Chapter 3: The Biblical Language of Time and Eternity — Olam, Aiōn, and What “Eternal” Really Means

The entire debate about God and time often comes down to a single English word: eternal. Pick up any Bible and you will find it scattered across the pages. God is described as "the eternal God" (Deut 33:27). He exists "from everlasting to everlasting" (Ps 90:2). He promises "eternal life" to those who believe (John 3:16). Christians have read these words for centuries and felt a deep sense of comfort in them. God is eternal. He has always been and always will be. He is utterly dependable, utterly permanent, utterly beyond the reach of decay and death.

But here is where things get interesting — and complicated. When we say God is "eternal," what exactly do we mean? Does it mean God exists outside of time altogether, experiencing no succession, no before and after, no sequence of any kind? Or does it mean God endures through all of time, that He has always existed and will always exist, with no beginning and no end? These are two radically different claims. The first says God has no relationship to time at all — He stands above it, beyond it, untouched by it. The second says God has an endless relationship with time — He lives through it all, from infinite past to infinite future, never beginning and never ending.

Most Christians have never stopped to think about the difference. They hear the word "eternal" and they nod in agreement without realizing that their pastor, their theologian, and their philosopher might each mean something very different by it. And yet, as we saw in Chapter 1, the answer to this question shapes everything else — how we understand prayer, the Incarnation, God's emotions, His providence, and His presence with us in our darkest moments.

So where do we turn for an answer? The natural place to begin is with the Bible itself. What does Scripture actually teach about God's eternity? And the answer to that question lies not in our English translations — which can obscure as much as they reveal — but in the original languages: the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New Testament. When we look carefully at the words the biblical writers actually used, a fascinating and surprisingly clear picture emerges. The thesis of this chapter is simple but important: the Bible uses a rich vocabulary to describe God's relationship to time, and a careful study of the original Hebrew and Greek terms reveals that the biblical writers were not teaching the philosophical doctrine of divine timelessness but rather portraying a God who endures through all of time — a God who is everlasting, not atemporal.

Let me be clear about what I am arguing and what I am not. I am not arguing that word studies alone can settle this debate — as we will see, the great biblical scholar James Barr rightly warned against reading too much theology into individual words. But I am arguing that the cumulative weight of the biblical vocabulary points strongly in one direction: toward a God who lives through time, not a God who exists outside of it. The philosophical concept of divine timelessness — the idea that God experiences no succession whatsoever, that all moments are simultaneously present to Him in a single changeless "now" — is nowhere taught in Scripture. It is a philosophical interpretation that was imported into Christian theology from Greek thought, and while it may or may not be true on philosophical grounds, it is not what the Bible says.

I. The Hebrew Word Olam (עוֹלָם): Long Duration, Not Timelessness

The single most important Hebrew word for understanding God's eternity is olam (עוֹלָם). This is the word behind nearly every English translation that reads "eternal," "everlasting," "forever," or "perpetual" in the Old Testament. If we want to know what the Old Testament teaches about God and time, we must understand what olam means.

The standard Hebrew lexicons — the tools scholars use to determine the meaning of Hebrew words — are remarkably consistent in their definitions. The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon (BDB), which has been the standard reference for over a century, defines olam as "long duration, antiquity, futurity."¹ It does not define it as "timelessness" or "outside of time." The more recent Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT) gives the range of meaning as "a long time ago, long ago, of old, in the remote past" and "for a long time, for the future, forever."² Again, there is no hint of atemporality in this definition. The word consistently refers to an indefinitely long period of time — a stretch of duration so vast that it seems to go on without end — but it is still temporal duration. It points along the timeline, not off of it.

This is a crucial point, so let me say it as plainly as I can. Olam is a time word. It describes a very, very long stretch of time — so long that it seems unlimited — but it is a word about time, not about the absence of time. When an ancient Hebrew writer used olam to describe God, he was saying something like "God exists for an incomprehensibly long duration — He stretches backward into the unimaginable past and forward into the unimaginable future." He was not saying "God exists in a timeless state where past, present, and future are all simultaneously present in an undivided eternal now." That concept would have been completely foreign to the Hebrew biblical writers.

The scholar Gershom Brin, in his careful study of the concept of time in the Hebrew Bible, emphasizes that olam describes temporal extent. The word appears in a range of contexts — some sacred, some quite ordinary — and in every case it carries the sense of extended duration.³ Sometimes it refers to the distant past ("ancient times" or "long ago"), sometimes to the distant future ("forever" or "in perpetuity"), and sometimes to both directions at once ("from age to age"). But it never means "outside of time" or "without succession."

Let us now look at how olam is actually used in the Old Testament to describe God and His relationship to time. We will examine four key passages, each of which reveals something important about the biblical portrait of God's eternity.

A. Psalm 90:2 — "From Everlasting to Everlasting You Are God"

This is perhaps the most famous Old Testament text about God's eternity, and it deserves careful attention. The full verse reads:

The Hebrew expression translated "from everlasting to everlasting" is me-olam ad-olam (מֵעוֹלָם עַד־עוֹלָם). Let us break this down. Me means "from." Ad means "to" or "until." Olam, as we have seen, means "long duration" or "perpetuity." So the phrase literally means something like "from perpetual duration to perpetual duration" or "from age to age" — stretching backward into the indefinite past and forward into the indefinite future.

R. T. Mullins draws attention to the significance of this construction. He notes that "the from/to formula in this passage is a common formula in scripture used to denote a span of time. In this instance, the Hebrew word olam — sometimes translated as eternity depending on context — is used twice here to refer to the span of God's life." Mullins adds that the phrase "quite literally means from perpetual duration in the indefinite past to perpetual duration in the indefinite future. This is a deeply temporal portrayal of God."⁴

Notice what the psalm is saying. It is not saying "God exists in a timeless state." It is saying God's existence stretches in both temporal directions — backward and forward — without limit. God was there before the mountains were brought forth. God was there before the earth was formed. And God will be there in the unimaginable future. His existence spans all of time, from its farthest conceivable past to its farthest conceivable future. This is everlastingness, not atemporality.

The psalm also makes a striking claim about God existing before creation. "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world" — this is explicitly temporal language. It speaks of a time before the physical world existed, a time when God was already there. As Mullins points out, "Psalm 90 not only portrays God in temporal terms, it also speaks of God existing alone before creation. One would be hard pressed to say that this is not a temporal before since the language employed is explicitly temporal."⁵ The Old Testament scholar Gershom Brin concurs, noting that "the earliest time mentioned [in scripture] is that of the reality prior to the Creation."⁶

This is an important observation for our broader argument. The Bible speaks comfortably about God existing temporally before creation. This fits naturally with the temporalist view — God has always existed in some form of temporal experience, even before the physical universe came into being. As we will see in Chapter 26, the intra-Trinitarian relations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can ground this pre-creation divine temporality. But for now, the key point is simpler: Psalm 90:2 portrays God's eternity in unmistakably temporal terms.

The in-depth exegesis of Psalm 90 as a whole, including the famous comparison "a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday" (v. 4), belongs to Chapter 19, where the Psalms and Wisdom Literature are treated in full. But we can note here that Psalm 90:4 does not teach timelessness either — it teaches that God's experience of time is qualitatively different from ours, not that God has no experience of time at all. A thousand years is nothing to a God who has existed from olam to olam.

B. Genesis 21:33 — "The Everlasting God" (El Olam)

The Hebrew phrase translated "the Everlasting God" is El Olam (אֵל עוֹלָם). El is one of the common Hebrew words for God, and olam, as we have seen, means "long duration" or "perpetuity." So El Olam means "the God of perpetuity" or "the God of the ages" — the God who endures through all of time.

The context is important. Abraham has just made a covenant with Abimelech, a Philistine king, and has secured a well at Beersheba. In this moment of covenant-making and settling down in the land, Abraham calls on the name of the Lord as El Olam — the God who endures. The emphasis is on God's reliability through time. Abraham can trust this God because He is not going anywhere. He will be faithful to His covenant promises across the ages. He will be there for Abraham, and for Abraham's descendants, through the long sweep of history.

This name carries a deeply pastoral force. It tells us that the God of the Bible is not a momentary deity who might disappear or lose interest. He is the God of the ages — the God who was there at the beginning, who is here now, and who will be here at the end. That is a temporal claim. It is about God's faithfulness through time, not about God's existence outside of time.

C. Genesis 9:16 — "The Everlasting Covenant" (Berit Olam)

The phrase "everlasting covenant" is berit olam (בְּרִית עוֹלָם) — a covenant of olam, a covenant of perpetual duration. God promises that He will never again destroy the earth with a flood, and this covenant will last from that moment forward through all future time. It is a covenant without expiration.

Once again, olam functions here as a temporal word. The covenant stretches forward through time endlessly. It does not exist in a timeless state — it was established at a particular moment (after the flood) and it extends forward from that moment without end. The concept of an "everlasting covenant" only makes sense in temporal terms. A covenant is inherently temporal — it involves a promise, a commitment, and ongoing faithfulness through time. A timeless covenant would be a strange idea indeed.

This pattern — olam describing something that extends through time indefinitely — is found throughout the Old Testament. God's love is olam (Ps 136, repeated twenty-six times). God's righteousness is olam (Ps 111:3). God's kingdom is an olam kingdom (Dan 4:3). In each case, the emphasis is on enduring permanence through time, not on existence outside of time.

D. Deuteronomy 33:27 — "The Eternal God Is Your Dwelling Place"

The Hebrew here is fascinating. The phrase translated "the eternal God" is Elohei qedem (אֱלֹהֵי קֶדֶם), and "everlasting arms" is zero'ot olam (זְרֹעֹת עוֹלָם). Notice that two different Hebrew words are used here for what English translates as "eternal" and "everlasting." The word qedem (קֶדֶם) literally means "the front" or "the east" — and by extension, "ancient times" or "what is before."⁷ It points backward in time — to what came before, to what is ancient and primordial. When Moses calls God Elohei qedem, he is calling God "the God of ancient times" or "the God who has been from the beginning" — a God who stretches back into the unimaginable past.

The second phrase, zero'ot olam, describes God's arms — His strength, His support, His sustaining power — as enduring through all time. The image is deeply comforting: underneath you, supporting you, are arms that never tire, never weaken, and never let go. And they are olam arms — arms that endure through the ages.

Both qedem and olam are temporal words. Qedem looks backward along the timeline. Olam stretches forward. Together they paint a picture of a God whose existence extends in both directions through time — a God who has been there from before the beginning and whose supporting arms will be there forever. This is everlastingness, not timelessness.

II. Isaiah 40:28 — "The Everlasting God" (Elohei Olam)

One more Old Testament passage deserves special attention because of its prominence in the debate:

The phrase "the everlasting God" here is Elohei olam (אֱלֹהֵי עוֹלָם) — essentially the same divine title we saw in Genesis 21:33. Isaiah is writing to a people in exile, discouraged and weary, who wonder whether their God is still strong enough to help them. His answer is powerful: the Lord is the olam God, the God of the ages, the Creator of the whole earth. He does not faint. He does not grow weary. His understanding is beyond our ability to fathom.

The emphasis here is clearly on God's unfailing endurance through time. He never runs out of energy. He never grows tired. He never fades. This is a temporal concept — it is about God's sustained vitality across an indefinitely long duration. A timeless God, by definition, cannot "faint" or "grow weary" because those concepts do not apply to a being outside of time. But Isaiah's point is more specific than that. He is saying that even though time passes and creatures grow tired and weak, God's strength endures through all of it. He is the God who never runs down, never loses power, never needs to rest. He is as vigorous after a billion years as He was at the very first moment.

This is a profoundly pastoral message. Isaiah is telling exhausted exiles that their God is not like them. They grow weary — He does not. They faint — He does not. Their strength fails — His endures. And this endurance is temporal endurance. It is about God outlasting everything, including His people's suffering. This is everlastingness, not atemporality.

III. The Greek Words Aiōn (αἰών) and Aiōnios (αἰώνιος): "Age" and "Age-Long"

When we turn from the Old Testament to the New Testament, we find that the Greek vocabulary for God's eternity follows the same pattern as the Hebrew. The two most important Greek words are aiōn (αἰών) and its adjective form aiōnios (αἰώνιος).

Aiōn (αἰών) is the word from which we get the English word "eon" or "aeon." Its basic meaning is "age" — a period of time, sometimes indefinitely long. The standard Greek lexicon for the New Testament, the Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich (BDAG), gives its range of meaning as "a long period of time, without reference to beginning or end," "a segment of time as a particular unit of history," and "a period of time of a kind that transcends our experience."⁸ Like the Hebrew olam, the Greek aiōn is a temporal word. It describes a period of time — sometimes very long, sometimes beyond our ordinary experience — but it is still about time, not about the absence of time.

Aiōnios (αἰώνιος) is the adjective form of aiōn. It means "pertaining to an age" or "lasting for an age" — and by extension, "age-long" or, in many contexts, "lasting forever." This is the word behind the English phrase "eternal life" (zōē aiōnios, ζωὴ αἰώνιος) in passages like John 3:16. As Ted Peters explains in a passage cited by Mullins, "The biblical words that come into English as eternity refer to an age that lasts a long time, perhaps forever. Isaiah uses the Hebrew word olam when writing, 'I will make you majestic forever, a joy from age to age' (Isaiah 60:15). In the New Testament the principal term for eternity is aion, which comes into English also as aeon, meaning literally an age that lasts for a long time."⁹

This point is worth pausing to appreciate. When the New Testament says that God gives us "eternal life" (zōē aiōnios), it is not saying God gives us a timeless life — a life outside of time, without succession, without sequence, without one moment following another. It is saying God gives us a life that lasts through the ages — a life without end, a life that goes on and on and on. "Eternal life" in the biblical sense is everlasting life. It is life that stretches forward through time without limit. As Mullins puts it with characteristic clarity, "Jesus grants an everlasting life, not a timeless life. Jesus does not seek to abandon temporal life, but instead seeks to redeem it."¹⁰

The New Testament also uses aiōn in important constructions that illuminate how the early Christians thought about time and eternity. They spoke of "this age" (ho aiōn houtos, ὁ αἰὼν οὗτος) and "the age to come" (ho aiōn mellōn, ὁ αἰὼν μέλλων). This language of successive ages — the present evil age giving way to the glorious age to come — is deeply temporal. It assumes that history is going somewhere, that time has a direction, and that God is working through the ages toward a grand climax. There is nothing in this framework that suggests time will be abolished or that God exists outside of it.

I should note that the full treatment of aiōnios in the context of the fate of the wicked — what it means when the Bible speaks of "eternal punishment" or "eternal fire" — is developed in detail in my companion book, Beyond the Grave, Chapter 20. The question of whether aiōnios always means "everlasting" or sometimes means "age-long" (with a finite duration) is important for the debate between conditional immortality and universalism, but it is not our primary concern here. What matters for our present purposes is simpler: whether we take aiōnios to mean "everlasting" or "age-long," it is still a temporal word. It describes duration through time, not existence outside of time.

IV. The Septuagint Translation Patterns: From Olam to Aiōn

One of the most illuminating pieces of evidence for understanding how ancient Jews and early Christians understood God's eternity is the Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament (often abbreviated LXX), produced by Jewish scholars roughly two to three centuries before Christ. The Septuagint was the Bible of the early church. When Paul quoted the Old Testament, he usually quoted from the Septuagint. When the author of Hebrews wove Old Testament texts into his argument, he was using the Septuagint. Understanding how the Septuagint translated the Hebrew word olam tells us how Greek-speaking Jews understood the concept of divine eternity.

And the answer is remarkably consistent: the Septuagint translates olam with aiōn and its derivatives.¹¹ That is, the translators consistently rendered the Hebrew temporal-duration word with the Greek temporal-duration word. They did not invent a new philosophical term for timelessness. They did not use Greek philosophical language to upgrade or correct the Hebrew concept. They simply moved from one temporal-duration word (olam) to another (aiōn). This tells us that the translators understood God's eternity in temporal terms — as enduring through the ages — not in the atemporal terms of Greek philosophy.

This is significant because the Septuagint translators were well acquainted with Greek philosophy. They lived and worked in Alexandria, one of the great centers of Greek learning. If they had understood the Hebrew olam to mean something like the Platonic or Plotinian concept of timeless eternity, they could have chosen different Greek terminology to express it. They did not. They used aiōn — the word for "age" — because that is what olam means: an indefinitely long period of time.

Craig notes an intriguing exception to this pattern, however, that deserves consideration. He observes that the Septuagint renders me-olam in Proverbs 8:23 as pro tou aiōnios ("before time"), and that certain other Greek expressions in the Septuagint describe God as "the one who exists before the ages" (ho hyparchōn pro tōn aiōnōn).¹² Craig takes this as possible evidence that some ancient Jewish writers conceived of God as existing "before" time itself, which could point toward a form of divine timelessness prior to creation.

This is a fair observation, and I do not want to dismiss it. Craig is right that some biblical and extra-biblical Jewish texts speak of God existing "before" the ages. But we should be careful about what this language actually implies. As Mullins argues in The End of the Timeless God, the "before the ages" passages (such as Jude 25 and Titus 1:2) are best translated not as "before all time" but as "before the ages" — that is, before this present epoch of created history. The Greek word in Jude 25 is aionos, not chronos or kairos, and it is more naturally translated as "ages." To speak of "before all time" would be incoherent — it would mean "time before time," which is nonsense. Instead, these passages are saying that God had glory, and had purposes, even before He created the universe and began this present age.¹³

Furthermore, even if these passages do imply that God existed "before" created time began, this does not require divine timelessness in the classical philosophical sense. It could simply mean that God existed in His own form of divine time — a pre-creation temporality grounded in the intra-Trinitarian life — before He brought the physical universe and its measurable clock-time into being. This is precisely the view I hold: God has always existed temporally, but His pre-creation temporality was qualitatively different from created time. As we will develop in Chapter 26, the perichoretic relations of the Trinity — the mutual indwelling and interaction of Father, Son, and Spirit — generate a form of divine temporality even apart from creation.

V. Key New Testament Passages on God's Eternity

We have already seen how the Greek vocabulary of the New Testament — aiōn and aiōnios — carries the same temporal-duration sense as the Hebrew olam. But let us now look at several specific New Testament passages that speak about God's eternity, to see whether they teach timelessness or everlastingness.

A. Revelation 1:4, 8 and 4:8 — "Who Was and Is and Is to Come"

One of the most striking New Testament descriptions of God's eternity appears in the book of Revelation:

This formula — "who was and is and is to come" — is remarkably temporal. It explicitly ascribes a past ("was"), a present ("is"), and a future ("is to come") to God. It is hard to imagine a more clearly temporal way of describing God's eternal nature. As Mullins observes, this language "clearly speaks of God having a past and a future." He adds a penetrating point about the literary context: by the time Revelation was written, the philosophical concept of divine timelessness was available in the broader intellectual world. The "timeless present" — speaking of God only in the eternal "is" — was a well-known feature of Greco-Jewish philosophical theology. Yet the author of Revelation deliberately chose not to use this available conceptual framework. Instead, he modified the common formula and spoke of God as "the One who is and who was and who is to come."¹⁴

The biblical scholar David Aune has shown that this three-part formula is unique to Revelation and does not appear elsewhere in Jewish or Christian texts before the third century. The author appears to have intentionally crafted it to emphasize that this God has a real history — He has done things in the past, He is doing things now, and He will do things in the future. This is a God with a temporal life, a God with a narrative, a God whose story is still unfolding toward its climactic conclusion.¹⁵

Some defenders of divine timelessness, like the seventeenth-century Reformed theologian Francis Turretin, have argued that the Revelation formula is merely "anthropopathic" — that is, it accommodates human language to describe a God who does not really have a past, present, and future.¹⁶ But as Mullins points out, if we take this approach, we can no longer use the passage as a proof-text for divine eternity at all. The passage says what it says. If we have to explain away its temporal language in order to make it compatible with timelessness, then it clearly does not teach timelessness. One must presuppose timelessness and then read it back into the text — which is exactly the opposite of responsible biblical interpretation.

B. 2 Peter 3:8 — "One Day Is as a Thousand Years"

Some readers take this as evidence that God is timeless — that for God, time does not really exist. But a careful reading of the passage in context tells a very different story. Peter is addressing a specific concern: scoffers are mocking Christian belief in the return of Christ, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming?" (2 Pet 3:4). They point out that everything seems to go on as it always has, with no sign of divine judgment.

Peter's response is not that God is timeless. His response is that God's temporal perspective is vastly different from ours. A thousand years seems like an impossibly long time to us, but to a God who exists from everlasting to everlasting, it is nothing at all — as brief as a single day. Peter is drawing on Psalm 90:4 ("For a thousand years in your sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night") to make the same point: God is patient beyond our comprehension because His experience of time is not limited by a human lifespan.

As the New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham makes clear, this intended contrast between humanity's perception of time and God's "is not a reference to God's eternity in the sense of atemporality." The point is that "God's perspective on time is not limited by a human life span."¹⁷ Mullins draws the pastoral implication: Peter goes on to explain why God is waiting — "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet 3:9). God is patiently waiting for people to turn to Him. And waiting is an inherently temporal activity. A timeless God cannot wait, because waiting requires the passage of time. As Mullins concludes, "A timeless God cannot be patient, and the passage teaches that God is extremely patient. So much the worse for divine timelessness!"¹⁸

The full exegesis of 2 Peter 3:8 belongs to Chapter 22 (The Apostolic Witness), but the point relevant to our present discussion is clear: this passage does not teach divine timelessness. It teaches that God's temporal experience is qualitatively different from ours — a point that fits perfectly with the view I am defending in this book. God genuinely experiences time, but His experience of time is not limited in the way ours is.

C. Jude 25 — "Before All Time and Now and Forever"

The ESV's translation "before all time" renders the Greek pro pantos tou aiōnos. As Craig notes, this passage "contemplates an everlasting future duration but affirms a beginning to past time and implies God's existence, using an almost inevitable façon de parler, 'before' time began."¹⁹ Craig takes this as possible evidence for divine timelessness before creation.

However, as we noted above, Mullins argues persuasively that aionos here should be translated as "ages" rather than "time." The passage would then read: "before the ages and now and forever" — that is, God had glory even before this present age of creation began. This is consistent with God existing temporally before creation, not with God existing timelessly. The three-part structure of the doxology is itself temporal: before the ages, now, and forever into the future. It traces a temporal trajectory — from the pre-creation past, through the present, into the unending future.²⁰

D. Titus 1:2–3 and 2 Timothy 1:9 — "Before the Ages"

Two passages in the Pastoral Epistles use similar language. In Titus 1:2–3, Paul speaks of "eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began but at the proper time manifested in his word" (ESV). The Greek phrase for "before the ages began" is pro chronōn aiōniōn (πρὸ χρόνων αἰωνίων). In 2 Timothy 1:9, we read of God's "purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began" — again, pro chronōn aiōniōn.

Craig observes that Arndt and Gingrich render this expression as "before time began," and he takes it as further evidence that some New Testament writers may have conceived of time having a beginning, with God existing "before" it.²¹ This is a reasonable interpretation, and I want to engage with it honestly. Craig may be right that these passages point to something like a beginning of created time. But even if they do, this does not require divine timelessness in the classical sense. It is fully compatible with God existing in His own form of divine temporality before creating the physical universe and its time. God's "before the ages" is a temporal before — a state in which God existed and acted (He "promised," He "gave purpose and grace") prior to the commencement of created time. Promising and purposing are temporal activities that require sequence.

In fact, the language of these passages actually supports divine temporality rather than undermining it. Notice what God is said to do "before the ages": He promised eternal life (Titus 1:2) and He gave us purpose and grace in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 1:9). These are active verbs describing things God did prior to creation. They imply a before and after — first God purposed and promised, then at the proper time He manifested what He had purposed. This is temporal sequence, not timeless simultaneity.

VI. The Critical Point: Divine Timelessness Is Not Taught in Scripture

We have now surveyed the most important Hebrew and Greek vocabulary for God's eternity, and we have examined the key biblical passages. It is time to state the critical point clearly.

The philosophical concept of divine timelessness — as developed by Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas in the medieval period and defended by philosophers like Paul Helm and Brian Leftow today — is not taught anywhere in Scripture. The Bible never says, "God exists outside of time." It never says, "God experiences no succession." It never says, "All moments are simultaneously present to God in a single eternal now." It never uses language that implies "the complete, simultaneous possession of interminable life" (Boethius's famous definition of eternity, or tota simul). These are philosophical concepts imported from Greek thought — specifically from the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions, mediated through thinkers like Philo, Plotinus, and later Augustine and Boethius — and projected back onto the biblical text.²²

I want to be careful here. I am not saying that divine timelessness is necessarily false just because it is not taught in Scripture. Philosophical theology is a legitimate enterprise, and there may be good philosophical reasons for holding or rejecting timelessness — as we will explore in Chapters 4 through 6. What I am saying is that no one can claim biblical warrant for divine timelessness on the basis of the biblical vocabulary or the biblical texts. The Bible's language consistently points to everlastingness — God enduring through all of time — not to atemporality.

Mullins makes this point with admirable precision in the conclusion of The End of the Timeless God. He states that "there is no hint of divine timelessness in the Christian scriptures. One can easily find the claim that God exists without beginning and without end in the Bible, but one cannot find anything that implicitly or explicitly resembles a 'without succession' clause anywhere in scripture." He adds a crucial observation: "More importantly, the Bible describes eternity in temporal terms."²³

This is the key. Whenever the Bible talks about eternity, it uses temporal words — olam, aiōn, aiōnios — that describe duration through time, not the absence of time. Whenever it describes God's eternal nature, it does so in terms that imply sequence, endurance, and ongoing faithfulness. Whenever it speaks of God existing "before" creation, it uses temporal language — "before the mountains were brought forth," "before the ages" — that implies a real temporal "before," not a logical or metaphysical priority that transcends time altogether.

Craig reaches a more cautious conclusion on this matter. He acknowledges that "it is indisputable that the biblical writers typically portray God as engaged in temporal activities, including foreknowing the future and remembering the past; and when they speak directly of God's eternal existence they do so in terms of beginningless and endless temporal duration." He quotes Alan Padgett's conclusion with apparent sympathy: "The Bible knows nothing of a timeless divine eternity in the traditional sense."²⁴ However, Craig argues that the biblical data are not entirely one-sided — he points to the creation texts and the "before the ages" passages as possible evidence for timelessness before creation. He ultimately concludes, with James Barr, that "if such a thing as a Christian doctrine of time has to be developed, the work of discussing it and developing it must belong not to biblical but to philosophical theology."²⁵

I agree with Craig that philosophical theology has an important role to play. The biblical data alone may not settle every question about God's relationship to time. But I disagree with the suggestion that the biblical data are indeterminate or evenly balanced. The overwhelming weight of the evidence points toward everlastingness. The handful of passages that might, on one reading, suggest something like timelessness before creation can be explained just as easily — and I would argue more naturally — as referring to God's temporal existence before the creation of the physical universe. The burden of proof clearly rests on those who wish to read atemporality into texts whose natural meaning is temporal.

VII. Engaging with Paul Helm: Is the Biblical Language "Compatible" with Timelessness?

At this point, we need to engage with the most sophisticated atemporalist response to the argument I have been making. Paul Helm, in Eternal God, does not argue that the Bible teaches divine timelessness. He is too careful a scholar for that. Instead, he argues that the biblical language is compatible with timelessness — that is, the everlastingness language does not exclude atemporality, even if it does not explicitly teach it.²⁶

Helm's argument proceeds in several steps. First, he acknowledges that the Bible describes God as acting in time — speaking, creating, judging, redeeming. He does not deny this. Second, he notes that many theologians accept that some biblical descriptions of God are "accommodative" or "anthropomorphic" — they use human language to describe a God who transcends human categories. Just as we do not take literally the biblical language about God having hands, feet, or a nose, we need not take literally the temporal language about God remembering, planning, or responding. Third, he argues that the introduction of the concept of divine timelessness is a legitimate philosophical development that provides a "metaphysical underpinning" for God's functioning as the biblical God.²⁷

Helm also appeals to James Barr's important methodological observation that it is hazardous to draw definite metaphysical conclusions from the writings of biblical authors whose primary concerns were theological and pastoral, not philosophical. The biblical writers were not trying to articulate a metaphysical theory of God's relationship to time. They were proclaiming God's faithfulness, sovereignty, and enduring love. Their language may be consistent with more than one metaphysical interpretation.²⁸

This is a serious argument, and it deserves a serious response. I want to offer four replies.

First, Helm is right that the everlastingness language does not logically exclude timelessness. In formal logic, the claim "God endures through all of time" is consistent with an additional claim that "God also transcends time." Wolterstorff and Mullins would point out, however, that while the language may not logically exclude timelessness, it certainly does not teach it, and the natural reading is everlastingness.²⁹ If someone reads Psalm 90:2 — "from everlasting to everlasting you are God" — and concludes "God exists in a timeless state with no succession," they are importing a concept that the text does not contain. The text says "from age to age." It is stretching the text to make it say "outside of all ages."

Second, the analogy between temporal language and anthropomorphic language (hands, feet, nose) is weaker than it initially appears. We have good independent reasons for thinking God does not have a physical body — He is spirit (John 4:24), invisible (Col 1:15), and not confined to any spatial location (1 Kgs 8:27). The anthropomorphic language about God's body is clearly metaphorical because the Bible itself tells us so. But the Bible gives us no comparable reason for thinking its temporal language about God is merely metaphorical. God is everywhere described as acting in time — creating, speaking, covenanting, judging, saving, responding, waiting, planning. If all of this is merely accommodative language that does not reflect God's actual experience, then we have almost no access to what God is really like, and the biblical portrait of God becomes deeply unreliable. As Wolterstorff argues in God and Time: Four Views, those who hold that God is atemporal bear a heavy burden of proof. Given the way God is portrayed throughout Scripture as having a history — performing actions before other actions, responding to events after they occur — we should take this temporal language literally unless given compelling reasons not to.³⁰

Third, the claim that the biblical writers were simply not interested in the metaphysical question of time is partially true but cuts both ways. If the biblical writers did not intend to teach divine timelessness, then we cannot claim biblical support for it. The fact that they were not trying to settle the metaphysical question does not give us license to project our own metaphysical theory onto their text. If anything, the absence of atemporality language in Scripture — when such language was available in the broader intellectual culture, as we saw with Revelation's deliberate avoidance of the "timeless present" — suggests that the biblical writers had a genuinely temporal understanding of God's eternity.

Fourth, the notion that timelessness provides a "metaphysical underpinning" for the biblical God is precisely what the rest of this book will challenge. I will argue in Chapters 4 through 6 that divine timelessness does not undergird the biblical portrait of God — it undermines it. A timeless God cannot genuinely act in history, cannot genuinely respond to prayer, cannot genuinely feel emotion, and cannot genuinely become incarnate. The "metaphysical underpinning" that Helm offers actually collapses the very activities that make the biblical God who He is.

VIII. Oscar Cullmann, James Barr, and the Methodological Question

No chapter on the biblical language of time and eternity would be complete without discussing two enormously influential scholars who shaped twentieth-century thinking on this topic: Oscar Cullmann and James Barr.

A. Cullmann's Christ and Time

In his landmark 1946 work Christ and Time, the Swiss New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann argued that the Bible has a thoroughly temporal understanding of eternity. For the biblical writers, eternity is not the opposite of time but rather the fullness of time — time without limit. Cullmann famously distinguished between two Greek words for time: kairos (καιρός), meaning "the right time" or "the appointed time" — a qualitative concept of time as meaningful, purposeful, and shaped by God's saving acts — and chronos (χρόνος), meaning "clock-time" or "measured time" — a quantitative concept of time as duration. Cullmann argued that the New Testament understanding of eternity is primarily kairos-shaped: time filled with divine purpose and moving toward God's appointed goal.³¹

For Cullmann, the center of time is Christ. All of salvation history radiates outward from the Christ-event. Before Christ, time moves toward Him in anticipation; after Christ, time moves from Him toward the final consummation. This is a profoundly temporal vision of God's relationship to the world. Eternity, on Cullmann's reading, is "endless time" — not Platonic timelessness. The biblical writers knew nothing of a God outside of time; they knew only a God who acts in time, whose actions give time its meaning.

Cullmann's work was enormously influential in challenging the dominance of the Platonic-atemporalist reading of biblical eternity, and I believe his core insight is correct: the Bible's understanding of eternity is temporal, not atemporal. "Eternal" in the Bible means "enduring through all the ages," not "existing outside of all ages."

B. Barr's Critique: An Important Methodological Check

However, we must also reckon with the important critique offered by James Barr in his 1961 book Biblical Words for Time. Barr challenged Cullmann's methodology, arguing that it is illegitimate to build theological conclusions directly from word studies. You cannot simply look at what a Hebrew or Greek word means in a lexicon and then conclude that the biblical writers held a particular theological position. Words are used in sentences, sentences in paragraphs, paragraphs in larger literary and theological contexts. The meaning of a word depends on how it is used, not just on its etymology or its dictionary definition.³²

Barr was especially critical of the idea that the Hebrew concept of time could be simply contrasted with the Greek concept of time on the basis of word studies. He argued that Cullmann and others had overdrawn the contrast between Hebrew "linear" time and Greek "cyclical" time, and that the kairos/chronos distinction was not as sharp as Cullmann suggested. In Barr's view, both words could overlap in meaning, and neither carried as much theological weight as Cullmann claimed.

Barr's critique is an important methodological check, and I take it seriously. He is right that word studies alone cannot settle theological disputes. We should not claim more than the evidence supports. If our entire argument for divine temporality rested on the meaning of olam and aiōn, Barr's critique would be devastating.

But our argument does not rest on word studies alone. Word studies are one piece of the evidence — an important piece, but not the only one. The argument of this book rests on the cumulative weight of multiple lines of evidence: the biblical vocabulary (this chapter), the broader biblical narrative of God acting in time (Chapters 16–23), the philosophical arguments against divine timelessness (Chapters 5–6), the positive case for divine temporality (Chapter 7), and the theological arguments from the Incarnation (Chapter 27), divine emotions (Chapter 28), and the Trinity (Chapter 26). The word studies establish an important starting point: the biblical language of eternity is temporal-duration language, not timelessness language. They do not by themselves prove divine temporality, but they establish that the biblical vocabulary provides no support for divine timelessness.

Moreover, even Barr himself — despite his cautious methodology — acknowledged that the question of God's relationship to time must ultimately be settled by philosophical theology rather than by direct appeal to biblical vocabulary. Craig cites Barr's conclusion approvingly: "If such a thing as a Christian doctrine of time has to be developed, the work of discussing it and developing it must belong not to biblical but to philosophical theology."³³ I agree with this to the extent that philosophical theology has a role — but I would add that philosophical theology must be constrained by the biblical data. And the biblical data, as we have seen, point overwhelmingly toward everlastingness.

IX. The "Proof Texts" for Timelessness: Do They Work?

Throughout church history, defenders of divine timelessness have appealed to various biblical texts as supporting their position. We have already addressed some of these (2 Peter 3:8, Jude 25, Titus 1:2). But it is worth surveying the major "proof texts" for timelessness and asking whether they actually support the claim.

Mullins provides a helpful overview in The End of the Timeless God. He notes that "most of classical Christian theology simply assumes divine timelessness and offers proof-texts like Exodus 3:14, Numbers 23:19, Malachi 3:6, Psalm 90, Psalm 139, Isaiah 46, James 1:17, 2 Peter 3, Hebrews 13:8, and Revelation 1:4." But, he argues, "none of these passages give us the without succession clause."³⁴

Exodus 3:14 — "I AM WHO I AM" (ehyeh asher ehyeh, אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה). This is God's self-revelation to Moses at the burning bush. Some theologians have interpreted the divine name as implying pure, timeless being — God as "Being Itself" (following Thomas Aquinas and the classical tradition). But the Hebrew verb ehyeh is in the imperfect (incomplete) form, which in Hebrew typically expresses ongoing or future action. Many scholars today translate it as something like "I will be who I will be" — a promise of ongoing presence and faithfulness, not a metaphysical statement about timeless being. The full exegesis of this passage belongs to Chapter 16, but for our purposes the key point is that Exodus 3:14 does not teach divine timelessness.³⁵

Malachi 3:6 — "I the LORD do not change" and James 1:17 — "no variation or shadow due to change." These passages teach divine constancy — God does not change in His character, His purposes, or His faithfulness. They do not teach that God experiences no temporal succession. "Not changing" and "being outside of time" are two entirely different claims. A temporal God can be utterly unchanging in His character while still experiencing genuine temporal sequence. The full treatment of these passages belongs to Chapter 19, but the relevant point here is that immutability passages are about God's reliable character, not about His metaphysical relationship to time.

Hebrews 13:8 — "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." Far from teaching timelessness, this passage actually uses thoroughly temporal language — "yesterday," "today," "forever." It says Christ is the same across all these temporal moments. This is a claim about consistency through time, not about existence outside of time. It fits naturally with everlastingness: Jesus Christ was faithful yesterday, is faithful today, and will be faithful in the endless future. His character does not change even though time passes.

Psalm 102:25–27 — "They will perish, but you will remain... you are the same, and your years have no end." This passage contrasts the transience of creation with the permanence of God. The heavens will perish, but God will remain. They will change, but God is "the same." And — notice this — "your years have no end." Years is a temporal word. God has years, but His years are unlimited. This is everlastingness: God endures through an endless succession of years while creation wears out and passes away. The full treatment of this passage belongs to Chapter 19.

The pattern is clear. In every case, the supposed "proof texts" for divine timelessness, when read carefully in their original languages and in context, actually describe God's enduring faithfulness, His unwavering character, or His unlimited temporal existence. None of them teach or imply the philosophical doctrine that God exists outside of time, experiencing no succession whatsoever.

X. How the Confusion Arose: From Biblical Everlastingness to Philosophical Timelessness

If the Bible does not teach divine timelessness, how did this idea become so dominant in Christian theology? This is a question we will explore at length in Part III (Chapters 11–15), but a brief preview is appropriate here.

The short answer is that early Christian theologians — particularly those in the Alexandrian tradition — were deeply influenced by Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and Neoplatonism. For Plato, the eternal Forms (Ideas) existed in a timeless realm beyond the changing, temporal world of sense experience. For Plotinus, the ultimate reality — "the One" — was utterly beyond time, beyond change, beyond multiplicity. These philosophical frameworks provided early Christian thinkers with conceptual tools for articulating God's transcendence over the created order.

The pivotal figure was Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), who was deeply influenced by Neoplatonism before his conversion and carried much of that philosophical framework into his Christian theology. Augustine argued in Confessions Book XI that God created time along with the world, and that God Himself exists in an "eternal present" — a timeless state in which there is no past or future, only an unchanging "now." Augustine's view was later refined by Boethius (c. 480–524 AD), who gave the classic definition of eternity as "the complete, simultaneous possession of interminable life" (tota simul). This definition was then adopted and developed by Anselm, Aquinas, and the entire medieval theological tradition.³⁶

What happened, in essence, is that the biblical concept of everlastingness — God enduring through all of time — was gradually replaced by the philosophical concept of timelessness — God existing outside of time altogether. The Hebrew olam and the Greek aiōn, which describe temporal duration, were reinterpreted through the lens of Greek philosophical categories that describe the absence of time. The biblical portrait of a God who acts in history, responds to His people, and unfolds His purposes through successive ages was overlaid with a philosophical portrait of a God who exists in a single, changeless, timeless "now" in which all of history is simultaneously present.

I want to be fair to the classical tradition here. The theologians who made this move were not careless or dishonest. They were trying to do justice to God's transcendence — His absolute sovereignty over creation, His independence from the created order, His perfection and self-sufficiency. These are genuine and important theological concerns. The question is whether divine timelessness is the best way — or even a coherent way — to safeguard these concerns. I believe it is not, for reasons that will unfold throughout this book.

Mullins offers a perceptive analysis of how this interpretive shift occurred. He notes that "despite the fact that the Bible uses temporal terms to describe eternity," most classical theologians "simply assume divine timelessness and offer proof-texts." When these proof-texts are examined carefully, however, they do not support timelessness. The move from biblical everlastingness to philosophical timelessness is not driven by the text itself but by philosophical commitments imported from outside the text.³⁷

Mullins also identifies a specific interpretive strategy used by classical theologians to handle the temporal language of Scripture: they gave temporal terms non-temporal readings when applying them to God. If the Bible says God "remembers" His covenant, they would say this does not mean God has a memory (which implies temporal sequence) but rather that God timelessly knows His covenant. If the Bible says God "responds" to prayer, they would say this does not mean God reacts in time but rather that God timelessly wills certain things to occur simultaneously with certain prayers. This strategy of systematically re-reading temporal language as non-temporal is coherent in principle, but it comes at an enormous cost: it makes the biblical portrait of God largely metaphorical, and it cuts the nerve of the Bible's most powerful claims about God's personal, responsive, active relationship with His creatures.³⁸

XI. The Eschatological Language: "The Age to Come" and Everlasting Life

Before we conclude, it is worth noting one more important area of biblical language that bears on our topic: the eschatological language of the New Testament — the language about the future, the end times, and the life to come.

As we have noted, the New Testament speaks in terms of "this age" and "the age to come." This framework is thoroughly temporal. It envisions history as a sequence of ages, with the present evil age giving way to the glorious age to come when Christ returns. The book of Revelation — the New Testament's fullest vision of the future — is saturated with temporal language. It speaks of events that "must soon take place" (Rev 1:1), of "the time" being "near" (Rev 1:3), of a throne room where living creatures say "day and night" a never-ceasing song (Rev 4:8), and of a new creation where "the tree of life" bears "twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month" (Rev 22:2). These are temporal descriptions of the age to come — a future life that involves sequence, activity, and the passage of time.

As George Ladd helpfully explains, "Biblically, eternity is unending time. The future life has its setting in a new redeemed earth (Rom. 8:21; 2 Pet. 3:13) with resurrection bodies in the age to come. It is not deliverance from the realm of time and space but from sin and corruption."³⁹ The Christian hope is not escape from time into timelessness. It is the redemption of time — the transformation of this present age of sin and death into an everlasting age of righteousness and life. As Mullins beautifully puts it, "The Bible is concerned with the end of the age of evil, and establishing a new everlasting kingdom ruled by God where evil has no say anymore."⁴⁰

This has profound implications for how we think about time itself. If the biblical hope is an everlasting future — not a timeless eternity — then time is not the enemy. Time is not something to be escaped or transcended. Time is part of God's good creation, a gift that God redeems and perfects rather than abolishes. The age to come will be temporal — it will involve sequence, activity, relationship, and growth. But it will be freed from the curse of sin and death that makes our current experience of time so often painful. As the theologian Antje Jackelén perceptively observes, "If detemporalization is the goal of life, questions regarding the concrete shaping of life in time lose their urgency."⁴¹ In other words, if the ultimate destination is timelessness, then temporal life loses much of its significance. But if the ultimate destination is everlasting temporal life — redeemed, healed, and glorified — then every moment of temporal existence matters deeply.

This connects to a point I have developed in my companion book, Beyond the Grave: the intermediate state (the period between death and resurrection) and the final state (the resurrection and the age to come) both appear to involve temporal experience. The souls under the altar in Revelation 6:9–10 cry out "How long?" — a temporal question. The rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19–31 experience a sequential narrative after death. These observations, which will be explored in more depth in Chapters 33 and 34 of this book, confirm the biblical picture: eternity, in the biblical sense, is not timelessness. It is everlasting temporal life with God.

XII. Conclusion: What "Eternal" Really Means

We have covered a great deal of ground in this chapter, and it is time to pull the threads together. What have we found?

We have found that the most important Hebrew word for God's eternity — olam (עוֹלָם) — means "long duration," "from age to age," or "perpetuity." It is a temporal word describing an indefinitely long stretch of time, not the absence of time.

We have found that the most important Greek words for God's eternity — aiōn (αἰών, "age") and aiōnios (αἰώνιος, "pertaining to an age, age-long") — follow the same pattern. They describe temporal duration, not atemporality.

We have found that the Septuagint translators consistently rendered olam with aiōn, indicating that ancient Greek-speaking Jews understood God's eternity in temporal terms.

We have found that every major biblical passage about God's "eternity" — Psalm 90:2, Genesis 21:33, Genesis 9:16, Deuteronomy 33:27, Isaiah 40:28, Revelation 1:4, 2 Peter 3:8, and others — describes God's enduring faithfulness through time, not His existence outside of time.

We have found that the philosophical concept of divine timelessness — the "complete, simultaneous possession of interminable life" — is not taught anywhere in Scripture. It was imported into Christian theology from Greek philosophy, particularly through the influence of Platonism and Neoplatonism on thinkers like Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas.

We have acknowledged, with Helm and Craig, that the biblical language of everlastingness does not logically exclude timelessness. But we have argued, with Mullins and Wolterstorff, that the natural reading of the biblical texts is everlastingness, not timelessness, and that the burden of proof rests on those who wish to read atemporality into texts whose language is consistently temporal.

We have noted Barr's important methodological caution that word studies alone cannot settle theological disputes, and we have accepted this caution while insisting that the cumulative weight of the biblical vocabulary is still a significant piece of the evidence.

And we have observed that the Bible's eschatological vision — the age to come, everlasting life, the new creation — is thoroughly temporal. The Christian hope is not escape from time into timelessness but the redemption of time into an everlasting future with God.

Where does this leave us? It leaves us with a clear foundation for the rest of the book. The Bible does not settle the God-and-time question by itself — philosophical and systematic theology have important work to do. But the Bible provides a starting point that strongly favors divine temporality over divine timelessness. The biblical God is a God who endures through all of time — from everlasting to everlasting. He is the God of the ages, the God who was and is and is to come. He is the God whose years have no end, whose arms support us through an endless succession of moments, and whose faithfulness stretches from the unimaginable past to the unimaginable future.

He is the eternal God. But "eternal" means "everlasting" — enduring through all of time, never beginning and never ending. It does not mean "timeless" — existing outside of time, experiencing no succession, frozen in a changeless "now." The biblical God is not frozen. He is alive, active, responsive, and present — and He meets us in time.

In the next chapter, we will turn from the biblical language to the philosophical tradition and examine the doctrine of divine timelessness in its strongest form — what it claims, why its defenders hold it, and what arguments support it. We owe the atemporalist tradition a fair hearing before we offer our critique. But we go into that examination knowing that the biblical vocabulary — the original Hebrew and Greek of Scripture — does not support atemporality. Whatever case the atemporalist can make, it will have to be a philosophical case, because it is not a biblical one.

Footnotes

¹ Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1907), s.v. "עוֹלָם." ↩

² Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, rev. ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2001), s.v. "עוֹלָם." ↩

³ Gershom Brin, The Concept of Time in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 15–40. ↩

⁴ R. T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), chap. 2, "What is Eternity?" under "Divine Temporality." ↩

⁵ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 2, "What is Eternity?" under "Divine Temporality." ↩

⁶ Brin, The Concept of Time in the Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, 18. ↩

⁷ Brown, Driver, and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon, s.v. "קֶדֶם." ↩

⁸ Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick William Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. "αἰών." ↩

⁹ Ted Peters, "Eschatology: Eternal Now or Cosmic Future?" Zygon 36, no. 2 (2001): 349–56, cited in Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

¹⁰ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 1, "Introduction," under "Why Divine Eternality Matters." ↩

¹¹ See Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1998), s.v. "αἰών." The LXX consistently renders olam with forms of aiōn. ↩

¹² William Lane Craig, Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2001), 19. ↩

¹³ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 1, "Introduction," footnote 3. See also the discussion in the Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

¹⁴ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

¹⁵ David E. Aune, "God and Time in the Apocalypse of John," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, cited in Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

¹⁶ Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), 1:202–3. ↩

¹⁷ Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), 310. Cited in Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

¹⁸ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

¹⁹ Craig, Time and Eternity, 19–20. ↩

²⁰ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 1, "Introduction," footnote 3. ↩

²¹ Craig, Time and Eternity, 19–20; cf. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. "αἰώνιος." ↩

²² For the classic definition and its philosophical background, see Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. V. E. Watts (London: Penguin, 1969), V.6. For the Platonic background, see Plato, Timaeus 37d–38c. For the Neoplatonic development, see Plotinus, Enneads III.7. ↩

²³ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

²⁴ Craig, Time and Eternity, 15; citing Alan Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time (London: Macmillan, 1992), 26. ↩

²⁵ Craig, Time and Eternity, 20; citing James Barr, Biblical Words for Time, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1969), 149. ↩

²⁶ Paul Helm, Eternal God: A Study of God without Time, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 1, "Why Timelessness?" ↩

²⁷ Helm, Eternal God, chap. 1, "Why Timelessness?" ↩

²⁸ Helm, Eternal God, chap. 1, "Why Timelessness?"; cf. James Barr, Biblical Words for Time, 138–40. ↩

²⁹ Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Unqualified Divine Temporality," in God and Time: Four Views, ed. Gregory E. Ganssle (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), 187–213; cf. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

³⁰ Nicholas Wolterstorff, "Unqualified Divine Temporality," in Ganssle, God and Time: Four Views, 187–92. ↩

³¹ Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1964), 37–68. ↩

³² James Barr, Biblical Words for Time, 2nd ed. (London: SCM Press, 1969), esp. chaps. 2–4. ↩

³³ Craig, Time and Eternity, 20; citing Barr, Biblical Words for Time, 149. ↩

³⁴ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

³⁵ See the detailed exegesis in Chapter 16 of this book. For scholarly discussion, see Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 60–70; and William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1–18, Anchor Bible 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 204–25. ↩

³⁶ For the classic definition, see Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, V.6. For Aquinas's development, see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 10, aa. 1–4. For a modern overview of the historical development, see R. T. Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 3, "What is Eternity? A History of the Doctrine." ↩

³⁷ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." ↩

³⁸ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, Conclusion, "The Bible on Time and Eternity." See also R. T. Mullins, From Divine Timemaker to Divine Watchmaker, Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology (London: Routledge, 2025), chap. 3, "Atemporalism." ↩

³⁹ George E. Ladd, "Age, Ages," in Baker's Dictionary of Theology, ed. Everett F. Harrison (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1960), cited in Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 1, "Introduction," under "Why Divine Eternality Matters." ↩

⁴⁰ Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 1, "Introduction," under "Why Divine Eternality Matters." ↩

⁴¹ Antje Jackelén, "A Relativistic Eschatology: Time, Eternity, and Eschatology in Light of the Physics of Relativity," Zygon 41, no. 4 (2006): 955–73, cited in Mullins, The End of the Timeless God, chap. 1, "Introduction," under "Why Divine Eternality Matters." ↩

Bibliography

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Peters, Ted. "Eschatology: Eternal Now or Cosmic Future?" Zygon 36, no. 2 (2001): 349–56.

Propp, William H. C. Exodus 1–18. Anchor Bible 2. New York: Doubleday, 1999.

Turretin, Francis. Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Translated by George Musgrave Giger. Edited by James T. Dennison Jr. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992.

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. "Unqualified Divine Temporality." In God and Time: Four Views, edited by Gregory E. Ganssle, 187–213. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001.

The Biblical Language of Time and Eternity

Introduction: The Most Important Word in the Debate

I. The Hebrew Word Olam (עוֹלָם): Long Duration, Not Timelessness