Thesis.
SECTION IV: ON THE ETERNITY OF GOD
Thesis.
§ 137. God is eternal with a true, properly spoken, and infinite eternity. Boethius defines eternity as “the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of unending life” (De consol., bk. 5, pros. 6). The Scholastics define it as “an interminable, indivisible, and independent duration.” It is interminable because it excludes beginning and ending limits, indivisible because it excludes all succession of time, independent because it excludes every imperfection and change.
But concerning “eternity,” this must be understood in its true, proper, and absolute sense. For “eternity” (
) is used in two ways in Scripture: (1) Improperly, for a very long yet limited time, and indeed simply (a) for something of long duration; (b) for something to which no end is attached; (c) for the whole course and succession of this time. Gen. 17:13: “There will be a covenant in your flesh, a covenant 
of forever,” namely, as long as the Law endures. Exod. 21:6: “He will serve him 
forever,” that is, until the jubilee.
It is also used in Scripture (2) properly for an interminable and infinite duration. This is also used in two ways: either for a duration with a limit only in one direction, namely, with reference to an interminable end or final limit—a posteriori, as they say—in which sense angels and human souls are called eternal. Or it is used absolutely, for a duration that is interminable in both directions, namely, with reference to a beginning and an end, with reference both to a beginning point and an ending point, a priori and a posteriori, before and after. In this sense only God is eternal because He has neither beginning nor succession nor end. He is eternal not by grace, like created things that will endure forever, but by nature. This pure and perfect act [i.e., God] is free from every passive potential, every succession, every composition. His being [esse] is always a standing being [ens], which never progresses to [become] a flowing being. His simple essence excludes every succession of before and after, past and future. Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 11, c. 6: “Time does not exist without some change of movement, but there is no change in eternity.” Boethius: “As ‘now’ flows, it makes time. As ‘now’ stands, it makes eternity.”
Proof.
§ 138. This eternity of God is confirmed by: (I) Holy Scripture in various ways: (1) by simple and plain assertion. Gen. 21:33: “Abraham called on the name of God 
eternal,” who endures and exists perpetually. Ps. 55:[19]: 
, “sitting from of old,” that is, He dwells since the beginning. Luther: der ewiglich bleibet [“who remains eternally”]. Isa. 40:28: 
, “The Lord is the God of forever,” that is, the eternal Lord. Isa. 57:15: “Thus says the high and lofty One, 
who dwells perpetually,” forever, the dweller of eternity. Dan. 6:26: “He is the living God, 
enduring forever.” Rom. 16:26: “the command of the 
, eternal God.”
(2) By denying time and succession. Job 36:26: “Of the number of His years there is no investigation.” Isa. 43:10: “Before Me no god was formed and after Me there will be none.” Ps. 90:[4]; 2 Pet. 3:8: “A thousand years before the Lord are as one day.”
(3) By attributing eternal properties and operations. His mercy is said to exist “from eternity to eternity” (Ps. 103:17). To Him is attributed “eternal counsel” (Ps. 33:11), “an eternal kingdom” (Exod. 15:18), “eternal power” (Dan. 6:26), “eternal glory” (1 Pet. 5:10), etc.
(4) By metaphoric description. Days and years are attributed to Him, but these are totally different from our days and years. In Dan. 7:9 and 22 He is called “the Ancient of Days.” Ps. 102:[27]: “Your years have no end.” Job 10:5: “Are Your days as the days of man or Your years as man’s years?” Isa. 43:13: “Even from a day 
I am He,” that is, from eternity, before there was a day.
§ 139. (II) Evident reason confirms His eternity. He who is the Creator of all things and all times, before whom there is nothing, with whom there is neither past nor future, neither before nor after, who is utterly simple and immutable, who remains immovable outside of every succession and every movement, who lives and rules forever, He indeed is truly and properly eternal. But all these things belong to God. Therefore.
He to whom belongs all the requirements of eternity, spoken of properly, is indeed truly and properly eternal. But all the requirements belong to God. The Philosopher says that there are two requirements for eternity: first, that it is 
—continuous, simultaneous, whole—having no succession nor interruption in it; second, that it is 
, timeless—lacking beginning and end. These, however, belong to God properly—most properly. (See Thomas, [ST,] p. 1, q. 10, art. 2.)
§ 140. (III) The judgments of the fathers are added. Irenaeus, bk. 2, c. 64, p. 164: “God alone is without beginning and end and is truly and always the same in the same way, and He is Lord of all.”
** Justin, QQ. et resp. ad Graec., f. 29: “Nothing in God is temporal.” And later: “He who remains has nothing temporal.” **
Hilary, De Trinit., bk. 2, p. 15: “Run with your mind. If you think something is His farthest part, you will always find Him, because though you always reach out farther, He is always where you reach. Again, turn back the times, and you will find that He always exists. Should the number of your calculations leave you speechless, it still does not cause the constant existence of God to fail. Stir up your intelligence and embrace Him wholly with your mind; you hold onto nothing because this whole has something left over, and this something left over is always in the whole.”
Augustine, De Trinit., bk. 4, c. 21: “He is without any temporal movement above every creature, without any intervals of times and places, and He is simultaneously one and the same from eternity to eternity as eternity itself.” On Psalm 101: “God’s years and God Himself are not two different things, but God’s years are God’s eternity. Eternity itself is the substance of God and has nothing changeable. There [in eternity], nothing is past as if it no longer is, nothing is future as if it is not yet, but it is not there unless it is. It is not there—was and will be—because even what was is not now, and what will be is not yet. But whatever is there, is not unless it is.”
The Damascene calls God “eternal, without beginning, uncreated, unbegotten, imperishable, and immortal” (De orth. fid., bk. 1, c. 8).
Something of God’s eternity was known even to the heathen (see Rom. 1:20). According to Laertius, when the philosopher Thales was asked, “What is the very oldest thing in all the nature of things?” he answered, “God, because He never began to exist.” When he was asked what God is, he answered: “He who has neither beginning nor end.”
Plato, Tim.: “Nothing of the past, nothing of the future can be attributed to God without blasphemy.”
Antithesis.
§ 141. These things must be set against: (1) The Manichaeans, who establish two coeternal principles, namely, two natures, one of good and one of evil. (See Augustine, De haeres., c. 46.)
(2) The Arnoldists, who said around the year of Christ 1140: “In God there is also something (eternal) besides God.”
(3) In 1226, among other errors, this also was publicly condemned at Paris: that “all things separated from the first principle are coeternal” (Cent. Magdeb. 13., f. 575), from which we understand that at that time the error of the eternity of the angels was flourishing. (However, God alone is eternal, Ps. 90:2; 102:26[–27].)
(4) Vorstius, who in many ways undermines the doctrine of God’s eternity. (a) He denies that “God’s eternity can be demonstrated from those passages in which God is said to have existed before His creatures” (De attribut. div., p. 224). “On the basis of Ps. 90:2 (“You are God from forever”), God’s absolute eternity is not proved solidly because whatever was before this world is not necessarily from eternity.” On p. 310 he also repeats the same thing. We respond. The Scholastics indeed argue about a sort of participated eternity, which they describe as follows: “Eternity is taken to mean something that in actuality has neither beginning nor end. Nevertheless beginning and end are not opposed to it, as if God had produced from eternity some angel or other creature that would never stop existing.” However, this participated eternity is unknown to Holy Scripture, which attributes to God alone an eternity that lacks all beginning and end and places it among the noncommunicated attributes. Before the beginning of the creation, Moses described nothing for us except pure eternity, and nothing except the uncreated and divine being will be described. Thus “to be before the creation and before the foundation of the world was laid” is also equivalent to the words “to be from eternity,” as is gathered clearly from Ps. 90:2; Eph. 1:4; Matt. 25:34; John 17:5; etc. As there is no midpoint between God the Creator and His creation, so also there is no midpoint between eternity and time, which began with the creation of the world. (See our De glor. Dei, disp. 5, § 14.)
§ 142. When this had been set against Vorstius, he responded: “To some extent one can prove God’s eternity through accident from this (from Ps. 102:[1]), but not demonstratively; for Moses’ aim was not to prove God’s absolute eternity but God’s old and constant affection for His people, or the paternal and eternal benevolence of God toward us” (Exeg. apolog., c. 13). He calls it a weak proposition “if someone should say that whatever exists before the earth and the mountains were created is simply and necessarily eternal, because the opinion of those who have said that the angels were created a long time before the world is not improbable.” (See Jerome, Epist. tit. 1.) Vorstius again, c. 14, p. 66: “One cannot demonstratively conclude from the existence of something before the world was created that that something has eternity in the proper sense, that is, an unlimited and absolute eternity, because God could have produced some very potential creature before the world.”
We respond. (α) We should not here indulge our own speculations or the bare assertions of some of the fathers. The guessers must try to prove that the angels were created before Moses’ six days of creation, but Scripture alone must be heeded, which sets forth “being before the creation of the world, before there were earth and mountains,” as the specific description of eternity and as an attribute fitting for God alone. We draw the following conclusion then: Whatever is the specific [propria] description of the eternal God can be predicated of nothing created; otherwise it would not be specific. “Being before the foundations of the world were laid,” however, is the specific description of the eternal God. Therefore. Whatever did not begin in time is eternal. Whatever existed before the earth and mountains existed did not begin in time. Therefore whatever existed before the earth and mountains existed is eternal. The major proposition relies upon the immediate opposition of “eternal” and “temporal.”
(β) As Scripture attributes the work of creation to God alone as proper to Him (Job 9:8; Ps. [135:6]; Isa. 45:6; Jer. 10:11; etc.), so it declares to us “being before created things” as an attribute proper to the Eternal One alone. Therefore as I correctly infer that whoever created heaven and earth is the true God, so also I am correct in inferring that whoever exists before the creation of all things is the eternal God. Just as in the prior instance one is not permitted to think that the angels were employed in the ministry of creation, so also in the latter instance one is not permitted to think that the angels existed before the creation of the world.
(γ) We invert Vorstius’s argument. If Psalm 90 describes the old and constant affection of God toward His people, then certainly “being before the mountains and the earth” is also a description of eternity. The reasoning for this is that the mercy of God lasts from eternity to eternity. 2 Tim. 1:9: “Grace was given to us in Christ before the times of the world.”
(δ) With good cause we compare Prov. 8:22ff. with this passage of the psalm. There, Solomon describes this description of eternity in greater detail and most clearly shows that “to be from eternity” and “to be before the depths, the fountains of waters, the mountains, etc., were formed” are equivalent in meaning.
(ε) To claim that there was time before the world was created is to claim an opposite in what belongs together [
] because time began with the world and no other beginning limit [terminus a quo] or beginning of time than the beginning of creation can be established if we want to follow Scripture. To this pertains that statement of Moses: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” (Gen. 1:1).
(ζ) When the proper subject is denied, its essential feature [adjunctum] is denied. Heaven as the dwelling place of the angels did not exist before the creation of the world. Therefore the angels did not exist before the creation of the world.
(η) Every creature as finite is limited by its own “when.” Before the creation of the world, there was no definite “when.” Therefore neither did any creature exist and, consequently, neither did the angels.
§ 143. (b) Vorstius denies that “the eternity of God is completely infinite and simultaneously all present. Rather, in it,” he says, “there is the succession of past, present, and future” (De attrib., p. 266). However, he badly contradicts both himself and the truth. The former is proved from the fact that on p. 12 he lists eternity among God’s attributes, and on p. 27 he asserts that “the properties of God are the very essence of God.” From this it follows of itself that eternity is not an accident but God’s very essence. How, then, could it not be infinite? The latter is inferred from the following: God’s eternity is nothing else but the duration of God. The duration of God is nothing else but His enduring existence, and the existence of God is the very essence of God. This is something Vorstius cannot deny and still preserve his own hypotheses. Therefore we make the further inference: God’s essence is indivisible, infinite, simultaneously all present, and excluding every succession of time. Eternity is God’s very essence. Therefore eternity is indivisible, infinite, simultaneously all present, excluding all succession of time, and, consequently, coexisting with all differences of times.
Vorstius makes the exception, Apol. exeg., c. 12, p. 50:
Holy Writ witnesses that God now is, that He formerly was, and finally that He always will be (Rev. 1:4); it attributes to God days and years (Ps. 102:[27]; Dan. 7:13); it distinguishes His operations according to three differences of time (Isa. 44:6); it attributes to Him the recollection of past events and the foreknowledge and prediction of future events; and, finally, when God speaks about Himself in the prophets, He discerns the past and future in His actions: “I have redeemed you from Egypt; I remember My covenant formerly made with your fathers; I shall visit or lift up Jerusalem.”
We respond. All these things are said through condescension. Procopius, on Isaiah 3: “Scripture treats this topic for humans in a human fashion.” Because our intellect is finite and can conceive of eternity only under the image of a time that endures with a perpetual succession of segments (which is why Plato in Timaeus calls time “the image of eternity,” and Pindar calls time “the likeness of the eternal”), therefore the eternity of God is described in human fashion with words that indicate the succession of time but that, nevertheless, must be understood in a manner fitting for God. Thomas, [ST,] part 1, q. 10, art. 2: “Words of diverse times are attributed to God in as much as His eternity includes all times, not as though He changes through present, past, and future.”
If Vorstius wishes to say that this is begging the question [petitio principii], we set against him those statements of Scripture in which corporeal members and human emotions are attributed to God, which he himself cannot deny must be understood by anthropopathism and accommodation. But especially we set against him the fact that Scripture itself explains that days and years are attributed to God not properly but metaphorically, and that it assigns to Him a simple immutability devoid of all succession. (See Exod. 3:14; Ps. 2:7.) The distinction of past, present, and future does not properly exist in God, the eternal and infinite Creator, but in created and finite things, of which some were, some are, and some will be. Furthermore, God properly has not been, nor will be, but perpetually is—not in a flowing “now” but in a fixed “now.”
If we are to use these words that denote time to refer to God, they must first be freed from all imperfections. That which remains utterly perfect must be attributed to God: “For He is always the same” (Ps. 102:[27]). “With Him there is no change” (James 1:17). Nor is there substance to what Vorstius fears, that “if the eternity of God is said to coexist totally with all differences of times, created things themselves must be deemed eternal.” For the meaning is not that eternity coexists in all segments and differences of time taken simultaneously and existing simultaneously, but that it coexists with segments of time taken separately and succeeding one another. Therefore as the distinction of times in creatures does not take away God’s eternity, so God’s eternity does not take away the distinction of times in creatures nor does it cause His creatures not to be subject to the succession and change of times. As all finite beings depend on the infinite God, yet do not for this reason become infinite, so segments of time in creatures coexist with eternity, yet the creatures do not for this reason become eternal. As the heavenly machinery revolves around an immovable pole with an eternal motion, and the immovability of the pole is not disturbed by the motion of the heavenly machinery nor the movement of the machinery caused to stop by the immovability of the pole, so also eternity coexists with the segments of time that follow after each other, and neither is the fixed immovability of eternity27 disturbed by the continuous successions of flowing times nor is the succession of times destroyed by the fixed immovability of eternity.
** Augustine says it well: “Although that immutable and ineffable nature may not accept ‘was’ or ‘will be’ but only ‘is’ … nevertheless through the changeability of the times in which our changeability moves about, we are not lying when we say, ‘He was, and He will be, and He is.’ He was because He never was not; He will be because He never will not be; and He is because He always is” (treatise 99 on John; see the entire passage). **
§ 144. (5) These things must be set against the Photinians, who themselves undermine God’s eternity: (a) By denying along with Vorstius that the description of eternity in its proper and absolute sense is that God existed before the creation of the world. Eniedinus, on Proverbs 8: “There can be something before the creation of the world that is not eternal.” Schmalz, Contra Frantz., disp. 1, p. 12:
Frantz argues that whoever exists before the creation of the world is from eternity on this basis: when it is said of the Father that He existed before the earth existed, when neither the depths nor the rivers nor the mountains yet existed, by this it is signified that He exists from eternity. But who does not see how weak this is? For in the first place, it is quite uncertain that God’s eternity is described in this way. To be sure, these things can be predicated of God, who is eternal, but they are not predicated of Him directly in such a way as to be arguments for His eternity. For unless it is evident from somewhere else that God is eternal or from eternity, it will never be proved by speaking in this manner. Next, there is an obvious fallacy of the consequent.28 For it is not [correct to conclude]: concerning Him who is eternal, one can rightly say about Him that He existed before the earth existed, so conversely one can say about Him who existed before the world existed that He was from eternity. For did not the angels exist before the earth existed and the world was created? They, however, are not eternal.
These points show that Vorstius and Schmalz used the same people as their teachers. Moreover, they argue with the intent of undermining the argument for Christ’s true deity, which is drawn from Proverbs 8 and from parallel passages.
(b) By stating that there are differences and succession of time in eternity. (See Goslavius, Contra Kecker., p. 2, c. 8.) However, the former correctly contradicted him. The Catech. Racov. (pp. 66–67) and Schmalz (Exam. 157 error., p. 39) correctly deny that differences of time occur in eternity.
(c) By denying that God’s eternity is explicitly taught in the Scriptures. From this the consequence would be that it is not simply necessary for salvation to believe that God is eternal, for whatever is necessary for us to know for salvation, they claim, is in Holy Writ explicitly, as we have shown elsewhere. Schmalz, Contra disp. 1. Frantz., q. 12: “Although it has perhaps never been written according to the letter that God exists from eternity, reason itself thus teaches that if God were not eternal, He could not exist, namely, as the supreme being.” Thus a greater force in asserting the eternity of God is attributed to the light of reason than to the light of revelation, though the eternity of the divine essence is nevertheless incomprehensible to our reason. Luther, commentary on Genesis 1, p. 2b: “It is insanity to argue much about God outside of and before time because that is wishing to comprehend the naked divinity or naked divine essence. Because this is impossible, God covers Himself in His works and in certain appearances, as He today covers Himself in Baptism, in Absolution, etc. If you should depart from these, you will then pass beyond measure, place, time, and into sheer nothing, about which there can be no knowledge, according to the Philosopher.” Schmalz himself behaves well, for he appears to have intended to correct that daring statement of his, for he adds: “Although one can claim correctly that it (namely, that God is eternal) was said there expressly, when God is said to be eternal.”
(d) By denying that eternity is a proper attribute of God. Schmalz, Contra disp. Frantz., de extr. judicio, p. 414: “I would not deny that there have been and are among the more learned those who feel differently from others in this matter” (about matter coexisting with God from eternity). On p. 415 he lists this question in the number of those “that truly pertain to neither salvation nor religion.” The source of his error is the denial of infinite divine power, which is required to produce something from nothing. (See our De glor. Dei, disp. 10, § 7.)
(e) By denying that the eternity of God is described by the words of Isa. 41:4: “I am the first and the last,” as we showed in the same place from Socinus and Ostorodt.
Questions regarding the eternity of God.
§ 145. (I) The question arises: Is eternity an attribute proper to God alone? We assert that Holy Scripture attributes eternity only to God and thereby distinguishes Him from creatures made in time. That which is truly, absolutely, and simply eternal is simply immutable. But no creature is simply unchangeable, because it has gone from not being to being and can go from being to not being. Only God, as utterly simple and infinite actuality, is simply unchangeable. Therefore only God is truly, absolutely, and simply eternal. Nothing else is its own duration because it is not its own being. But God is His own uniform being. Therefore He is also His own eternity. (See Thomas, [ST,] p. 1, q. 10, art. 2.)
That which is diverse from the essence of God cannot be eternal because eternity is the very essence of God. But all creatures are diverse from God’s essence. Therefore no creature is eternal. As nothing eternal is created, so nothing created is eternal. Consequently, to claim that a created thing is eternal implies a contradiction.
§ 146. (II) The question arises: Is eternity an absolute29 attribute of God in the same way as omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness are? Some people say it is not, persuaded as they are by the following argument: Eternity cannot be understood without a concept of time. Therefore eternity is said of God in a relative sense, namely, to the extent that it means that He lacks beginning and end, which are said only respectively.30 Also, when I ask whether God is eternal, I am not simply asking about God’s essence but about the duration of His essence. Similarly, when I respond that God’s essence is eternal and has neither beginning nor end but is outside of time, then I am making a pronouncement about God in a certain respect. Thomas, [ST,] p. 1, q. 10, art. 1: “It is right for us to come to an understanding of eternity through time. As the reckoning of time consists in numbering what comes before and what comes later in its motion, so also the reckoning of eternity consists in the apprehension of its uniformity, because it is completely outside of motion.” Yet the formal [principle] of eternity is not the lack of beginning and end but an immutability that excludes all succession of time, and the duration of the divine essence is nothing else but the ever-enduring divine essence. Consequently, when I attribute eternity to the divine essence, I am not assigning it some measure; rather, I am excluding every measure of time. Thomas, [ST,] p. 1, q. 10, art. 2: “Not only is God eternal, He is also His own eternity, though nothing else is its own duration because it is not its own being. But God is His own uniform being. Consequently, as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.”
§ 147. (III) The question arises: Is there not a succession according to earlier and later in divine actions just as there is in [His] essence? We respond. We must distinguish between eternal actions—which they call “personal” and “notional,”31 such as the begetting of the Son and the spiration [that is, “breathing”] of the Holy Spirit—and external acts or opera ad extra. (Philosophers distinguish between immanent and emanent action.) In the former there is no earlier nor later nor is there a priority or posterity of time between the begetting of the Son and the spiration of the Holy Spirit because both are eternal. In the latter actions, however, there is an earlier and later. Thus God created the world before He redeemed the human race. He calls before He justifies, and He justifies before He glorifies.
§ 148. (IV) The question arises: How is eternity different from time and aeviternity?32 Thomas, [ST,] part 1, q. 10, art. 5:
To the extent that something comes short of the essence of constantly enduring, so also it comes short of eternity. Some things come short in such a way that their being is the subject of transformation or consists in transformation. These things we measure by time. Some things come short in such a way that their being neither is the subject of transformation nor consists in transformation. Nevertheless these have transformation as an essential feature [adjunctum] either in actuality or in potential. These befit aeviternity. Secondarily and accidentally, eternity is distinguished from time and aeviternity in such a way that eternity lacks beginning and end, aeviternity has a beginning but lacks an end, and time has a beginning and an end.
Practical use.
§ 149. (1) Consoling. Our hope is in the eternal God whose “truth and mercy endures unto eternity” (Ps. 117:2) and who “keeps truth forever” (Ps. 146:6); therefore “He will not dismay” (Rom. 5:5). Isa. 54:10: “The mountains will depart and the hills will be removed, but My mercy will not depart from you and My covenant of peace will not be removed, says the Lord of mercy.” For His mercy and His covenant of peace are eternal. The Lord is our king “forever” and unto eternity (Ps. 10:16). Therefore He will defend the subjects of His kingdom forever (Ps. 37:28). Isa. 40:8: “The Word of the Lord endures unto eternity.” Therefore those who believe in the Word endure unto eternity. This God is “our God forever and beyond. He Himself will lead us above death” (Ps. [48:14]). “He has betrothed Himself to us forever” (Hosea 2:19). Therefore He will not abandon His betrothed.
(2) Admonishing. O my soul, created for eternity, divest yourself of the love of earthly and transitory things and desire only celestial things because they are eternal! Nothing temporal and unstable can provide rest for the soul or fulfill its desire, for it was created by God for eternity. Let us, then, cling by love to our eternal God, who is the end of our desires, “for we are but of yesterday and know nothing, because our days on earth are a shadow” (Job 8:9). Let us be carried, then, by the full desire of our heart to the Eternal One, lest we perish with the world when it tumbles and perishes. The world passes away, the earth perishes, all things in it perish, but he perishes worst who clings with his heart to earthly, transitory things. God intended visible and earthly things to come in great variety and change so that when we have perceived their fleetingness, we may lift our hearts to the eternal things, the things that are above, and say with David: “You, O Lord, are my portion in the land of the living” (Ps. 142:[5]) and “Whom have I in heaven besides You? There is none upon earth that I desire besides You. My flesh and heart have failed, but God is my rock of my heart and my portion forever” (Ps. 73:[25–26]).