God stands above time even as he freely and effectively works within it. As Steven J. Duby helpfully explains, this is possible precisely because God is who he is: “in simply being who and what he is as God, he both transcends all that he has made and can be immediately present to all that he has made.” Creation does not introduce a new mode of existence in God; rather, it is an eternal divine act that produces a temporal effect. God is therefore not located in time as a result of creation but transcends what he has made while remaining immediately present to it.

Human beings are creatures inescapably bound by time. We are born, we age, and our lives pass like a shadow (Eccl. 6:12). However much we try to delay its advance, our days are “soon gone, and we fly away” (Ps. 90:10). Time remains beyond our control.

How, then, can temporal creatures even begin to imagine—or understand—what eternity means? Eternity does not belong to our experience (Eccl. 3:11; Job 36:26), and even time is a mysterious reality. Augustine famously asked, “For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? . . . If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.”[1]

Thus, if we are to begin reflecting on what eternity is—and especially on what it means to confess that God is eternal—we must first acknowledge this fundamental truth: God is not like us. He does not possess eternity in the way we possess duration. His relation to time is altogether different. He is not merely present at every moment in time but transcends time altogether.[2] If this is so, then eternity is not a reality we discover, but one God must disclose from Scripture. Consequently, we will turn to God’s self-revelation to learn (1) what eternity is and (2) how this confession steadies the Christian life.

Divine Eternity: God Beyond Time

Scripture portrays God as infinite in his nature. He is described as one whose greatness and understanding are beyond measure (2 Chr. 6:18; Ps. 145:3; 147:5). This provides the framework for the confession of God’s eternity, understood as infinite with respect to time.[3] The biblical witness unfolds this confession along three distinct but complementary lines.

God is Eternal in His Being

Moses says that the Lord is God from “everlasting to everlasting” (Ps. 90:2; see also Hab. 1:12). He is the everlasting (Gen. 21:33) and eternal God (Rom. 16:25–26) who “inhabits eternity” (Isa. 57:15). And he remains unchanging (Ps. 102:25–27; Isa. 41:4; 46:9–10; Heb. 13:8; Mal. 3:6; Num. 23:19; Jas. 1:17).

Divine eternity, then, is not something God merely possesses; it belongs to who he is. The great “I AM” is intrinsically eternal—not in the process of becoming.[4] Only the Triune God, properly speaking, is eternal by nature, for “He is His own essence; therefore, He is His own eternity.”[5]

What, then, do we mean when we confess that God is eternal? In light of Scripture’s testimony, divine eternity names God’s mode of existence. To say that God is eternal is to say that he possesses, as Boethius famously defined it, “the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of limitless life.”[6] His eternity comprehends the entire flow of time in a single, indivisible, and eternal present.[7] By way of negation, this means God has no beginning, no end, and no succession of moments.[8] There is no “before” or “after” in God (Ps. 90:2; Mal. 3:6). God exists outside time in the plenitude of his eternal life.[9] As Francis Turretin (1623–1687) rightly states, God is “free from every difference of time.”[10]

Beginning with God’s eternal being is essential for a proper understanding of his relation to time. Otherwise, we risk attributing to God change in response to creation. 

Read More 

1. Augustine, Confessions, 11.14.17, in NPNF 1:168.
2. Stephen Wellum, Systematic Theology (Brentwood: B&H Academic, 2024), 1:618.
3. Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology, vol. 1, Revelation and God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2019), chap. 35, Kindle; Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols., trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), I.10.1.
4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, volume 2: God and Creation, ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 2:163. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Augustine rightly explains that God alone can properly say “I AM,” because to the divine nature “there is no proper application of was and will be, but only is; for that nature alone truly is, because it is incapable of change.” For this reason, it was fitting for God to say [in Exodus 3:14], “I AM THAT I AM,” and “He Who Is hath sent me unto you.” Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, in NPNF, 7:383.
5. Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, rev. by Daniel J. Sullivan, Vol. I. (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1923), I, q.10, a.2; see also Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:163. Aquinas in aa. 3–4 explains that eternity belongs properly to God and indivisibly to all three persons of the Trinity. As the Athanasian Creed likewise confesses, “The Father is eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal; and yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.”
6. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. David R. Slavitt (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), V. 6, 168–169; see also Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.10.VI; Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 2:163; John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity (Paris: Baptist Standard Bearer, 2000), 46. ↑
7. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, V. 6, 168–169.
8. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.10.1.
9. Wellum, Systematic Theology, 1:618.
10. Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, I.10.1.