God: The Fullness of Life
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The Fullness of Life: the Foundation of Classical Theism
The Fullness of Life: the Foundation of Classical Theism
Scriptural Reasoning for the Boundless Timeless Perfection of God
Scriptural Reasoning for the Boundless Timeless Perfection of God
But will God indeed live on earth? Even heaven, the highest heaven, cannot contain you, much less this temple I have built.
Can you fathom the depths of God or discover the limits of the Almighty?
who alone has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.
God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ”
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ ἥκει καὶ δέδωκεν ἡμῖν διάνοιαν ἵνα γινώσκωμεν τὸν ἀληθινόν, καὶ ἐσμὲν ἐν τῷ ἀληθινῷ, ἐν τῷ υἱῷ αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστῷ. οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ ἀληθινὸς θεὸς καὶ ζωὴ αἰώνιος.
They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.
I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.
God is eternally God and cannot change in his essence (ousia) or will (nous).
“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.
God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
As a perfect begin, God cannot be tempted.
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
Aquinas’ Five Ways Demonstrate the Necessity and Nature of God.
Aquinas’ Five Ways Demonstrate the Necessity and Nature of God.
Summa Theologica I q.2.a.3 resp
Summa Theologica I q.2.a.3 resp
argument from motion
argument from efficient cause
argument from possibility and necessity
argument from gradation
argument from “governance” or providential design
Why must God be perfect?
Why must God be perfect?
God is perfect because there is no “potential” in God.
God is perfect because there is no “potential” in God.
God is the first mover. Nothing made God move. God must timelessly be “pure act” (actus purus) or perfect life or the fullness of life.
God is the first mover. Nothing made God move. God must timelessly be “pure act” (actus purus) or perfect life or the fullness of life.
God is perfect because God necessarily is his own essence and existence.
God is perfect because God necessarily is his own essence and existence.
Summa Theologica (English) Fourth Article: Whether Essence and Existence are the Same in God?
Therefore, if the existence of a thing differs from its essence, this existence must be caused either by some exterior agent or by its essential principles.
Summa Theologica (English) Fourth Article: Whether Essence and Existence are the Same in God?
existence is that which makes every form or nature actual; for goodness and humanity are spoken of as actual, only because they are spoken of as existing
Summa Theologica (English) Second Article: Whether the Perfections of All Things are in God?
All created perfections are in God. Hence He is spoken of as universally perfect, because He lacks not (says the Commentator, Metaph. v) any excellence which may be found in any genus.
Summa Theologica (English) Second Article: Whether the Perfections of All Things are in God?
First, because whatever perfection exists in an effect must be found in the effective cause
Summa Theologica (English) Second Article: Whether the Perfections of All Things are in God?
God is existence itself, of itself subsistent
Anselm’s Monologium 1.
Anselm’s Monologium 1.
The Major Works of Anselm of Canterbury Chapter I
There is a being which is best, and greatest, and highest of all existing beings.
The Major Works of Anselm of Canterbury Chapter I
For, since all desire to enjoy only those things which they suppose to be good, it is natural that this man should, at some time, turn his mind’s eye to the examination of that cause by which these things are good, which he does not desire, except as he judges them to be good.
And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.
Finally, there can be no “accidental” attributes in God.
Finally, there can be no “accidental” attributes in God.
Distinction between accidental and necessary attributes.
Accidents imply potentiality or future change.
Accidents imply that God would, at some time, be less than the perfect being.
Accidents imply that something might move God.
All God’s Attributes are Established in His Primacy
All God’s Attributes are Established in His Primacy
Theoretical-Practical Theology, Volume 2: Faith in the Triune God 2. Because All the Attributes of God Are Established in This Primacy
On the other hand, it is accepted that all the attributes of God are grounded on this aseity, independence, and primacy, which could be made plain through induction, in the following ways. (1) Unity: for that which is the absolutely first being cannot be but one. But if several such beings should be conceived, none will be absolutely first, since one does not precede another. (2) Immutability: for if this being were changed, it would be changed by another, and to that extent that other would undoubtedly be prior to the absolutely first being, which is contradictory. (3) Infinity: for that which is limited, is limited by another, for nothing limits itself and restricts its own perfection, and that other would certainly be prior to the absolutely first being. (4) Simplicity: for that which is composed is, by the same measure, composed by another that is prior to it. (5) Life: for since there is no imperfection involved in the concept of life, it cannot but belong to the one who is simply from himself, and thus it applies to the one to whom this perfection cannot be denied by another. By the same consequence, (6) intellect: for by common consent it is more perfect to understand than not to understand. And also (7) will: for as all confess, to operate from free choice is more perfect than to act by nature. Equally, (8) omnipotence: for he who does not admit a being prior to himself also cannot be restricted and limited in his power. (9) You could easily demonstrate similar things concerning the virtues of the intellect and the will—wisdom, goodness, grace, holiness, and others—which, since they without any doubt imply absolute perfection, cannot be removed from the absolutely first being, because if they were removed, they would be removed by another, who would then become prior to the absolutely first being.
How the Biblical Conception of God Encourages Christians
How the Biblical Conception of God Encourages Christians
from Petrus van Mastricht, 93-94.
His greatness encourages praise.
His greatness encourages humility in the creature.
His greatness encourages us to deny ourselves.
His greatness encourages us to have confidence in him.
His greatness encourages us to receive his word.
New Theism: Hegel, Moltmann, and Pannenberg
New Theism: Hegel, Moltmann, and Pannenberg
Hegel
Hegel
If it isn’t history, it isn’t real
If it isn’t history, it isn’t real
G. W. F. Hegel tied reality to the experience of history so that reality is that which happens in history. Hegel “translated” Galatians 4:4 as, “when the need for the Spirit came into existence, Spirit manifested the reconciliation.”[1] Since, for Hegel, all reality is tied to history, the prehistory existence of the Trinity is problematic. What could God possibly be like if there were no history to reveal himself in or to be present (real) in. The ad intra nature of the Trinity was reduced to an afterthought in this system because on the ad extra works of the Trinity were “real” in history. Fred Sanders said, “Hegel’s influence on modern trinitarianism has been so pervasive as to be nearly inescapable. His work established a style for modern trinitarianism, according to which the doctrine is grounded in the dynamics of world process.” [2]
Moltmann
Moltmann
If it isn’t suffering, it isn’t real
If it isn’t suffering, it isn’t real
Moltmann continued the radical new direction for trinitarian thought. Instead of the classical conception of God as the immutable timeless first cause, Moltmann’s doctrine of God focused on the cross and the divine experience of suffering. He wrote, “The doctrine of the Trinity is the conceptual framework that is necessary if we are to understand this history of Christ as being the history of God.”[3] Suffering played such a foundational role to Moltmann’s trinitarian theology that he said, “the theology of the cross must be the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Trinity must be the theology of the cross.”[4] The divine suffering, according to Moltmann, led to “God’s eschatological self-deliverance.”[5] Moltmann emphasized that God must be relational. He described the Trinity as a fellowship of persons and demanded that those three divine persons must relate fully to creation in its suffering.[6]
Wolfhart Pannenberg
Wolfhart Pannenberg
It isn’t real till its finished
It isn’t real till its finished
Wolfhart Pannenberg saw the eschaton as the realization of God’s existence. He said, “it is necessary to say that, in a restricted but important sense, God does not exist yet.”[7] Pannenberg argues that in order for God to exist, God must “actualize himself in the world by his coming into it.”[8] The Trinity, therefore, according to Pannenberg does not “exist” until the divine persons are present in history so that they can begin to actualize.[9] In this system God exists in his interaction with the world. Pannenberg said, “It is certainly true that the trinitarian God in the history of salvation is the same God as in His eternal life.”[10]
Summary of this Modern Trinitarian Conception
Summary of this Modern Trinitarian Conception
theistic personalism and social trinitarianism
theistic personalism and social trinitarianism
This modern conception of the Trinity shaped by Hegel, Moltmann, and Pannenberg forms the doctrine of God in which the Neo-Apollinarian thesis might be formulated. This doctrine of God is one of theistic personalism. In this conception of God, God is a being among beings. He is a person among persons. The gap between the Creator and creature has been so eroded that God remains superior but not transcendent. The God presented in this framework is inherently tied to history and is therefore mutable and relatable above all other things. This doctrine of God is always social trinitarian. The three persons of the Trinity are related socially but not in their relations of origin. The Trinity, in this conception, is a fraternity or team in which the Father, Son, and Spirit exist in creation to complete themselves through participation in the creation’s suffering.
[1] Cited in Stephen Crites, “The Gospel According to Hegel,” Journal of Religion, 46, no. 2 (April 1966), 252.
[2] Fred Sanders, Fountain of Salvation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), 159.
[3] Jurgen Moltmann, The Future of Creation: Collected Essays (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1979), 81.
[4] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 241.
[5] Moltmann, Trinity and Kingdom (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 60.
[6] Moltmann, Trinity and Kingdom, 19, 149.
[7] Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and The Kingdom of God, (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), 56.
[8] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:390.
[9] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1:391-393.
[10] Pannenberg, “Books in Review: Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: Volumes 1 & 2,” First Things103 (May 2000):49-53.
Classical Theism
Classical Theism
This new, more limited, doctrine of God is popular among theologians today who are divorced from or have greatly reinterpreted the great tradition. Modernity shifted the doctrine of God away from sublime divine mysteries to that which is more suitable to the grasp of creatures. As Katherine Sonderegger suggested that modern theologians “have an allergy to deity.”[1] Classical theists stand in the great tradition of Christian thought and stay “convinced that we can only understand God’s attributes in all their glory if such attributes originate from one core conviction: God is someone than whom none greater can be conceived.”[2]
As a champion of God’s perfections, Anselm taught, “There is a being which is best, and greatest, and highest of all beings.”[3] Similar to how Aquinas affirmed the existence of God by the argument from gradation in his “Five Ways,” Anselm argued that God must exist as the greatest of all possible beings because “all other goods are good through another being than that which they themselves are, and this being alone is good through itself…. There is, therefore, some being which is supremely good, and supremely great, that is, the highest of all possible beings.”[4] Katherine Rogers explained that the great Greek and Roman philosophers held to a “perfect being theology” and that the great thinkers of classical theism “agreed that certain attributes must be applied to ‘that than which a greater cannot be conceived’. He is perfect unity, immutable and eternal. He is absolutely independent and necessarily existent. He is the omnipotent, omniscient and ubiquitous source of all.”[5]
This classical conception of God was largely unchallenged until the modern era. Epistemological questions which began during the Enlightenment cast doubt on all forms of knowledge. David Hume, for example, stood squarely in opposition to classical theism and the dominant Thomistic philosophical foundations in his opposition to rationalism and even the principle of cause and effect. This post-Enlightenment epistemology began to grapple and then dominate theological study. Rogers noted that these types of philosophical inquiry should be rejected in favor of classical epistemology since the classical view which was most clearly set forward by Aquinas because “they did not attempt to solve one philosophical puzzle in isolation and then move on to another as so often seems to be the modus operandi among contemporary analytic philosophers of religion” and because “the medieval had the backing of powerful epistemic and metaphysical systems.”[6]
[1] Katharine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology Volume 1: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015), xi.
[2] Matthew Barrett, None Greater, 10.
[3]Anselm, Monologium, 1.
[4] In an interesting contrast to Neo-Apollinarianism, Anselm focused his argument on the divine intellect (Anselm, Monologium, 1).
[5] Rogers, Perfect Being Theology, 6.
[6] Rogers, Perfect Being Theology, 6.
Perceiving the Divine Power
Perceiving the Divine Power
Romans 1:19-20 teaches that, even in natural theology, one might perceive God’s “eternal power” and his “divine nature.” God’s omnipotence the boundless nature of God was described as “ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις” or his “timeless power.” Paul combined two concepts, timelessness and power which, in the creaturely realm, do not immediately relate. However, in the classical conception of God, God’s power and timelessness are inherently linked since God is pure actuality. God’s timelessness and omnipotence were then linked, by Paul, to God’s θειότης or divine nature. The same word was used again by Paul to describe the incarnate Christ in Colossians 2:9 when he wrote, “ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ κατοικεῖ πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς θεότητος σωματικῶς.” The exclusively divine attributes of “ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις” and “θειότης” were said to “dwell bodily” (σωματικῶς) in Christ.
Eternal Timelessness
Eternal Timelessness
Eternal timelessness affirms that God is not in time and that there is no change or passing of time with God. Jesus is “true God and eternal life” (1 Jn 5:20). Eternality or divine timelessness is a necessary attribute of God since God existed before the creation of space-time (Gen 1:1; Jn 1:1). Furthermore, if God came into existence, then there would, by necessity, be something greater than God which brought him into existence. Divine timeless eternity has been accepted by classical theists. Paul Helm described this widespread agreement when he said “The classical Christian theologians, Augustine of Hippo, say, or Aquinas, or John Calvin each took it for granted that God exists as a timelessly eternal being. They accepted it as an axiom of Christian theology that god has no memory, and no conception of his own future, and that he does not change.”[1] Since God is distinct from time and created space time, classical theologians argue that he cannot be contained by time.
The eternal divine timelessness is necessary to God’s nature and to the existence of the universe. Aquinas argued for the existence of God as the necessary first cause and as that being which makes sense of gradation.[2] In this way it is shown that God must be pure act or without potentiality. If God was not pure act, or if God had potential within him, then the ultimate cause of the universe would remain a mystery. Aquinas pointed out that, “motion is nothing else that the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality.”[3] Since Scripture and reason declare that God is the first cause who is uncaused, then eternality and immutability must also be accepted.[4] If God is “temporal” in any way, then it is logical to assume that God had a beginning, God may have a creator, and that there is something greater than God.
Descriptions of God as acting in creation, responding to creatures, or even interacting with his creation do not need to be seen as clear proof that God is in time. These descriptions are understood by temporalists as literally true. These same descriptions are understood, in a timeless sense by atemporalists, as anthropomorphically true. Paul Helm, in the opening chapter of his book Eternal God, dermonstrated that Scripture described God as in time just as it described God as being in space. Since God is omnipresent (without limitations to his presence), God must also be timeless (without limitation to time).
Anthony Kenny rejects eternal timelessness because, according to him, all events would be simultaneous. He explained that if God were truly eternally timeless then, “If A happens at the same time as B, and B happens and the same time as C, then A happens at the same time as C.”[5] Kenny has manifested a foundational misunderstanding. He assumed that God and creation exist on the same plane of being. God must exist apart from creation. Therefore, God and creation do not exist in the same plane of existence. Creation is simultaneous present to the God who exists outside the creation.
Moreland and Craig furthered their argument on the temporal nature of God based on God’s interaction with nature. They wrote: “ If God is really related to the world, then it is extraordinarily difficult to see how God could remain untouched by the world’s temporality.[6]Similarly, Nelson Pike argued against eternal timelessness because “A timeless individual could not produce, create, or bring about an object, circumstance or state of affairs, since so doing would temporally locate the agent’s action.”[7]Pike’s argument, like Kenny’s, failed to acknowledge the true force of God’s eternal act and the potential for God to eternally act so that the creature “feels” as though there is interaction which resembles the human action and response instead of the divine act which includes the human action and the divine work.
Arguments against God as eternal and timeless fail to recognize the true fullness of the divine action and the nature of God as distinct from time and space. As Anselm said, “what evidently has no place or time is doubtless by no means compelled to submit to the law of place or time.”[9] God cannot be bound by space and time since he created space and time. Again, Anselm reasoned that rational consideration would reveal “that the Substance which creates and is supreme among all beings, which must be alien to, and free from, the nature and law of all things which itself created from nothing, is limited by no restraint of space or time.”[10]
Anselm explained how that the very nature of God requires a timeless eternal existence. He first clarified the way in which God’s existence should be spoken of when he wrote, “Is not, therefore, the term which seems to mean all time more properly understood, when applied to this Substance, to signify eternity, which is never unlike itself, rather than a changing succession of times, which is ever in some sort unike itself?”[13]Anselm pointed out that time is consistently changing. It is always different. God, on the other hands, is always the same. God is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Js 1:17). God’s existence then “apparently is an interminable life, existing at once as a perfect whole.”[14]
Aquinas masterfully reasoned that God cannot be in time because time is the measure of change. God does not change (Js 1:17), so God cannot be in time. Aquinas wrote, “Now in a thing bereft of movement, which is always the same, there is no before and after. As therefore the idea of time consists in the numbering of before and after in movement; so likewise in the apprehension of the uniformity of what is outside of movement, consists of the idea of eternity.”[15]Furthermore, God must be timeless because he has neither beginning nor end. To measure something by time includes the expectation of a beginning measurement and an ending measurement. With God there can be no beginning nor end. Therefore, God is not in time. God must be eternally timeless.
The eternal and timeless nature of God is linked to his nature. Since God is infinite, he cannot be bound by time just as he cannot change. So, Aquinas said, “He is His own eternity; whereas no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being and hence, as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.”[16] Just as God is distinct from his creation because he is perfect and the creation is imperfect, “Eternity is simultaneously whole. But time has a before and an after.”[17]
The timeless eternality of God was also taught in Psalm 90:2, “from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” Since God is God from “everlasting to everlasting,” God must be outside of time or else there would be change in God as there is change in everything that is in time. Just as Heraclitus said, “no man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he’s not the same man,”[18] if there was ever any change in God, then the God known by the apostles would have been a different “version” of God known to Adam. God is eternally and timelessly God.
Barth argued that God dwells in a supreme temporality. He wrote, “Even the eternal God does not live without time. He is supremely temporal. For His eternity is authentic temporality, and therefore the source of all time.” Still, Barth distinguished God from time when he wrote, “But in His eternity, in the uncreated self-subsistent time which is one of the perfections of His divine nature, present, past and future, yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, are not successive, but simultaneous.[19] Barth does not seem to agree with Moreland and Craig’s position though he did use similar language to describe God’s “experience” of successive moments. Barth went on to explain that:
It is in this way, in this eternity of His, that God lives to the extent that He lives His own life. But man, who is not God, who is a creature and not the Creator, cannot live like this. If he is to live at all, he needs an inauthentic temporality distinct from eternity. He needs the time created by God, in which past, present and future follow one another in succession, in which he can move from his past through his present to his future[20]
In this way, Barth has distinguished the creature from the Creator. God alone is eternal. Creatures dwell in temporary moments. Barth also noted that time itself is a creation. He wrote that “For time is not a something, a creature with other creatures, but a form of all the reality distinct from God, posited with it, and therefore a real form of its being and nature.”[21]
Barth’s explanation of time as opposed to eternity displays the difference between the Reformed position, classical theism, and the Neo-Apollinarian view maintained by Moreland and Craig. God cannot go through time as creatures go through time, because time itself is a creation. God could no more inhabit time than he could inhabit any other creature. The only way in which God could experience time would be the incarnation.
Moreland and Craig’s view does not fit the biblical descriptions of God’s relationship with time and events. Isaiah 46, for example, described God as omniscient and the One who brings events to occur. Isaiah 46:11 described the link between God’s actions and omniscience. The Scripture says, “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose…I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.” God’s knowledge was not based on the accumulation of facts and possibilities. God’s knowledge is based on what he has decreed.
Since God is eternal, he must also be immutable. Since God is both eternal and immutable, he must also be infinite as only a boundless being could be eternal and immutable. Classical theism recognizes the immutability of the divine nature and then the mutability of the human nature.
[1] Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time, (Oxford: Oxford U of P., 1988), 1.
[2]Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I q.2 a.3 s.c.
[3]Aquinas Summa Theologica, I q.2 a.3 resp.
[4] The modern rejection of timeless eternality is partly the result of a methodological error. Since Schleiermacher’s The Christian Faith, experience has been a the foundation of theological knowledge. This methodological shift to experientialism is, in varying degrees, felt in the approach to God’s eternality and timelessness. If one shapes his doctrine of God chiefly from experience, then the Scriptures could be interpreted through the lense of human experience. On the other hand, if special revelation is allowed to shape the doctrine of God so that God’s relation to creation can be better understood, then the doctrine of God could be viewed differently. Theologians who begin with the conception of God as one who interacts and grows with his creation need a more limited doctrine of God to fit this mold (See Helm’s introduction to Eternal God).
[5]Anthony Kenny, “Aquinas on Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom,” in Reason and Religion: Essays in Philosophical Theology (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 129.
[6]Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 848.
[7]Nelson Pike, “God and Timelessness” in Studies in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Schoken Books, 1970), 110.
[8]William Lane Craig, “Eternal God: A Study of God without Time” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (June 1993) 36/2, 255.
[9] Anselm, Monologium, 22.
[10]Anselm, Monologium, 22.
[11] See Paul Helm, Eternal God, chapter 1.
[12] Anselm, Monologium, 25.
[13] Anselm, Monlogium, 24.
[14] Anselm, Monologium, 24.
[15]Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I q.10 a.1 resp.
[16]Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I q.10 a.2.sc.
[17]Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I q.10 a.4 obj. 3.
[18]Plato, Cratylus, 402a.
[19] Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 2, vol. 3, 437.
[20] Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 2, vol. 3, 437–438.
[21] Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 2, vol. 3, 438.
Immutability
Immutability
Immutability refers to God’s changeless nature. Immutability is a “natural implication of God’s aseity.”[1] Anselm summarized the doctrine when he said, “It is also evident that this supreme Substance is without beginning and without end; that it has neither past, nor future, nor the temporal, that is, transient present in which we live; since its age, or eternity, which is nothing else than itself, is immutable and without parts.”[2] Since God is infinite and perfect he must also be changeless.
James 1:17 affirms, in a strong fashion, that God has given every good gift and that the one who gives good gifts is changeless. James said, “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” The unchangeable nature of God, his immutability, was also taught in Malachi 3:6 where God said, “I the LORD do not change.” Even God’s will is immutable. Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind.” God is the same and his years have no end (Ps 102:27). God alone has “immortality” (Rom 1:23, 1 Tim 1:17, 6:16).
Paul described God as the one who alone has “ἀθανασίαν” in 1 Timothy 1:16. This “immortality” is not given to God as it is shared by God to his creatures. Instead, “immortality” is the nature of his existence. Calvin said, “The meaning is the same as if Paul had said, that God alone not only is immortal from himself and from his own nature, but has immortality in his power; so that it does not belong to creatures, except so far as he imparts to them power and vigour.”[3]Augustine explained that “Since god is supreme being, that is, since He supremely is and, therefore, is immutable, it follows that He gave ‘being’ to all that He created out of nothing; not, however, absolute being.”[4] It is necessary that God is immutable because “any lack of goodness is opposed to God as evil is opposed to good…in respect to the nature which suffers a lack of something good, the lack is not only evil but also harmful.”[5] God cannot experience change because he is, in his very nature, changeless. As Augustine said, “No evils, of course, can be harmful to God, but only to mutable and corruptible natures.”[6]
The incarnate Lord claimed divine immutability for himself. He said, “before Abraham was I am” (Jn 8:58). Hebrews 13:8 taught that Jesus is the same “yesterday, today, and forever.” These descriptions of Christ as immutable must be predicated on the divine nature. The human nature, as a true human nature, experienced all the change expected by humans (Lk 2:52). However, the divine nature remained immutable. Jesus’ statement in John 8:58 is especially pertinent to the Neo-Apollinarian discussion. Jesus claimed the divine name given at Exodus 3:14-15 as he described himself as the one who is even before Abraham was. This eternal timelessness was not just a reality for the Logos and Abraham. Jesus, according to the divine nature, remained the I AM even as he spoke in John 8. The human nature experienced time, but the Logos remained the eternally timeless I AM.
Although immutability is taught in Scripture and confessed by the tradition, Moreland and Craig deny strong immutability because, they say, that if God is entirely changeless, then he would not be able to relate to creation. They wrote, “ he could not exist in space, since any spatially located entity will be constantly changing in relation to other spatial things.”[7] Divine immutability, once enjoyed near universal acceptance among theologians and philosophers alike. Even the ancient heretics affirmed the immutability of God. Weinandy, in Does God Change, documented that the affirmation of God’s immutability governed much of the discussion between Arian, Nestorian, and Apollinarian Christologies in contrast with what became described as Chalcedonian orthodoxy through the work of Athanasius, Cyril, and the Cappadocians. If God is immutable, the heretics argued, then the Christ must be mutable to be involved with and active in creation. This belief led to the view that Christ was a lower deity or the first of God’s creation. Since the Logos was distinct from and of a different nature than God, he could create and be active in the created world. The defenders of orthodoxy responded with the classic dyothelite position which maintained the deity of the Logos which included eternality.
Aquinas acknowledged the connection between immutability and eternality. In fact, Aquinas built his doctrine of God’s eternality upon his doctrine of divine immutability. Aquinas wrote,
The idea of eternity follows immutability, as the idea of time follows movement, as appears from the preceding article. Hence, as God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence, as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity.[8]
This problem between divine immutability and God’s interaction with creation was a major fuel to Christological fires of the fourth century. Athanasius and the Cappadocians argued that God must be immutable, and that the humanity of Christ was, of course, mutable. Aquinas was left with the task of accurately describing the way in which the immutable God could be active in creation without ceasing to be immutable. Thomas argued that since God is the fulness of life (actus purus) rather than inert, he must be able to “interact” immutably with creation as pure act.
Thomas Weinandy affirmed “God’s immutability then as actus purus is on longer a stumbling block, but the primary prolegomenon for a true incarnation.”[9] Immutability via actus purus is the key to unlocking the mystery of the immutable God’s interaction with creation. Since God is infinite and the fulness of life, he fills all time and space. Weinandy described the classic position found in Aquinas this way:
In seeing that God’s immutability as due to his supreme and utterly dynamic perfection as ipsum esse and actus purus, Aquinas eliminated all negative potential in God. He did not place God in complete isolation from the world and man, nor in a situation in which no relation was possible. Rather he gave to God the positive potential that whatever is related to him is related to him as he is in himself.[10]
God is thus able to act on all things and therefore be present to all things (Heb 1:3; Col 1:17). Typically, the discussion of God’s interaction with time shifts between the temporal and atemporal. However, temporality and atemporality may be a false dichotomy. Since God is “pure act,” perhaps it would be best to say that God is atemporal (B Theory), and that he, as the fullness of life, would also be involved in temporality as well. God is distinct from nature, but all things are upheld by his powerful word, and it is “in him that we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Aquinas argued that all creation was like the craftsman’s knowledge of his craft.[11] God, the Craftsman, would be eternally and perfectly aware of everything about his creation as it is and its future as well.[12] Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann have proposed a view of God’s interaction with time which would fit with the classical doctrine of God’s immutability and also explain how God can act in temporal reality.[13] Stum and Kretzmann argued that the eternal and temporal are “simultaneous.”[14] Similarly, Brian Leftow has argued for what he labeled “quasi-temporal eternity” or “QTE.”[15] In Leftow’s view, all events are seen through God’s timelessness. God, as he hurled space and time into existence, would have been fully capable of “interacting with human events such that it appeared “anthropomorphically” that God was acting as a temporal agent while, in fact, God remained immutable.
It seems best to reject any mutability with God for the following reasons. First, if God experiences change, then there must be progress or regress which would imply qualitative gain or loss. Secondly, if God is mutable then that would imply potentiality in God rather than fulness. Next, if God experienced change, then God would also gain knowledge. If God gained knowledge, then he would have previously been ignorant of something. If God is previously ignorant of one thing, then he would have been ignorant of two things before that. This pattern would inevitably reduce the infinite God to finitude and demand another Cause for God himself. Change in any direction implies weakness in God. Change in God is unacceptable because it destroys the very essence of God. As Barrett said, “ In either option God ceases to be eternally good. A God who is not eternally good is not eternally perfect either. And a God who is not eternally perfect cannot be God in the end. Immutability, we are impelled to conclude, is essential and necessary to God’s identity as the perfect, supreme being.”[16]Equally troubling is the reality that if God experienced change, then there would also need to be something great enough to change God by acting upon him.
Finally, if God experiences change, then the Scriptures which affirm his immutability must be explained away as well as the great tradition of interpretation of those passages. As Matthew Barrett wrote
if God changed from good to better, we would have to ask what perfection was lacking. His wisdom? His power? His knowledge? His love? We might also ask whether God is at the mercy of such a change or if such a change is voluntary. If he were at the mercy of such a change, then God would be impotent, vulnerable to the will of another, no longer the most sovereign being, no longer the most supreme being.[17]
God said, “I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). Any change in God would demand that God, at least at some point, was imperfect. Even if God willed a change within himself, there would be difficulties. As Matthew Barrett wrote, “if such a change were voluntary, God would be at odds with himself. For he would have willed change in his being even though his perfections defy any change, at least as long as they are to remain perfections.”[18]Immutability must pertain to the divine will since the divine will is part of God. Contrary to the claims of Neo-Apollinarianism, Aquinas argued that God’s will must be immutable as well since it is the divine will.[19] Since the divine will cannot change, not even “lateral” movements would be allowed in the divine mind. Even lateral movements are outside the realm of the perfect being. God can have no potential choices or decisions since he is simple, a se, and immutable.[20]
The formative Christological debates of the 3-6th centuries focused on the immutability of God as the given. Modern theologians presume that immutability is rejected. To abandon immutability is to abandon clear statements of Scripture and the great tradition as well. It seems best then to accept divine immutability. Therefore, unless one is to accept some form of Arianism, the immutability of the Logos must be affirmed. As the ancient Christological disputes confirmed, the Logos remained true God at and throughout the incarnation. Since the Logos is true God, it would be impossible for him to undergo change. As the Athanasian Creed said, “Qui licet Deus sit et homo, non duo tamen, sed unus est Christus. Unus autem non conversione divinitatis in carnem, sed assumptione humanitatis in Deum. Unus omnino, non confusione substantiae, sed unitate personae.”[21] If the Logos was fully divine, then the Logos must remain fully divine. Which means that the Logos, even during the incarnation, must be immutable.
The doctrine of immutability, although it has been questioned by modern theologians, was, like other classical attributes, accepted by most scholars until the 19thcentury. Bavinck, although he noted the difficulties with the doctrine of immutability given God’s interaction with the world, affirmed the classical doctrine of immutability based on Scripture. Bavinck wrote “At the same time the Scriptures testify that amid all this alternation God is and remains the same. Everything changes, but he remains standing. He remains who he is (Ps. 102:26–28). He is yhwh, he who is and ever remains himself.”[22]Bavinck helpfully demonstrated the Scriptural affirmation of divine immutability.[23] Immutability serves as a distinction between the creature and the Creator. Irenaeus wrote “He who makes is always the same; but that which is made must receive both beginning, and middle, and addition, and increase.”[24]
Theologians are right to say that God is immutable, and that God has acted upon his creation.[25]Moreland and Craig affirm that these two concepts are irreconcilable. They wrote, “ he could not exist in space, since any spatially located entity will be constantly changing in relation to other spatial things.”[26]However, the Scriptures teach that God is immutable, and that God has acted on his creation. Craig rejects both divine immutability and timelessness. He critiqued Aquinas’ description of creation because, according to Craig, an immutable and timeless God could not create and relate to his creation. Craig described Aquinas’ doctrine of creation as “unusually strange” and “just not credible.”[27]Craig suggests that “sustaining the world ought to be regarded as a real property acquired by God at the moment of creation.”[28]
Craig’s critique of Aquinas also entails the rejection of the Aristotelian concepts of relation given in book five Metaphysica since Aquinas couched his argumentation on Aristotelian language. Furthermore, Aquinas had not presented “new material” as such. Aquinas had masterfully explained the theological and philosophical consensus.[29]Augustine argued that God’s work in creation did not manifest a change in God. The change was only in the creation’s relation to God. In reference to God’s gift of the Spirit to the church, Augustine said, “The Spirit is a gift eternally, but has been given in time. For if even a man is not called lord, except when be begins to have a slave, so too, that name is relative and is given to God in time, since the creature of which He is the Lord is not eternal…For nothing accidental happens to God in time, because He is not changeable.”[30]Augustine concluded “How, then, shall we uphold the doctrine that nothing accidental can be predicated of God, except by saying that nothing happens to His nature by which He may be changed, so that those things are relative accidents which can effect some change in the things of which they are predicated?”[31]
Aquinas argued that real relations, as creatures experience them, are not possible in God because these “real relations” as experienced by humans would make the substance of God dependent upon something external to him. In Summa Contra Gentiles, he wrote that, “Oporteret igitur quod Dei substantia ab alio extrinseco esset dependens.”[32]Creation could not in any way perfect God. If creation perfected God, then God would be imperfect before creation and the creation would, in some way it seems, be a part of the divine nature. Imperfection in God must be rejected. Therefore, Aquinas was right to maintain, with the tradition, that God bears no real relation to the world as such because he is immutable and timeless. These “relations” are only “attribuantur solum secumndum intelligentiae modum.”[33]There is no “real relation” because God is not perfected in any way by creation.[34]
Divine immutability should not be cast aside. Instead, immutability should be prized as a supreme comfort. Augustine argued that “the happiness of all anges consists in union with God” and that “their unhappiness must be found in the very contrary, that is, in not adhering to God.”[35] The creature’s happiness depends upon God’s unchanging perfection. Augustine continued to say that, “of course, that One whose beatitude depends upon Himself as His own good and not on any other good can never be unhappy since He can never loose Himself.”[36] God is unchangeable and “there can be no unchangeable good except our one, true, and blessed God.”[37] If God was immutable, then the source of creaturely happiness would be lost. In contrast to “these mutable things” the “beatitude in the Immutable Good is so completely their good that, without this good, misery is inevitable.”[38]
[1]Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. 2, 153.
[2] Anselm, Monologium, 24.
[3] John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 168.
[4]Augustine City of God, 12.2.
[5]Augustine, City of God, 12.3.
[6]Augustine, City of God, 12.3.
[7]Moreland and Craig. Philosophical Foundations, 846.
[8] Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q.10 a.2.
[9]Thomas Weinandy. Does God Change? Studies in Historical Theology Volume 4 (Still River: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985), 189.
[10] Weinandy. Does God Change?, 189.
[11]Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.66.
[12]Since God is eternal, or outside time, he eternally sees every moment. Aquinas compared the relation of God’s eternal knowledge to creaturely time to the center of a circle (eternity) and the diameter of the circle (creaturely time). All things are present to the center (eternity). Aquinas said, “Accordingly whatever exists in any part of time, is coexistent with the eternal as though present thereto, although in relation to another part of time it is present or future. Now a thing cannot be present to, and coexistent with, the eternal, except with the whole eternal, since this has no successive duration. Therefore, whatever happens throughout the whole course of time is seen as present by the divine intellect in its eternity” (Summa Contra Gentiles1.66).
[13] Eleanor Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Eternity,” The Journal of Philosophy 78., no 8 (1981), 429-458.
[14]This view is summarized as ET-simultaneity.
[15] Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 225-235.
[16]Matthew Barrett, None Greater (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2019), 95.
[17]Barrett, None Greater, 95.
[18]Barrett, None Greater, 95.
[19]Aquinas said, “intelligence is the act of an intelligent being, existing within that being and not passing on to something outside of it, as heating passes into the thing heated: for the intelligible suffers nothing through being understood, but the one who understands is perfected. Now whatever is in God is the divine essence. Therefore, God’s act of intelligence is the divine essence, the divine existence, and God Himself: since God is His essence and His existence” (Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.45).
[20]Rogers, Perfect Being Theology, 46-48.
[21]Athanasian Creed, “Although he is God and man, he is not two but one Christ. One, not by conversion of the divinity in flesh but by the assumption of the humanity to God. One not by confusion of substance, but by the unity of person.”
[22]Bavinck continued to offer a biblical defense, with several Scripture references, of divine immutability in his Reformed Dogmatics, vol. 2, 153.
[23]Whatever critiques one has for divine immutability must be levied against the Scripture either by reinterpretation of the Scripture apart from the consistent testimony of the great tradition or by the exclusion of the Scriptures. Philosophical examination must be the handmade of theology and exegesis. Scripture, exegesis, and theology cannot serve philosophy as supreme.
[24]Irenaeus, “Irenæus against Heresies,” 4.11.2.
[25] Bavinck acknowledged the apparent contradiction in Reformed Dogmatics Vol 2, 153. Bavinck, contrary to Moreland and Craig, went on to harmonize the clear statements of Scripture and the record of God’s work with his creation. Rather than choose either interaction or immutability, Bavinck demonstrated that God is immutable and that he has acted on his creation through his one unchangeable act.
[26]Moreland and Craig. Philosophical Foundations, 846.
[27]William Lane Craig, “Timelessness, Creation, and God’s Real Relation to the World,” Laval theologique et philosophique 56, no 1 (2000), 109-110.
[28]Craig, “Timelessness, Creation, and God’s Real Relation to the World,” 99.
[29]Matthew McWhorter, “Aquinas on God’s Relation to the World,” New BlackfriarsJanuary 2013 Vol. 94 no 1049, 9-11. See also William E. Mann “Immutability and Predication: What Aristotle Taught Philo and Augustine,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol 22, No ½ (1987): 21-39.
[30]Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.16.
[31] Augustine, De Trinitate, 5.16.17.
[32]Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 12, 913.
[33] Or “according to the intelligence” (Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 13.14, 919).
[34] See Herbert McCabe, God Matters: Contemporary Christian Insights (New York: Continuum, 2005), 45.
[35]Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 12.1.
[36]Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 12.1.
[37] Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 12.1.
[38]Augustine of Hippo, The City of God, 12.1.
Omniscience
Omniscience
With the previous discussion of God’s eternal timelessness and his immutability, the concept of omniscience can be better understood. Since God is eternal, timeless, and immutable, there can be no change in his knowledge and that knowledge must be perfect. If there was a change in God’s knowledge, then God would cease to be timeless and immutable. God has been shown to be both eternally timeless and immutable, therefore he must also be omniscient.
Divine omniscience is linked to the divine eternality. If God is eternal and infinite, then omniscience logically follows that timeless and infinite. The 139thPsalm links both these concepts. The Psalmist described God’s knowledge of the creaturely present when he said “you have known me…you know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways” (Ps 139:1-4). The Psalmist also affirmed that God knew the words creatures would speak before they are spoken (Ps 139:4). The Psalmist has taught that God knows events both as they happen and before they happen. God not only knows future possible events, but God knows exactly what will be said in creation before it is said. The Psalmist went on to connect God’s omniscience to his omnipresence in Psalm 139:7-12. Wherever one might go, God is there. God also knows where we will be and what we will do before we do.
If God maintains the universe (Heb 1:3) and is immutable (Js 1:17), then it follows that he is present in every moment of time. Therefore, Gregory of Nazianzus appropriately said, “For Eternity (αἰ̂̔́ων) is neither time nor part of time; for it cannot be measured. But what time, measured by the course of the sun, is to us, that Eternity is to the Everlasting, namely, a sort of time-like movement and interval co-extensive with their existence.”[1] The Nazianzan’s model highlights the immutability of the eternal and the dependence of space-time on the eternal timeless God. In this way God is also “co-extensive with” creation through his actions.
The Scriptures do not present God’s knowledge as growing with events in time. God’s knowledge is not presented as knowledge only of possible events. Instead, God is fully present at every place and every time. All creation in space-time is a continuous present to God since he stands outside of space-time and is infinite in all his attributes.
Moreland and Craig deny the classic definition of God’s eternality, and also divine omniscience in the classic sense. Moreland and Craig favor divine temporality and argue that God’s omniscience is evidence of his temporality. They wrote, “In order to know the truth of propositions expressed by tenses sentences like ‘Christ is risen from the dead’ God must exist temporally. For such knowledge locates the knower relative to the present.”[2]The argument displays a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the classical doctrine of God’s relationship to creation.
In the classical view, all time is eternally present to God. As each moment is present, then God is perfectly and eternally cognizant of all reality. Moreland and Craig compared classical theism’s view divine omniscience with “the knowledge of a film producer has of a movie as it lies in the can: he knows what is on every frame, but he has no idea what is now being projected on the screen.”[3] This “hermetically sealed” God, as they described him, would have no knowledge of whether Jesus had actually been crucified or if the crucifixion remained a “future” event.[4]
Omniscience should be taken as evidence of God’s eternality in the classical sense. Omniscience logically follows eternality and infinitude. If God is distinct from space-time, then he is not bound by its limitations. If God is infinite, then he cannot be bound by any limitations. God is both distinct from his creation and infinite. Therefore, he must be omniscient because he is ontologically distinct from his creation and also fills creation due to his infinitude. God’s relation to creation cannot exist as creatures experience relationship with time and objects. God relates to creation only though his actions.
Furthermore, if God’s omniscience is granted then it must also be an eternally timeless omniscience. God’s omniscience cannot be relegated to a reference of all the possibilities given all the possible counterfactuals. God does not just know what could happen, he must know what does happen. This perfect knowledge of created reality is necessary because God is timelessly eternal and immutable. The timelessly eternal and immutable God also cannot change his mind. The very concept of God who can change is mind is in opposition to any reasonable conception of omniscience. If God knows everything, he cannot change his mind. Any apparent change of God’s mind must be understood anthropomorphically. The God who knows everything that a creature will do cannot act other than he eternally is.
Whatever is said about the divine mind must also be said of the Logos. Either the Logos has all the divine attributes or the Logos is not true God. Augustine said, “The Word of God, then, the only-begotten Son of the Father, in all things like and equal to the Father, God of God, Light of Light, Wisdom of Wisdom, Essence of Essence, is altogether that which the Father is… hence He knows all that the Father knows.”[5] The Logos must be consubstantial with the Father. This is the direct claim of Scripture (Jn 1:1) and the implication of eternal generation. As Augustine said, “as though uttering Himself, the Father begat the Word equal to Himself in all things.”[6]
Bavinck described God’s knowledge of creation this way: “God is conscious of and knows all that exists outside of his being. Scripture nowhere even hints that anything could be unknown to him.”[7] Therefore, “The notion that something should be unknown to him is dismissed as absurd.”[8] Psalm 147:5 affirms that God’s knowledge is “beyond measure.” God’s knowledge was described anthropomorphically in 2 Chronicles 16:9 with the words, “his eyes run to and from throughout the whole earth.” The anthropomorphic nature of this description is important to note. Obviously, God does not have eyes and his watch is not continually scanning the earth as though he was collecting data. Instead, God’s knowledge was presented as complete and omnipresent. Since, as has been shown by Paul Helm, God’s knowledge covers all space it must also cover all time.[9] Therefore, God’s knowledge timelessly covers every detail (Matt 10:30) and every hidden thing (Jer 17:10). As John said, “γινώσκει πάντα” (1 Jn 3:20).
God’s knowledge is not contingent on creation or absent and awaiting the creature to act. Instead, God’s knowledge, as an attribute of God, is eternally timeless. Bavinck described God’s knowledge as “present from eternity.”[10]God’s knowledge must be “present from eternity” because God is immutable, timelessly eternal, and distinct from his creation which he knows perfectly. Bavinck affirmed the timeless knowledge of God from 1 Corinthians 2:7, Romans 8:29, Ephesians 1:4-5, and 2 Timothy 1:9.[11] These passages point to the timeless nature of God’s knowledge. God does not wait to see who will be saved. He timelessly knows, from his eternal perspective, what remains the future for creation. God’s knowledge, contrary to open theism and perhaps to Molinism, does not grow. God’s knowledge was linked to his nature when Isaiah said, “Who has measured the Spirit of the LORD, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him to understand?” (Is 40:13-14).
Aquinas explained that God must know his creation perfectly from his timeless eternity because he knows himself perfectly and he is the cause of all things. Aquinas said, “For the knowledge of an effect is sufficiently obtained from knowledge of the cause: wherefore we are said to know a thing when we know its cause, Now God by His essence is the cause of being in other things. Since therefore He knows His own essence most fully, we must conclude that He knows other things also.”[12]Since everything in creation stems from God as the first Cause, then all things must be known to him perfectly. Aquinas then cited Pseudo-Dionysius who said, “He looks upon singulars not by casting His eye on each one, but He knows all things as one, contained in their cause; and further on: Divine wisdom knows other things by knowing itself.”[13]
This concept of Moreland and Craig’s view of God’s knowledge must be critiqued. For Craig and other Molinists, the concept of divine omniscience is radically redefined from the classic expectations. ReferencingMoreland and Craig, Loke defined omniscience as the ability to “actualize any state of affairs that is not described by counterfactuals about the free acts of others and that is broadly logically possible for someone to actualize, given the same hard past as t and the same true counterfactuals about free acts of others.”[14] This definition of omniscience is essential to Loke’s argument and Neo-Apollinarianism because with this definition “omnipotence does not require a conscious exercising of the ability. Furthermore, omniscience and omnipotence, he claims, does not require the ability be continuously exercised in all the acts that the person performs.”[15]
God, from eternity, is active in each successive moment in the maintenance of all creation. Hebrews 1:3 revealed that God upholds all things (φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ). “Upholds” (φέρων) is a present active participle. The same word was used in Luke 23:26 to describe how Simon carried the cross of Christ. The Logos, similarly, bears the creation continually. Opposed to the God of deism who built and then left creation, the Scriptures described God as upholding creation as a continuous reality. Hebrews 1:3 must always be true for every person in every time and place. God is, therefore, intimately connected to each atom in creation and every neuron firing in each brain throughout each second of its existence.[16]
Here is it important to note the impact of the extra-Calvinisticum on the discussion of God’s mind in the incarnation. The Heidelberg Catechism described the doctrine this way: “Since divinity is not limited and is present everywhere, it is evident that Christ’s divinity is surely beyond the bounds of the humanity he has taken on, but at the same time his divinity is in and remains personally united to his humanity.”[17] In the early Christological debates, Athanasius reasoned that:
For he was not enclosed in the body, nor was he in the body but not elsewhere. Nor while he moved that [body] was the universe left void of his activity and providence. But, what is most marvelous, being the Word, he was not contained by anyone, but rather himself contained everything. And, as being in all creation, he is in essence outside everything but inside everything by his own power, arranging everything, and unfolding his own providence in everything to all things, and giving life to each thing and to all things together, containing the universe and not being contained, but being wholly, in every respect, in his own Father alone. So also, being in the human body, and himself giving it life, he properly gives life to the universe also, and was both in everything and outside all.[18]
Calvin said:
They thrust upon us as something absurd the fact that if the Word of God became flesh, then he was confined within the narrow prison of an earthly body. This is mere impudence! For even if the Word in his immeasurable essence united with the nature of man into one person, we do not imagine that he was confied therein. Here is something marvelous: the Son of God descended from heaven in such a away that, without leaving heaven, he willed to be borne in the virgin’s womb, to go about the earth, and to hang upon the cross; yet he continuously filled the world even as he had done from the beginning!
Athanasius continued his argument to display how the Logos, though united to, was distinct from the human nature. He said, “he was not bound to the body, but rather was himself wielding it, so that he was both in it and in everything, and was outside everything, and at rest in the Father alone.”[19] The dyothelite nature of the incarnation was emphasized here. The Logos was active and did divine actions while at the same time working through the human nature.
The extra-Calvinisticum highlights the true force of dyophysitism, namely that there are two true natures present in Christ. The Logos “was not bound to the body.” The Logos continued to be true God, and retained the true mind of God. Since the Logos remained true God, then he remained the caretaker of the universe as is demonstrated in Colossians 1:17-20. Paul said, “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Even as he reconciled all things through himself on the cross (Col 1:20), he remained the sustainer of the universe in Heaven (Col 1:17). The Logos remained true God and as true God he also retained the true divine mind.
Even during the incarnation, the Logos remained true God. Creation is “experienced” only in virtue of the true humanity assumed by the Logos. Similar to how God is omnipresent and omniscient in virtue of his action of upholding the universe, the Logos was present in the true humanity which creatures saw and interacted with during the incarnate life. “Like all other men, the man Jesus is in His time, His lifetime, the time He needs like all other men to be able to live a human life. But in this time of His He lives as the One He is in virtue of His unity with God.”[20]
The Neo-Apollinarian model of divine knowledge is outside the teaching of biblical orthodoxy and outside the boundaries recognized by the great tradition. The Neo-Apollinarian version of omniscience brings God to the level of creature. This model of omniscience is also a necessary presupposition for the Neo-Apollinarian version of the incarnation. The NA view of God must be mutable to allow for the Logos to relegate the divine omniscience to the subconscious. Since the divine subconscious and the divine preconscious models of the incarnation are not tenable given the immutable omniscience necessitated logically from the eternal God distinct from creation and from the description of the eternal God in Scripture.
Since the Logos is the Creator (Heb 1; Col 1; Jn 1), he knows all of his creation in all times and in all places eternally. Divine omniscience in the person of Christ is difficult because the human mind is so clearly evident in various ways (Lk 2:52). Even though attributes of human intellect are affirmed and displayed, the divine intellect is also affirmed in Scripture. John 2:25 affirmed that Jesus “knew what was in man.” This affirmation is more important once the affirmation is seen to be a typical affirmation of deity (1 Kgs 8:39).
The description of Jesus’ mind displays the necessity of the dyothelite position to account for all the biblical data. The incarnate Christ must have the divine mind which cannot change. If Christ is God in any sense, he must be God in the full sense. Jesus must have the divine mind which is timeless, eternal, and omniscient. The human attributes displayed in Christ are evidence of the human mind because the divine mind simply could not function as a human mind. If the divine mind was limited in any way, it woud not be appropriate to say that that mind was divine.
[1] Gregory Nazianzen, “Oration 38.”
[2] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 850.
[3]Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 850.
[4] Moreland and Craig, Philosophical Foundations, 850.
[5]Augustine, “On the Trinity,” 15.14.23.
[6]Augstine, “On the Trinity,” 15.14.23.
[7]Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 2, 192.
[8] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 2, 192.
[9] See Paul Helm, Eternal God chapters 1 and 2.
[10]Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, 192.
[11] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2, 192.
[12]Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.49.
[13] Pseudo-Dyonysisu Div. Nom. Vii quoted by Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles, 1.49.
[14] Loke, “On the Coherence of the Incarnation,” 54-55. This definition seems to be at odds with the traditional understanding of God who, although he fills all things with his active presence, stands outside the created time and space experience which his creation has experienced.
[15] Loke, “On the Coherence of the Incarnation,” 55.
[16] Barth summarized the eternal role of the Logos in relation to creation when he wrote, “He who is and was and is to come ὁ παντοκράτωρ(Rev. 1:8), the same yesterday, today and for over (Heb. 13:8). For this reason it may be said of Him, as the Prologue of John already emphasized, that through Him God made the aeons (Heb. 1:2), that He is the Word of power by which He upholds all things (Heb. 1:3), that in Him everything was made that is in heaven and on earth (Col. 1:16; 1 Cor. 8:6)” (Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1, vol. 1 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 401–402).
[17]Heidelberg Catechism, Q/A 48.
[18] St Athanasius the Great of Alexandria, On the Incarnation, 17, ed. John Behr, trans. John Behr, vol. 44a, Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 85–87.
[19]Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 17.
[20] Barth, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of Creation, Part 2, vol. 3, 439.