Summa Blogologica - Questions 9 & 10: The Immutable and Eternal God

Today I decided that I would be running together two Questions from the Summa Theologica in one post.

The first is Question 9, God's Immutability. Immutable means changeless. Not changeless by ordination or by virtue of testimony, but changeless by nature. Below I will explain better.

The other is Question 10, God's Eternity. God exists forever. Always has, always will.

In this post I will introduce a term all philosophers or theology students need to understand, and that is "a posteriori" which simply means "by effect" or "when something is derived from observation". Second, remember what "potential" things are. It is anything which can undergo a change in order to become perfected.

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Question 9

God and God alone is a changeless being. Things which change are prone to potentiality; they are seeking perfection; things that are imperfect are finite. But God is infinite, everywhere, perfect, and has no potential. God is therefore unchangeable, or immutable.

Question 10

God’s eternal nature is due a posteriori (by effect) to His essence as existence. If He is existence itself then He has always existed. Further, His other qualities as immutable and infinite make Him the only eternal being, as eternity belongs to Him alone. What must be understood is that eternity does not share and is not the same thing as time, for God created and began time and is what our finite minds can conceive as “time” but not as a thing is created or born or began – God is outside all of these.

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I tell you truthfully, even though I wrote this and it all makes sense to me, it is difficult to decipher. Spend time on these Summa posts. Your understanding of God and His "awesome" qualities will provide you with such a humility and reverence for Him. Seek the truth!