On Jan. 17, Paidion wrote:
If God is outside of time, then how can He in anyway act within time? It seems to me that He would be unable to act at all. And yet the scriptures indicate that He is very active in the world, and not only active but has a relationship with his people, and IS ACTED UPON by His people and that this makes a difference to his choices and actions. But a timeless being could not make plans and carry them out for mankind who lives in a temporal mode.
So, we are hitting on a very fundamental question; a question so fundamental that it must necessarily be answered well before any sane doctrine on the Trinity can either be presented or understand. And, so, we need to deal with this here and now.
Question: Whether God is eternal and immutable?
Objection 1: According to the Scriptures, God acts in time, but anything that acts in time is not eternal; thus, God is not eternal.
Objection 2: According to the Scriptures, God seems to be changed by the actions of creatures, eg., the prayers of holy men, repentance of sinners, etc., changes the course of action that He otherwise would have taken. But, anyone that is changed is not immutable, and so God is not immutable.
But, contrary to these objections, we have the clear testimony of Scripture, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God,” (Ps. 90:2) and, “Now to the King eternal…the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever. Amen. “(1 Tim. 1:17) And so God is eternal. Likewise, Holy Writ states, “I, the LORD, do not change…” (Mal. 3:6) And, so, likewise, God is also immutable.
My answer to this question is that God is both eternal and immutable, as the aforementioned Scripture passages—along with many others—clearly show. But, in addition to this truth being revealed by God through Divine Revelation, it is also a truth that can be known by man’s reason alone.
For, reason can know that God is the First Cause of all motion and change. But the First Cause of all motion and change can not Himself be moved or change (else, this “First” Cause would need another being who put Him into motion and change, and
that being would either Himself be the absolute First Cause of motion and change, or, if not, there’d have to be another being causing motion and change—but this chain cannot go on forever, and so there must be a FIRST Cause of motion and change, which Being deserves the name “God”). Thus, God is immutable.
And, with this being the case, the following argument can also be made: God can not be changed, i.e., He is immutable. But, anything that can not be changed is outside of time (for, a thing is said to be in time if and only if it is subject to motion and change, for time is simply a measurement of motion).
Thus, God is eternal, i.e., He exists and acts outside of time, not subject to any motion or change Himself, even while also being the First Cause of motion of things within time.
And, so it is, that both the Divine Scriptures and man’s reason testify to the truth that the attributes of eternity and immutability belong to God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—to Whom belongs all glory and honor, now and into eternity. Amen.
Reply to Above Objection 1:
To say that God acts in time is not the same as saying that God Himself is subject to the constraints of time and motion; rather, Himself being outside of time, He Himself is the cause of time itself, and all of the motion that exists therein.
Reply to Above Abjection 2:
It is true to say that the actions of creatures, eg., prayers and acts of penance, affect the outcome of events in salvation history; for, God, in His Providence, has deigned that these actions serve as secondary causes in carrying out the plan which He, as the First Cause, willed to carry out for all eternity (even as He, in a similar way in the material world, uses secondary causes to bring about His ends, eg., the generation of children destined for heaven is brought about by the freely-consented union of husband and wife). To manifest the fact that these events are true, even if only secondary, causes in reality, the Scriptures make healthy use of metaphor to teach this truth; for, it ought to be known that the Scriptures frequently use metaphors to communicate truths about God, with such expressions as, “God is a Rock,” God “roars like a lion”, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” “I [Jesus] am the Gate,” etc. By applying these terms to God, it is not the Author’s intent—whether we are speaking of the sacred human author or the Divine Author of Scripture Himself—to apply any kind of notion of these things to God, eg., it is not intended that some kind of definition of “rock”, “roaring”, “lion”, “shepherd”, “gate”, etc., be applied to God, but, rather, such expressions are used in order to communicate a certain
likeness between God and these things (or, rather, between these things and God). Thus, for example, God can be called a “rock” because He is firm, unchanging like a rock; and He “roars like a lion” for He is fearless in His attacks against the enemies of Him and His People. And similarly with the other metaphors used in Scripture; among which must be included the expressions which state that God “repented” or “changed his mind”. For, it is not as if Scripture intends to communicate the idea that God repented or changed is mind in the strict sense of the word, i.e., having one decision in His eternal mind and then changing that decision (either because of actions done by creatures or because of “new information” presented to Him), but, rather, Holy Writ uses these expressions metaphorically, i.e., to communicate the fact that God sometimes acts in creation
like a man would act when man changes his mind or repents of one of his decisions.
The term 'son of god' was nothing new to ancient people. The term equated a 'son of god' as a god (have you not heard of the Iliad?). Jesus was not introducing a ‘new’ spin on a word, or somehow creating a ‘new’ category of being. People of that Judean/Greek/Roman time and culture were clear what The Son of God was meant to imply. Jesus was saying: He was a God.