Today I continue my series of articles about theology proper by considering how we should understand the eternity of God. Of all the divine attributes, this one tends to lead to the most technical and even scientific discussions. Although there has been a mainstream of Christian theologians who have tended to view God’s eternity the same way, there have been dissenters from this mainstream throughout history, with some of today’s prominent evangelical and Reformed theologians among them. The question of definition becomes controversial because eternity is ultimately about more than time: it involves the very nature of God’s existence.
(Be sure to check out the resource page accompanying this article: “What the Church has said about Divine Eternity”.)
God’s Eternity Established in Scripture
That God is eternal is the consistent testimony of Scripture from beginning to end:
- “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree at Beersheba, and there he called on the name of the Lord, the Everlasting God.” (Genesis 21:33)
- “Before the mountains were born / Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, / Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” (Psalm 90:2)
- “But the Lord is the true God; / He is the living God and the everlasting King.” (Jeremiah 10:10a)
- “Are You not from everlasting, / O Lord, my God, my Holy One? / We will not die.” (Habakkuk 11:12a)
- “Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” (1 Timothy 1:17)
- “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” (Revelation 22:13)
Not only the Father, but also the Son (Isaiah 9:6, Micah 5:2) and the Holy Spirit (Hebrews 9:14) are declared eternal. God’s redemptive decree is also said to be eternal, (Ephesians 1:4 & 3:11, 2 Timothy 1:9, Hebrews 13:20) as are His attributes of power (Romans 1:20) and wisdom. (Proverbs 8:22-23) There is every reason to conclude from scripture that everything about God is eternal: the three Persons, the attributes, and the decree. But what exactly does it mean that God is eternal? How can we, as non-eternal beings, comprehend the eternity of God? To be sure, we cannot do so fully. The finite will never fully comprehend or define the infinite. However, there are some things about God’s eternity that we can truly affirm and deny, and I intend to explore those things in this article.
Towards a Definition of Eternity
The Hebrew word`owlam appears frequently in the Old Testament and is often translated into English as eternal or everlasting. The term does present us with interpretive difficulties, as the definition is somewhat ambiguous. The biblical authors knew what they meant when they used it, but the rest of us are left to consider each instance in context in order to choose between slight variations of meaning. The basic meaning of the word is a long duration of time, possibly going on forever. At different points in the New American Standard Bible,`owlam is translated as everlasting, eternal, forever, perpetual, and ancient.
Despite these possible variations in definition, orthodox scholars (in the broad sense, not the Eastern sense) have long held that when we speak of God as eternal, we mean something different from when we declare something created to be eternal, everlasting, or perpetual. When we say that God is eternal, we affirm that he had no beginning in two senses: 1) he did not come to be at a point in time, and 2) there is nothing logically prior to him such that he derives his existence from it.
We should see easily enough that this definition of eternity cannot be transferred to anything that is part of our universe, but it likewise cannot be transferred to angelic beings, for despite the few specifics Scripture gives us about them, we can easily conclude that they have their existence from God. God has no beginning in either of these senses. He is the only self-existent thing—that is, the only thing that exists simply by virtue of itself, without needing to be composed or created in any way.
Perhaps this is already a bit confusing, and that is the nature of this doctrine. It forces us to delve into difficult material, but our reward is a better understanding of our Creator.
Let me put it more simply. Orthodox scholars in the tradition of Augustine, Aquinas, and the Reformed scholastics have summarized their definition of God’s eternity in three denials: God is 1) without beginning, 2) without end, and 3) without succession. That final denial—that God is without succession—is the one that is typically challenged in Christian theological circles. I will explore that issue more fully, but first we need to examine time.
The Nature of Time
We cannot rightly understand what it means for God to be without beginning, end, or succession unless we understand a few basic facts about time, for we as temporal or time-bound creatures cannot consider eternity except in relation to time. How would you define time?
“It’s how long something takes to go from A to B.”
A good start, but what exactly do you mean by “long”? After all, long can be either a measure of time or distance. Your definition seems to require physical movement from one location to another. Is that what you meant? Perhaps another attempt is in order.
“It’s the duration between one event and another.”
Not too bad, but surely now we need to define what we mean by duration. The people at the University of Oxford get to decide these things, perhaps because they are better at marketing than the people at Cambridge. According to the first available definition in their much hallowed dictionary, duration is, “The time during which something continues.”[1] Unfortunately, time is what we were attempting to define in the first place, and in defining that word we have now been forced to use the word, which is mistake #1 of definitions. Perhaps another approach?
Consider this question: Is time something physical? Not is it visible, but does it have any essence that is subject to the normal laws of the natural world? It may be tempting to think that time is an abstract concept rather than anything concrete, but abstract concepts cannot be empirically measured, and it is possible to empirically measure time. So how do we measure it?
- One light-year = The distance traveled by light in one year
- One year = The time it takes for the earth to make a complete orbit around the sun (maintained by calendar variations)
- One month = The time it takes for the moon to complete one cycle (maintained by calendar variations)
- One day = The time it takes for the earth to complete one 360° rotation
- One hour = 1/24 of a day
- One minute = 1/60 of an hour
- One second = 1/60 of a second
As you read through those definitions, you probably noticed that they all involve some notion of distance and movement: the distance light travels in a year, the distance the earth travels around the sun, etc. This means that time is actually spatial. The time between two things is, in a sense, the space between them.
That may seem counter-intuitive. We could pass a lot of time before feeling that time is spatial. Space is spatial while time is temporal! Yes, but scientifically speaking, time is actually spatial. It has a concrete, physical essence that can be manipulated by gravity, as when time slows down significantly near objects with a high gravitational pull. Time is not simply an abstract concept or modifier. This is now a proven fact of our existence.[2]
Perhaps you have heard about something called space-time. (The more scientifically minded of my readers are way ahead of me here, but I’m speaking now to those who either didn’t take high school physics, were too distracted by that cute guy or girl to pay attention, or forgot it all somewhere in the middle of raising three kids.) The concept of space-time is a critical component of modern physics. The idea here is that in addition to the three dimensions of space we know and love (length, width, and depth), there is a fourth dimension: time.
Thinking about Dimensions
The idea of a fourth dimension is enough to tax our brains because we cannot properly visualize it. We see things in either 1D, 2D, or 3D (if we pay $5 extra at the movie theater). Perhaps you saw these dimensions illustrated in your school science book like so.
1D = Length
2D = Length + Width
3D = Length + Width + Depth
A 2D object is visualized by drawing two 1D lines and then connecting them at each end point. Likewise, a 3D object is visualized by drawing two 2D rectangles and connecting them at each end point. The best way to visualize a 4D object would be to draw two 3D cubes and connect them at each end point, creating what is known as a tesseract. I did this once in a math class, at which point I personally confirmed that it wasn’t truly possible for my eyes, which can only view things in 3D, to make sense of the odd bunch of scribbles I had just created. Adding to the difficulty is the fact that all drawings made on flat surfaces are necessarily 2D. The only way to properly represent a 3D image on a flat surface is to put together two 2D layers, the feat accomplished by 3D glasses. But there cannot be any 4D glasses, because we face a limitation of our eyes: we can only see three dimensions of imagery.
We have wandered a long way from divine eternity at this point, but we are much closer to understanding time, which I said must be done before making sense of eternity. You see, time is a fourth dimension. Moreover, it is one that we experience. We cannot properly visualize time as a dimension because we do not see all times at once. Rather, we experience time in succession.
Think back to the era when films were actually on film. Were you to look at the film itself—the stuff that got fed into the projector—you would see thousands of individual images. When these images were fed through a machine and projected at a high rate of speed, they tricked our brains into thinking that the things we saw on the screen were moving seamlessly in 2D, despite the fact that we were actually looking at a long succession of individual 2D images.
Even as we see a succession of 2D images when we watch a movie, we see a succession of 3D images throughout our lives. What separates one 3D image from the next? Time. This is the fourth dimension that brings together our existence, in which we are bound by space-time.
Still having trouble thinking about time as a dimension? Then forget high school science and math and think back to high school history, or perhaps Sunday School. At some point, you surely saw something called a timeline: a 1D line that visualized a progression of years. If I were to make a timeline of my own life, the point farthest to the left would say “1986: Birth”. Other dates would come into view: “1991: Kindergarten”, “2004: High School Graduation”, “2008: College Graduation”, “2012: Marriage”, “2040: Nobel Prize”. Then at the end point on the far right, you would read the sad news of my demise. It is possible to imagine me moving along that line, growing taller and then eventually shriveling up into a skeletal, drooling thing, at which point I fall off the edge. With each progression, I cover space as visualized along the line. That is how we actually experience time non-visually: we move along from one event to the next, growing and changing. It is our fourth dimension of time.
Without Succession
What on earth does any of this have to do with God? Well, I said that in addition to being without beginning or end (meaning that he exists beyond the timeline he created, or beyond the dimension of time), he is also without succession. Remember the succession of images that allows us to watch a film and the succession of moments that allows us to experience a life. When theologians deny that there is a succession in God’s being, they deny that he is moving through time as we are, transitioning from one state of being to the next, progressing through points of space, continually changing in response to his experiences. He does not see only a single moment of time at once, but the totality of time. This makes sense when we consider what the Bible has to say about God’s foreknowledge: he can accurately predict the future because he sees it perfectly in our here and now.
- “And yet this was insignificant in Your eyes, O Lord God, for You have spoken also of the house of Your servant concerning the distant future…” (2 Samuel 7:19)
- “Behold, the former things have come to pass, / Now I declare new things; / Before they spring forth I proclaim them to you.” (Isaiah 42:9)
- “From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He.” (John 13:19)
- “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren…” (Romans 8:29)
- “For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you…” (1 Peter 1:20)
In addition to Scripture’s testimony of the Lord’s foreknowledge, we can add his clearest form of self-definition: “I AM”. The Lord named himself thus to Moses in the account of the burning bush, when he proclaimed himself to be “YHWH”, typically standardized in English as Yahweh. (Exodus 3:14) It means, “I am,” or alternatively, “I will be.” The implication of the phrase in the original Hebrew is just as the English translation suggests: a basic statement of existence without any implication of change.
This precious name Yahweh is of such critical importance that it demands deep reflection and extensive consideration. It is repeated time and again throughout Israel’s history as a surety of God’s covenant faithfulness and the definitive revelation of his nature. Indeed, it is used at so many critical junctures in salvation history that it ought to serve as the basis for our understanding of who God is: a standard to which all our scriptural interpretations must be held.
Crucially, the statement “I AM” does not leave room for succession in God’s existence or being. In fact, it specifically rules out such a notion. Even as it suggests a constant present state, its dual meaning in Hebrew (“I will be”) suggests that this state will continue into our future. Were we given the power to move back and forth throughout linear time at will, popping up every 1,000 years to check, we would find at every point that God is “I AM”: nothing more and nothing less.
However, we ourselves would be different at each point. Our line of sight, our experiences, and even our very beings would undergo change as we passed through the succession of moments. This is because we are temporal creatures with defined beginnings. Not only that, but we have defined stages of existence: we are composed in our mothers’ wombs, we grow from children into adults, we endure the decay of old age, and we pass from this life into the next. We experience the succession of time because we are bound by it as creatures made for it. We are physical beings conceived in relation to space, and our existence moves spatially along the timeline of this universe.
Here we must remember that God is not like us: he is an entirely different category of being. Because he created time, he is not bound by it. His existence, ever unchanging and perfect, is not dependent on it, controlled by it, or defined by it. He is not moving along a timeline as we are.
Scripture assures us that time had a beginning (Genesis 1:1) and God existed before it, (Psalm 90:2) which is simply to say that he exists beyond it. His existence does not depend on it and cannot be measured by it. Our differences of time and space cannot change his being, for he is not subject to a succession of time or space. He knows and sees all at once, even as he exists everywhere at once. He is not confined to three dimensions of experience. He does not progress successively through time because he holds the entirety of time in his hands, which is simply a metaphor to say that he possesses its entirety always and eternally. After all, he created it.
I struggle to find the words to describe this, for how can a time-bound being describe that which is not bound by time? How can the finite shed light on the infinite? But perhaps it is best for you to think of the entire history of the universe as a translucent sphere which is surrounded by, penetrated by, and filled by God. He is not the same thing as the sphere, nor is he bound by it or blocked out by it. He created that sphere, so he controls it fully. He is as existent inside of it as he is outside of it, yet not so that he is changed by it or present in a different manner in one part than another, inside or outside. Again, this is only a metaphor, and perhaps a poor one at that.
Remember that God is omnipresent. To be omnipresent means to exist fully and continually in every place—that is, every segment of space—forever and without exception or change. Now recall that we said time is spatial. To exist in a segment of time is no different, from a metaphysical standpoint, than existing in a segment of space. So to exist fully and perfectly at every point along our timeline is simply part of what it means for God to be omnipresent, and if he exists in exactly the same manner at every point in time, he cannot be moving through a succession of moments as we are, passing from one experience to the next. To pass from one experience to the next is to be changed by those experiences in some manner, but the fullness of God’s existence is present always and everywhere.
A 3D human can look at a 1D line, a 2D square, or a 3D cube and see it all at once (though the limitations of our eyes force us to focus on one portion of an object at any given moment). However, we cannot visualize the fourth dimension of time because we are three dimensional creatures. Were we not affected by this limitation, we could just as easily see in 4D, even as God does. We would view the connection and totality of time all at once. We could grasp it and comprehend it together rather than being limited by a succession of splintered views.
That is what it means for God to be atemporal, or not bound by time: what we experience as a movement through space is to him simply another dimension upon his vision that in no way limits or confines that vision. Our beings are defined by temporality, while his is defined by atemporality. This is not to say that we have no discourse with the eternal nor the eternal with us, but they are facts of existence that reveal an important truth: we are limited while God is not, even as we change and God does not.
The Natural Question
Perhaps at this point you are wondering the same thing that many perfectly intelligent Christians have wondered over the years: “If God doesn’t experience a succession of moments, then how does he relate to us?”
I am reminded of a favorite proverb often recited by one of my old professors of political science. He used to tell us, “You don’t solve problems. You just sequence them.” In the realm of government policy making, that is undoubtedly true. Raise taxes to fund government programs, and you risk stifling the economy and angering the populace. Cut taxes in the hope of stimulating the economy, and you risk having less government revenue. Such trade-offs are inevitable in an imperfect system run by imperfect people.
Theology can have a similar feel at times. Say you’re faced with the difficulty of a sovereign, holy God who has nevertheless created a world that includes evil. You can say that evil occurs against God’s will, thus sparing him from apparent moral culpability, but then you must reckon with the concerning prospect that God does not get what he wants, which is to say he is not in complete control. Alternatively, you could argue that evil is the will of God, but then you are left scratching your head over how a holy God could will evil, and whether he should be deemed ultimately responsible for something he willed.
Yes, the study of Christian theology can make us feel at times that we are simply sequencing problems or playing a game of whack-a-mole, but the difference between theology and public policy is that there is a perfect answer out there somewhere. Whereas a government may never be able to arrive at a perfect set of policies in a world marred by sin, God himself is perfect and thus our consideration of his nature should cause us to arrive at a point where the problems cease their sequencing and are simply solved.
Unfortunately, because we are finite creatures attempting to understand an infinite Creator, our ability to recognize or comprehend the perfection we seek is limited. While we may never be able to study theology proper without arriving at some point when we must throw up our hands and say, “I don’t understand it, but somehow it works,” this does not mean that what we do not understand is imperfect or problematic. In fact, the perfection we know not is the end of all problems, but because we cannot fully comprehend it, we remain unsatisfied in this life.
That is a rather long way of saying that the question of how an atemporal God relates to us in time is a natural and valid query, but one that may force us to be content with a partial answer. When we read the sacred scriptures and see God doing something one day and another thing the next, speaking specific words to specific people at specific points in time, and changing his dealings with man through a series of covenants, we are naturally led to think of him in terms of time and space. To use a very basic example, does the famous hymn not tell us “I once was lost, but now am found / Was blind but now I see”? Or to quote from scripture itself,
“Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)…” (Ephesians 2:3-5)
This is a fundamental concept of Christianity: that we who are saved were once perishing. Our relation to God has changed, as have his actions toward us. How then can we say that God does not move through a succession of moments when he was wrathful toward us yesterday and today showers us with grace? There has been a real change in our lives and our experience of the divine majesty. How then can there be no change in God’s thoughts, relations, or actions toward us? For if he experiences no change of moment for moment, then it would seem his eternal present is simply an immovable wall against which we fling ourselves rather than arms reaching out to meet us where we are.
Thoughts like this have troubled some theologians so profoundly that they have determined God must possess some form of temporality, meaning that some part of his being must be subject to time. Some argue that the very creation of the universe requires that God must have taken temporality upon himself, or perhaps that his eternity was never the absence of time, but the merely the continual succession of the same without beginning or end.
The question is important and deserves a good answer. How can the atemporal relate to the temporal, and most crucially for our daily Christian lives, how are we to understand our relationship with God?
How Can God Act in Time?
When we consider how God relates to us, it is important to state first of all that God is certainly present within time. As I previously stated, his omnipresence means that he is fully and perfectly existent in every segment of time even as he is in every segment of space. Understanding that time is spatial and dimensional helps us to see this. Likewise, we must affirm that God’s actions throughout time are not the same: they change depending on the circumstances. He only appeared in a burning bush to Moses on one particular day, even as he only split the curtain in the Temple on one particular day.
Therefore, the question of whether God can exist within time or act within it has already been answered for us by scripture. But can God change his actions without changing his existence? How can he be present on the timeline while not actually experiencing the progression of that timeline existentially? Let me put it a bit more simply: if God is not seeing one moment go by at a time, then how can he act one moment at a time?
I’ll be honest with you: I’m not sure the perfect answer to this dilemma exists on planet earth. However, I also believe that there is a perfect answer out there. We are unable to fully articulate the perfect answer because we are temporal by nature. It is not possible for us to conceive of an existence that is not bound by linear time because this is all we have ever known. Our very thoughts are occurring in linear time as we attempt to consider non-linear existence. Basically, our brains are like computers that lack to necessary capacity to make this calculation. Our thoughts can only build upon what is already programmed into us by our biology and experiences. Even so, perhaps I can mention a few things that might help you to envision how an eternal (here meaning atemporal) God might relate to his temporal creation.
First, remember that God created time and is therefore sovereign over it. This simple fact should assure us that he is in no way blocked from being able to affect it, despite his eternal nature. All God’s creations are within his power. Why then would we assume that he cannot affect them without changing himself? He was the one who brought them into being in the first place.
Second, remember that the fact that God is not present in one moment at a time does not mean that he is not present within time, even as the fact that he is not present in one location at a time does not mean that he is not present within space. That is not what it means to be atemporal. Rather, God is not bound or limited by time. His existence is not parceled out in such a manner, with one part of it in 1951 and another in 2051. As the scripture says, he is the same “yesterday and today and forever”. (Hebrews 13:8)
Third, the Apostle Peter makes reference to the fact that God does not operate in the same manner as creatures when it comes to time. His comments come in the middle of a discussion about God keeping his promises.
“But do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:8-9)
Some might object that Peter does not claim that God is atemporal, but simply that his time does not work the same way as our time. I concede that a doctrine of God’s atemporality cannot be built upon this passage alone, but neither should we write off Peter’s use of simile. He does not tell us that one of God’s days is equal to a thousand of our years. He says “one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day”. This is not a conversion chart, but a declaration of relativity. Peter seems to state that all lengths of time are the same to God, which is very close to saying that God experiences all times at the same time or that they cause him no existential change.
Again, I would not stake my notion of God’s eternity on a single verse, but it is possible for us to imagine how this would work when we think back to our discussion of dimensions. Whereas a 3D cube appears to us as a single, connected whole, to someone who experiences life in 2D, it could only be perceived one segment at a time. Even so, while the fourth dimension of time appears to us in segmented succession, a being that experiences 4D would view a united whole. It is therefore conceivable that such a being could touch any point on a 4D tesseract they wanted without themselves becoming consumed or bound by the 4D object, even as a rod of solid gold might be lowered into a fish tank, disturbing the water without experiencing any change in its own elemental composition. (God is not a composite, so consider for the purposes of this illustration that the rod of gold itself was indivisible on an atomic or subatomic level.)
This is not a perfect metaphor, because God’s eternity actually goes a step further than that. When I described the 4D being in the previous paragraph, I still spoke of them as if they were making one move and then another in a sequence. It is only natural that I, a human being, should speak in this manner, because I can only imagine actions sequentially. But in truth, there is no before or after when it comes to God. From our perspective, his actions occur in a sequence of time, but from his perspective outside of time, they are in effect all one: the carrying out of his eternal decree within created time. God’s decree is one and his actions are one.
There are many portions of scripture that speak from either our perspective or God’s—in terms of the temporal or eternal. (This is similar to the distinction theologians make between God ad intra and ad extra.) Far more often, scripture speaks from our perspective, even when it describes God. Yet enough examples of it speaking from God’s perspective are present to convince me that his existence is indeed different from ours, and it is that simple and perfect existence that ought to be our controlling metric when evaluating all other passages of scripture.
Thus we know that God is spirit and doesn’t have an arm in the physical sense, he is unchanging and doesn’t repent in the human sense, and a year with him is like a thousands days rather than his years adding up like a man’s. We do no injustice to the scriptural text when we declare that verses which speak from our perspective or according to our limitations do not describe things from God’s perspective or according to his eternal nature.
Does it not make sense that a book written for finite creatures would speak in finite terms given that we are not capable of fully comprehending the infinite? Not only does it make sense, but there is no other conceivable way for an infinite being to address us. He must speak from our perspective, for it is the only one we can understand fully, but he gives us just enough of a glimpse of his perspective to assure us that it is different, transcendent, and perfect. We confess that which we cannot fully comprehend. Anything we can fully comprehend is no greater than ourselves, but God is the definition of greatness.
Another Obvious Objection
Perhaps you have tracked with me thus far and can imagine how an eternal God could, as it were, point to different spots on a 4D object without himself being changed by that object. The meeting of time and eternity does not turn eternity into time. Maybe you’re even able to accept that, from God’s perspective, his actions are all one. If you are a Calvinist in terms of soteriology, this leap should be easier for you to make, because you have already accepted the priority of God’s eternal decree over everything else.
Yes, Calvinists do argue about the logical ordering of God’s salvific decrees (e.g., Did he ordain the Fall first or choose the elect first?), but most understand that this logical ordering is not a chronological ordering. God did not decide to create and then, as an addendum, decide that allowing the Fall would be a good idea. He knew everything eternally, and his decree is eternal (e.g., Ephesians 3:11) and united. It is only for the sake of our own speculation that we debate infralapsarianism vs. supralapsarianism.
Similarly, it is possible for someone who holds to a Calvinist (here meaning monergistic) understanding of soteriology to see how a person’s experience in time could change even though their eternal status in God’s eyes is already determined. That does not mean we understand all the ins and outs of how such a thing works, but it is possible for us to accept that God could take in our entire history of unfaithfulness and faithfulness at once and see us in a single state: as one of his elect children. Thus, our predestination to salvation is caused by the same love of God that will carry us through justification and sanctification to glorification. To be known by God from eternity is, in at least one important sense, to be his from all eternity. The differences in how scripture speaks about the process of salvation—of divine agency and human responsibility—may in fact be because it sometimes speaks from the perspective of temporal humanity and sometimes from the perspective of an atemporal God.
But there is one matter that seems particularly difficult to reconcile with the notion of God’s atemporality: the incarnation of Jesus Christ. The hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures is a puzzle in and of itself, but when we then consider how a God who does not experience events in a temporal sequence could become incarnate when he was not previously incarnate, we face a real theological difficulty.
One might be tempted to conclude that if God is equally present at all times at once and does not experience them in sequence, the Son of God must have been always incarnate as a human being, for everything about God is eternal and there is no before and after with him. On the other hand, those who find such a statement ridiculous and contrary to scripture might conclude that God had to take on temporality at some point in order to become incarnate, or perhaps he was always temporal in some sense. This is part of what pushes some theologians into the position that God become temporal in creating.
The Reformed theologians of what is typically known as the scholastic period (late 16th century into early 18th century) often argued that God has a duration but not a succession, and this line of reasoning has made its way down to the present day. I can get on board with that, but it does require us to divorce our understanding of the term “duration” from any notion of temporal succession, which is difficult given that we are temporal creatures. Remember, I gave the common dictionary definition for “duration” early in this article, and it involved time, so we must be careful in defining our theological use of the term. In any case, I do not think the word duration alone can get us out of this pickle.
Some have sought a solution to this dilemma in the distinction between the single divine essence and three divine persons. After all, it was not all three persons who took on a human nature, but only the person of the Son. Therefore, one might conclude that temporality was not taken on by the Godhead as a whole, nor did it become part of the divine essence, but it was taken on solely by the person of the Son. The characteristic of temporality is then not essential, but personal.
I can certainly understand why theologians would think this way. They are trying to come to grips with the paradox of the hypostatic union, which has puzzled the greatest human minds since it was first revealed. We are still seeking the perfect answer regarding the hypostatic union of Christ’s divine and human natures, and I understand why theologians would seize upon a possible answer like this one.
Unfortunately, the personal vs. essential distinction does not solve this particular problem. In fact, it gives us no help at all, because we are not talking about whether the human nature of Christ experiences a succession of time. (He certainly did and does.) We are talking about whether God experiences a succession of time, and in particular we are facing the claim that the Son of God must have experienced a succession prior to the incarnation if he was once unincarnate and is now incarnate. Persons can only do that which accords with their own nature.
The Son of God may do something according to his divine nature, human nature, or conceivably both at the same time. However, we cannot assign to his divine nature something that only belongs to his human nature, such as mortality.[3] Likewise, we cannot assign the temporality of the Son’s human nature to his divine nature, both because no such transfer of properties occurs according to any biblical statement, and because to make such a change in the divine nature would be to make a change in the divine essence. God would then become mutable.
Furthermore, I personally fail to understand the logic by which God could become temporal in order to experience succession with his creatures. The proposal is that God at one point had no succession but at another point began to have a succession. However, to begin to have a succession is itself a feature of succession. In other words, God would have needed to possess the ability and/or limitation of moving through succession before he took on a new property, namely that of proceeding by succession. To put it another way, God would have had to already be changeable in order to change, for changeableness itself is a characteristic that one either has or does not have. I admit that I am not the world’s greatest philosophical mind, but it seems to me that our choice is between an eternally temporal God or an eternally atemporal one. To be temporally temporal seems to fly in the face of basic logic, according to the best understanding of this author. But I digress…
So the time issue is not solved by a distinction between essence and persons, unless I have missed something rather obvious. The person of Jesus Christ may act according to two different natures, but the Triune God only ever acts according to the divine nature. That is confusing, to be sure, but we must confess it.
Thus, we are left with the objection that God the Son must have eternally possessed two natures, or else God eternally experiences some sequence of time. More than that, it is possible to push things back further and say that if God does not experience a sequence, then he is eternally Creator. Most extreme of all, one could argue that creation itself is eternal as did some of the ancient Greeks, but this option is simply not open to the Christian. It violates Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created…”
I will again do you the service of admitting that there are no easy answers here. Theologians and philosophers sometimes willfully ignore easy answers for their own reasons, but I do not believe that is the case in this circumstance. It is a legitimate theological difficulty: one that has a perfect solution, but perhaps not one we can fully comprehend.
Before or Beyond?
When we order things in time, we do so in terms of before and after, but how should we order things when time is not in play? If the eternity of God requires that he is without succession, how should we understand that existence? We can perhaps say that he has a duration without a succession, but that doesn’t help us much given that duration in this natural world always involves a succession of time.
We must confess that God exists outside of time even as he is omnipresent within it. If he existed before time was created, even as he existed before the rest of the physical universe was created, then he himself is not subject to it. Though he is present and sees all within it, he also views it from the outside. This is why I suggested the comparison between time and a translucent sphere (or 4D hypersphere) that an observer could look at from outside. When it comes to an atemporal being, we would perhaps do better to speak in terms of “inside” and “outside” rather than “before” and “after”.
Of course, scripture uses the language of before and after to refer to God. “Before the mountains were born / Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, / Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.” (Psalm 90:2) But logic and our observation of the natural world would suggest to us that this is accommodated language meant to reveal truth to human beings in a manner that we can understand. As our minds have no capacity to fully comprehend non-linear or atemporal existence, we must be given language that accords with our own experience in order to grasp something of the truth revealed. For if there was no timeline before the timeline began, then we cannot technically speak of it in terms of before and after. We can speak only of time and eternity, or of being inside or outside time. One might almost say that eternity wraps around time.
I believe we should also make a distinction between chronological and logical precedence. Earlier in this article, I talked about how God has no beginning in two senses: 1) he did not come to be at a point in time, and 2) there is nothing logically prior to him such that he derives his existence from it. The first is an example of chronological precedence, while the second is an example of logical precedence.
The word chronology implies an ordering of events according to time. If one thing comes before another in this sense, it means that the first thing precedes the second on the timeline. The first thing existed, time passed, and then the second thing came into existence. For example, my mother precedes me chronologically because she was conceived before I was. 2018 also precedes 2019 chronologically.
Chronological precedence is fairly easy to understand, but what about logical precedence? When one thing precedes another in this sense, it means that the second thing has its origin or existence from the first thing in one sense or another. An example here would be the logical precedence of God the Father over God the Son. It is not a chronological precedence, because there was never a time when the Father was but the Son was not. Neither is it a precedence of power or majesty, for both share in the divine essence which is infinite in both. Rather, the Church has historically confessed that the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, while the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. These are known as relations of origin and are an example of logical precedence. While the Father does not come first chronologically, we speak of him as the first of the three divine persons because he begets the Son and the Spirit proceeds from them both.
Another example of logical precedence can be found in the ordering of God’s decrees. While God did not decide to create, stop to process new information, decide to allow the Fall, stop to process new information, and then decide to save the elect, we may still consider a logical ordering of these steps. This does not imply that time went by between them, for they are all part of God’s decree, which scripture refers to as eternal. (e.g., Hebrews 13:20) So the eternal duration of God does not operate according to chronological precedence, but logical precedence.
I would submit that this is how we should speak when it comes to our eternal, atemporal God understood outside the temporal universe he created. (ad intra rather than ad extra) God has logical precedence over creation, but not chronological precedence, because a chronology requires time, and there is no time except in creation. Nevertheless, we can speak of things “before” or “after” creation, by which we mean things that logically precede or succeed it in eternity. This logical precedence is the way that eternity is ordered. Therefore, while it is not incorrect to speak of God being before the world (after all, scripture uses that language), it would be more technically accurate to say that he is beyond the world or not bound by the world.
What Then is Logic?
“Alright, so if God’s eternity is ordered through logical precedence, then what exactly is it? How does it work? How do we measure it?”
At this point, I must remind you that earlier in this essay I warned that theology proper sometimes forces us into situations where we must simply say, “We know it works because it does. We can’t explain it.” I can tell you there is some kind of order to God’s eternity (or eternal duration, if you will), but I can’t define it. I have no idea how it works, and I have no idea how to measure it, if indeed it can be measured at all. To do any of those things would, I suspect, require the mind of God. We are off the map here. We have no language to describe atemporal existence. We can deny what it is not, but we cannot properly define what it is.
Perhaps that seems like a cop out. I totally understand. After all, haven’t I suggested that other theological positions (e.g., that the atemporal God became temporal) are logically inconsistent? How then can I throw up my hands and say, “There’s no logical explanation for this, so you just have to trust me.” This certainly seems hypocritical.
You are naturally welcome to reach your own conclusion, but I would defend myself by saying that some things violate logic because they do not agree with revealed truth, and some things violate logic simply because the rules of logic do not apply to them. Consider the hypostatic union again: the incarnation of the Son of God in human flesh as he took on a human nature. This does not violate logic in terms of contradicting revealed truth, because scripture has made this argument to us. However, it does violate logic in the sense that we have no resources in our natural world nor our created minds to comprehend how such a thing could take place. We can describe certain things about it and deny various errors, but we cannot fully comprehend it. We must simply accept by faith that it worked, because we have the evidence of its success.
I would suggest that the difficulty of understanding God’s atemporality—how he could create or how he relates to us—is a logical challenge of the same type. I don’t know what it feels like to be God or to exist in such a way that I am not going through a succession of moments. Yet God does exist, he has created, and he relates, so it obviously works in some manner, even if we cannot understand it.
Our task when it comes to divine eternity is primarily to reject erroneous understandings that conflict with scripture or the commonly available principles of our natural world. For example, we know the sun rises in the morning both because scripture tells us so and because anyone on planet earth can observe it. We know the earth revolves around the sun because we now have instruments capable of recording the fact. To deny either would therefore be illogical, but as for how the sun was made, we must confess that we have no idea of the exact mechanism. That does not mean it is illogical that the sun was created, but rather that it goes beyond the scope of our logic. What we must do is deny that the sun is eternal, because scripture has assured us it is not. We must also deny that the sun is a flat hexagon, because basic observation reveals that to be false.
This is how we should approach the matter of God’s eternity. Once we eliminate all possibilities that are not scripturally or logically sustainable, we are left with nothing but what God originally gave to Moses: “I AM”. It may boggle our mind, and yet we confess it to be true. The essence of God is so far beyond our ability to comprehend that we must simply acknowledge our limitations and praise the one who is majestic beyond our capacity to describe or imagine. Would we hope to control him by understanding him fully? Would we hope to bring him down to earth? No, he came down to earth, but he is still higher above us than the heavens are above that earth. That is what makes him God.
Conclusion
Boethius famously defined eternity in relation to God as “the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment”.[4] We cannot comprehend exactly what this means or what the experience would be like, but we must confess that it is the case. If God moves through a succession of moments rather than possessing “endless life whole and perfect at a single moment”, then he is changeable. To pull out the thread of atemporality is to unravel the tapestry of divine simplicity. God is not simple if his existence can be divided into this moment and that instead of being whole and undivided eternally. (See my previous article about divine simplicity.)
Perhaps that seems overly theoretical, but there is also a very practical significance for our Christian lives. Consider that the promises of God are resting upon his eternity. This is what gave the prophet Habakkuk hope. “Are You not from everlasting, / O Lord, my God, my Holy One? / We will not die.” (Habakkuk 11:12a) It was also a source of strength for the Psalmist.
“Of old You founded the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.
Even they will perish, but You endure;
And all of them will wear out like a garment;
Like clothing You will change them and they will be changed.
But You are the same,
And Your years will not come to an end.
The children of Your servants will continue,
And their descendants will be established before You.” (Psalms 120:25-28)
There is an “eternal covenant” by which God saves us, (Hebrews 13:20) and his unchanging nature is what ensures he will perform what he has sworn. This is why scripture tells us, “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself…” (Hebrews 6:13) To swear by eternity is to make the thing absolutely certain, for the eternity of God is not subject to change. “Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.” (James 1:17)
It is the eternity of the Triune God that allows us to proclaim that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Hebrews 3:8) All glory to the God who would grant us eternal life, that we may dwell with eternal divinity. The temporal will give way to the eternal.
“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)
All scripture quotations are from The New American Standard Bible, copyright The Lockman Foundation.
Now that you’ve read all that, why not check it against some experts? See “What the Church has said about Divine Eternity”, the companion resource to this article.
[1] “Duration” in The Oxford English Dictionary online. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/duration
[2] In his important analysis of historic Reformed thought, Richard Muller rightly observes that theologians in the 17th century and earlier did not often operate according to this assumption. Rather, they “held to the Augustinian conception of time as the mutation of the finite order and not as an objective reality or ‘thing,’ an assumption which was disputed toward the end of the seventeenth century by various Newtonians.” (Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. III – The Divine Essence and Attributes [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003], 360.) I, on the other hand, am operating according to modern scientific assumptions. Experiments conducted with two atomic clocks placed at different elevations have demonstrated that the one closer to the earth’s surface registers less elapsed time than the one farther from its surface. This is on account of the increasing gravitational force exerted on smaller objects that move closer to a larger object such as the earth, a concept known as time dilation. Happily, I seem to reach many of the same conclusions as the Reformed scholastics while operating according to a different, post-Newtonian and Einsteinian understanding of what time is. I also do not fault those theologians, for they were simply operating according to the information available in their own era.
[3] Some theologians, particularly in the Lutheran tradition, have suggested a one-way communication of properties (communicatio idiomatum) from Christ’s divine nature to his human nature, such that his human nature can now be omnipresent in the Eucharist. Reformed theologians have traditionally rejected this understanding as a Christological error.
[4] Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy, translated by H.R. James (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1900), 197.