When
you start down the path to understand the nature of God, many
skeptics will say “there is nothing you can know about God”.
Technically, if that were true, then you would in fact know
'something' about God, in that He is unknowable. But we can easily
conclude some things about God by definition of what we mean by
“God”. He must be Self-Existent, the First Cause, Uncreated,
and Eternally Being. That is a fair definition of God's aseity –
the nature of His existence.
The
Westminster Shorter Catechism describes God as “a spirit, infinite,
eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness,
justice, goodness, and truth.”
God
has Infinite Attributes
An
aside about the concept of Infinity. It is in essence a negative
word describing what “isn't” -- something that is not
finite. There are two aspects to infinity. One is the mathematical
construct of a set of discrete things for which there is no upper
boundary of their quantity. Examples are the set of natural
numbers, the set of real numbers, etc. A second aspect of infinity
is qualitative.
Dr.
W. L. Craig i
“...if we talk about God’s love as “infinite,” what we mean
is that it is unconditional, it is boundless; but we don’t mean
that it is somehow made up of a collection of definite and discrete
parts which are infinite in number. The love of God’s being
infinite is not a quantitative notion. Or when we talk about God’s
moral perfection and his holiness and we say he is infinitely good or
holy, again that is not a quantitative notion. We don’t mean that
there are units of holiness, and God has an infinite number of these
units. It is more a qualitative infinity. So when we talk about
infinity with respect to God, we should use the word as a qualitative
notion.”
In
the temporal/physical universe, I've not found an example of either
aspect of infinity. There are "potential infinities" such as the
dividing of time into ever smaller units, but Time had a beginning,
and as such, we have be progressively adding to a set of units of
time. But in physical reality, time is discrete units or quanta of
10-43 seconds. The same can be said of distances –
they could potentially be infinite in terms of a set of points in the
universe, but real, actual locality cannot exist in a space less than
a Planck length, which is approximately 1.616199×10−35
meters or 636.30×10−36 inches, which is about 10−20
times the diameter of a proton. That's really small, but not
infinite.
Similarly,
I find no infinite forms of superlatives – no qualities or
characteristics that would be considered infinite. Some may be
considered absolute or complete, but this doesn't raise that to
infinitude, even if in our imaginations – one could always imagine
just a little more.
God
is Self-Existent
God
is not contingent on anything else, He is not created, but “is”
eternally. God has the power of Being in Himself. God cannot not
'be'. Otherwise, nothing would exist. God is the source of all
reality outside himself.
John
1:1 In the beginning was the Word,[logic] and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. NKJV
Psalm
90:2 Before the mountains were born, before You gave birth to
the earth and the world, from eternity to eternity, You are God. NKJV
Dr. W. L. Craig ii “Philosophers draw the distinction between necessary existence and
contingent existence. God is a necessary being. His non-existence
is impossible; he exists necessarily. By contrast, all other beings
are contingent – they are contingent upon God as the independent,
self-existent one. So it is not true that if God is a being, he is
just one among many. Quite the contrary, God is the source and
sustainer of all contingent beings, and he is the only metaphysically
necessary being that exists.
For those who press the question, when
you are in conversation with them, “Where did God come from?” I
think you can return with the following question: “If there is no
God, then where did the universe come from?” On the atheistic
view, you have got to believe that the universe is self-existent,
unless you think it just popped into being uncaused out of nothing,
which seems absurd. That is worse than magic. So on the atheistic
view, you have got to believe the universe is a self-existent,
necessary being, which is exactly the same thing that we believe
about God. In other words, what the atheist is forced to do is
simply to substitute the universe in the place of God."
The
only two worldviews possible to be logically consistent with reality
are that the universe is eternal and is a proxy for God, or God
exists. The bible notes that those who substitute the creation for
God are subject to God's wrath.
Romans
1:20-22 For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all
godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their
unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about
God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For His
invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature,
have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being
understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without
excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or
show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their
senseless minds were darkened. NKJV
Even
if the universe is ultimately proven to exist eternally (or somehow
defies the Law of Cause and Effect in its beginning), the universe is
not “necessary”. The universe does not have to exist, or exist
in the present form. However, God is necessarily existent, are
there are implications for us to consider.
Dr. W. L. Craig iii Theologian
Paul Tillich defined God as “the object of ultimate concern.”
Since God is the ultimate being, the metaphysically necessary source
of all other being, he is properly the object of ultimate concern
because he is the ultimate being. Therefore, to substitute anything
else for God is literally a form of idolatry. Once you understand
how radically contingent we are, how we depend upon God and his
pleasure for our very existence moment by moment, then to live
independently of God is madness.
God
is Eternal
By
definition, being self-existent necessarily means being eternal,
outside the contingent state of time. The Psalms praise God as
everlasting:
Psalm 41:13
Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to
everlasting. Amen and Amen NKJV
Job 36:26 How
great is God—beyond our understanding! The number of his years is
past finding out. NKJV
Jude 25: to the
only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through
Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! NKJV
Dr. W. L. Craig
“...Scripture is often under determinative with respect to these
attributes of God. By that I mean that they don’t make it entirely
clear how we are to conceive of a particular attribute of God. For
example, the Scripture says that God is eternal; but does that mean
that he has existed for infinite time and always will? Or does it
mean that he is timeless? The Scripture isn’t altogether clear on
that.”
Sidebar: Time and Eternity
Theologians
debate whether God lives outside of time, or exists everlastingly
from eternity past through eternity future. The Psalms give the
impression God lives in an endless stretch of time from past to
future, whereas Jude hints that God is entirely disconnected from
time and temporality. We assert time was created, as it is clearly
a physical attribute of the universe. And God had to exist outside
and before time existed in order to create it.
However,
does God now still now live outside of time? This is not clear,
because Scripture tells us God will create a new heavens and a new
Earth where we will dwell in our resurrected bodies forever. This
has the appearance of being temporal (bounded in spatial and time
dimensions). Christ as a man clearly experienced temporality on
Earth, and will again some day. So the debate occurs around whether
God now lives within created time (experiencing a past, a present and
a future and causality from events occurring in chronological order),
or does God remain utterly unaffected by time.
While
we affirm that God is uncreated, immutable, permanent and will
continue to exist forever, there is room for dispute about how God
interacts with time. Here are arguments for both timelessness and
temporal states.
Dr. W. L. Craig iv “In
my book Time and Eternity I survey what I think are the best, or most
promising, arguments for divine timelessness, and I find that most of
these are, frankly, very implausible or weak arguments, with the
exception of one. This is the argument based on the incompleteness
of temporal life. The idea here is that a temporal mode of existence
is, by its very nature, a defective mode of existence. One has only
the brief, fleeting present. The future is not yet – one does not
yet possess one’s future. The past is gone, irretrievably lost. So
all one has is one’s present, and that is ever changing, ever
passing away, with no permanence, so that a temporal being cannot
possess his life all at once. By contrast, a being which is
timeless, outside of time, possesses all of its life at once. It
simply has no past, present, or future – it just has a timelessly
existing state. It has its life all at once. The claim is that this
is a more perfect mode of existence, and, since God is the most
perfect being, it would be incompatible with God to have a defective
mode of existence. Therefore, God cannot exist temporally.”
The
temporary nature of time, how things are transitory; always moving
from future to present to past, gives strength to the argument God
cannot be affected by time. However there are also arguments for the
strength of God to endure everlastingly.
Dr. W. L. Craig v
“God is a God who acts in history – first causing one event,
then causing another event after that, then causing another. God is
intimately involved in the temporal process. He parts the Red Sea,
he calls the children of Israel out of Egypt, he sends Christ into
the world. The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity is an
especially problematic doctrine for those who think that God is
timeless. Here God himself enters into human history in the person
of Jesus Christ...There was a time when the second person of the
Trinity was not yet incarnate, and there was a time after which the
second person of the Trinity was intimately united to a human
nature...Anything that changes has a before and an after. That just
is to be in time.
As an omniscient being,
God must know all truths – he must know all the facts that there
are. But there are clearly truths which are tensed truths. God must
know these tensed truths if he is truly omniscient.
For example, God must know that Christopher Columbus discovered
America in 1492. But at one time, that wasn’t true. In 1490, it
was true that Christopher Columbus will discover America, and God
must have known that truth. But if God knows these tensed truths,
then that means that his knowledge is constantly changing, as
future-tense truths become false and the present-tense versions
becomes true. “Christopher Columbus will discover America” was
true at one time, then it became false, and it became true that
“Christopher Columbus is discovering America.” Then that became
false and the past-tense statement “Christopher Columbus did
discover America” became true. So God’s knowledge would be
constantly changing, and therefore He would be in time.”
Resolving
the paradox from the Scriptures
Dr. W. L. Craig vi I
want to suggest that we understand God’s eternity to mean that God
is timeless without creation, and he is temporal subsequent to the
moment of creation. God is timeless without creation. Existing
alone without the universe, God exists timelessly. With the creation
of the world, time begins and God enters into time in virtue of his
changing relationships with the temporal world and his knowledge of
tensed truths. God is timeless without creation, and he is temporal
with creation. That makes sense of the passage in Jude, which says,
“. . . before all time and now and forever.” That is a way of
expressing in ordinary language God’s existing timelessly without
creation, time begins at creation, and God now and forever exists in
time.
One more thing – I
would say this: a way of thinking of this is as an act of
condescension on God’s part. In creating a temporal world, God
condescends to give up his mode of atemporal existence and to take on
our mode of temporal existence for our sake and our salvation. Then
in the incarnation, he condescends even further to take on not merely
our mode of existence but our very humanity. I think that is very
characteristic of the biblical God – a God who humbles himself and
condescends to take on our mode of existence and our humanity."
To
summarize, the bible clearly asserts that God “was” before time
was created. God had to exist outside and before time existed in
order to create it. The best explanation for God's interaction with
creation and scripture is that now He condescends to participate with
man in a temporal state. For us the issue is to keep the eternal
perspective ahead of us. As Paul writes:
2
Corinthians 4 16-18 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though
outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day
by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an
eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on
what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary,
but what is unseen is eternal. NKJV
i Defenders
Podcast “Doctrine of God”
ii Defenders
Podcast “Doctrine of God”
iii Defenders
Podcast “Doctrine of God”
iv Defenders
Podcast “Doctrine of God”
v Defenders
Podcast “Doctrine of God”
_____________________
Scripture citations are from: Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) © 2009 Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville TN or New King James Version®. (NKJV) Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson
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