Author
Helm, P. (2001). Divine Timeless Eternity
4 quotes Popular first.
- “Aquinas is emphatic that God’s will is unchangeable. And so words ascribing change to God, or words ascribed to God which entail change:
have a metaphorical turn according to a human figure of speech. When we regret what we have made we throw it away. Yet this does not always argue second thoughts or a change of will, for we may intend in the first place to make a thing and scrap it afterwards. By similitude with such a procedure we refer to God having regrets, for instance in the account of the Flood, when he washed off the face of the earth the men whom he had made; to speak of God as repenting is to use the language of metaphor.… The conclusion to this argument is not that God’s will changes, but that he wills change.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, trans. Thomas Gilby (London: Spottiswoode, 1966), 1a.19.7.”— Helm, P. (2001). Divine Timeless EternitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 44) - “The fundamental point is that such language is not dispensable but necessary, not necessary only for the plowman but necessary for us all, in view of our moral and metaphysical position vis-à-vis God. If a timelessly eternal God is to communicate to embodied intelligent creatures who exist in space and time and to bring about his purposes through them, and particularly to gain certain kinds of responses from them, then he must do so by representing himself to them in ways that are not literally true. How could God put Moses to the test, apart from testing him step by step and so appearing to change his mind? So the impression we may form, reading the biblical narrative, that God changes is an illusion that arises because we learn of God’s purposes for the actors in the narrative (and perhaps for others) only bit by bit.
On the theory of divine accommodation, statements such as “God repented” are false if taken literally, because God does not literally repent and cannot do so. But although they are literally false, some truth about God may nevertheless be conveyed by them.
. In G. E. Ganssle (Ed.), God & Time: Four Views (pp. 45–46). Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic.”— Helm, P. (2001). Divine Timeless EternitySource:God & Time: Four Views (pp. 45–46) - “According to Aquinas, though the universe is really related to God, God is not really related to the created universe.
Whenever two things are related to each other in such a way that one depends upon the other but the other does not depend upon it, there is a real relation in the dependent member, but in the independent member the relation is merely one of reason—simply because one thing cannot be understood as being related to it. The notion of such a relation becomes clear if we consider knowledge, which depends on what is known, although the latter does not depend on it.
Consequently, since all creatures depend on God, but he does not depend on them, there are real relations in creatures referring them to God. The opposite relations in God to creatures, however, are merely conceptual relations; but, because names are signs of concepts, certain names we use for God imply a relation to creatures, even though, as we said, this relation is merely conceptual.
Thomas Aquinas De Veritate 4.5, quoted by Craig, “Tensed vs. Tenseless,” p. 225.”— Helm, P. (2001). Divine Timeless EternitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 48) - “The incarnation is the “projection” of the eternal God. There is therefore no sense in talking of the eternal Son of God apart from the incarnation except to make the point that the incarnation was logically contingent. That is, there is no point to it if by this we mean there was a time when the eternal Son of God existed unincarnated. It is of course possible for us to think of the eternal Son of God as unincarnated, by an abstraction of thought, but that is a different matter. The point is, as Herbert McCabe says, there is no preexistent Christ with a life history independent of and prior to the incarnation. There was no time when the eternal God was not Jesus of Nazareth. There is no other life story—story in time—of God than the story of the incarnation. There was no time when the Son of God was not willing himself to be incarnate, but only decided at a particular time to become incarnate in our history. God did not exist and then at some later point decide to become incarnate, for there is no change or succession possible in the timeless eternity of God’s life.”— Helm, P. (2001). Divine Timeless EternitySource:God & Time: Four Views (p. 54)