From Reformation to Reformation

THESIS XXVII: Hitherto the commanding principium: the executing principium follows, which is the power of God, whereby God is able to...

THESIS XIX: In the Scripture there are various names for the divine will, which nevertheless indicate concepts, diverse to us, of...

THESIS XVIII: The principium commanding action is the will, whereby God wills Himself of Himself, and beyond Himself all things because...

THESIS XIV: Hitherto the divine properties of the first class: Of the second class are those that are applicable to God in such a way...

THESIS XI: Immutability is a property of God, which excludes from God all possibility of mutation: 1. with respect to existence; 2. ...

THESIS VI: The Properties of the divine nature, or essence, are GOD’S essential attributes, whereby the truth and majesty of the divine...

THESIS I: Hitherto the προλεγόμενα/Prolegomena of Christian Theology: now follows the explication of the body of Theology itself by...

Thesis I: The knowledge of God is defined. Thesis II: God is described. Explanation: 1. The description of God is confirmed. 2. The...

Johannes a Marck Our AUTHOR expounds the Mode of the Divine Knowledge, § 35, and its Object, § 36. God knows: 1. By a Most Simple Act, such that there is here no place for Habit as distinct from Act, with the Habit now resting, now passing again into act. α. Indeed, the Knowledge of an altogether perfect Being also ought to be altogether perfect, such that His consummate Perfection always ought to be present. β. By a transition from Habit to Act Immutability would also fall,

Now follow the Communicable Attributes of God, distinct from His Faculties: Knowledge, which has immediate regard to His Intellect; Goodness and Righteousness, which have immediate regard to His Will. Of course, the Spiritual Faculties of Intellect and Will our AUTHOR referred to the divine Nature or Essence, § 16, while he considers Knowledge, Goodness, and Righteousness as Communicable Attributes of the divine Essence. Moreover, Intellect and Will, together with a Spiritual

[This is Eternity…. In Moses they received a beginning of existence.] Compare below in Chapter VIII, § 13, 24; Chapter IX, § 4, compared with this Chapter, § 30. Johann a Marck [In accordance with Successive Duration and the Measure of that, which are said to be Concreated.] That Time is Concreated with things, our AUTHOR thus indicates. Of course, the Socinians sometimes attempt artfully to prove that Time is Eternal, and that such eternal Time is suited to God, because Time

Objection 1: The Conceptualization of this matter is difficult. But compare the Response of our AUTHOR, and what things already preoccupied us at the beginning of this §. Objection 2: Differences of Times are ascribed to God, Revelation 1:4, 8. Response: α. That this is not able to be understood properly, is proven of itself merely from the things produced, on account of the many absurdities of the resulting complete denial of God’s Independence, Immutability, Infinite Perfec

γ. But verily God would not be without Beginning and End, if by Succession the new beginning should continuously incur an end. In succession the one thing is no longer, but was and has departed; another is present, but for a moment only, and soon flies away also. Now that successive movement, in which there are continually new beginnings and ends, at some point necessarily had a first beginning, whence that motion and succession began. But, if you place in God some beginning

β. That He exists immutably the Same, Psalm 102:26, 27. Of course, there in the context the omnimodal Eternity of God is taught with compete clarity: both in parts, when not only is a Beginning removed from God, inasmuch as He was before the foundation of the earth and the fashioning of the heavens, verse 25, and an End, as the one who endures forever, verse 13, and whose years are from generation to generation, verse 24, whose years shall have no end, verse 27; but also all

Nevertheless, nature and Scripture equally teach with sufficient clarity that to the divine Eternity a removal, not only of Beginning and End, but equally also of Succession, pertains. This is proven from this, Crellius α. That before God a Thousand Years and One Day do not differ, Psalm 90:4; 2 Peter 3:8. And so before God there is no distinction of time. Now, before whom there is no distinction of time, before him there is no true succession of time, before and after. Excep

Moreover, that by Eternity all Succession is removed from God, we hold in particular against the Socinians, who write, that Time is also eternal, which is applicable to God, in which there is prior and posterior, since all duration, according to their understanding, has parts, of which one follows upon another, one is prior and another posterior. Whom in this conception Vorstius follows, who says that Eternity is nothing other than eternal Time; see HOORNBEECK’S Socinianismum

Boethius The Eternity of God is defined: It is that Perfection of God, whereby He, being without all Beginning, End, and Succession, exists continually. With which that definition of BÖETHIUS,[1] in which the simultaneously entire and perfect possession of interminable life is asserted, which definition is found in book V of The Consolation of Philosophy, prose VI, and which POIRET without good reason assails with various complaints, Cogitationibus Rationalibus, book III, cha

This Eternity of God is argued in general, 1. by God’s Independence, which, a. as it posits God as Necessarily Existing, so also as abiding with eternal duration in His Existence. We set it forth as proven that God necessarily exists in § 21, page 592; hence it follows that God also exists as Eternal without beginning, end, or succession. For, if He should have a beginning, He had not existed necessarily before His beginning: if He should have an end, when that had arrived, H

Finally, Eternity is to be claimed for God, an Eternity altogether distinct from all Æon and Time. Time, of course, is the measure of created duration, which is able to be measured; a quantity continuously flowing, whereby a creature passes from the end of one moment to the new beginning of another. In time an Æon is contained, αἰὼν, as if ἀεὶ ὢν, always being; by which Æon, when a Universal, not a particular, Æon is indicated, is understand a measure of duration that is with

Balthasar Mentzer Now, the calumny of the Lutherans, as if the Immensity of God were overturned by us, is confuted by the very arguments that Mentzer[1] and others advance. This calumny of the Lutherans against us is well-known, that the Calvinists believe and make God to be Immense only with respect to power, but not with respect to essence; which as such HEINRICH ALTING relates and refutes in his Exegese Confessionis Augustanæ, article I, page 10; Scriptorum Heidelbergensiu