The argument rests upon a misconception of eternity, regarding it as a prolongation of time into the endless past. We have seen in our discussion of eternity as an attribute of God, that eternity is not endless time, or time without beginning, but rather superiority to the law of time. Since eternity is no more past than it is present, the idea of creation from eternity is an irrational one. We must distinguish creation in eternity past (= God and the world coëternal, yet God the cause of the world, as he is the begetter of the Son) from continuous creation (which is an explanation of preservation, but not of creation at all). It is this latter, not the former, to which Rothe holds (see under the doctrine of Preservation, pages 415, 416). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 81, 82—“Creation is not from eternity, since past eternity cannot be actually traversed any more than we can reach the bound of an eternity to come. There was no timebefore creation, because there was no succession.”
Birks, Scripture Doctrine of Creation, 78-105—“The first verse of Genesis excludes five speculative falsehoods: 1. that there is nothing but uncreated matter; 2. that there is no God distinct from his creatures; 3. that creation is a series of acts without a beginning; 4. that there is no real universe; 5. that nothing can be known of God or the origin of things.” Veitch, Knowing and Being, 22—“The ideas of creation and creative energy are emptied of meaning, and for them is substituted the conception or fiction of an eternally related or double-sided world, not of what has been, but of what always is. It is another form of the see-saw philosophy. The eternal Self only is, if the eternal manifold is; the eternal manifold is, if the eternal Self is. The one, in being the other, is or makes itself the one; the other, in being the one, is or makes itself the other. This may be called a unity; it is rather, if we might invent a term suited to the new and marvellous conception, an unparalleled and unbegotten twinity.”
(b) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's timelessness. Because God is free from the law of time it does not follow that creation is free from that law. Rather is it true that no eternal creation is conceivable, since this involves an infinite number. Time must have had a beginning, and since the universe and time are coëxistent, creation could not have been from eternity.
Jude 25—“Before all time”—implies that time had a beginning, and Eph. 1:4—“before the foundation of the world”—implies that creation itself had a beginning. Is creation infinite? No, says Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:459, because to a perfect creation unity is as necessary as multiplicity. The universe is an organism, and there can be no organism without a definite number of parts. For a similar reason Dorner, System Doctrine, 2:28, denies that the universe can be eternal. Granting on the one hand that the world though eternal might be dependent upon God and as soon as the plan was evolved there might be no reason why the execution should be delayed, yet on the other hand the absolutely limitless is the imperfect and no universe with an infinite number of parts is conceivable or possible. So Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 1:220-225—“What has a goal or end must have a beginning; history, as teleological, implies creation.”
Lotze, Philos. Religion, 74—“The world, with respect to its existence as well as its content, is completely dependent on the will of God, and not as a mere involuntary development of his nature.... The word ‘creation’ ought not to be used to designate a deed of God so much as the absolute dependence of the world on his will.” So Schurman, Belief in God, 146, 156, 225—“Creation is the eternal dependence of the world on God.... Nature is the externalization of spirit.... Material things exist simply as modes of the divine activity; they have no existence for themselves.” On this view that God is the Ground but not the Creator of the world, see Hovey, Studies in Ethics and Religion, 23-56—“Creation is no more of a mystery than is the causal action” in which both Lotze and Schurman believe. “To deny that divine power can originate real being—can add to the sum total of existence—is much like saying that such power is finite.” No one can prove that “it is of the essence of spirit to reveal itself,”or if so, that it must do this by means of an organism or externalization. Eternal succession of changes in nature is no more comprehensible than are a creating God and a universe originating in time.
(c) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's immutability. His immutability requires, not an eternal creation, but only an eternal plan of creation. The opposite principle would compel us to deny the possibility of miracles, incarnation, and regeneration. Like creation, these too would need to be eternal.
We distinguish between idea and plan, between plan and execution. Much of God's plan is not yet executed. The beginning of its execution is as easy to conceive as is the continuation of its execution. But the beginning of the execution of God's plan is creation. Active will is an element in creation. God's will is not always active. He waits for “the fulness of the time” (Gal. 4:4) before he sends forth his Son. As we can trace back Christ's earthly life to a beginning, so we can trace back the life of the universe to a beginning. Those who hold to creation from eternity usually interpret Gen. 1:1—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” and John 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word,” as both and alike meaning “in eternity.” But neither of these texts has this meaning. In each we are simply carried back to the beginning of the creation, and it is asserted that God was its author and that the Word already was.
(d) Creation from eternity is not necessitated by God's love. Creation is finite and cannot furnish perfect satisfaction to the infinite love of God. God has moreover from eternity an object of love infinitely superior to any possible creation, in the person of his Son.
Since all things are created in Christ, the eternal Word, Reason, and Power of God, God can “reconcile all things to himself” in Christ (Col. 1:20). Athanasius called God κτίστης, ού τεχνίτης—Creator, not Artisan. By this he meant that God is immanent, and not the God of deism. But the moment we conceive of God as revealing himself in Christ, the idea of creation as an eternal satisfaction of his love vanishes. God can have a plan without executing his plan. Decree can precede creation. Ideas of the universe may exist in the divine mind before they are realized by the divine will. There are purposes of salvation in Christ which antedate the world (Eph. 1:4). The doctrine of the Trinity, once firmly grasped, enables us to see the fallacy of such views as that of Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:286—“A beginning and ending in time of the creating of God are not thinkable. That would be to suppose a change of creating and resting in God, which would equalize God's being with the changeable course of human life. Nor [pg 389]could it be conceived what should have hindered God from creating the world up to the beginning of his creating.... We say rather, with Scotus Erigena, that the divine creating is equally eternal with God's being.”
(e) Creation from eternity, moreover, is inconsistent with the divine independence and personality. Since God's power and love are infinite, a creation that satisfied them must be infinite in extent as well as eternal in past duration—in other words, a creation equal to God. But a God thus dependent upon external creation is neither free nor sovereign. A God existing in necessary relations to the universe, if different in substance from the universe, must be the God of dualism; if of the same substance with the universe, must be the God of pantheism.