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So we come to our fourth session. We've entitled it, The Depth 
of God's Eternity and Incomprehensibility. At the risk of false advertising, 
we'll be speaking about the depth, but not plumbing it. Because 
we can't. That's also implied in the title. 
Two texts to begin with for this session. Psalm chapter 90, verse 
two, and actually we'll begin in verse one, the Psalm of Moses. Lord, you have been our dwelling 
place in all generations before the mountains were brought forth 
Or ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting 
to everlasting. You are God. And then the words 
of dedication in First Kings Chapter 8 verse 27. Solomon, in leading the congregation 
in prayer, says this. But will God indeed dwell on 
the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot 
contain you. How much less this temple which 
I have built. Well, as we consider our eternal 
and uncontainable God, let's ask for his help in this session 
together. God of all eternity, we do give 
you praise and thanksgiving and adoration. And God, we ask for 
your help now in this evening session as we consider the glory 
of your eternity and even the glory of your incomprehensibility. 
Lord, we pray that you would give us knowledge of the truth. 
Even if we do not comprehend the truth, Lord, give us a true 
apprehension of it, that our hearts might be encouraged and 
built up to honor you and worship you as is your due. We pray this 
in Christ's name. Amen. God's timeless eternity and his 
incomprehensibility follow somewhat of necessity from doctrines we've 
already considered together. Simplicity, immutability, infinity, 
impassibility, if all these things be so, then necessarily God is 
outside of time in one important respect, or timeless in His eternity, 
and also is in His very being incomprehensible at least to 
finite knowers. And we'll add that qualification 
in when we come to that in a little while. The doctrine of God's 
eternity, to begin, is at once one of the most uncontested truths 
of the Reformed confessions. all confess that God is eternal, 
and yet also one of the most difficult to understand. There 
was a time when it was a consensus that to be eternal meant to be 
all temporal or not subject to succession of moments. In the 
last maybe century in Western theology, and even I will say 
in a lot of conservative and reformed theology, there have 
been considerable reformulations of divine eternity so that eternity 
now means endless succession in both directions, to put it 
somewhat crassly, as opposed to outside all succession altogether. So how do we know that eternity 
means ah temporal or timeless as opposed to simply unending 
succession of moments. Why did the older writers especially 
insist on the non-successiveness of God's life as opposed to an 
endless successiveness of his life? We'll address that point 
and Many of the traditional texts for divine eternity somewhat 
underdetermine that point. That's something we have to be 
aware of, that the texts that simply indicate, by eternity 
we mean all temporal as opposed to endless duration, don't actually 
exist, the reason that earlier theologians came to those conclusions 
is because they would never think of formulating a doctrine of 
God's eternity that did not take account of his immutability, 
of his simplicity, of his pure fullness of being, and of his 
infinity. If those things be true, then those texts must necessarily 
be taken in the direction of timelessness. Scripture is clear 
in its witness to God being eternal. He's called the King Eternal. 
First Timothy 1-7. He's the Alpha and Omega, the 
beginning and the end, Revelation 1-8. The one whose years have 
no end, Psalm 102-27. And as we just read, the one 
who is before he gave birth to the earth and the world from 
everlasting to everlasting. He exists, exalted above time 
as its creator. 1 Timothy 1.9 says that he even 
planned our salvation, the words of Paul, prachronionion. In other words, before chronological 
ages. Whatever that means, I think 
at the very least, it can't mean chronologically before chronological 
ages. Again, I'm going to quote the 
kids, not a thing. Chronologically, before chronological 
ages. So whatever we even mean by before 
the ages and before the world, we can't even necessarily mean 
older than. In fact, maybe I should just 
put this out now. I had not planned on it. God 
is not older than the world or younger than the world. Because 
God isn't old and God isn't young. God is. And I know that some 
of you are already thinking of the ancient of days texts, and 
I've got plans for you, so hold on. We will return to that. Why does the Bible talk like 
that? What are we to make of words like before if we don't 
mean chronologically? And then when the Bible says 
that God purposed pro-chronon ionion, before chronological 
ages or eons. That almost seems to indicate 
a divine activity that is taking place outside of anything like 
a chronologically ordered relationship. All of our knowledge of God certainly 
arises from our experience of his productions in time and in 
space, creation and scripture. These are the two sources of 
all of our knowledge of God and creation, itself and certainly 
does include time in as much as creation itself exhibits progress 
and succession and of course scripture itself came to us in 
time and in space as God deemed fit to reveal these things to 
us and so there's a very important respect in which we ourselves 
encounter temporal products, things that God has made which 
are temporal, nature and scripture. And moreover, we always approach 
those from some standpoint in time. And so there is an important 
respect in which we cannot, in one respect, elevate or transcend 
our own time-bounded situation. We can abstractly sort of try 
to transcend that, but even the moment we do that, we're doing 
that in time. So there's almost an inescapableness 
to the fact that we talk about eternity, but from within time, 
and we know about eternity through things that are revealed to us 
in time. What we need to be careful of is concluding that because 
the revelation of God is in time, that God himself must also be 
that way. Because of this, much of our 
God talk deploys time-bound terminology. Indeed, as with all of our God 
talk about His attributes, there's an acute non-symmetry between 
the temporal-shaped terms and concepts that we use to describe 
His eternity and the ontological reality of that eternity in Him. In other words, my words are 
in some respects not commensurate to or equal to the thing that 
I'm saying. Now, really quick, that doesn't 
make them false. It just makes them finite and 
creaturely. It's how Calvin speaks about 
God revealing himself to us in scripture. And he says that in 
scripture, God lisps and babbles to us as to babes. That doesn't 
mean that God isn't speaking truthfully to us, but he has 
packaged that truth into an approachable linguistic and conceptual structure. 
He's also, though, given us the resources to understand that 
that's what he's doing, that he's in fact accommodating himself 
to our capacities. Back to time and eternity. Augustine 
of Hippo, died in the year 430, wrote profoundly of time and 
eternity in his famous Confessions. Anyone who's read the Confessions 
finally gets to book 10 eventually, and that's where a lot of people 
poop out. He starts waxing eloquent, he's talking to God, and he's 
giving some of the most profound thoughts on time and eternity. One of the things he says there 
is this. Your years do not come and go. Our years pass and new 
ones arrive, only so that all may come and turn. But your years 
stand all at once, because they are stable. There is no pushing 
out of vanishing years by those that are coming on, because with 
you, none are transient. There's no next year and last 
year with God. Back to Augustine. Your today 
does not give way to tomorrow, nor follow yesterday. Your today 
is eternity. He's using the language of a 
today, but it's just not like any today you've ever had. My 
today is always yesterday's tomorrow. I didn't just make that up. I've 
always thought, probably since I was about six, I've thought 
that. I'm sure you have as well. And then also, today is tomorrow's 
yesterday. Okay, you know how this works. 
We don't have to go on. It's also basically the same 
statement. God's today isn't Any yesterday or tomorrow, it's 
a way of simply saying your now just is. And God's now, unlike 
your now, is not sandwiched between an almost bewildering number 
of future moments and past moments, the future ones eclipsing into 
the past ones almost as soon as they arrive, the now just 
being the razor's edge between the future and the past. I mean, 
think about it like this. When I say the word time, by 
the time I finish saying time, there's already a past even in 
that very word. When I say the word now, when 
I get to the ow after the mm, I've already got the mm in the 
past and I'm still trying to say the word now. You begin to 
feel the, we live in this razor's edge now sandwiched between an 
almost, innumerable, seemingly innumerable future moments that 
just slip then into our past. John Owen says this about the 
mystery of God's eternity, how inconceivable is this glorious 
divine property unto the thoughts and minds of men. I'm trying 
to make the argument for why we should put eternity and incomprehensibility 
together again. How inconceivable is this glorious 
divine property unto the thoughts and minds of men. By inconceivable 
he doesn't mean untruthful or unbelievable, he just means I 
cannot form a one-to-one concept in my mind of eternity. I know 
why God must be eternal, we'll say a few things about that in 
a moment, but that doesn't mean that I can actually imagine God's 
eternity. I can believe it, I can defend 
it, I can say a lot of things it isn't, but that's not the 
same thing as actually forming a discrete concept in my mind 
of eternity itself. Owen says, how weak are the ways 
and terms whereby men go about to express it. He that says most 
only signifies what he knows of what it is not. We are of yesterday, change every 
moment, and are leaving our station tomorrow. God is still the same, 
was so before the world was, from eternity, and then Owen 
says this right afterward, and now I cannot think what I have 
said, but only have intimated what I adore. Christians get that. I think 
the rationalist, that frustrates him. The Christian accepts that. I speak it, I know it, I can 
even defend it and argue for why it must be true, but people 
then get the wrong idea about us. They tend to think, oh, you 
think you know all about God. It's exactly not that. I'm actually 
trying to make a very coherent argument for why I couldn't possibly. Time and eternity puts that challenge 
to us. Augustine also very famously 
said, if no one asks me what time is, I know. I like that 
one. What is time? As soon as someone 
asks you, you're like, eh, it's hard to say. This great mystery 
of God's eternity, though not comprehensible to us, does not 
leave us speechless. It seems that we at least know 
how not to characterize eternity. That is, our God talk must eschew 
any notion of change in God. If time is the measurement of 
movement between the before and the after, I stand with that 
tradition. I think that's what time is. 
And if God is immutable, then there's nothing for time to measure, 
no movement. Whatever we're to say of God's 
work in the world, creation, judgment, redemption, consummation, 
we must insist that this work produces no change in God. Even 
if we ask the question, like, when did God create the world? in the beginning, which I think is right, but then 
also he created the beginning in which he created the world. 
So the beginning wasn't just there waiting for him, and there's 
a certain sense from the divine side in which God created the 
world know when. From the human side, of course, 
we say something like, depending on where you stand on this, if 
you're a young earther, you could say 7,000 to 10,000 years ago 
or something like that. But then again, you're actually 
only speaking about the when from the way you count the motion 
of the very world that itself was created. So when I say, when 
did God create the world? There's no when that characterizes 
God's activity. His activity is not in time. 
What he produces is in time, but his act of producing is not 
in time. It's timeless. It'd almost be 
like asking the question, where did God make the world? No, God made where? Concomitant with the world. But 
it wasn't like there was a somewhere waiting for God to place a world 
in it. The where and the when, the time and the space from the 
divine side have no bearing or restriction upon him. Only in 
the world itself do we find when and where, properly speaking. 
All right, some fundamental then convictions of the classical 
eternity doctrine as would have been intended by the writers 
of our confession and the other Reformed confessions. First, 
a few words on the meaning of divine eternity, and then a few 
statements about the traditional interpretation of the Bible's 
eternity passages, and then a few supporting doctrines, and then 
we'll kind of transition for the last half into incomprehensibility. 
First, the meaning of it. The basic claim of the classical 
doctrine is that God does not experience successive states 
of being, and thus has no future and no past. Positively, divine 
eternity derives from the belief that God is so perfect and infinite 
and actuality of being that no new state of being can come upon 
him and no state of being can slip away from him if God just 
is being actual and unbounded. then there's nothing that can 
actually come to him, nothing that can slip away from him, 
that is to say no movement into one state of being from another, 
no loss of a state of being as he moves into another state of 
being, and therefore there's nothing to measure or to count, 
and time just is the counting of the movement between the before 
and the after. But the before and the after 
in this case are actually states of being, the one being what 
you were and are no longer, and the after being what you came 
to be, and then the motion being however you can count the movement 
between those states of being, and then that's time. But if 
God isn't moving from one state of being to another, that is 
to say not changing, then there's no counting, which means there's 
no time. He is purely and infinitely actual 
in all that he is. Boethius, the sixth century philosopher 
and theologian, memorably describes God's eternity this way, and 
Boethius' formula, as they call it, really becomes the touchstone, 
the standard formula, even all the way down into the Reformed 
tradition. You'll just hear echoes of the Boethian formula. Boethius 
says that God's eternity is, quote, the whole, simultaneous, 
and perfect possession of boundless life. That way of putting it. You can almost think of it in 
contrast to bounded life. Bounded life is the one you're 
living right now, bounded by your non-existent future and 
your no longer existent past. Dinner is over. The pie is gone. The opportunity has passed. The moment in time in which that 
piece of pie was offered to you, is no more. Just like before 
dinner, the moment in time which had not yet been offered to you 
was not yet. And our lives as it were, the 
now of our lives is sandwiched between all the are not yet's 
and the are no longer's, called future and past by normal folk. 
The are not yet's and the are no longer's, that's a bounded 
life. The is not of the future and 
the no more of the past are actually the little hedges that bound 
in your now. I'm not sure this is a post-dinner 
kind of talk that we should be having. Especially with that 
roast beef, that's just gotta be taking blood out of your brain. 
Dude, that's doing it to mine a little bit. That's your bounded life. That's 
what Boethius is after. So much of my life is not yet. Well, I hope. Definitely my eternal 
life in heaven is not yet, aspects of it, and so much of my life 
is no longer. You can think back to happy moments, 
but they only live in your memories at this point. The actuality 
of that moment, that time, that experience, it came and it went 
almost as soon as it got here. A bounded life comes into one's 
possession little by little and is liable to pass out of one's 
possession almost as soon as you come to possess it. The Boethian 
formula then, as I mentioned, gets reproduced down the ages. 
Francis Turretin says this, true eternity has been defined by 
the scholastics as the interminable possession of life, complete, 
perfect, and at once. That's just kind of rustic Boethius 
talk there. This excludes succession no less 
than end and ought to be conceived as a standing but not a flowing 
now. God's now just is. Your now is 
gone even before you finish saying the word now. That's a flowing 
now, a now that came and a now that goes. God's, as opposed 
to that, is a standing now. And His life is an interminable, 
boundless life, a perfect now that includes the boundlessness 
of His being. That I can't imagine, but there 
are good reasons to believe it. The reason Turton says is because 
nothing flows away with time from the life of God as from 
ours. God has every moment at once whatever we have dividedly 
by succession of time. Hence philosophers have well 
said that neither the future nor the past, he will be or he 
was, but only the present, he is, can properly be applied to 
him. I mean, this is a little bit of a technical point. I have 
absolutely no doubt in my mind that he is speaking about Plotinus' 
Aeneid, book three, and that he thinks that Plotinus, who 
was a pagan philosopher of the third century A.D., was correct 
about that, just for what it's worth, even though he is a good 
Reformed theologian. For the eternal duration of God 
embraces all time, the past, present, and future, but nothing 
in him can be past or future because his life remains always 
the same and immutable. That which is perfect and indivisible 
in being then cannot be subject to change or mutation or movement. 
It cannot acquire or lose actuality of being, but all temporal succession 
involves change from one state of being to another. Turretin 
again. For he is not always the same, 
for whom almost every moment something anteriorly is removed 
and by whom posteriorly something is added. So he goes on, the 
succession and the flow of the parts of duration which exist 
successively, never necessarily involve a species of motion which 
cannot be applied to God. Time measures successive duration, 
movement from one state of being to another. State of being A 
gives way to state of being B through some change or alteration. Time 
measures the duration of the movement between the states. I think we get this in one respect, 
even time as we keep it, so to speak, and measure it in our 
world of experience is measured by motion. If I ask how do you 
measure time, or where do you get, how do you know what time 
it is, some of you have a time piece, but your time piece is 
just an artificial device with little segmented portions, 24 
of them, maybe 12 if it goes around twice, and then those 
are subdivided further, and what we've done is we've subdivided 
The year into 365 days, those into 24 hours of 60 minutes each 
of 60 seconds each. Of course, you could subdivide 
that potentially onto infinity inwardly, strange. But then at 
a certain point, it would just be hard to say what time it is 
to anybody. It also, though, helps us to 
make plans, to get together on time, to have a Zoom call with 
somebody on the other side of the world and actually show up 
at the same time. How is it that you can all sync up your watches, 
so to speak? And the reality is that we are 
all experiencing the exact same motion by which we are counting 
at the same rate the measurement of that motion, and it's namely Orbital and axial movements. Orbital movements would be our 
earth moving around our sun 365 and a little bit more. Every once in a while you need 
a leap year to cover that. And then the orbital would be, or 
the axial movement would be a complete rotation upon our own axis. And 
between the axial movements and the orbital movements, we have 
figured out that roughly 365 axial rotations correspond to 
one orbital rotation. And then we get days and years, 
and then we subdivide the axial movement itself relative to where 
we're facing the sun at that moment. And this is actually 
all just called sidereal time. time based upon relative position 
to nearby stars. And I've found that it works. And also, the rest of the world 
knows that, except for American Airlines sometimes. That's not 
sidereal time. It's something else. It's American 
Airlines time. Movement though, we are all measuring 
the same movement from the here to the there and because we're 
all counting the same movement, we can actually sync up our counting 
devices and then plan meetings and life around that. Time measures 
motion. In every bit of time, there are 
three ingredients. There's a term from which, point 
of departure. There's a term to which, point 
of arrival. And then there's the measurement 
of the movement between the terms. And we're actually denying all 
three of God when we say that He's eternal. We're saying that 
there is no from which, because God doesn't leave behind any 
state of being. There is no to which, because 
God isn't arriving at a state of being hitherto unreal in him. 
And of course then, there'd be no motion to measure between 
these two states of being, which we're denying of God. In which 
case then, no terminus a quo, no terminus ad quem, no succession 
to measure, not temporal at all. That's the traditional reasoning, 
I think sound. Stephen Charnock says, all other 
things pass from one state to another, from their original 
to their eclipse and destruction, but God possesses his being in 
one indivisible point, having neither beginning, end, nor middle. Put differently again, he just 
is. Now, there's a challenge with 
how to interpret certain passages of scripture, and I want to be 
somewhat brief about this, but it deserves a bit of recognition 
in this moment. There's a challenge of how to 
understand the traditional temporal understanding of God's eternity, 
given that there are certain biblical passages that use the 
language of eternity to describe things that we definitely think 
are temporal. So for instance, Scripture applies the language 
of eternity in a kind of improper, I don't mean in a invalid way, 
but in an improper, inexact way to things that, strictly speaking, 
are of time. Some of the things that Scripture 
calls eternal were not there in the beginning, but came about 
later, and some of the things it calls eternal lasted less 
than 400 years, and they were still called eternal. Just a 
few, a sampler of this. Genesis 17.7 speaks of an eternal 
covenant, and that's speaking of the covenant with Abraham, 
of an eternal possession of land, Acts 17.8, of eternal mosaic 
rites, ceremonies, and promises. I mean, we're told in Hebrews 
8, those things are already passing away. Numbers 10, eight, 15, 
15, et cetera. Eternal mountains. But then how 
could they be eternal mountains? Because God was God from everlasting 
to everlasting before he gave birth to the earth or the world. 
And so how can another text talk about eternal mountains? Of Solomon's 
temple and Mount Zion as God's eternal dwelling place, 1 Kings 
8, 13. But by 586, it was a pile of rubble, 586 BC. Of the earth as immovable forever 
and ever, and yet other passages say that it will be melted with 
fire. Of eternal life given to God's 
elect, John 10, 28. Of the eternal weight of glory 
currently being produced in believers, 2 Corinthians 4, 17. Of an eternal 
heavenly home that awaits God's people, 2 Corinthians 5, 1. None 
of these is strictly timeless in the sense of outside of the 
measurement of successive motions. Some of these things came about 
and were already, and disappeared even before the close of the 
Old Testament. Each of these realities has a temporal beginning, 
proceeds through a succession of moments. Some of those have 
an end, some of them will never have an end, like our life with 
him in heaven, even though it does have a very definite beginning. 
Some have already passed away and will never return. Others 
will pass away at the end of the present age. Others will 
go on endlessly into the future. Why are these things called eternal? 
Francis Turretin says that these various temporal realities are, 
God uses eternalist language, quote, because on account of 
their long continuance and constant duration, they seem to approach 
eternity. Or it may be used for that which 
has no end, although it might have had a beginning as the angels 
and souls are eternal. The idea is this, they're more 
enduring than other things. If eternity is based upon divine 
immutability, things that are comparatively less mutable than 
other mutable things will sometimes be given the name eternal, but 
in that sense eternity is being used in a comparative and contrastive 
sense with other more fleeting and ephemeral things. In which 
case, then, an exact and literalistic sense of the term is not intended. 
But still, something important is being said about those things, 
especially the eternal weight of glory that is even now being 
produced in you and the eternal life that waits us in heaven. 
That is to say, a life not like this life, a life that isn't 
terminated in death, but a life that isn't terminated at all, 
that just is life abundant that Christ came to give us. Eternity 
then is a comparative term in those instances, denoting temporal 
things that are more permanent than others. Also, though, Scripture 
might seem confusing because it will use temporalist terms 
to describe the Eternal One Himself. Now I answer the Daniel 7 challenge. He's called the Ancient of Days. 
We're told in Psalm 102, 27 that his years have no end. His eternity 
is said to be from the day. He is before the created world, 
from everlasting to everlasting. That sounds like a terminus, 
a quo, an aquem. All of these expressions seem 
to suggest, perhaps, that God is in some kind of successive 
or aged type of arrangement. Is God ancient so as to be thought 
of as very old? Let's just take that one for 
an example. I don't think that's the intent of Daniel 7. The intent 
of Daniel 7 is not to say something about God's age. The intent of 
Daniel 7 is to say something about God's honor and God's glory. In a Semitic culture, The hoary 
heads were to be listened to and revered. And the old paths 
that Jeremiah talks about were the good paths that we should 
walk. And the old ways and the old wisdom and the old people, 
the old things were to be given a preference because they had 
endured longer and proven themselves longer. They were to be given 
an esteem above, I think Jeremiah says, hip and 
trendy stuff. But I could be wrong about that. That's the 
gist of it, as I take it. Anyway, but there to be given 
esteem above that, you know, above newfangled ideas, the things 
that just got here, we revere the ancient. When he calls God 
the ancient of days, He's actually saying God is to be revered and 
honored above even the most ancient things, yea, all days. The most 
ancient and enduring of the creative things to which we give deference 
and to which we give esteem. God is to be esteemed above those 
things. Calling him ancient of days would 
have had more the connotation of reverence and esteem than 
a statement about age and arguably would not have been understood 
to be making a statement about age per se. Time. God is the 
ancient of days. Brockel, Wilhelmus of Brockel 
says, even when years or days or past and present times are 
attributed to God, and he is called the ancient of days and 
other similar expressions, such is merely done from man's viewpoint. 
The reason for this is that we insignificant human beings incapable 
of thinking and speaking about eternity in a fitting manner 
may by way of comparison comprehend as much of eternity as is needful 
for us to know. Nevertheless, in doing so, we 
must fully divorce God from the concept of time. The other thing 
that might tempt us to think God is in time is the unfolding 
of his effects. So you can think about the unfolding 
of my effects, like let's say for instance I'm like laying 
out cards to play a game of solitaire, and as I'm laying out the cards 
and building the stacks, so to speak, to be again defeated by 
solitaire, We can talk about my effects laying down this stack 
and laying down that stack as things that I'm bringing about 
one after the other, but the succession is not just in the 
cards being laid, the succession is also in the activity of the 
card layer. There's not just a before and 
an after in the building of the columns, there's also a before 
and after in the activity of the column builder. And the reason 
is because I actually exist in time and in space with the cards 
as I lay them out to be yet again defeated. And the temptation 
is to think that this is how God is, that God relates to his 
effects, which are temporal, as if he himself were a temporal 
agent, and we're so used to agents actually existing in the same 
timeframe with their effects that we actually trick ourselves 
into thinking that existing in the timeframe with your effects 
is actually a law of causality. But it's not a law of causality. 
It's only a law of causality if you are a certain kind of 
being exhibiting certain kinds of limitations like time bound. In which case then I do happen 
to actually exist in the same time space continuum arrangement 
with the cards that I lay out or any of the other effects that 
I produce in time. But all that is necessary for 
causality is an act by which something is brought about. Whether 
the act that does the bringing about, the causality, itself 
is temporally situated or indexed would ultimately come down to 
what kind of being the doer is. If he's a simple doer, if he's 
a purely actual doer, if he's an immutable doer, if the one 
who produces time is himself all of these things, then there 
would be no obvious or necessary reason that he would have to 
exist in time to produce effects in time. God timelessly brings 
about temporal effects. God infinitely produces finitude. 
God simply produces complexity, that he does not actually have 
to exhibit the same sort of being as the effects that he produces. And I think that will suffice 
for the dogmatic motivations of it as well. These have been 
historically infinity. If God is infinite, there's no 
movement. There's nowhere to go if you're infinite. There's 
fullness of being, in which case then, there be no measurement 
of movement. Edward Lee says, that whereby 
God cannot be limited, measured, or determined of anything, being 
the first cause from whom and the end whereby all things are 
made, God is thus free altogether from all limitation of time, 
place, and degrees. He makes time, place, and degrees, 
but his making is not in time, place, or degree. What is made 
is in time, place, and degree. Hermann Boebing says, the one 
who says time says motion, change, measurability, computability, 
limitation, finiteness, creature. Also, as I mentioned, this follows 
from immutability. Thomas Aquinas says, the idea 
of eternity follows immutability as the idea of time follows movement. Hence, as God is supremely immutable, 
it supremely belongs to him to be eternal. Also, as for divine 
simplicity, we should also say that God, in a strict sense, 
does not dwell in time, or sorry, in eternity, but rather God just 
is his own eternity. Eternity is not like a realm 
and God fits into it. He really just is his eternity. 
Again, Brockle's very good on this. He says, there can be no 
chronology within the being of God, and this is his reason, 
since his being is simple and immutable. In fact, you wouldn't 
even need a verse that said God was eternal. If you knew that 
he was simple and immutable, you would just know that he would 
have to be eternal for those other things to be true. Brockle 
then concludes this, God's being is eternity, and eternity is 
God's being, in that strict and proper sense of it. Well, let's 
come now, in the last moments we have together, to talk about 
divine incomprehensibility. And I hope this, as a conclusio 
to what I've done today, but also as a kind of introduction, 
and maybe a little bit of mercy begging for my brother, who has 
to be good on everything we've done today, and also try unity. At the same time, tomorrow morning, 
starting at 8 a.m. And so, I want to preface, even 
for him, this doctrine of divine incomprehensibility. Divine incomprehensibility 
is not just us throwing up our hands after we tried really hard 
to understand God. I tried, I tried, I tried, I 
just don't know. God's just an enigma to me, and incomprehensibility 
is really just a report about your frustration. That's not 
what it is. In fact, what's interesting about 
incomprehensibility, if you're at page seven in the spiral handout 
again, left column, the Second London Confession actually indicates 
this doctrine of incomprehensibility three different times. Three 
different times. Read with me again. The Lord 
our God is but one living and true God whose subsistence is 
in and of himself, that's his self, his aseity, infinite in 
being and perfection, and then here comes the first reference 
to incomprehensibility, but notice that it's qualified. There is 
a sense in which God is not absolutely incomprehensible. We need to 
be very careful about this. God is not absolutely incomprehensible. There is someone who comprehends 
him. whose essence cannot be comprehended 
by any but himself. But himself. God comprehends 
God. If God were absolutely incomprehensible, 
you could almost make the argument that he was unintelligible. That 
seems to be not the point. He's incomprehensible to the 
creature, but not to himself. Say with this, the most pure 
spirit, invisible without body, parts, or passions, who alone 
hath immortality, and here comes the second reference to divine 
incomprehensibility, dwelling in the light which no man can 
approach unto. That's from Paul's language to 
Timothy in 1 Timothy 6. Who is immutable, immense, eternal, 
and if you missed it twice, here it is a third time, incomprehensible, 
almighty, every way, infinite, most wise, most holy, most free, 
most absolute. We'll leave it there for now. Three times in 
the first half of the first paragraph on the doctrine of God, we are 
told in three different ways that to us God is incomprehensible. The doctrine is not saying that 
God is unknowable in any respect or not truthfully able to be 
known. That certainly is not what we're saying. If that were 
the case, they owe you your money back for the conference, and 
also you should return your Bibles to whatever bookstore you bought 
them from. We're not saying that God is not knowable. We're saying 
that the way in which we know is not comprehension. So a brief 
statement on incomprehensibility. What we mean is that the knowledge 
of God cannot be contained by the mind of the creature. Let 
me be careful. I try to be careful in saying 
it. The knowledge of God cannot be contained by the mind of the 
creature. I am not saying that the knowledge of God cannot be 
had by the mind of the creature or even possessed by the mind 
of the creature somehow. I'm very interested in this word 
contained. That's the key word here. That 
it's whatever it is that I have of the knowledge of God in my 
mind that's true, it's not containment. The way of my knowing is not 
a containing sort of knowing. And there are ways to have without 
containing what you have. We'll talk about that in just 
a moment. Herman Bobbing says, The knowledge of God that God 
has revealed of himself in nature and scripture far surpasses human 
imagination and understanding. What I love about that statement, 
I'm gonna reread it, because I think what people often think 
about incomprehensibility is there's stuff about God I don't 
know. Yes, right, and I've not actually met anyone professing 
Christianity who says, you know what, oh yeah, I finished with 
that God study and now I actually do know everything about God. 
I've never met a person who said that. And I can imagine an 18-year-old 
who just wants to be obtuse saying that just so I could hear somebody 
say it. But nobody could say it and mean it. Anyone who's 
a theist at all doesn't say, yeah, I know everything about 
God, I'm done, I'm moving on to other things now. That's not 
done. But that's actually not the doctrine 
of incomprehensibility necessarily. Listen again to Bovink carefully. 
The knowledge that God has revealed of himself in nature and scripture, 
the two great sources of our knowledge of God, far surpass 
human imagination and understanding. In other words, it's not what 
you don't yet know about God that you don't comprehend. I 
mean, that's of course true. It's what you do truthfully know 
about God already that you don't comprehend. That does not mean 
you don't know it. It just means that the way of 
your knowing it is not a comprehending. I know that God is love, but 
my knowledge of God's love does not in one way, in a one-to-one 
way measure or correspond to that love. God's love is greater 
than my greatest thought of God's love. In fact, I could just back 
up and say what we're really saying is God is greater than 
your greatest thoughts of Him. That's incomprehensibility. It 
doesn't make your great thoughts not great and not true. It just 
means that God is actually better than you can possibly think, 
greater than you can possibly think. That, in fact, your mind 
could never, as it were, measure His glory so as to capture in 
a concept all of it. And we kinda know this. Your 
name be blessed, O Lord, forever and ever be praised. And then, 
also, we come to church again and again and again. And the 
thing about our worship, do you notice this about our worship? 
We don't ever really finish worship. We just get tired and need lunch 
and a nap. And then we just pick it up again 
later. And it's a different worship service, but it's actually not 
a different worship. It's just the same worship, and 
because of our limitations, we needed a break. And then here 
we are to continue the theme. Nobody ever says, I'm done worshiping 
God. What you really mean is, I need a break and I'm gonna 
get back to it, but this is forever. This is endless. Thomas Watson 
says, learn to admire where you cannot fathom. I think this fights 
against our modern proclivity. Where I can't fathom, I get kind 
of in a snit and I get discouraged and I just walk away from it. 
Because either I'm gonna intellectually master it, figure out everything 
about it, or I'm done. And I just want to say, don't 
be such a petulant child about this. Actually, leave room for wonder 
and for awe. Leave room for mystery. Leave 
room for, if I can say this in a circumspect way, leave room 
for the strangeness of God. I think C.S. Lewis said something 
to the effect once that it would be strange if God were not strange. If God just turned out to be 
a big amazing version of a great man without a body maybe, that'd 
be strange. That'd be strange. Far from being 
a liability for our faith, the unfathomability of God's glorious 
being animates and inspires our confidence and praise. Psalm 
145, we'll look at a couple of texts together. speaks with those familiar superlatives 
about God's glory. And I think the unbeliever doesn't 
get this. They hear about forever and ever praise, and I think 
sometimes even Christians are tempted by this, and they get 
this strong sense of the longest, boringest church service ever. 
I've been in long, boring church services. I've been the principal 
cause of long, boring church services. I've bored myself in 
church services as the preacher, searching my notes for the exit 
and not finding it. So I understand that. And the 
temptation is to think, I'm going to get to heaven and it's just 
going to be church forever, and there's not going to be a clock 
on the back wall to check because it doesn't matter, it's not ending. And there's something deflating 
about all that, if I'm being honest, except that it's not 
like that. It isn't like that. Brothers and sisters, words fail 
me here, but I'll feebly attempt it. To gaze upon his glory in 
the beauty of his presence, sinless, blameless, with great joy, looking 
in to the boundlessness of glory and having your heart absolutely 
ravished by the sight of it. Loving and communing with him 
who isn't just a good thing, but goodness itself subsisting 
and you placed eternally in his presence. Whatever that means, it is exactly 
the opposite of a boring church service. And David gets that. Psalm 145, the first few verses, 
I will extol you, O God, my God, O King. I will bless your name, 
here it comes, forever and ever. Every day I will bless you. I 
will praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and 
greatly to be praised. I give you now the new King James. 
His greatness is unsearchable. This is one of those strange 
moments where the NIV, yes, the NIV, might be just a little more 
literal than the ESV and the New American Standard and even 
the New King James. I think it says, his greatness no one can 
fathom, which is actually what it says. It says no man can fathom 
it. A fathom is a unit depth of water. And then the verb to fathom is 
actually a verb that describes taking the measurement of water 
depth. And the way you would do this 
in the olden days is with a weighted line, probably notched, a measuring 
line, so to speak, and you would drop that weighted line over 
the edge of the boat and it would sink down and maybe it would go 15 
or 20 fathoms. And then you would know basically 
where the bottom was underneath your boat. And he says, God's 
greatness, no man can fathom. And I wanna propose to you for 
two reasons. The first one might be evident to you. You don't 
have enough measuring stick up here. You don't actually have 
the equipment to take that measurement. But there's another reason why 
you can't get to the bottom of God. It doesn't exist. There is no 
bottom. There, can I translate that a 
little bit? There just is no last great thing about God. His greatness is unbounded. His greatness is being itself 
subsisting. His greatness isn't just a good, 
it is goodness as such. His love isn't just a love, it 
is love itself and it is God. And he gives himself to us in 
the gospel and calls us into that presence and ravishes our 
souls and resurrected bodies for eternity with that. With 
that. That's incomprehensibility and 
it's glorious. Not discouraging, glorious. A 
comprehensible God could never give you that. A God you could 
get to the bottom of, a God you could contain in your mind and 
measure by your finite intellect is not a God who could ever be 
that God. This we have to grasp about the 
doctrine of incomprehensibility. A corollary text worth a peek, 
Isaiah chapter 40 verses 12. to 17 has one of my favorite 
worship verses. It's a bit of a strange one, I suppose, but 
still worth a look. Isaiah 40 verse 12, who has measured 
the waters in the hollow of his hands and measured the heaven 
with a span and calculated the dust of the earth in a measure? Weighed the mountains and the 
scales and the hills in a balance, who has directed or measured 
the spirit of the Lord or as his counselor has taught him? 
So in the first verse, God gave the measure to everything. God 
measured it out. He gave it its limits, its time, 
its place. But who has measured the Spirit 
of the Lord as his counselor has taught him? With whom did 
he take counsel and who instructed him and taught him in the path 
of justice and taught him knowledge and showed him the ways of understanding? 
In other words, God gives measure to things, but no one gives measure 
to God. No one gives him measure and 
no one takes his measurements. If I can put it in a more modern 
idiom, no one sizes up God. No one measures God. Behold, 
the nations are as a drop in a bucket and are counted as the 
small dust on the scales. He lifts up the aisles as a very 
little thing, now this verse on worship. And Lebanon is not 
enough to burn, nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. 
All the nations before him are as nothing and are accounted 
by him as less than nothing and worthless. How could the less 
than nothing and worthless world ever actually, watch this, measure 
God with our minds, or even more improbable, measure Him with 
our worship. You know, in the Bible, that 
verse where God says, yeah, everybody, that's enough worship now, cut 
it out. It's right there with the thank you verses. which would 
be pseudepigrapha or apocrypha if they existed, not in your 
canonical scriptures. God never says, hey, everybody, 
stop the worship. He does tell Joshua to stop praying. That's 
an interesting passage. But that's because Joshua was 
praying instead of acting when he knew what he should be doing. 
In other words, prayer was actually being used as an excuse for indigence. 
So every once in a while, God does tell people stop praying. 
But he's not saying, stop worshiping me. And you know how? We can 
praise man too much. You could praise an angel too 
much. John did it twice and the angel rebuked him, Revelation 
19 and Revelation 22. You can give too much praise 
even to a holy angel. It can be overdone. You can certainly 
give too much praise to a man. I mean, if you've ever been praised 
and it's like your aunt or your grandmother and she overdoes 
it, and you just, you know you're not actually that great. Like, 
you're probably not gonna tell grandma, and she thinks, my grandson, 
you're not actually that great, and you just know you're not. 
And you might even be a little bit embarrassed, but God's never 
embarrassed, God's never shamefaced, God never says, oh, cut it out, 
everybody. Look at verse 16 again. Lebanon is not enough to burn, 
nor its beasts enough for a burnt offering. Lebanon's where the 
big trees are. You want to kindle altars of worship, go to Lebanon, 
cut down all the forests, Take all the beasts, and I like to 
say, kindle countless altars, offer endless beasts, and you would not have given 
him enough worship because the world is not enough. The world and all that it has 
to return in praise and thanksgiving to God could never actually, 
as it were, measure the greatness of God. Our worship, even through 
all of eternity, finite creatures in the state of grace and glory 
even, will not, as it were, be enough to measure his glory. And that is actually why the 
worship service never ends. It's just gonna be the best one 
ever, that's all. The best one ever. This is incomprehensibility. Now a little bit on the language, 
we come near the end. So why do we use this language? 
A couple of technical points. To prehend means to grasp. If you put a prefix on it like 
app, apprehend, it means to grasp at or onto. I could do that with 
this little cap from the bottle there. I can grab onto it. If 
you change the preposition from app, at or onto to com, it takes 
on this connotation of grasping so as to completely encircle 
or enclose. This is a grasping, and this 
is a grasping, but the mode between them is apprehendere and comprehendere. And what I want to propose to 
you is that in the knowledge of God, in Scripture and nature, 
insofar as He reveals Himself, we do truly apprehend Him. Sufficient to be saved from our 
sins, to be reconciled to Him, and to give Him praise for this 
life and all of the next. But none of that is a measurement 
of him. None of that is actually equal to or commensurate to the 
glory of God itself. I want to return to a text with 
which I began this session and finish with its contemplation, 
1 Kings 8, verse 27. God condescends in the glory 
cloud to reveal his presence in a kind of phenomenal way to 
Israel. and that shiny cloud of glory, 
the Shekinah, is going to dwell in a temple. Now, Solomon has 
finished building the temple. It's a great house, we're actually 
told. We're told Solomon spoke, 1 Kings 8, 12. The Lord has said 
he would dwell in a dark cloud. I have surely built you an exalted 
house, a place for your dwelling forever. In other words, big 
God, big house, eternal God, eternal dwelling. But actually, 
it's a big house. I mean, it's like nothing they've 
ever seen. It's a grand house, and they 
come to the prayer of dedication. They've built a grand house for 
their God. He gets just like five verses into the prayer, 
and there's this moment in the prayer, this is verse 27, in 
which Solomon reflects on what they're doing. And now I'm gonna 
translate what they've done. They've built a really pretty 
house, really just a box on top of a hill for God. It seems like 
a box on a hill for God shouldn't be something humans should be 
able to do. And Solomon knows that that's not in fact what 
they have done. Look at this, verse 27 with me. Will God indeed 
dwell on the earth? Now, I just want to remind you, 
this is part of the prayer itself. It's a kind of reflection on 
what they're doing. It's not just more of the same. 
It's a kind of self-reflective moment. It almost, in a sense, 
stands outside of the flow, but it's still part of it. It's self-aware 
of what's going on. Will God indeed dwell on the 
earth? Behold, here comes incomprehensibility, heaven and the heaven of heavens. 
cannot contain you, that is incomprehensibility. That is to say that heaven cannot, 
as it were, grasp God so as to fully encompass him, and here's 
the reason. Heaven is creature, glorious creature, no doubt. 
But heaven is created, heaven is finite, heaven isn't God. Heaven is God's handiwork. Heaven 
is the most sublime realm of his manifested glory, but it 
is, like all realms of manifested glory, a created realm. The medievals 
had a little saying and the reformers picked it up that the finite 
cannot contain the infinite. I'm not going to make an argument 
for that. If you disagree, you need rest. The finite cannot 
contain the infinite. A box on a hill was never gonna 
actually put a lid, so to speak, on God. And you know what else 
wasn't gonna put a lid on God? The heaven of heavens. And you 
know those seraphs who cry, holy, holy, holy? They just keep doing 
it. Because the theme goes on and on. And in joy and swiftness 
and with burning zeal, covering their faces and flying with two 
wings and covering their feet, they cry intifidally, holy, holy, 
holy. Even heaven isn't enough. Do 
you see what I mean? Even heaven doesn't matter. God 
is greater than heaven. And the glory of God revealed 
in heaven is not equal to the glory of God itself. It is but 
the most sublime, finite manifestation of his glory. Now back down to 
planet earth, he says, how much less this house or this temple 
which I have built. I mean, if your own, if the temple 
made without hands. You know, God's own handiwork 
in heaven could not contain Him. How much less this little replica 
box on a hill that I have built, how could this contain Him? Now 
let me extrapolate from this and kind of move out. We're not 
just talking about spatial containment. I want to just kind of build 
this out in your mind. It's not just that boxes on hills cannot 
comprehend God. Thoughts and created minds don't 
comprehend God. Words spoken by human tongues 
don't comprehend God. He can't be comprehended physically, 
metaphysically, logically, or conceptually. This does not mean 
that he's unintelligible. What it means is that he's super 
intelligible, that he's beyond the capacity of our intelligibility, 
not to know, we do know him, to measure. to size up, to encompass 
with our minds. Watson again, learn to admire 
where you cannot fathom. Let that be a good word to take 
us into tomorrow's sessions as we end today, let me pray. Our 
God in heaven. Indeed, the heaven of heavens 
does not contain you, and yet there you have placed your most 
sublime manifestation of glory seated on your throne with six-winged 
seraphs surrounding you, your son at your right hand, executing 
judgment upon the earth, the whole earth like grasshoppers 
before you, you exalted above all your creation. And yet, Lord, 
we praise you, and you have put your praise in our lips by your 
grace. And so Lord, we do praise you 
and we raise an anthem of praise. We pray that if we indeed think 
that our worship is enough, you would forgive us for such low 
thoughts. That we would be content to occupy a little space to hymn 
your praise, to sing it, to wonder, to be in awe, to seek you. But 
Lord, to know that we, the creature, will never measure you, we will 
never size you up, for you are boundless, infinite in being 
and perfection. Lord, spare us from discouragement, 
That could be a sin. Spare us from delusionment. Help 
us to see rightly and apprehend rightly your incomprehensibility, 
Lord, that our hearts might be ravished with wonder and with 
awe and with desire for the enjoyment of you for all of eternity. Give 
us good rest this night and sharp minds and ready hearts to receive 
what comes to us tomorrow. We ask this in the blessed name 
of your son, Jesus Christ, amen. I just want to make sure we reiterate 
our thanks to Drs. Dolezal and Renahan for being 
up here with us in this conference. Hopefully you'll come back. It's 
been a blessing thus far. We have every reason to believe 
that tomorrow, our brother, as he brings the doctrine of the 
Trinity to us, it is a big task. We'll be praying that all goes 
well. And just a reminder, we start at 8 o'clock in the morning. 
Park on that side of the fence. And for our closing hymn or psalm, 
you can turn to page 25. Psalm 134, we'll stand as we 
sing together. servants of the Lord, who in 
his house do stand by night, and praise him there with all 
your might. Lift up your hands in prayer, 
draw nigh Unto this sanctuary nigh. Oh, bless the Lord, kneel 
at His feet, ♪ Worship Him with reverence, please 
♪ ♪ The Lord now bless you from above ♪ ♪ From Zion in His boundless 
love ♪ Our God, who heaven and earth did frame, blessed be His 
great and holy name. Amen. Just a reminder, there 
is a Q&A session paper here, so there's gonna be at the end 
of the sessions, the lectures, there's gonna be a time of a 
panel discussion and questions to be taken by the brothers that 
are here. So fill that out. There's instructions 
on that page, page 36. Just wanna read the benediction 
from 2 Corinthians 13, 14, and God willing, we'll see you all 
tomorrow morning. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ 
and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you 
all. Amen.