God Is Eternal

§ 52. By the Eternity of God we understand the absolutely timeless causality of God, which conditions not only all that is temporal, but time itself as well.

1. If the eternity of God be separated from His omnipotence, which is here confined to its special relation to eternity, it becomes only a so-called ‘inactive’ attribute; and thus is often described as infinity or immeasurability applied to time. To represent it thus, however, would only encourage the representation of God apart from the manifestations of His power, an idea quite out of harmony with the religious consciousness and so quite empty for us. Such an idea would in any case include the antithesis of rest or idleness and activity, always suspect in relation to God, but in the sphere of Christian religion quite inapplicable. The religious consciousness, however (since we relate the world as such to God), becomes actual only as consciousness of His eternal power.¹ On the other hand, poetical representations express the eternity of God as an existence before all time;² but this cannot be taken up into didactic language without harm, for in this sphere a comparison of more or less can only be made between similars; but the divine causality, since time itself is conditioned by it,³ must so much the more be thought of as utterly timeless.⁴ This is achieved through expressions denoting the temporal, and therefore as it were pictorially, since the temporal oppositions of before and after, older and younger disappear in coincidence when applied to God.⁵

While, however, we relate the eternity of God to His omnipotence, and make it equal and identical therewith, it still does not by any means follow that the temporal existence of the world must reach back into infinity, so that no beginning of the world can be thought of.⁶ For as what now arises in time is yet grounded in the omnipotence of God, and therefore willed and enacted by Him in an eternal, i.e. timeless, manner, the world also could be timelessly willed to emerge in the beginning of time. On the other hand, we need not be anxious lest, if the world is given no beginning or end, the difference between divine causality and causality within the natural order should be cancelled, and the world be as eternal as God. On the contrary, the eternity of God remains none the less unique, since the antithesis between the temporal and the eternal is not in the least diminished by the infinite duration of time.⁷

2. But, of course, this relationship is much obscured by all explanations of the eternity of God which either equate it with apparent eternity,⁸ i.e. endless time, or even merely compare it therewith.⁹ Even the common formula to the effect that the eternity of God is the attribute in virtue of which He has neither begun nor will cease to exist, is of this kind. For since here only the terminal points of temporal duration are negated, while between them the existence of God is made equivalent to a temporal one, the intrinsically temporal character and the measurability of the Divine Being, and therefore also His activity through time, are not denied but rather indirectly affirmed. We must therefore reject as inadequate all those explanations which abrogate for God only the limits of time and not time itself, and would form eternity from time by the removal of limits, while in fact these are opposites. Even if poetical passages cannot describe eternity except by pictures of unending time,¹⁰ the New Testament itself teaches us how for didactic purposes these must be supplemented.¹¹ While therefore it must be admitted of some theologians that, with Socinus, only for other dogmatic reasons, they have here rejected the perfectly scriptural statements of Augustine and Boethius, in the case of others that rejection can only be explained as due to the fear that if eternity be taken as timelessness nothing really is affirmed at all. But this can only happen if eternity is placed among the inactive attributes, while yet it is also thought that each such attribute by itself alone expresses the Essence of the Divine Being. On the other hand, it disappears if, as we demand, this conception is combined with that of omnipotence. For, in that a divine activity is posited, something may be posited, unknown indeed and perhaps not clearly conceivable, but by no means simply nothing. Indeed, finite being offers us some real help in conceiving the idea of eternity, since to a great degree time is merely an adjunct to finite being in so far as it is caused, and to a less degree in so far as it is cause. But in so far as finite being produces time-series with their content, thus remaining the same and identical with itself (as, e.g., the Ego, as the enduring ground of all changing spiritual states, especially of resolves, each of which again as a moment of the Ego produces a concrete time-series), then, as the enduring causal ground relatively to the changing caused, it is posited as timeless. And with some such kind of analogy we must rest content.

POSTSCRIPT: THE UNCHANGEABILITY OF GOD

If the idea of eternity is thus conceived, there is no reason to introduce unchangeability as a separate attribute: it is already contained in the idea of eternity. For if God, in His relation to the world, conditioning its absolute dependence, is completely timeless, there is in His being no manifold of parts following one upon another. It appears to be different if, setting out from a distinction between substance and existence in God, eternity is presented merely as one aspect of unchangeability.¹² But for us it comes to the same thing, since the other aspect is an inactive attribute which expresses nothing actually present in the religious consciousness. We may do better, therefore, to take the principle, that God is unchangeable, merely as a cautionary rule to ensure that no religious emotion shall be so interpreted, and no statement¹³ about God so understood, as to make it necessary to assume an alteration in God of any kind.

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Footnotes

1. Rom. 1²⁰. ↩

2. Ps. 90². ↩

3. Augustin., de Gen. c. Man. i. 3: Deus enim fecit et tempora … Quomodo enim erat tempus, quod Deus non fecerat, cum omnium temporum ipse sit fabricator.—The same meaning seems to be indicated by the phrase ἀφθαρτος βασιλεύς τῶν αἰώνων, 1 Tim. 1¹⁷. ↩

4. Aug., Conf. xi. 16: Nec tu tempore tempora praecedis, alioquin non omnia tempora praecederes; sed praecedis omnia celsitudine semper praesentis aeternitatis.—Boeth., p. 137: Interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio. Aeternum necesse est et sui compos praesens sibi semper assistere, et infinitatem mobilis temporis habere praesentem. ↩

5. Augustin., de Gen. ad litt. viii. 48: Nullo temporum vel intervallo vel spatio incommutabili aeternitate et antiquior est omnibus, quia ipse est ante omnia, et novior omnibus, quia idem ipse post omnia. The same as 2 Pet. 3⁸, in another form. ↩

6. Cf. Joh. Damasc., c. Man. vi.: οὐ γὰρ πρότερον μὴ θέλων ὕστερον ἠθέλησεν, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ ἠθέλεν ἐν τῷ ὑπ’ αὐτοῦ ὡρισμένῳ καιρῷ γίνεσθαι τὴν κτίσιν. ↩

7. Augustin., de mus. vi. 29: tempora fabricantur et ordinantur aeternitatem imitantia.—Idem, de Gen. c. Man. i. 4: Non enim coaevum Deo mundum istum dicimus, quia non ejus aeternitatis est hic mundus, cuius aeternitatis est Deus. ↩

8. Socin., Praelectt. cap. viii.: Nec vero in mundi creatione tempus primum extitit … quamobrem ipsius quoque Dei respectu aliquid praeteritum aliquid vero praesens, aliquid etiam futurum est. Mosheim, Theol. dogm. i. p. 254: Aeternitas est duratio infinita. Cf. Cudw., Syst. intell., p. 780.—Reinh., p. 104: Aeternitas est existentiae divinae infinita continuatio, which assumes an inadmissible distinction between substance and existence in God. ↩

9. Eckermann, Dogm. i. p. 123, calls it a necessity, because he compares it with the immortality of the soul and the indestructibility of force. ↩

10. Job 36²⁶, Ps. 102²⁸. ↩

11. Cf. 2 Pet. 3⁸ with Ps. 90². ↩

12. Cf. Reinhard, Dogm., p. 105. If we regard unchangeableness in relation to the essence of God, it is simplicity; if in relation to His existence, it is eternity. But previously he had treated simplicity as a separate attribute, and eternity was unendingness contemplated as belonging to God’s existence. ↩

13. Ex. 32¹⁴, Jer. 26¹³ 42¹⁰. ↩