386 PART I. — THEOLOGY [Ch. V. - Divine Attributes.
same, and thy years shall have no end." (Ps. cii. 25-27.) He is " The high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." (Is. Ivii. 15.) " I am the first and. I am the last ; and besides me there is no God." (Is. xliv. 6.) " A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past." (Ps. xc. 4.) " One day is with the Lord as a thousand yeai's, and a thousand years as one day." (2 Pet. iii. 8.) He is " the same yesterday, and to-day, and for- ever." (Heb. xiii. 8.) God is He "which is [ever is], and which was, and which is to come." (Rev. i. 4.) Throughout the Bible He is called the eternal or everlasting God ; who only hath im- mortality. The primal revelation of Himself to his covenant people was as the " I am."
What is taught in these and similar passages, is, first, that God is without beginning of years or end of days. He is, and always has been, and always will be ; and secondly, that to Him there is neither past nor future ; that the past and the future are always and equally present to Him.
B. Philosophical View.
These are Scriptural facts, and necessarily follow from the nature of God as self-existent, infinite, and immutable. With these rep- resentations the teaching of theologians for the most part agi'ees. Thus Augustine says: "Fuisse et futurum esse non est in ea \_scil. vita divina'], sed esse solum, quoniam aeterna est : nam fuisse et fu- turum esse non est geternum." ^ " Nee tu tempoi'e tempora prae- cedis, alioquin non omnia tempora pracederes sed praecedis omnia praeterita celsitudine semper prsesentis seternitatis ;,et superas omnia futura, quia ilia futura sunt et cum venerint praeterita erunt ; tu autem idem ipse es, et anni tui non deficiunt." ^ Aquinas, to the same effect says, " .iEternitas est tota simul." ^ Or, as the school- men generally were accustomed to say, " In seternitate est unicum instans semper praesens et persistens ; " or, as they otherwise ex- pressed it, " Eternitas est interminabilis vitae simul et perfecta possessio." The same view of this attribute is given by the later theologians. Thus Quenstedt says, " ^Eternitas Dei est duratio vel permanentia essentise divinse interminabilis, sine principio et fine carens, et indivisibilis, omnem omnino successionem excludens." *
The only thing open to question in these statements is, the de- nial of all succession in the divine consciousness. Our idea of
1 Confessiones, ix. x. 21, edit. Benedictines, vol. i. p. 283, c.
s Ibid. XI. xiii. 16, p. 338, a. « Summa, i. x. 4, edit. Cologne, 1640, p. W.
* Theologia, i. viii. § i. xvii. p. 413.