The Eternity of God
Of the many attributes commonly ascribed to God – like transcendence, immanence, sovereignty, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and eternity – for many Christians, His eternity provokes the most wonderment.
This, perhaps, is because while it is easy for us to conceive of something having no end, it is not easy for us conceive of something having no beginning. Yet, implicit in the Eternity of God, is that God had no beginning.
Consider, for example, ancient fossils and animal skeletal remains tens of millions of years old and expected to be preserved indefinitely. Their longevity is easily within our mental grasp as is also the prospect of their indefinite duration. Both are measurable in time. Neither is particularly mind-boggling since their duration, no matter how long, does not outrun time. But if we were to say that such fossils and skeletal remains had no beginning we would be saying that they always were and that there was never a time when they were not. That would make them beyond one of our most basic frames of reference in relating to everything in the universe – time.
Despite the almost unfathomable longevity of fossils and animal skeletal remains for tens of millions of years (and presumably tens of millions of years more), we know that they all had a beginning – in time and their duration is in time. But conceiving of something having no beginning is different. For extreme longevity we have a frame of reference – things like fossils and skeletal remains. But we have no frame of reference for something in existence but having no beginning.
This is among the reasons that God’s eternity invokes such wonderment – God has no beginning. This seems quite unfathomable. But the issue of God’s eternity is even more unsearchable than the absence of a beginning for God. It would seem to require that God, somehow, transcends time itself. God’s eternity seems to mean that God somehow stands apart from time. Thus, God’s eternity invokes not merely God’s presence in time but also God’s relation to time such that He exists even apart from time.
This, then raises a host of questions. Theologians and philosophers like St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Boethius and others have long ago contemplated and written about this. For example, if God stands apart from time, does God have access to past, present and future? Or does He, as we do, have only access to the present and is completely powerless over the past and future? “Eternity” of God involve these and more about God in time and God’s relation to time.
Nevertheless, in the most simplistic view, God’s eternity means that God has always existed and always will exist. It means that He had no beginning and will have no ending. But, as we see, there is so much more to God’s Eternity than that.