed.

'oes that diminish God's power because now He can't bless

the nations through some other person?

No, because once God has promised one thing then He must
deliver it. Therefore it rules out other things that might have
been the case, but once He says this then it means He can't do
that.
Also there are things that on the surface appear as a limitation
of God but when you dig deeply into it you find they show how
unlimited God really is.

For example;
According to Scripture God cannot lie.
v

 in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot
lie, promised long ages ago,

What does this mean?

This means that God is unlimited in His nature as God for truth
telling, honesty, faithfulness and this means that God cannot
break a promise.
We as human being can break promises. This shows our limit
in the ability to tell the truth.

We as human beings can die. This shows our limit in regard

to living.

But God can't die. And this shows His limitless.

So this means that God doesn't have the limitation but in fact
we do have the limitation.
reep in mind that boundlessness and limitless have to do
with the qualities that are true of God.

· The quality of truth assures us that God cannot lie

· The quality of existence assures of that God cannot die

· The quality of faithfulness assures of that God cannot

break a promise
Infinity is shown in Î

 
à an you discover the depths of God? an you discover the
limits of the Almighty? à
hey are high as the heavens, what
can you do?Deeper than Sheol, what can you know? àts
measure isüüü longer than the earth And broader than the
sea.

 


·Great is our Lord and abundant in strength; His
understanding is infinite. X A Hebrew term for God's
knowledge that is without limit)
First, a self imposed limit is not a limitation in regard to the
nature of God.

Again when God makes a covenant with Abraham then it

rules out other things that God might have done so this is in
essence a self imposed limitation God places on Himself.
Second, it appears to be a limitation in the nature of God but is
not. Or it may seem that we can do things that God can not
do.

For example; I can lie but God cannot lie. Someone might say
that we can tell the truth and we can lie and that gives us a
breadth that God doesn't have. But the problem with that kind
of thinking is not understanding what limitless really means.

God has the limitless quality of truth telling which means it

can never be limited or denied. And the limited or negative
quality of lying is not true of God but it is true of us.
We can understand that God is infinite as it relates to:

Eternality: God can¶t be measured in time

Omniscience: God¶s knowledge is inexhaustible
Omnipotence: God¶s power is without limits
Omnipresence: God can¶t be localized


 
Theologians all the way back to the early church have wanted
to talk about God's omnipresence in two particular ways in
which God is not bound.
· God is not bound in relation to space Xomnipresence)
· God is not bound in relation to time Xeternity)

Omnipresence means that God is not limited in His existence

by space. Or God transcends all spatial boundaries and is
present everywhere at once.


 

àut who is able to build a house for Him, for the heavens and
the highest heavens cannot contain Him? So who am , that 
should build a house for Him, except to burn incense before
Him?
Î
¢¢ 
Am  a God who is near, declares the LORD, And not a God
far off? an a man hide himself in hiding places So  do not
see him? declares the LORD. Do  not fill the heavens and the
earth? declares the LORD.



àut will God indeed dwell on the earth? ehold, heaven and
the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this
house which  have built!



àHowever, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by
human hands; as the prophet says:
Omnipresence means that God is not limited in His existence
by space. Or God transcends all spatial boundaries and is
present everywhere at once.

 

¢
!
|here can  go from Your Spirit?
Or where can  flee from Your presence?
f  ascend to heaven, You are there;
f  make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
f  take the wings of the dawn,
f  dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me
God is everywhere present

In this Psalm this is meant as a comfort and an encouragement

because nowhere that you are called to go in ministry,
business, home or where ever you go then God is with you.
And even if you go to a place and you are alone, God is with
you in that place.

Also there is a sobering truth to this principle that in every

moment of private sinning God is with you in that moment
also.

In the Bible there is a theme that runs through Scripture that

would seem to undercut this particular doctrine.
For example:
When God says to His people "I will be with you"
 
¢

But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, And He
who formed you, O Israel, ³'o not fear, for I have redeemed
you; I have called you by name; you are Mine!
³When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And
through the rivers, they will not overflow you. When you walk
through the fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame
burn you.
³For I am the Lord your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior;
I have given Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in your
place.
³Since you are precious in My sight, Since you are honored and I
love you, I will give other men in your place and other peoples
in exchange for your life.
³'o not fear, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the
east, And gather you from the west.
What is the point of "I will be with you" if we know that God
is omnipresent?

Because it is one thing to have the attribute and quite another

to have the expression of that attribute.

Isn't it different to talk about God's omnipresence which

means He is everywhere and God's manifest presence?

Manifest presence means that God is there in a focused,

deliberate and intentional way watching over not just seeing
what is there but attending to and caring for, providing for,
strengthening and enabling and protecting.

God is omnipresent but in the temple God's glory came and

dwelled.
† 
!¢

hen the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of
the LORD filled the tabernacle.

So is God in the temple or is God everywhere? And the

answer to that question is both.
But in different senses.

God is present with His people Israel as He dwells with them

in the Tabernacle. And this is different than God being with
the Babylonians and the Egyptians.

'on't confuse the teaching of God's omnipresence the fact that

He is everywhere with the manifest presence of God being
with His people specifically.
There is a wonderful theme that runs throughout Scripture in
which God tells His people from Genesis to Revelation that
"I will be with you.´

The church has always agreed upon the doctrine of the

omnipresence of God is the following way.

Theologians agree that before God created the world there

was no space. God then creates a spatial temporal world.

And so before the beginning of the world you would talk

about God in terms of a non spatial reality. God in Himself
doesn't occupy any space whether it be finite or infinite.
God is non spatial in His nature as God.
But when He creates the world He creates a spatial world He
then fills with His existence all that He creates. And He
occupies that which is foreign to His own nature.

However in relation to creation God is omnipresent. God fills

all of the creation that He has made.

The reason this is helpful to understand is because there is a

parallel thought here when it comes to understanding how we
see God and time.


†

God is not limited in His existence by time. The

Scriptures speak of God as everlasting or eternal.

Some of the richest passages in the Bible connect the

supremacy of God with His being the eternal God.

Psalm 90
1. Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2. Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
The point is that in whatever direction you may think
whether it be everlasting past or everlasting future God
always is. There is a sense in which God is the eternal
present tense.

1 Timothy 1:17
Now to the ring eternal, immortal, invisible, the only
God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

This is conveyed in the I AM in Exodus 3:14 and

conveyed in the language in Revelation He is the Alpha
and the Omega.
It is also conveyed in Genesis 1:1 - everything else had a
beginning but God has no beginning

Eternity has been taught over the years but this has been
a very difficult question for theologians to come to
complete agreement over the years.

In what sense should we come to understand that God is

eternal. Is this eternality temporal or timeless?

And the argument that won out early was timeless

eternity.
One of the strong reasons that the church went in this
direction was that it safeguards God's immutability.
Therefore if you want to support a doctrine of the
absolute immutability of God in that He can't change in
any way then you must eliminate time from the equation.

Why?
Because it is impossible to talk about change without the
medium of time.
Think about it. Try to think about change without time.

The early church went in this direction because if God is

absolutely timeless then one cannot talk about in any
meaningful way a change in God.
They wanted to safeguard that God couldn't change for
the better because if He did He wasn't God before.
And God can't change for the worse or He wasn't God
before.

So in order to be sure that we safeguard absolute

immutability then let's do away with anything that
could be involved in God changing in anyway.

And the timeless view of God throughout eternity does

that for absolute immutability.
This theological belief is going to run into problems
when the Scripture talks about the change of God in a
meaningful way.

Augustine both in Confessions and the City of God

talked about this issue. He proposed the notion that
since God created the world and the world being a
place of space and time that therefore God apart from
that world must be neither spacial nor temporal.

This became the predominant view within the church

and a man named Boethius is the one who developed
the view of God's timeless eternity.
Boethius explained it this way:
God stands as a fixed point that is not temporal but as a
timeless present tense of God. The experience of God is
like the one we are having at this present moment. It is
here and now gone.

But take that present moment and extend it infinitely in

both directions. This could be called the eternal present
tense because God doesn't experience a past or a future.
God experiences only now and He does so eternally.
So God is a present point and He can see both the
beginning from the end. And since He can see the now
then everything is immediately present to God. This is
the way that Boethius would have explained the
eternality of God.

For example:
Adam and Eve in the garden
Christ on the cross
You and I right now
The second coming of Christ
All these event would be to God a present tense event
before Him. Which means this takes out any temporal
distinction in God's own experience or reality.

The column argument Xpassing from moment to

moment)

The other argument is for a temporal eternity. And this

has sometimes been referred to as everlastingness

God exists in time and there is no point in time where

God does not exist. This view has really been on the
radar screen only in the last 50 years.
John Feinberg argues for this view of God's eternity.
The strongest argument for this view is that the Biblical
language uniformly speaks in these terms.
Look again at Psalm 90
. Lord, you have been our dwelling place
in all generations.
2. efore the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

What is the context?

With our forefathers, we us now, with future
generations.
It looks as if the framework of this language is temporal.
So these theologians would argue that the Bible wants us
to think of God in time rather than outside of time.
Feinberg makes the philosophical argument that how do
you have God relating to people that go through real
moments in their past, and have hopes and fears of the
future, how does God relate to people if He stands
outside of time.

One of the great pressing issues for evangelical

Christians is the relatedness of God to the world that He
has created.

The proposal from Ware and Frame is as follows:

If the church had done with eternity what it did with
omnipresence then this would have taken care of this
problem.
Because the answer to the question is God inside or
outside of time would be answered with yes and both.
In other words this doesn't have to be a disjunctive
being one or the other but rather it can be a both/and.