GOD’S ETERNITY

The idea of God being eternal is hinted at in a few biblical passages, e.g.
Isaiah 57:15a):
For thus says the high and lofty one
Who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy.

 The idea of God being eternal has also been strongly influenced by
classical philosophy, especially Plato and his unchanging true reality of
the world of Forms, and the later philosophy of Boethius.

 However, Nicholas Wolterstorff (‘God Everlasting’)

has suggested that the eternity of God has appealed
to people not just because of the influence of
classical Greek philosophy but also because the
eternal God is different from humans’ experience of
life in the physical world:

..the feeling, deep seated in much of human culture, that

the flowing of events into an irrecoverable and
unchangeable past is a matter of deep regret. Our bright
actions and shining moments do not long endure. The
gnawing of time bites all. And our evil deeds can never be undone. They are to
be forever regretted…regrets over the pervasive pattern of what transpires
within time have led whole societies to place the divine outside of time – freed
from the bondage of temporality.

In today’s world people try to stave off aging and the effects of time, but it
remains a fact of life that the past flows by and, while it can be regretted, it can
no longer be changed. We live in the present moment and our experiences are
our reality. In a world before the discovery of antibiotics and modern medical
care, where death was a much more prominent feature of life, the notion of the
world as a place of change and loss must have been very poignant. In this world
the notion of God being other and always existing, as revealed in the Bible,
leads to the philosophical understanding of God’s nature as eternal and makes
believers’ conviction that God is eternal more understandable.

 Philosophers such as Aquinas and Anselm have suggested that God

exists outside of time. Anselm argued that God is eternal because
nothing can contain God (Proslogion 19). For
Aquinas, time and change are inseparable; since
God cannot change, so God cannot be in time.

 Six main reasons can be identified to explain why

Christians traditionally believe that God is
eternal:
1. The Bible suggests that God always exists.
2. God is not a physical being like us.
3. God is the Creator of the universe. Time passing is a
feature of the universe. God as the Creator of the
universe is therefore outside of time.
4. God is the ultimate cause of why things exist and why there is change in the
universe. Anselm
5. God is perfect and so is not subject to time because time passing implies
imperfection. When time passes you change and lose what you were
previously. This argument is found in Anselm’s Proslogion.
6. God exists necessarily.

Boethius on God’s Eternity

The Christian belief and God was eternal was strongly

influenced by Boethius. He argued that:
a. God is changeless (impassable).
b. God does not exist in time.
c. Eternity is “the whole, simultaneous and perfect
possession of unending life” – this means that life is not
only endless but that it is not like physical life as it does not involve change
and as it does not involve experiencing life as a series of events one
following another.
d. God’s life is limitless and possesses the whole of His/Her life eternally without
end.
e. For God there is no past, present and future – instead God exists eternally
and all of time is present to God at the same time. God does not see history
as it happens; instead all time is present to God ‘simultaneously’.
f. God is simple, i.e. He does not learn new things and time does not pass for
God.

Aquinas on God’s Eternity

Aquinas was heavily influenced by the ideas of Boethius. He

quoted Boethius, saying:
“Eternity is simultaneously whole, while time is not, eternity
measuring abiding existence and time measuring change…
the primary intrinsic difference of time from eternity is that
eternity exists as a simultaneous whole and time does not.”

For Aquinas:
a. God exists unendingly without a beginning or conclusion.
b. Hence God must exist outside of time, because time
consists of parts and the notion of time involves
beginning and ends. For example, all humans are born,
live their lives and die.
c. God is the Creator of the universe and all life, who always exists without end.
d. Time does not pass for God.
e. Time involves living life ‘successively’ i.e. one event follows another, but for
God this is not the case. God exists outside time and the nature of God is to
exist.