The Eternal God
In time of old You founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands. Even they will perish, but You endure; all of them will wear out like a garment; like clothing You will change them and they will pass away. But You are the same, and Your years will not come to an end. Psalm 102:25-27 NASB
In time of old/ endure – Pagan Christianity. The book by that title created quite a stir in 2001. It explored the syncretism of Christian practices with pagan rituals. Some Christian circles even banned reading it. But Viola’s book only scratched the surface. It dealt with architecture, service order, format, tithing, etc. But it didn’t touch the theological and philosophical foundations. When the sequel arrived, it implored believers to change the way that they worshipped. It didn’t expect them to change how they think about God. Too bad. Changes in practice don’t mean much if you don’t reconstruct the basic thinking.
One of those basic thoughts about God is called eternity. For most Christian believers, this simply means that God lives forever. But this is naïve. Theologians don’t say things like “God lives forever.” Why? Because they know that God is transcendent. Time doesn’t apply to Him. He is, in their view, “outside” of time. Why aren’t they satisfied with “God lives forever”? The answer is straightforward. Something that lives, changes. That’s what it means to live. And God doesn’t change—ever! He is (the big word) immutable. He cannot change. It’s not that He chose not to change. It’s that it isn’t logically possible for God to change. Why? Because anything that changes was once something else and now is different. And if God is perfect, perfection cannot once be one thing and then later by something else. Perfect means unchangeable. Anything that is “in” time, experiences change. Therefore, God cannot be “in” time. To say “God lives forever” is to imply that God experiences temporality. Theologians say, “God is eternal” and by that they mean, “God is not in time.”
It comes as no surprise that Aquinas assigns to the concept “eternity” exactly those characteristics which he has determined can only be applied to immutable being. Eternity is seen as the contrasting opposite of time. Since time is the successive numbering of change, eternity must not involve succession. Eternity not only has nothing to do with successiveness, it also has nothing to do with measure because all measurement implies intervals and intervals belong only to the temporal. Moreover, whatever is eternal cannot be associated with change for all change is a mark of the temporal. Eternity is characterized by two things: unending existence and instantaneous existence of the whole.[1]
Aquinas’ idea of eternity is integrally connected with perfection and completion. Aquinas employs an argument something like this:
{1} Change is measured by time. Time is the measure of change.
{2} Wherever there is change, there must be time.
{3} Whenever there is time, there must be change.
{4} Therefore, where there is no change, there cannot be time; and when there is no time, there cannot be change.
With immutability, theologians attempted to formalize the belief that God does not and cannot change. Under the influence of the Greeks, this changeless existence could only occur if it were not temporal. Since the presupposition of Aquinas’ discussion of eternity is the doctrine of immutability, it is only reasonable that he should assert the creation of time with the creation of material substance. Prior to this creation, only God existed. And since God’s existence is absolutely changeless, it provides nothing for the measurement “time” to express. Consequently, time could only begin when something which had the possibility for change (and actually did change) existed. We might put it like this: In Aquinas’ view, time could not have begun until there was an actual change in substance.[2]
This is why many Christians claim that God “created” time when He created the material universe.
And all of this makes sense—until we read the Bible. The Bible consistently treats God as though He participates in the temporal realm just as we do. The only difference is that His life never ends. He endures. The Hebrew is ʿāmad. Typically used of standing before God, this verb expresses the continuing presence of YHVH. It does not suggest that God’s endurance is somehow removed from His creation, existing in a timeless, transcendent realm. In fact, the next verse even speaks of God’s years not coming to an end. Everywhere we look in the biblical text, God is intimately involved in the cosmos. Yes, of course, there are passages about His lofty abode, His majestic sovereignty, His omnipresent observation, but nowhere do we find the following crucial theological terms: timeless and perfect.
Theology, influenced by Greek abstraction, invented the Holy Other God, the God transcendentally removed for any human conception. It is well to remember Heschel’s work:
“An adequate Biblical ontology . . . must be based on . . . the divine concern. God and the world in relation, and not God in isolation, is the subject matter of human experience and thought. Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as theology (the logos about God). Heschel calls the Bible ‘God’s anthropology’ rather than ‘man’s theology’ since it deals with man as standing in relation to God and under his demand and not with the divine nature or essence. And just as Biblical ontology cannot deal with God apart from the world, it is also unable to look at the world in isolation from God. The divine concern is, therefore, a more basic category than being.”[3]
“But from the pole of inclusiveness, seen as eternity, the essence of time is attachment and communication. Such communication does not begin beyond but within time. To be lasting does not mean to endure through a long stretch of time in isolation, but rather to commune with God. If reality is experienced as the act of God’s concern, then every present moment is not a terminal but a signal of beginning, as act of creation. ‘Time is perpetual innovation, a synonym for continuous creation.’”[4]
“The Bible tells us nothing about God in Himself; all its sayings refer to His relations to man. His own life and essence are neither told nor disclosed. . . The only events in the life of God the Bible knows of are acts done for the sake of man: . .”[5]
“The Bible is primarily not man’s vision of God but God’s vision of man. The Bible is not man’s theology but God’s anthropology, dealing with man and what He asks of him rather than with the nature of God. God did not reveal to the prophets eternal mysteries but His knowledge and love of man. It was not the aspiration of Israel to know the Absolute but to ascertain what He asks of man; to commune with His will rather than with His essence.”[6]
By the way, that opening prepositional phrase, “in time of old,” is the single word lipnim. It’s an idiom. It is usually connected to turning the face (“before” “in the presence of”). It’s not about time. Hebrew doesn’t have a word for the abstract idea of time. The sentence basically says, “God founded the earth before.” It doesn’t mean “before time.”
So read your Bible as it is written, not as the Greek/Western theologians wish you to read it. Read about God’s involvement, His feelings, His concern, His repentance, His hopes. Read about His life as He reveals His purposes to men. You and I don’t serve a transcendent Being so removed from us that we have no real idea about Him at all. If that is the case, we know nothing of God. Instead, we serve an involved God, a God who participates in our temporal world along with us, a God who cares and who shows that He does—every day.
Topical Index: eternity, endure, stand, ʿāmad, transcendence, Psalm 102:26-27
[1] Skip Moen, God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience, p. 117.
[2] Skip Moen, God, Time and the Limits of Omniscience, pp. 140-141.
[3] Fritz A. Rothschild, “Introduction,” in Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 24.
[4] Fritz A. Rothschild, “Introduction,” in Abraham Heschel Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 30.
[5] Abraham Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (Free Press Paperbacks, 1959), p. 111.
[6] Ibid., p. 112.
