The Divine Attributes in Special

It is a truth manifested in ontology that every being is good. For good means desirable or appetizable, and every being, inasmuch as it is a being, can be the object of appetite or desire. Hence the measure of being is the measure of goodness, and, viewing the terms in their most abstract meaning, good and being are strict synonyms. It follows at once that the Infinite Being is the Infinite Good.

In our proof for the existence of God, taken from the grades or degrees of perfection observable in the world, we developed the truth that the existence of good and better (that is, of a lesser or greater fulness of being) points inevitably to the existence of that which is absolutely best. For there is need of an absolute standard before there can be any degrees resulting from a closer or more remote approach to that standard. And we concluded our argument by establishing the existence of the supremely perfect and absolutely boundless Good, the Summum Bonum called God. God, therefore, is infinitely good; and, since His attributes are one with His essence, God is Infinite Goodness. When we speak of creatures, we make a distinction between goodness and perfection. Every being, as such, is good; but every being is not perfect. A being may lack some element, some essential or integral item, and in so far it is imperfect; but even an imperfect being is good as far as it goes, that is, as far as it has being. So the case stands with finite things. To prove a finite thing good is not to prove it perfect. Contrariwise, however, to prove a thing perfect is to prove it good. Hence, to prove God All Perfect is to prove Him the Infinite Good. But, indeed, the terms good and perfect are synonymous when used with reference to the Infinite Being, and whether we take up the point of goodness to establish the Divine Perfection, or take up the point of perfection to prove the Divine Goodness, we are following a fully justified mode of procedure. Here we choose to establish the Divine Goodness by showing that God is the All Perfect. God is Pure Actuality. This point we have mentioned repeatedly and have demonstrated more than once. Recall here, that the first actuality can have nothing whatever about it that has been received; for no receiver is first; the giver is prior to the receiver. All, therefore, that the first being has belongs to its own essence and is not ascribable to any causes. In other words, the first being stands self-sufficient and self-explaining and self-justifying to reason. It is a necessary being. Now, a necessary being is not conceivably subject to development or change, for such processes always result from the action of causes upon the being affected by development or change; and the first being, the necessary being, is in no wise subject to causes. Hence there is in the first being no potentiality, no possibilities to be realized, no capacities to be filled up or filled out, no limitations to be extended. But that which is not potential is actual. In our concept of the first being there can be no note except the actual. Such a being is purely and entirely and unmixedly actual. And, since such a being is also, and necessarily, simple, its actuality is identified with its essence. Therefore, God, the First and the Necessary, and the Simple Being, is Pure Actuality, Now, the word potentiality is synonymous with imperfection. A thing is said to have potentiality inasmuch as it has about it some capacity not yet filled out, some possibility not yet actualized; in a word, it lacks something, and is in so far imperfect. But God has about Him absolutely no potentiality; therefore, He has no lack; therefore, He has no imperfection whatever ; He is the Pure Actuality and by that token He is Pure Perfection. God therefore is purely or boundlessly perfect; He is All Perfect. And this is saying that He is Infinite Goodness. In casual speech the term good often suggests kindness, consideration, devotion, thoughtfulness for others. Thus we say that a devoted mother is a “good mother,” or that a kind person is “very good to everybody.” Now, when we speak of the absolute goodness of God, all that is fine and perfect about this common colloquial meaning of good is included in our use of the term, but this is not the special point of the present consideration. This rather belongs to the study which we shall make later in its proper place, the study of the perfection of the Divine Will and, in special, of that Will as expressed in Divine Providence. Here we take a more abstract view of the matter, considering goodness rather as an absolute perfection than a relative perfection in God, that is, as a perfection which reveals God in His own Being rather than one which reveals Him in His dealings with creatures.

Let us take just one more compelling argument to show that God is the All Perfect or the All Good in Himself. God is the first cause of all things. Now, whatever of perfection is found in any effect must be found in the cause that produced that effect, either in the same way (if the cause be univocal, that is, if the cause be of the same nature as the effect, as it is, for example, in the case of living creatures regarded as the causes of their offspring) or in a superior way (if the cause be analogical, as it is, for example, in the case of the sculptor causing the statue to exist as an image). Hence, all the perfections of creatures must be found in the cause of all creatures, that is, in God. And, since God is not the univocal but the analogical cause of creatures, these perfections must be found in Him in a way superior to that in which they are found in creatures. St. Thomas Aquinas puts the point thus, “It is evident that an effect preexists in the power of the cause that can produce it; and such preexistence is not of a lower but of a more perfect order as a mode of existence. Since, then, God is the first cause of all things, it follows that in Him the perfections of all things (existible) are present in an eminent way.” Now, “the perfections of all things existible” is a phrase that might be formulated as “all possible perfections.” But if all possible perfections are present in the First Cause, and in an eminently superior manner, then the First Cause is simply All Perfect. Therefore, God is the All Perfect. Therefore, God is the All Good. In a word, God is Infinite Goodness.

b) Immensity

The term immensity is from Latin, and literally means measurelessness, A thing is immense when it cannot be measured, confined, estimated, quantified. As a Divine Attribute immensity may be defined as “A perfection whereby the Divine Substance is enabled to be present in all things arid in all places without being limited or measured by them.” Immensity is not the attribute whereby God is in all things and everywhere. This is His ubiquity or actual omnipresence, Immensity is rather God’s radical omnipresence. It is viewed by our minds as God’s power to be everywhere, whereas ubiquity is the fact of God’s being everywhere. We notice here the marked inadequacy of human speech to deal with the Infinite. We speak of the attribute of immensity as that by which God is “enabled” to be present everywhere, and we are forced by reason to make a mental apology for the term even as we use it. We know, of course, what is meant, yet words do not adequately serve to express what is meant. That is why we say that God is ineffable or “inexpressible in speech.” Our language only approaches accuracy when dealing with the Infinite Being; it is what priggish people like to call “asymptotic,” meaning that it comes near what is meant but never quite reaches perfect expression. Well, we do what we can, and keep reminding ourselves of the limitations of speech, and indeed of thought, and ever and anon we say to ourselves, “Do not forget that all that God has He is; the Divine Attributes are one with the Divine Essence.” If a person asks, “Where is God?” we have our answer ready, for we know our little catechism, and we say, “God is everywhere.” If the inquirer says, “Is God in this room?” we answer, “Yes.” If he says, “Is God in me?” or “Is God in that tree?” we answer, “Yes.” But God is not in things in such wise that the things limit, or measure or confine Him. And this suggests that we review our knowledge of how a thing may be in a place. A thing is said to be in a place circumscriptively when its own dimensions are co-dimensional with those of a surrounding body. A baseball flying through the air is, at any given moment, completely surrounded by a perfectly fitting pocket of atmosphere, the inner concave surface of which meets at all points the outer convex surface of the ball, and determines its proper external place in the air. This is circumscriptive presence, location, or ubication. The term comes from the Latin circumscriptum “written around,” for the containing body (in our example, the air) is drawn around the located body somewhat as a line is drawn or written around a coin laid flat on a piece of paper. Circumscriptive presence or location depends upon the external measures or dimensions of a body perfectly meeting the enveloping surface of a containing body. We say external dimensions, for a body has also its internal extension, and this may best be viewed as the bodymass contained within its own dimensions as within a film or skin. Wherever the body is, as long as it remains the same body with the same quantity, its internal extension is the same, and its “location” in this internal sense is immovable. Thus the internal extension and location of the baseball is ever the same, though its outer or external location is changing at each successive moment of its flight. Now, God is not in things circumscriptively. Such a presence is manifestly a bodily presence, a presence by outer material dimensions, and God is, as we have seen, the Infinite Spirit. Besides, circumscriptive presence is a limiting and determining thing, and God is not limited nor determined by His creatures. For any determination is an actualization of potentiality and God is Pure Actuality. Now, a thing may be placed or located or present informatively. This mode of presence is verified when the located reality is a determining factor, a determinant, a form. Thus the substantial form of any body is in the body. Thus the human soul (which is the substantial form of the living human body) is in a man. Thus beauty of feature is in the beautiful face. Thus the hardness of marble is in the marble. These forms (substantial or accidental) are said to be in the bodies which they determine, establish, or characterize, but it is manifest that they are not present according to measurements and dimensions. A man’s soul, or his strength, or his appearance, is not in the man in the sense in which the ball is in the air, or a boat is in the water, or a root is in the ground. This is not circumscriptive presence, but informative presence, and the reality so present is said to in-form the thing that it determines, marks, qualifies, limits, characterizes. Our casual use of the terms “inform” and “information” illustrate the root-meaning of the words; for our knowledge of things in-forms the mind; it gives “shape,” so to speak, to our understanding; it is present in (or “located in”) our minds, not circumscriptively, which is absurd to say in the present case, but informatively. In a word, a thing is present or is located informatively when it is a determinant or form (substantial or accidental) affecting that in which it is said to be present or located. Manifestly, God is not in the world informatively. He is not the substantial form of the universe. The old Greek Stoics thought He was, and called God the soul of the world. Nor is God the accidental form or determinant of the world,—the shape of the world or its temperature or its appearance or any other item of its accidental determinate being.

For God is the supersubstance, the All Perfect and Self-subsistent Being; He is not the accident (i. e., accidental form) of anything. Thirdly, a thing may be placed or located or present in another thing operatively; and it is so present when it exercises activity there. This may happen in such wise that the operating or active power (the thing located) is limited to one single substance, and then it is present operatively and definitively; thus the soul is present in a man; thus the life-principle is present in a tree. Or the operating or active thing may be present to a plurality of things, spreading its power among them, and then it is present operatively and extensively; thus the sun is said to be present in all the places on earth that enjoy its light and its warming rays. Or a power may be present unlimitedly to all things, and then it is present operatively and incircumscriptively. In this last named manner, God is present in the world and in every creature; He is present operatively, for all things depend upon Him as their producing and sustaining cause (their cause in being as well as their cause in becoming) and they discharge their connatural functions only in virtue of their God-given equipment and by reason of God’s preserving and concurring action. God is present in all things operatively but incircumscriptively, for He is in no wise measured, limited, or contained, by the universe or any item of it, while He sustains it in being and operation.

Thus God’s immensity means His radical operative and incircumscriptive presence everywhere and in all things. His actual operative and incircumscripive presence everywhere and in all things is His omnipresence or ubiquity. The proof of God’s immensity is drawn from His infinity and from His boundless power.

1. God possesses in an eminent degree, as an actuality which is truly identified with His own Divine Essence, every pure perfection. Now, immensity is a pure perfection. For the definition of a pure perfection is that it involves in itself no limitation or lack or imperfection, and immensity is just such a perfection, consisting as it does, in the absence of all limitation. Therefore, God possesses this perfection in an eminent degree, as an actuality which is truly identified with His own Divine Essence. 2. God must be present wherever He exercises His power. But God exercises His power everywhere, giving to all things their being, and conserving them in existence. Hence God is present everywhere and in all things. For wherever God’s power is, there also is the Divine Essence, since the power of God is identified with His essence. Nor is the power of God in any way limited,—for God is infinite,—and therefore God is not bounded or measured by actually existing realities in the world.

Hence, it cannot be said that God is merely coextensive with the universe. God is not only omnipresent in the sense that He is in every actual place and in every actual reality; He has true immensity which knows no limit or measure by reason of the creatural realities to which and in which God is present. There is, of course, a deep mystery in the omnipresence of God. Our imagination is wholly incapable of picturing it, and for this reason it presents some difficulty to our grasp. But the fact of God’s omnipresence is inevitable; reason not only allows it, but demands it. The limitations of imagination cannot dim the clarity of that outstanding truth. Nor can the imperfections of mind or the character of our human experience allege anything that avails in the least to weaken the certitude with which the truth is known. We know the truth, and we know why it is truth; to explain in last detail how the truth finds actual expression is beyond our best efforts. Nor is this to be wondered at, since the finite mind cannot fully and adequately comprehend the Infinite. The point to remember is that the mind can and does apprehend the Infinite, that is, knows It with certitude as a fact, and knows about It much that lies within the capacity of the human grasp. Just as the eye cannot take in the whole earth at a glance, but sees that it is there, and takes in much that lies within the immediate range of vision; just as the cup cannot take up the entire ocean, but is dipped into a sea that is unquestionably there, and takes up what its little capacity allows, so does the mind view Infinity, so does it take up of Infinity, always sure of Infinity Itself as an actual and an inevitable Fact. And the immensity and omnipresence of God are phases of Infinity that the mind acknowledges, and indeed is forced to acknowledge, as factual ; but to picture the immensity of God in imagination, or even to have a complete and adequate comprehension of it in intellect, is manifestly not to be expected of a creature of strictly and narrowly limited capacities.

A thought has sometimes found expression in the form of an objection to God’s immensity, an objection which appeals to the Infinite Dignity as its grounds, and, like most specious objections which have a pious cast, it is very shallow. It amounts to this. There are things in the universe that the human mind and taste find unclean, foul, nasty. Can God be present in these things? If He is present everywhere He is certainly in everything, even in things that are repulsive to the sense of sight and of smell. But is there not some indignity in the thought of God’s presence in such things? Not in the least. St. Augustine remarks that the sunlight is not soiled because it sheds its glory upon fetid refuse. Nor is the Infinite soiled or tainted by His presence in such things. Remember God is not contained, confined, restricted, limited, measured, by circumscriptive presence in any reality. For the rest, remember that all being, inasmuch as it is positive being or reality, is good, that is, transcendently or metaphysically good, regardless of what effect it may have upon human palates and noses, Because of our own limitations, nay, because of our own original defilement, we have certain trials of sense and of taste to bear in this world; but we must not ascribe our limitations to the Almighty, nor think that what affects bodily things in their circumscriptive location can affect in like manner that Infinite who is present to them and in them incircumscriptively.

Since God is present in all things and everywhere in an incircumscriptive manner, we must banish from our understanding of His immensity and omnipresence all notions of extended parts. God is not partly here and partly there. He is not to be conceived in a bodily manner as a being of immense size. God has neither parts nor size. Such things are the mixed perfections of bodies, and God is Pure Perfection entirely unmixed. Wherever God is, He is wholly present; by His essence, by His power. St. Thomas says, “God is in all things by power inasmuch as all things are subject to His will and control ; He is present in all things by a true presence, inasmuch as all things are open and naked to His knowledge; He is present in all things by essence, inasmuch as He is the cause of their being.” c) IMMUTABILITY

The literal meaning of the Latin derivative immutalibity is changelessness. It is a negative term, for it denies something; it denies change or movement or alteration in God. But the term indicates a positive perfection, for its denial is directed against imperfection or potentiality and hence amounts to an affirmation of perfection or actuality. Here we see illustrated the manner of our progress towards a detailed knowledge of God. We learned long since that our procedure in acquiring such knowledge goes by three steps (after recognizing Primal Causality, as a preliminary step) called affirmation, denial, and excellence, or, to vary the expression, attribution, elimination, and transcendence. We affirm of God, or attribute to Him, all perfection; we deny of God, or eliminate from our concept of Deity, all imperfection; we predicate pure perfection of God in a manner more excellent, more transcendent, than that which we employ in predicating perfection of creatures. In the present instance, when we declare God immutable, we discern the need of attributing to God a complete identity of Being and Activity; the need of eliminating from our concept of God all change or movement; the need of predicating changelessness of God in a truly transcendent way so that it does not convey the idea of mere fixity, which is a limitation, but suggests perfect freedom and boundless eternal action. Therefore, when we say that God is immutable, that is, when we assert Divine Immutability as identified with the Divine Essence Itself, we mean that God is in no wise subject to change; that He is indeed the Being “with Whom there is no change or shadow of alteration”; that God is not thereby set in a frozen fixedness but is changelessly free and eternally active. Now, when a creature is called changeless, the predication indicates a mixed perfection, that is, a perfection mingled with imperfection. For, while there is perfection in endurance or duration, there is limitation and imperfection in a merely unvaried duration or fixity in being and activity. Of course, no creature is changeless in any absolute sense; but in a limited and relative sense some creatures are called so. Thus, the human soul is a changeless spiritual substance. Thus, the unvaried opinion of a stubborn man is a changeless accident. Thus, the more lasting bodily materials are metaphorically changeless in the sense that change in them occurs very gradually, and that they last a long time. But, whether we speak of substances or accidents, creatures are never changeless in the full and perfect sense of that term. And, when we come to consider the Divine Changelessness, we are all too likely to bring to our study the notion of the limitations that associate necessarily with what is called changelessness among creatures. By reason of our whole human experience, our first mental reaction to the thought of changelessness in God is very likely to be a mistaken one; we are apt to think of His changelessness as a thing that freezes and fixes God, as a thing that limits Him. Yet we know, upon a moment’s reflection, that this cannot be, since God is infinite and subject to no limitation at all. But first we shall look at the compelling proofs for Divine Immutability; then we shall notice certain mistaken thoughts about it which we must avoid for ourselves and correct in others. We shall see that God must be immutable because of His actuality, His simplicity, His infinity.

1. Where there is change or movement (and movement is synonymous with change) there is manifestly the actualization of a potentiality. The thing changed is, to begin with, changeable. It has a capacity for change; and when the change occurs, this capacity is filled out, realized, actualized. Now, God is Pure Actuality. There is no conceivable capacity in God; nothing in God can be regarded as not yet filled out. Hence, there is in God no possibility of change. God is immutable.

2. Where there is change, there is always something that undergoes the change; something which remains the same while the change takes place in it and transforms it in substance or in accidentals. But this means that a changeable reality is a compound of elements, namely, of the underlying thing that supports the change and of the shifting thing that is lost or gained in the change. In a word, a changeable thing is not simple, but composite. But God is absolutely simple, as we have amply proved in another place. Therefore God is not changeable. God is immutable.

3. Every change means both a loss and a gain. It means the loss of one state or condition and the gain or acquisition of a new state or condition. But there can be neither loss nor gain in God. For God is infinite; and an infinite Being has all perfection in boundless degree, and there is no perfection still to be gained; and an infinite Being cannot lose anything or it would cease instantly to be infinite, since the loss would mark a lack and a limitation. Therefore, there can be no change in God. God is immutable. When we say that God is immutable, we mean that He is entirely so. He is immutable in substance, For He is the Infinite Spirit and a spirit is not substantially changeable but is incorruptible; be- sides, God is the Necessary Being, and cannot conceivably fade, diminish, fall away, corrupt. God is immutable in nature, that is, specifically, in understanding and in will. For God’s understanding embraces all truth changelessly and eternally; and God’s will is changeless, since a change of will is always consequent upon a change of substance or of knowledge, and we have just seen that neither substance nor understanding is changeable in God. Now, it is here that a difficulty may arise in our imperfect minds. We are apt to think that if God’s will does not and cannot change, we are all the helpless victims of an iron destiny and free-will is an illusion. Or, even if we brush aside this basic difficulty, we are likely to think that our prayers of petition to God are valueless, since nothing can lead to a change in the Divine Will. Of course, these difficulties are mere seeming. They occur to us because, unconsciously, we attribute to God our own human limitations, and misunderstand His eternal immutability, making of it a mere fixity. We must remember that God is eternal and infinite. All things knowable are present to God’s knowledge, in fullest detail, from eternity. Hence, every circumstance that comes to our knowledge and bears upon our freechoice is fully known to God from eternity, and from eternity He decrees to concur with our freewill and, indeed, from eternity He moves it to its free choice. Therefore free-will is not thwarted nor made illusory by God’s changelessness. Further, God from eternity knows every possible petition that can ever be offered to Him, and, for those that are actually made, He has, from eternity, prepared the answer. Hence our petitions can and do have their effect. And the petitions must be made, since the answer to them is prepared from eternity as contingent upon our making them. When God grants our requests there is no change in God. From eternity He decrees the answer that comes to us in time. Thus our prayers make all the difference in the world. But they make no change in God. We must avoid the mistake of attributing to God a manner of dealing with us that resembles our dealing with others. For we must take things one after another; we must live and act in a succession of moments, hours, days, years. It is not so with God. All things, past, present, and to come, are perfectly present to God from eternity. Hence, an event that looks to us like an exceptional thing,—such as the answer to a special prayer, or the intervention of God in a miraculous happening,—is just as much a matter of eternal and changeless decree as that which appears to us as the fixed course of nature continuously sustained. The raising of Lazarus was as much a matter of eternal Will as the universal law that all men must die. The healing of St. Peter’s mother-in-law was just as much a matter of eternal Will as the constant “law” of nature which requires the cooperation of much time in the curing of a fever, and produces no instantaneous cures. It is interesting to notice that the persons who find difficulty in the thought of God’s immutability are usually the same persons who talk pityingly of the Christian’s “anthropomorphic concept” of God. The overwhelming term anthropomorphic is a simple combination of two Greek words, anthrop os “man,” and morphe “form,” and means, when applied to our knowledge or concept of God, that we think of Him as a kind of superman. That there is danger of such a concept (or of such an imagination-image) of God occurring to the mind, is manifest. All mythology is proof of it, and there may be some in our own enlightened age who think of God as a gigantic human figure with flowing beard and piercing eye. Perhaps we might dare to say that one of the reasons,—or, at all events, one of the effects,—of the Incarnation, was to give weak man the true God in human form, so that henceforth the concept of God as man shall be a true concept. But the point we wish specially to make is this: the persons who take a superior attitude and offer criticism of the “anthropomorphic concept” of God, are themselves hopelessly and falsely anthropomorphic in their own conception of Deity. For they limit God as they would limit a creature; His immutability is a puzzle to them; His eternity baffles them; His infinity and immensity suggest only largeness to them.

And in all this, they manifest an idea of God that is only an enlarged idea of a creature. They are doing the one thing that they particularly profess to avoid and to censure in others: they are evidencing anthropomorphic limitations in their notion of God. d) ETERNITY

The term eternity means not only endlessness but it means also an absence of beginning and an absence of successive duration. Only that Being which has had no beginning and will have no end, and whose existence is not a matter of successive days and years but is all present at once, meets the requirements of the term eternal in the strictest sense. And it is in this sense that the terms eternity and eternal are applied to God. Ponder this definition of eternity, made by Boethius about fifteen hundred years ago: “Eternity is the possession, at once, complete and perfect, of boundless life.” Notice the force of every word in the definition. It is the complete possession of endless life, and of beginningless life, that is, “of boundless life.” There is nothing lacking in this possession; there is not some of the life yet to come, not any of it that has slipped away. And it is the perfect possession of boundless life; it is not held vaguely, as a man might hold great riches without knowing their exact extent or how every penny is stored or invested; no, it is a perfect possession, a fully real- ized possession, with nothing vague about it, with nothing running off into the region of misty details. Further, this complete and perfect possession of boundless life is simultaneously complete and perfect; it is not a matter of a clearly remembered past and a clearly envisioned future; it is the perfect possession of boundless life which is all there at once; and that “once” is a changeless eternal now. Consider, too, why Boethius speaks of eternity as the possession of boundless life. He does so because existence or duration has no perfect form but that called life, and the perfect form of existence or duration must be attributed to the infinite Being. There are three conceivable sorts of duration, and these we call time, aeviternity, and eternity. Time is a measure,—at least, it is ever conceived as such, and in this phase of its concept it is a logical entity,— of existence in bodily things; it measures and marks existence and operations, happenings and events, in a bodily universe. Time has been pretty well described as, “the measure of movements (or events) considered with reference to before and after.” Of the nature of time, and of what modern philosophers are trying to do with it, a full account is given in both Ontology and Cosmology, but we have no need to say more of it here. The second type of duration, aeviternity, is the measure of duration in things that are substantially unchangeable, once they are created, but which are changeable in operation. This term, aeviternity (and the adjective aeviternal), is applied to beings that have had a beginning but will never have an end. Human souls, and angels, are aeviternal beings. And, as we have seen, eternity and eternal are terms that find just application only to that Being which is wholly changeless; which admits no variation in substance or nature or operation; which has neither beginning, end, nor succession in existence. Now, it is manifest that eternity, like all the Divine Attributes, is not a thing that our imagination can depict. Imagination tries to depict it; it does its best; but it falls far short of success; indeed, it falls short of making even a proper beginning of what would have to be an infinite image. But our mind can know what is meant by eternity, and our reason can, and must, recognize the compelling need for attributing it to God. And thus, though we be finite in all our powers, we can and do realize the eternity of God as a fact, although we acknowledge its appreciation as utterly beyond us. When fancy tries to picture eternity, or even aeviternity, it merely presents an image of tremendously lengthened time. Of course, such imaginative efforts are often of great practical value. A man may dwell upon the picture of staggering reaches of time, and find in it a strong motive for working to gain an endless heaven and to avoid an endless hell. But the picture is ever an image of greatly protracted time, and never of endlessness. We have all heard the story of the negro preacher with his graphic description of eternity, the story which describes a little bird taking a drop of water from the Atlantic Ocean, and carrying it, not through the air, but hop by hop across our continent, to deposit it in the Pacific; then going back, hop by hop, for another drop. The conclusion of the story is that when the little bird has completely emptied the Atlantic into the Pacific by this unbelievably slow process, then eternity shall just have made a start. Or we may have heard and pondered the other graphic description of eternity, or rather, of aeviternity, which is sometimes proposed in some such form as this: “Suppose the earth were a ball of the hardest steel. Now suppose that once in every hundred thousands years a tiny insect were to crawl a few feet on the surface of this enormous steel ball. When the ball is entirely worn away by the crawling insect, then eternity will have just begun.” These descriptions are amusing; and they are not without a certain element of terror for the mind; and they may serve, as we have said, a very necessary practical purpose. But even such staggering descriptions as these cannot enable imagination to picture eternity or aeviternity. All they can do is to overwhelm one with enormous reaches of imaginary time. They stress the point of successive duration and of change.

Yet all succession is excluded from the concept of eternity; and substantial change is excluded from the concept of aeviternity.

That God is necessarily eternal, or that eternity is but one phase of the indivisible Divine Essence, is easily proved. It may be proved by appealing to God’s infinity, to His simplicity, to His immutability, to His necessity. We choose to present two short proofs, taken from the fact that God is Necessary Being and from the fact that He is immutable. i. God is Necessary Being. He is Pure Actuality. He is wholly independent of causes. Now, such a Being cannot conceivably have a beginning (else It would be caused; It would be actualized; It would be contingent). Nor can such a Being have an ending (else It would suffer the action of a cause which would bring It to an end; It would be contingent upon such cause; It would be in potentiality towards the action of such cause). Nor can such a Being have any succession of times or moments in duration (else It would be continuously actualized and would not be Pure Actuality to begin with; It would be contingent upon the coming of moments not yet lived; It would be affected by the causal action of such moments). Hence, the Necessary Being, the Pure Actuality, the Causeless Being, cannot be subject to beginning, ending, or succession in existence. Therefore, God is eternal. 2. We have proved that God is immutable. But what is immutable is necessarily eternal. A being that comes into existence is not immutable, for it comes. A being that has an ending is not immutable, for it goes. A being that suffers succession in its existence is not immutable, for it progresses from moment to moment. Therefore God does not come into existence; He does not pass out of existence; He does not undergo the passing of successive periods, stages, or moments. Therefore, God is eternal.

Summary Of The Article

In this Article we have considered certain Divine Attributes, namely, God’s Goodness or Perfection, His Immensity, His Immutability, His Eternity. In a former Chapter we established the fundamental Divine Attributes of Unity, Simplicity, Infinity, Spirituality. We have based our proof of God’s goodness on the fact that He is Pure Actuality. We have proved the immensity of God, and His ubiquity or omnipresence, from His infinity, and from the fact that He is the necessary First Cause which gives and supports the existence of all things. We have found that God is present everywhere and in all things operatively and incircumscriptively. We have proved the immutability of God from His actuality, simplicity, and infinity. We have shown the true meaning of eternity, and have seen that God must be eternal since He is the Necessary Being and is immutable.