Aquinas on the Eternality of God

A summary from Summa Contra Gentiles – book 1: God

God is eternal. That which has a beginning and ending begins and ends through motion or change. God is absolutely immutable; no beginning; no end.[1] Beginning and ending beings are measured by time, which is the measurement of motion——the measurement of change. Because God is without motion, he is not measured by time. “There is, therefore, no before and after in Him.”[2] He has no succession in his being. . . . “He has his whole being at once.”[3] If God existed after not existing, then ‘someone’ brought him into being from non-being. And it cannot have been God, since “what does not exist does not act.”[4] Nothing is prior to God, and he will never cease to exist; therefore, he is everlastingly eternal.

There are beings in the world that have come into being and perish. Therefore, they have a cause, since what does not have being at one time and then has being owes its existence to some cause.[5] Therefore, a necessary being must exist. A necessary being must be necessary through itself, not from an outside source; otherwise, we end up with an infinite causal regress. And this First necessary being is God; he is the first cause and he is eternal, “since whatever is necessary through itself is eternal.”[6]

God is the first moving substance.[7] If something is set in motion, i.e., has a beginning, which is measured by time, either there was a first moving cause that either began to move by another moving cause, or it is an everlastingly moving cause that had no beginning.

Scripture affirms this truth: Psalm 102:12, 27: “But you, Lord, are enthroned forever . . . .” “But you are the same, and your years will never end.”

—Romans 11:36
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[1] cf. Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17; Num 23:19.
[2] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles - Book 1: God, ed. Joseph Kenny, O.P., trans. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Hanover House, 1955), 1.15.3.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid., 1.15.4.
[5] Causes cannot be infinite, for there will never be an original cause that brought about the first act because all causes in an infinite series would be instrumental, never being set in motion by the previous instrumental cause, since no point of origin can be found in an infinite series. Aquinas proves this in SCG 1.13.11.
[6] Aquinas, SCG, 1.15.5.
[7] Substance is a being whose essence naturally requires it to exist in itself (ens per se; ens in se).

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