Human beings are creatures inescapably bound by time. We are born, we age, and our lives pass like a shadow (Eccl. 6:12). However much we try to delay its advance, our days are “soon gone, and we fly away” (Ps. 90:10). Time remains beyond our control.
How, then, can temporal creatures even begin to imagine—or understand—what eternity means? Eternity does not belong to our experience (Eccl. 3:11; Job 36:26), and even time is a mysterious reality. Augustine famously asked, “For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? . . . If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.”[1]
Thus, if we are to begin reflecting on what eternity is—and especially on what it means to confess that God is eternal—we must first acknowledge this fundamental truth: God is not like us. He does not possess eternity in the way we possess duration. His relation to time is altogether different. He is not merely present at every moment in time but transcends time altogether.[2] If this is so, then eternity is not a reality we discover, but one God must disclose from Scripture. Consequently, we will turn to God’s self-revelation to learn (1) what eternity is and (2) how this confession steadies the Christian life.
Divine Eternity: God Beyond Time
Scripture portrays God as infinite in his nature. He is described as one whose greatness and understanding are beyond measure (2 Chr. 6:18; Ps. 145:3; 147:5). This provides the framework for the confession of God’s eternity, understood as infinite with respect to time.[3] The biblical witness unfolds this confession along three distinct but complementary lines.
God is Eternal in His Being
Moses says that the Lord is God from “everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. 90:2; see also Hab. 1:12). He is the everlasting (Gen. 21:33) and eternal God (Rom. 16:25–26) who “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). And he remains unchanging (Ps. 102:25–27; Isa. 41:4; 46:9–10; Heb. 13:8; Mal. 3:6; Num. 23:19; Jas. 1:17).
Divine eternity, then, is not something God merely possesses; it belongs to who he is. The great “I AM” is intrinsically eternal—not in the process of becoming.[4] Only the Triune God, properly speaking, is eternal by nature, for “He is His own essence; therefore, He is His own eternity.”[5]
What, then, do we mean when we confess that God is eternal? In light of Scripture’s testimony, divine eternity names God’s mode of existence. To say that God is eternal is to say that he possesses, as Boethius famously defined it, “the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of limitless life.”[6] His eternity comprehends the entire flow of time in a single, indivisible, and eternal present.[7] By way of negation, this means God has no beginning, no end, and no succession of moments.[8] There is no “before” or “after” in God (Ps. 90:2; Mal. 3:6). God exists outside time in the plenitude of his eternal life.[9] As Francis Turretin (1623–1687) rightly states, God is “free from every difference of time.”[10]
Beginning with God’s eternal being is essential for a proper understanding of his relation to time. Otherwise, we risk attributing to God change in response to creation or we risk importing creaturely, temporal characteristics into God’s divine life (Isa. 40:18, 25; Num. 23:19; Ps. 50:21), forgetting that he “is the same, and his years have no end” (Ps. 102:27).[11] This means, as we will see next, God relates to time without acquiring new properties or altering the fullness of life that eternally exists in him.[12]
God Is Eternal Before, During, and Beyond Time
God is the Creator of all things, including time itself (John 1:1–3; Ps. 90:2; Prov. 8:22–23). Time belongs properly to the created order and may be understood as a mode of existence proper to creatures.[13] In other words, it arises with creation and is inseparable from it.[14] Consequently, God, as the sovereign Creator of time, is neither contained by time nor subject to its constraints but transcends it.[15] As the psalmist declares, for him, “a thousand years” are as “yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night” (Ps. 90:4; cf. 2 Pet. 3:8).
In contrast to creaturely existence, God is atemporal. He “sees” the whole of time at once, comprehending every moment without himself undergoing succession.[16] In this sense, God “embraces” past, present, and future, not because his life extends across them, but because nothing in him can properly be said to be past or future, since his life remains always the same and immutable, as Francis Turretin properly notes.[17]
For this reason, time and eternity are not merely different in degree but are qualitatively and essentially distinct realities.[18] Time is the duration proper to creaturely existence, whereas eternity belongs uniquely to the divine life.[19] This distinction inevitably raises the question of divine governance: if God is eternal in his being and transcendent of time, how does he rule the temporal order without becoming subject to it? It is to this question that we will now turn.
God Governs Time without Being Contained by It
God is “the King of the ages” (1 Tim. 1:17). This means that God, far from being eternally static, is sovereign over time itself.[20] He establishes times and seasons, removes kings and sets up kings (Dan. 2:21); determines the decisive moments of redemptive history (Gal. 4:4; Acts 2:23); governs the ordinary events of providence (Prov. 16:9; Matt. 10:29); and directs history toward its appointed consummation (Acts 1:7; Rev. 1:8). In this way, God is genuinely and actively involved in the temporal events of his creation without being limited or conditioned by time itself.
Although God truly acts within time, he does not experience temporal succession as creatures do. Properly speaking, God stands above time even as he freely and effectively works within it. As Steven J. Duby helpfully explains, this is possible precisely because God is who he is: “in simply being who and what he is as God, he both transcends all that he has made and can be immediately present to all that he has made.”[21] Creation does not introduce a new mode of existence in God; rather, it is an eternal divine act that produces a temporal effect.[22] God is therefore not located in time as a result of creation but transcends what he has made while remaining immediately present to it.[23]
In sum, divine eternity is God’s mode of existence according to which he possesses fullness of life, without succession or change, transcending time as its Creator while remaining fully present to every moment of history (Ps. 139:7–10; Heb. 4:13). Eternity, therefore, is not an infinite extension of temporal life, but the perfection of God’s being beyond all temporal limitation.
Living before Our Eternal God and Redeemer
Far from being a cold or merely speculative doctrine, the doctrine of God’s eternity has the power to stir our affections and sustain us in the Christian life. In the midst of weariness, the ongoing struggle against sin, and the frustration of slow spiritual growth, Scripture calls us to lift our eyes beyond the present moment and to remember a foundational truth: we were loved before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4), and we will be loved into eternity (Eph. 2:7).
The love with which God has loved us is eternal. His redemptive purpose—to give his Son for us—was established in eternity, according to his immutable will (2 Tim. 1:9). For this reason, we may rest in the assurance that our salvation does not depend on our fluctuating strength, but on the eternal faithfulness of God. The one who knew us and loved us from before the foundation of the world is the same one who patiently sustains us now and will faithfully bring his work to completion (Rom. 8:29–30; Phil. 1:6).
Though time may feel heavy or uncertain to us, God is not bound by such limitations. He knows the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:9–10) and governs every moment of our lives with perfect wisdom. We can be confident that our lives are secure in the hands of our eternal God and Redeemer.
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Augustine, Confessions, 11.14.17, in NPNF 1:168. ↑
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Stephen Wellum, Systematic Theology (Brentwood: B&H Academic, 2024), 1:618. ↑
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Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, vol. 1, Revelation and God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), chap. 35, Kindle; Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols., trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), I.10.1. ↑
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Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, volume 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 2:163. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Augustine rightly explains that God alone can properly say “I AM,” because to the divine nature “there is no proper application of was and will be, but only is; for that nature alone truly is, because it is incapable of change.” For this reason, it was fitting for God to say [in Exodus 3:14], “I AM THAT I AM,” and “He Who Is hath sent me unto you.” Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, in NPNF, 7:383. ↑
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Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, rev. by Daniel J. Sullivan, Vol. I. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1923), I, q.10, a.2; see also Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:163. Aquinas in aa. 3–4 explains that eternity belongs properly to God and indivisibly to all three persons of the Trinity. As the Athanasian Creed likewise confesses, “The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal; and yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.” ↑
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Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. David R. Slavitt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), V. 6, 168–169; see also Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.10.VI; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:163; John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity (Paris: Baptist Standard Bearer, 2000), 46. ↑
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Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, V. 6, 168–169. ↑
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Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.10.1. ↑
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Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:618. ↑
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Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.10.1. ↑
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Beeke and Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, 1:682. ↑
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Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:621. ↑
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As Herman Bavinck astutely observes, “if there were no creatures, there would be no time.” Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:162; cf. Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. John Hammond Taylor, 2 vols., Ancient Christian Writers 41–42 (New York: Newman Press, 1982), VI; Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), XI.6. ↑
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Turretin rightly says: “Eternity always was and will be. However, time neither always was nor always will be, but will cease with the world.” Turretin, Institutes I.10.XVI. ↑
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This account preserves the immutability of God in relation to creation. As Herman Bavinck accurately explains, “He is the eternal Creator, and as Creator, he was the Eternal One, and as the Eternal One he created. The creation therefore brought about no change in God; it did not emanate from him and is no part of his being. He is unchangeably the same eternal God.” Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:429. ↑
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Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:619. ↑
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Turretin, Institutes I.10.VI; As Boethius explains, God possesses the fullness of life all at once: He loses nothing of the past, lacks nothing of the future, and comprehends the entire flow of time in a single, indivisible, and eternal present. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, V. 6, 168–169. ↑
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Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:162; see also Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q.10, a.4. ↑
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Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:162–63. ↑
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Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:619. ↑
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Steven J. Duby, “For I Am God, Not a Man”: Divine Repentance and the Creator-Creature Distinction, Journal of Theological Interpretation 12, no. 2 (2018): 157. ↑
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Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:620–621. ↑
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Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:620–621. For representative modern revisions of the classical doctrine of divine eternity, see the essays by William Lane Craig and Nicholas Wolterstorff in Gregory E. Ganssle, ed., God and Time: Four Views (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), 129–60, 187–213. For mediating or “both/and” proposals regarding God’s relation to time, see John M. Frame, The Doctrine of God (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2002), 553–59, 570–73; Millard J. Erickson, God the Father Almighty: A Contemporary Exploration of the Divine Attributes (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998), 114–40, 271–77; Rob Lister, God Is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 225–31. ↑
