This paper begins by exploring Aquinas’ view of God and eternality, and subsequently outlines some worries and attempts at solutions to Aquinas’ view. There are worries of God eternality and personhood, God eternality and our personhood insofar as autonomy, and God’s eternality and his relation to us. There seem to be some unresolved tensions pointing at the act of creation; specifically, with conceptions of causation and maintaining God’s eternality. I propose a more moderate view of creation, which is supplemented with some of Aquinas’ view, as an attempt at addressing these qualms.
Let us begin with an exposition of Aquinas’ view of eternity and God. (ST 1, Q10)[1] Aquinas seems to look at time as a measured (“numbered”) succession of change (“movement”). (ST1,Q10, A1) He adds that this view of time is interdefinable with the concept of “eternity.” Whatever is not in time, and is “outside of movement,” (ST1, Q10, A1) is the eternal, since it has no successive dimension (i.e. its ontology has simultaneity) and it has no dimension of initiation and termination (i.e. “interminable). I useful illustration to elucidate this idea might be a track and field race. Imagine a race where sprinters have to run 100 metres – there is a starting line and a finishing line. Every step the sprinters take, they change locations and move closer to the finish line. Suppose also that there is a referee that stood completely still throughout the whole race. From the point of view of the sprinters, the referee has always been there from the race’s start to the race’s finish, and the referee is completely throughout the race (he does not run with them, or move alongside them). Similarly, the sprinters are how we see time, and the referee is how we view eternity. This idea of eternity is essential to connect with our idea of God.
Aquinas is committed to the idea that God is changeless, and it follows from this that God is also eternal. (ST1, Q10, A2)Immutability, or the attribute of being changeless, entails the two conditions for eternity. First, since there is no change, there is no successive dimension – it must always (without connoting time) be the same. Second, since there is no change, it cannot have a beginning or end because this implies having some property at one moment and not having a property at another moment. Aquinas also stipulates that this concept of “true” eternity (ST, Q10, A4), or eternity proper, is only instantiated in God. Other things we might think to be eternal are spirits, universals, angels, or demons; however, they have immutability (eternality, or “eternal life”) merely in virtue of God. (ST, Q10, A3) The idea here is that God’s ontology is an antecedent to the ontology of these other immutable things. Aquinas mentions the term “aeviternity” (ST1, Q10, A5), a state of eternity improper for angels and the like. What distinguishes them is, again, their creation from God; in other words, they have “a beginning but no end” (ST1, A10, A5). This is difficult to picture, but imagine that Atlas existed eternally, holding the earth on his shoulders. The earth on his shoulders is not on the ground in virtue of Atlas holding it up; although both exist eternally, the earth needs Atlas to hold it up. Similarly, other immutable things need God to maintain their eternality – the analogy is far from perfect, but the idea is that God is the only thing that has immutability (ipso facto eternality) in the robust sense.
Some have pushed back on this idea that God is eternal by arguing that a personal God cannot be eternal because there is some inconsistency. William Lane Craig remains unconvinced by this pushback. Craig narrows the scope of his argument to the mere conception of God; by this I mean God analyzing God without conflating the issue of how God might relate to humans. Craig looks at the “necessary conditions of personhood” and seeks to establish their consistency with a timeless being. (Craig, 110) Craig alludes to three such conditions: “consciousness,” intentionality,” and “inter-personal relations.” (Craig, 110)
First, let us explore the consciousness challenge. Craig mentions an argument that time is a “concomitant of consciousness.” (Craig, 111) This alludes to Aquinas’ initiate view of time: consciousness generates a “temporal series” (Craig, 111) that is sufficient for time. This view however is not in conflict with Aquinas’ general view of a God with “atemporal consciousness;” (Craig, 111) more specifically, Aquinas thinks that the “potentiality for change could not be eternal” (112) because God must be pure actuality. It is possible to imagine that God has consciousness that consists of various propositions which do not have to be temporal (e.g. “all men are mortal,” “the internal degrees of a triangle add up to 180 degrees,” etc.).
Next, the intentionality challenge. A person performs “international actions” (Craig, 117) for the sake of bringing about some goals. This seems like a challenge for God because this implies “future-directed intentions” (Craig, 118), which seems incompatible with not only eternality but also omnipotence. Aquinas seems to maintain that God’s intentionality is oriented to his own goodness. Is there a contradiction here? Craig does not think so – he thinks intentionality does not have to be future-directed. (Craig, 118) Craig frames intentionality as an act of the will. (Craig, 119) Therefore, God exercises intentionality by either willing to create (the universe) or willing not to create.
Finally, let us explore the “inter-personal relations” (Craig, 119) challenge. Some say God’s timelessness does not allow him to have relations with other people, thus God is not personal. Here, the objection falls flat immediately because the conception of God necessarily has interpersonal relations. The Trinitarian doctrine states that the godhead consists of a relation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. An illustration that comes to mind is Cerberus from Greek mythology. Cerberus is a three-headed dog, and each distinct head has a relation with each other. Moreover, the picture of God is often accompanied with angels and demons, so there are further reasons to think that God has relations without thinking of relations with humans.
By and large, there is no trouble with God’s eternality and personhood; however, there may be an issue with God’s eternality and our personhood. This issue is equally pressing because our personhood seems like a basic (i.e. fundamental or primitive) idea to us; if it were mutually exclusive with God’s eternality, it would be reasonable for us to give up the concept of God’s eternality. An essential feature of personhood that should be emphasized is autonomy. On Aquinas’ picture, it is a feature of what makes us essentially human; more specifically, our autonomy guides the way we achieve our teleological goals. We have the freedom to choose how to achieve the ends for Eudaimonia (i.e. fulfillment, happiness, flourishing). If our autonomy is violated by God’s eternality, it questions our personhood.
Brian Leftow thinks Boethius’ model best preserves God’s eternality and our autonomy (or “libertarian freedom”). (Leftow, 309) The general problem with God’s eternality and our autonomy is that God’s knowledge is of eternal truths, and this means God knows every action any human will do. For instance, my choice to either write this sentence or not write this sentence was already known by God’s eternal knowledge; thus, if it were already known, there seems to be some sense in which I was not free to choose it.
The maneuver around this, Leftow presents, is reminiscent of Boethius. (Leftow, 311) The claim is that God is not in time, but above and beyond time. There is no “time” when God know what will happen; in other words, there no “time” when there is a being (God) with knowledge of the next succession (time) of events (my choice). On this view, God is timeless (and eternal) and still has eternal knowledge of all truths. This is a nice reconciliatory view of God’s eternality and our personhood.
Let us now consider God’s eternality and his relation to us. David A. White mentions two forms of the “doctrine of divine immutability.” (White, 70) First, is that God’s change is not “real” change, but mere “relational” change; second, it that God undergoes neither of these changes. (White, 70) This can be frame in the language of extrinsic and intrinsic change: “real” change seems to be intrinsic in character – that is, gaining a (salient) property – yet “relational” change seems to be extrinsic, or gaining (loosely) a property in virtue of something else. For example, an intrinsic change to a bucket of blue paint would be it changing into a bucket of red paint (it gains the property of “redness”); in contrast, an extrinsic change would be putting it next to a bucket of red paint (it gains the property of “being next to a red bucket of paint”). With this picture, it would seem God’s relation to us is a relation change. For instance, prayers are thought to be a relation between us and God, but it is such the case that we pray to God and God gains the property “being prayer to by a person.” Moreover, answering prayers aligns with the previous thought of eternal knowledge: mainly, God ordered the world so that prayers may be answered. By and large, it seems most cases of God’s relation to us seem like the weaker, “relational” type change.
There seems to be another issue with God’s eternality and change – that is, the moment of creation. It seems there is some real change in God at the moment of creation; namely, he takes on the property of “creator.” This issue might be resolved by saying that God always had the property of being a creator and chose to exercise it at the moment of creation. However, this pushes the problem towards temporality. If God is eternal, how could he choose a specific moment to create the world and still maintain his eternality?
There have been some reasonable responses to this issue. Leftow seems to deny that it is a real change but a mere relational change. (White, 76) The idea is that intrinsic changes to properties must have some causal significance, and creation should not be conceived in this way. Unsatisfied with this view of causation, Craig responds by wanting to take a model of divine eternity which “combine states of divine timelessness and temporality into a single world.” (Craig, 114) So prior to creation God exists atemporally, but then exists temporally with his creation of time. (Craig, 115) Craig bites the bullet and says that God is temporal post creation; nevertheless, his view of eternity allows this. Craig’s views of eternity, however, seem unsatisfactory to the traditional view of God.
Perhaps Aquinas can help. Perhaps creation can be seen as an extension of God so that a robust notion of causation is not necessary. With this in mind, the view that creation is a mere relational change seems tenable. Rather than thinking of creation as an artist drawing a picture (a direct causal relation), a more appropriate analogy might be a tree growing a fruit. The tree sets in motion the development of the fruit, but it is still a part of the tree; moreover, the fruit affects the tree in an extrinsic, relational way. Some may push back and say this implies that all the imperfections and evil of the world are also a part of God. However, Aquinas’ conception of evil is viewed as a privation of good, and as long as the imperfections of the world strive for perfection (consistent with Aquinas’ picture), there is no issue.
This is only one small suggestion at dealing with the issue of God’s eternality, change and creation. It is an open question which conceptions of eternality and causation in creation are most tenable, especially keeping in mind specific views of Christian dogma. I want to further suggest that a conception of eternal time for God that is not univocal with human time is hinted at by Aquinas, and this too would resolve the tensions.
Sources
Craig, William Lane. “Divine timelessness and personhood.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43: 109–124 (1998)
Leftow, Brian. “Timelessness and Foreknowledge.” Philosophical studies 63. 309-325 (1991) White, David A. “ Divine Immutability, Properties and Time.” Sophia 39:2. 70-80 (2000
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