http://www.hgst.edu/Faculty_Staff_Pictures/Kennard/Doug%20Kennard%20web%20page_files/Linked%20Docs/ClassicalGod_Ch3.pdf
"Eternity is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life."
Boethius.l
"Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the
mountains were born. or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world, even
from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God." (ps. 90:1-2).
God (ontologically or in Himself) is eternal (outside of time) and yet once
He began to create He is everlasting in time in relationship to this creation. God's
etemality is defended philosophically and hinted at Biblically. While the main
Biblical pattern develops a God, Who at least in relationship to creation interacts
and reacts with this creation in time forever and always will. This is not a
contradiction, since eternity describes God ontologically; everlasting in time
describes God's relationship to the creation. fu this paper I will define time,
everlasting, and eternity. Then I will explore how these work out for God
ontologically and relationa11y.
Time is the relationship of sequence for anyone thing. Time is not merely
an absolute Newtonian framework (in which everything experiences the same
sequence simultaneously) or a Kantian phenomenological grid for perception (in
which sequence merely becomes a mental category not descriptive of reality) but
an Einsteinian metaphysical relationship of anything's experience in relationship
expressed though the equation: an object's relativistic time equals observed time
divided by the square root of [l-(velocity squared divided by speed of light
squared)]. This makes time a fourth dimension along with the three spatial
dimensions and all four of these are effected by the velocity of the object in
relationship to another to which they are referenced, as expressed by the dilation
equations. This theoretical time dilation was experimentally verified by the MIT
physicists Frisch and Smith in 1961 who showed that for the mu-mesons (small
particles found in both the atmosphere and outer space) that were being stopped at
sea level, their time had been slowed down by their longer experience at a
velocity near the speed of light as compared to the time of the earth observers or
the time of the mu-mesons which were stopped and held relatively stationary in
the cloud chamber on the top ofMt. Washington. The mu-mesons which traveled
faster for longer then lived longer verifying the Einsteinian expectation that time
is in fact a metaphysical reality for anything in relationship to another. In this
way, time can be thought of as a metaphysical sequence. Anything that has the
experience of sequence is then in its own time. Likewise, anything that is related
to the experience of sequence is then also in its own time as well. It is in
reference to God's creation of the universe and the experience of the sequence of
this creation that God is drawn into time as an everlasting being. For example,
one implication of our previous defense of God being everywhere (from the
nature of necessity or Psalm 139 chapters)3 is that God would be everywhen as
well. This means that the fact of creation draws the everywhere and everywhen
God into everlasting experience of all things and all times. God in relation to
creation experiences the creation's sequence. These metaphysical expressions of
I Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 9-11
2 In contrast to Hume's ocassionalism.
3 Cf. This book PP. 11-39.113-18.
an Eagle," that "Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future."
Everlasting means persistence through time. Everlasting would be any
temporal experience that does not end, or a being which is perpetually in
relationship to time. For example, aionion is used in the Bible in this sense of
perpetual temporal experience. An instance of this is the everlastjng life that the
believer in Christ experiences already in contrast to the judgment that the
nonbeliever is already under (In. 3: 15-16). The fact that everlasting life is already
being experienced as a temporal experience shows that everlasting life will
always be experienced within time but that this time just does not come to an end.
Eternal would mean atemporality, or outside of time and sequence. This
concept of eternity is understood by Boethius as an eternal duration of
providentially sourcing life.
Eternity ...is the complete possession all at once of illimitable life. This
becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things. For whatever lives
in time proceeds as something present from the past into the future, and
there is nothing placed in time that can embrace the whole extent of its life
equally. Indeed, on the contrary, it does not yet grasp tomorrow but
yesterday it has already lost, and even in the life of today you live no more
fully than in a mobile, transitory moment ...[A temporal thing's] life may
be infinitely long, but it does not embrace its whole extent simultaneously
...Therefore, whatever includes and possesses the whole fullness of
illimitable life at once and is such that nothing future is absent from it and
nothing past has flowed away, this is rightly judged to be eternal, and of
this it is necessary both that being in full possession of it self it be always
present to itself and that it have the infinity of mobile time present to it.4
Such a duration view of eternity may be helpful in showing the oddity of eternity
but technically such expressions as "present to itself' and "simultaneous" are not
appropriate of eternity for there would be no expression of sequence of any kind
4 Boethius, Consolation ofPhilosophy, Book V, ii, 9-18, 22-3t
In such a model Aquinas de~ends that God's eternity is like an event furough
which God sees all events as present.
Were someone to see many travelers along a road successively,
over a certain period of time, in each part of that time he would see
some passersby as present, so that over the whole time of his
vision he would see every traveler as present. He would not see all
as present at once because the time ofhis seeing is not all-at-once.
Ifhis seeing were able to exist all at once, he would see at once all
as present, although they do not all pass by as present at once.
Whence because the vision of God's knowledge is measured by
eternity, which is all at once and yet includes all of time. ..God
sees what happens in time not as future but as present.8
While this view has influenced eternity development significantly, it still
maintains analogies of time, such as "all at once," to communicate what is
essentially beyond time and sequence. So as a model, the temporal analogies still
fall short of God's eternal essence.
The classical Christian theologian who most captures the essence of
eternity is Anselm, with his view that eternity is like a super-temporal dimension
Everything that is in any way bounded by place and time is less
than that which no law of place or time lirrrits. Since, then, nothing
is greater than thou, no place or time contains thee; but thou art
everywhere and always. And since this can be said of thee alone,
thou alone art uncircumscribed and etemal.9
Such a Maximally Great Being would be imminently omnipresent and thus
immaterial or spiritual as well. That is, there could be no sequence or variation
temporally or spatially for this God. Likewise, this God would be available and
7 Augustine, 11Ie Trinity, Book V, ii, 3.
8 Aquinas, Of the Truth, 2.12.
9 Anselm, Proslogium, chapter 13.
would have no body (i.e. spiritual) and be immutable (i.e. eternal even though
such a being might be glimpsed within creation as everlasting). So the spiritual
and eternal omnipresence which the Maximally Great Being would instantiate
would be exhibited in a non-spatial and non-temporal manner similar to another
dimension beyond space and time. Perhaps Tillich's dimensional model for spirit
as an imminent causal ground which creates and sustains the whole of creation
serves as a paradigm for making sense of the omnipresence of this eternal
spiritual Being. That is, a person would not expect each location of the universe
to contain an instance of the fullness of God but that God's fullness is present to
each location in a continuous causal manner creating, determining, sustaining,
protecting, relating, knowing from that perspective, and recreating the whole of
the universe into His kingdom.
Brian Leftow describes the level of absolute immutability that ensues with
such an eternal necessary Being as ontologically unreactive. 10
A timeless God does not remember, forget, regret, feel relief, or
cease to do anything. For a timeless God has no past, and one can
remember, forget, etc., only what is past. A timeless God does not
wait, anticipate, hope, foreknow, predict, or deliberate. For a
timeless God has no future, and one can anticipate, etc., only what
is in one's future. A timeless God does not begin to do anything; if
one can begin to do only what one then continues to do. If
timeless, God does not change: what changes first has, then lacks,
some property, and so must exist at least two times. Thus a
timeless God never learns or changes His attitudes or plans. All
His knowledge and intentions are occurrent, not dispositional.
Further, if God is timeless, there is no temporal gap between His
forming a plan and executing it, or executing it and seeing all its
consequences. If timeless, God's life lasts forever in the sense that
at every time, it is true to say that, timelessly, God exists. Yet in
10 This concept can be seen to be essentially the Aristotelian concept of full actualization
in God's ontological nature.
Anselm's solution to this W1reactive eternity has God, Who does not exist in time
or place having all things existing in Him.12 "This thought is a kind of
expression of the objects created. like the expression which an artisan fomls in his
mind for what he intends to make."13 Brian Leftlow follows him in this idea.
God's knowledge would then be the storehouse of all actualities of all time.14
Furthermore, the knowledge He knows He has always known without variance.
God would know all there is to be known for the whole of time without sequence
and without change. However, this does not cause God to be opposed to the
knowledge of His creation, for He would always know what every feature of the
creation knows from that creature's perspective in space and time while also
knowing simultaneously from His unique vantage point. That is, spatially or
temporally referenced knowledge claims will be referenced from the vantage of a
knower or as an avenue through God's everlasting omnipresence which would
know what would be known from that time and space if any other knower would
have been there. For example, He would eternally know my knowing of the past
and my fears of the future from my vantage point and the perspective of every
created thing in addition to His unique additional perspectives. So that in our
Einsteinian relativistic universe we may have problems defending simultaneity of
II Brian Leftow, 'Eternity,' in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion [ed. Philip Quinn
and Charles Taliaferro, (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1997)], p.257.
12 Anselm, Proslogium 19, Monologium 9-14.
13 Anselm, Monologium 10.
14 This would be a Grand Mind idealism, which by His commitment to creation
perpetually supplies the creation with its reality .We humans will know of this creation througb
critical realism [Cf. Douglas Kennard, The Relationship between Epistemology. Hermeneutics.
Biblical Theology and Contextualization. (Lewiston, The Mellon Press, 1999), chapters 2 and 3].
This omniscient Sovereign superintends the actualities of the creation. This would contrast with
the process primordial nature of God in that far more than possibilities would reside in God's
mind and these thoughts of God would then be determinate for whatever happens. For more on
this see the chapter, "God's Sovereignty and Human Free Will," in this book.
possession all at once of illimitable life.15 The complete possession is an
atemporal sourcing that does not change and is not limited but brings about all
that has changed in its expressions of finiteness. This means that eternity is the
source for all power and life, as previously described under omnipotence above.16
So eternity is not primarily to be lmown for its static comprehensive determining
lmowledge but for the life revealed to have come from God in His revelational
creation. Anything that lmows and enlivens others should be thought to be alive.
Because God iriitiates the whole of the creation including all of its details His
lmowledge is essentially also determining choice. God's choices are eternal and
essential to His nature without variance. To have God as an actually necessary
being means His sovereign choice is set. This means that the level of necessity
for God includes all of God's thoughts and sovereign choices eternally and
immutably. This means that God is not open in growing and gaining more
knowledge and choosing in response to this lmowledge. God's lmowledge and
choice would in fact be set within God's essential nature as determinative for the
existence, essence, and choices the whole of creation makes.17 With God's
knowledge and choice as essential to His nature, then there is no logical order in
God either. This means that all the reformation options expressing the order of
the decree would in fact be contradictory to God' s essential nature. There would
not be a logical sequence within God Who simultaneously knows and chooses
without sequence (i.e. eternally). This should not swprise us, for there are no
Biblical texts that talk about any logical or chronological sequence within God of
.IS Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, Book V, Prose 6; and De trinitate, chapter 4
~ E. K. Harvard, 1973).
16 Cf. pp. 13-14.
17 For a further discussion of how the detennining sovereignty of God and freedom of
man fit in a non contradictory manner that consistently reflect the Biblical text see the chapter "
God's Sovereignty and Human Free Will," in this book. In that paper a compatiblism of
Anselmic/ Thomistic determinism with Edwardsian free will is defended.
example, there is a clear logical and chronological sequence in applying the
divine election (ekletois) as foreknown, preparatively sanctifying the person so
that the outcome {eis) of this sanctification ushers in obedience and atonement (I
Pet. 1: 1-2). At other instances of sequence of the application of salvation there is
encouragement for the Christian who has experienced some of the salvation
benefits, such as justification, who can be reassured that the other benefits, like
glorification, will also be his in time (e.g. Rom. 8:29-30). So the whole postreformation
discussion of the order of the decree and the order of salvation within
God was an unfortunate exploration that does not apply to this necessary,
in1mutable, and eternal God. Any linkage of logical order or chronological
sequence in such works of God is an expression of application order or revelation
purpose. Any attempt to communicate eternal truths into a constantly changing
environment like the creation will reflect them in sequential ways partly because
of the sequential nature of the environment and partly to accommodate to our
human understanding, which is sequential in its learning and contemplation
process. For example, the textual sequences above convey that God graciously
applies and guarantees the fullness of salvation to each Christian personally,
which is a revelation purpose consistent with God's in1mutable nature. So that
any apparent change in God is actually the refraction of a changeless God through
the lens of the changing environment for purposes of applying some benefit to the
creation, such as salvation or the communication of certain select truths to a
certain group in time. The fact that the truths of God are accommodated to the
means of communication does not limit the truths of God, but the context
indicates the primary hermeneutic purpose and how the descriptions of God are
merely supportive of this purpose.
Anse1m defends the eternity of God he also defends that God creates everything,18
penneates all and sustains all that exists,19 and expresses compassion!O Since
God in relationship to the world is the way God reveals Himself in the Bible, it is
also true that We should say these revealed statements of God as well. However,
Anse1m is not contradicting himself in these claims for he acknowledges and
expresses the lack ofpathos ontologically within God and the clear compassionate
results of the salvation, which God provides for US!1 God is relationally temporal
even though He is ontologically eternal. In fact, since time is the relationship to
sequence, the very fact that God is related to the creation as source draws God
automatically into relationship to this very sequence of the creation, and thus
relationally into time. This temporal relationship is best understood for God as
everlasting.
The Biblical authors express that God's life is without beginning and end
in ways described as everlasting in time. William Craig suggested that God was
eternal until creation in which God became temporal as everlasting.22 However,
God cannot first be timeless and then later be temporal, for then God's timeless
phase is earlier than His temporal phase, and whatever is earlier than something
else is in time!3 Additionally, such a change from timeless eternity to temporal
everlastingness calls into question whether God was in fact eternal at all for this
very language contradicts the level of immutability that an eternal God would be.
The solution I propose does not have this problem for God remains timeless in
eternity, and with regard to creation, God reveals Himself relationally to be in
18 AnseJm, Proslogium 5, Monologium 8.
19 AnseJm, Proslogium 20, Monologium 9.
20 AnseJm, Proslogium 8.
21 AnseJm, Proslogium 8.
22 William Craig, meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, Nov. 20, 1999.
23 Brian Leftow, "Eternity," in A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip Quinn
and Charles Taliaferro (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), p.259.
God's relationship to the creation in temporal ways that have a beginning in the
creation act. In fact, the alliteration of the BRA sound of the first two words of
the Hebrew Bible draw the concept of creation together with the beginning of
time; time begins with God's creation (Gen. 1:1). So that God is ontologi~ally
eternal as a being but relationally everlasting once creation has occurred, as time
begins. The Biblical text emphasizes the relational connection of God to the
creation because of course the Bible is not trying to tell us everything about God,
instead it focuses on God's relationship with His creation. The main point of the
creation stories of Genesis 1-2 is to develop the privileged place humankind has
within the creation in relation to God as the image of God, God's son and
daughter, blessed and obligated for God's purposes.
Isaiah gives a helpful window into how God relates to time. Men, idols
and false gods are in time and bound by it, while Yahweh is far superior, being
beyond time and everlasting with time. Yahweh is the First and the Last, before
Whom no being was formed and after Whom nothing will exist (Isa. 40:28; 41:4
43:10ff.; 44:6; 48:12). God is here contrasted with history in its totality ("and
with the last I am still He")!4 This contrast includes a strong polemic against all
other gods who are temporal. These declarations of Yahweh's transcendence over
the world and time provided a basis for comfort within Judah's captivity as well
as revealing Yahweh to be the God Who extends beyond the bounds of time.
Isaiah uses verb tenses, which may even imply that the past, present and future of
time is present to Yahweh. Christopher North explores this concept with passages
such as Isaiah 48:4-5, which say, "I knew-how stubborn you are" and "therefore I
told you long ago," before the nation existed!5 In these texts there is no clear
development of God's eternality but Yahweh may be hinted at as being
24 WestemJann, Isaiah 40-66, p. 65.
creation as everlasting in time. There are no Biblical texts that clearly develop
God's eternity beyond time. The primary word in the O.T. is olam, which means
everlasting in time. It can mean everlasting in the past or ancient ( e.g. Gen. 6:4;
A
Dtr. 32:7: Pr. 22:28; Isa. 44:7). 'Ozam can mean continuing as in a continuing
covenant relationship between God and creation through time (e.g. Gen. 9:12, 16;
13:15; 17:7-19; 2 Sam. 7:13-29; 1 Chr. 16:17-41; Ps. 105:10; Isa. 61:
. From
this temporal continuing everlastingness, God is said to be everlasting (Gen.
21:33; Pss. 41:13; 90:2; 93:2; 103:17; Isa. 40:28). God's reign is forever in time
(Ex. 15:18; Pss. 10:16; 29:10; 45:6). God's mercy endures forever for those who
are His (1 Chr. 16:34,41; 2 Chr. 5:13; 7:3-6; Ezra 3:11; Ps. 100:5; 106:1 107:1;
118:1-29; 136:1-26). Likewise, God's righteousness is everlasting (Ps. 119:142-
160; Pr. 10:25; Isa. 51:
. God's commitment to those who are His will be
benefited from a salvation that lasts forever as well (Isa. 45:17; 51:6). A few
instances of qedem also indicate that the mountains, the people of Israel and God
asKing are all ancient, fromofold (Dtr. 33:15,27; Ps. 74:2,12). TheN.T. words
(aiOiz and aionios) continue the everlasting in time meaning. They both stand for
ancient as with or before the beginning of creation (Lk. 1 :70; In. 9:32; Acts 3:21;
15:18; 2 Tim. 1:9). In this sense sometimes a ion even stands for the world as the
continuing creation (Mt. 13:22-49; 1 Tim. 6: 17). Our God is blessed forever (Rm.
1:25; 9:5; 11:36; 1 Tim. 1:17). May God's glory and dominion be forever (1 Tim.
1:17; 2 Tim. 2:10; 4:18; Heb. 1:8,13,21; 1 Pet. 5:11; 2 Pet. 1:11; 3:18; Rev. 1:6).
Additionally, a ion conveys that God is alive forever (Rev. 1:18; 4:9-10; 5:14;
15:7). There are also two instances in which aidios develops everlasting chains of
judged angels and God's everlasting power (Rom. 1:20; Jude 6). This is the
Biblical evidence that portrays that God is an everlasting God.
2S Christopher North, The Second Isaiah ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), pp. 180-81
and it is also our experience that only the living give life. However the Biblical
text develops that God is the living God more in the sense of interacting with the
creation in time. That is "God is alive"26 (~aya, zaO) means that He interacts with
the creation sequence in time unlike lifeless idols, which do not. The statement
that God is alive (~ayQ) is synonymous with saying that God is soul (nephesh)!7
He is vibrant, active and acts in the midst of human situations. Special emphasis
on the living (~aya) quality of God is developed within the former prophets of
Samuel and Kings, and the latter prophets of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Nephesh has
a special emphasis in Jeremiah as referring to God. Zao has special emphasis in
Hebrews warnings and hope. Perhaps the precarious situations and the obvious
need to trust God highlights God as alive to meet the need. However, God is
developed as alive from nineteen O.T. books and eight N.T. books. That God
lives forever is developed as a contextual model to inform the believer that they
will live forever with Him (Dan. 12:2, 7 and John 6:51-59).
So the Biblical presentation of God is that He is everlasting. There is no
problem with such an everlasting God entering time to create, incarnate, present
Himself as theophany, to interact with creatures in time, and to respond to what
the creatures are doing as well. This is all part of God's everlasting relationship
with creation, which in no way violates or alters His etemality. When issues of
tense are raised (like Can God know now, or Did God do something, or Will He
26 .
Num. 14:21,28; Dtr. 5:26; 32:40; Josh. 3:10; Judg. 8:19; Ruth 3:13; 1 Sam. 14:39,45;
17:26,36; 19:6; 20:3,21; 25:26,34; 26:10,16; 28:10; 29:6; 2 Sam. 2:27; 4:9; 125; 14:11; 15:21;
22:47; 1 Ki. 1:29; 2:24; 17:1, 12; 18:10, 15; 22:14; 2 Ki. 3:14; 4:30; 5:16, 20; 19:4, 16; 2 Chr.
18:13; Job 19:25; 27:2; Pss. 18:41; 42:2; 84:2; lsa. 37:4, 17; 49:18; Jer. 4:2; 5:2; 10:10; 12:16;
16:14-15; 22:24; 23:7-8,36; 38:16; 44:26; 46:18; Ezek. 5:11; 14:16, 18,20; 16:48; 17:16, 19;
18:3; 20:3,31,33; 33:11,27; 34:8; 35:6,11; Dan. 6:20,26; 12:7; Hos. 1:10; 4:15; Zeph. 2:9; Mt.
16:16; 26:63; In. 6:57,69; Rm. 9:26; 2 Cor. 3:3; 6:16; 1 Thes. 1:9; 1 Tirn.3:15; 4:14; Heb. 3:12;
9:14; 10:31; 12:22; Rev. 7:2; 15:7.
27 Lev. 26:11,30; 1 Sam 21:35; Ps. 11:5; Pr. 6:16; lsa. 1:14; 42:1; Jer. 5:9,29: 6:8; 9:9;
12:7; 13:17; 51:14; Ezek. 25:18; Amos 6:8.
meaningfully describe the everlasting relationship, which God has with creation;
such concepts would not be meaningful with regard to eternity since no temporal
sequence and tense exists in eternity. The omniscience of God as it relates
through God's everlastingness means that sequence would be known in God's
relationship with creation and in that relationship tensed statements become
meaningful for God. An example of this has to do with the Biblical statement of
foreknowledge. That is, foreknowledge is an intimate knowledge which God has
in His everlasting relationship with creation which because He knows it, actually
determines what will happen long before we humans choose for it to occur (Acts
2:23; 1 Pet. 1 :2, 20). Because of this, the concept of foreknowledge actually
raises more complex concerns for the relationship of determinism and free-will,
so I will handle it in the chapter, "God's Sovereignty and Human Free Will."28
The Bible (which is primarily develops the everlasting relationship of God
to the creation) presents God as a Being interacting in time in tensed ways.
Tensed statements would be inappropriate of eternity but are quite appropriate of
everlastingness. The primary passage that the openness of God calls us to
examine concerning this tensed language is Genesis 18. Proponents of openness
would like to call our attention to statements like:
The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin
is exceedingly grave. I will go down now, and see if they have
done entirely according to its outcry, which has come to Me; and if
not, I will know. (Gen. 18:20-21)
It looks like God will in the future of this statement obtain firsthand experiential
knowledge that He does not in fact know yet, therefore the future is seen by them
as open as to whether a requisite number will be righteous to save Sodom and
28 Cf. Chapter, "God's Sovereignty and Human Free Will" in this book.
his response and not just the openness point that God progressively comes to
know the evidence (Gen. 18:17, 20, 23). The traditional sovereign view will also
respond that if God is as the openness view claims, then God does not know some
present and past knowledge about the conditions of Sodom and Gomorrah. This
point catches the openness view in an inconsistency, since openness proponents
claim that God is omniscient about the past and present. At this point, we need to
break in and point out that both traditions are using the text for their own purposes
and ignoring the feature that Moses as the human author is emphasizing in this
text. Texts are to be understood with their authorial contextual emphases and not
by our biases of models to make sense of God or our existential context?9 Moses
(as author) has just underscored that nothing is too difficult for God, so
impregnating Abral1am's Saral1 is no problem for God. Now with the possibility
of the judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah looming large, the issue of this passage
becomes righteousness. It is a subject that God raises by describing Abral1am as
being chosen to "keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice"
(Gen. 18:19). Abral1am, the would-be righteous one, then responds with a reply
which focuses on the righteousness of God: "Wilt Thou indeed sweep away the
righteous with the wicked?" The textual issue is then that the righteous God
shows Himself to be righteous in a satisfying way for His righteous servant
Abraham and Moses' readers who have the text, which selectively crops the
account of the event to emphasize this righteous theme; "Far be it from Thee to
slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are
treated alike. Far be it from Thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal
29 This hermeneutical method and the orientation to the authorial context to infonn
Biblical theology rather than the tradition of a theological henneneutic is explained in Douglas
Kennard, The Relationship Between Epistemology, Hermeneutics, Biblical Theology and
Contextualization, pp. 124-48; 181-85.
Abraham responds back whether God would save the city if the fifty righteous
would lack five. The response goes back and forth between God and Abraham
until God affinns that Sodom would be preserved if ten righteous would be found
in her. Chapter nineteen continues the account showing that at best three
righteous could be found in that Lot and his two daughters are delivered Gen.
19:15-29; 2 Peter 2:7-9). Even these three fall short of Abraham's pattern of
righteousness as chapter eighteen and nineteen are compared for hospitality,
obedience, and a focus on the preservation of self or others. Above all God shows
Himself to be the righteous One Who preserves the righteous, while destroying
the wicked. If we use this text for other than this textual emphasis we show that
we are using it for our biases. This means that if we wish to get to know the
everlasting God's involvement with the creation then we need to consider texts
that develop this theme such as Psalm 139 or Isaiah 40-48. These passages will
be developed in other chapters, herein.
God's relationship with the creation is shown by occasional comments in
which He responds and interacts with events of the creation. For example, in
Genesis 22 Abraham is tested by God to experientially verify whether God or the
promise of God takes precedence in Abraham's life. When Abraham showed his
obedience in attempting to offer Isaac, God responded, "Now I know that you fear
God" (Gen. 22:12). It is an appropriate comment in responding to the situation
but the fact of Abraham's obedience had been apparent for years. Additionally,
there is a standard response in which God reacts to the situation of rampant
idolatry as in Jeremiah 7:31; 19:5 and 32:35. After pointing out Israel's sin God
identifies that such idolatry was not what He had commanded, and because these
instances of idolatry and child sacrifice were so horrendous, God admits that these
practices had not entered His mind. These comments should not be read as a lack
emphasizing that the disobedience of Israel was way beyond the command of
God. Likewise, some comments of God include "perhaps" as an indication that
some Jews might get the prophetic point of their rebellion and repent as a rempant
while Israel as a whole is heading for captivity in their rebellion (Jer. 26:3; Ezek.
12:3). The contexts around these "perhaps" comments include God's certain
declaration that the captivity is coming quickly and that it would last seventy
years (Jer. 25-26; Ezek.12). So God knows the future and interacts with the
present in a way that shows that He is relationally committed to His creation.
God's relationship to creation as everlasting permits God to express
change with respect to the changing creation and remain immutable with regard to
His righteous character. God is the good and righteous source of all good, with
no variation or shifting shadow in His character (James 1:17). We can count on
God' s consistent goodness so that we should not blame Him for temptations or
sins in which we entangle ourselves. Because He has established creation this
way means that our sin results in judgment (James 1:13-16). John Sanders
challenges the claim that God knows the future with consistent purposes by his
appeal to 1 Samuel 15: 11.30 In this verse God relates to Samuel that He regrets
that He made Saul king for he has rebelled and been disobedient. This verse sets
up the context in which Samuel must tell Saul ofHis rejection as king. This scene
ends with Saul seizing Samuel's robe and tearing it, which Samuel turns into a
metaphor for the situation: "The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you
today, and has given it to your neighbor who is better than you, and also the Glory
of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should
30 This challenge and others like it are developed at some length in John Sanders, The
God Who Risks: A Theology of Providence (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 1998).
of a king in Israel, but God's grief as a response from the everlasting and
immutable character of God shows that God does emotionally respond to sin and
His divine consistent response is to reject the rebel in his unrepentant sinning
condition, and send him away in judgment. God in His everlasting relationship
with creation responds to the creation with emotion and consistent character and
purpose. However in the narrative this looks like divine blessing upon Saul while
he is faithful and divine curse in Saul's rebellion. It is to texts such as this that
openness points, which include statements of God's repenting. For example,
Genesis 6:5- 7 presents an evaluation of humans prior to the Noahic flood that
recounts Yahweh seeing man's wickedness to such an extent that He is grieved in
heart and repents from His blessing to now destroy the world in judgment.
Certainly, Yahweh is consistent with His nature for blessing His creation until in
their disobedience they transgressed His standard (e.g. Gen. 2:17; 3:14-20; 4:7-
12). The text does not comment on this being a plan of Yahweh for it leaves it as
a description from the viewpoint of the changing historical narrative and such
phenomenological language is to be expected in a narrative account. Now that
man's thoughts were only evil continually, God's destroying judgment is to be
expected, and judgment comes with God's consistency in the flood.
Our God is ontologically eternal and immutable as a Necessary Being,
while this same God relates to the creation once it begins in time with everlasting
31 Other texts also show the consistency of God in carrying out His purposes whether
they be blessing grounded in His choice or a consistent response of rejecting into judgment. E.g.
Num. 23:19; Ezek. 24:14.
responds to us with blessing or curse, and mercy or wrath. When God enters time
such as in creation, theophany, or incarnation, it is through God's everlasting
relationship with creation, all the while remaining fully eternal within Himself.
Is God Timeless or Everlasting ? on Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:33 am
