The Unchangeableness of God, and additional attributes

The Unchangeableness of God, and additional attributes

Thomas Watson wrote; “God's unchangeableness. ‘I am Jehovah, I change not.' Mal 3:3. I. God is unchangeable in his nature. II. In his decree. I. Unchangeable in his nature. 1. There is no eclipse of his brightness. 2. No period put to his being. [1] No eclipse of his brightness. His essence shines with a fixed lustre. ‘With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' James 1:17. ‘Thou art the same.' Psa 102:27.”-page 66

That Spirit does not change is consistent with the idea of omniscience, prescience and so forth. God already embodies all things that could be or that will be or become in some way-what is there to change?

Parmenides and Heraclitus-two pre-Socratic philosophers in Greece had different opinions on what actually changes, or if anything actually changes, if everything is in motion or if nothing is in motion, then of course, Einstein provided relativity theory.

Relativity theory apparently allows gravity to provide negative pressure to the Universe while mass and energy have a kind of positive pressure. Because of the conservation of energy where the net value for the Universe remains constant-it might be that as mass and energy lose value with mass and energy running down that energy is conserved by the acceleration of space speeding up as some sort of reciprocal of gravity. I believe that the total amount of energy in the Universe equals mass x speed of light squared + the force of spatial expansion. Alan Guth made a new video recently on the inflationary era of the Universe (1) providing things to think about on cosmology and of course what occurred before the hypothetical inflation era.

Often when people are talking about a singularity in the beginning of the Universe they assume it was a very small thing packed tight with mass and energy under the force of gravity. Yet some have speculated that gravity switches off at a certain small scale to let the inflation recur. There are innumerable ways to consider configurations of a potential singularity or small patch of a larger field from which the mass-energy, space and time of the Universe extruded or leaked-perhaps like a jet of water shooting out of a hole in a dam under great pressure.

The cosmic microwave background temperature may means that there was a fast inflation (10-35th second) to distribute and equal temperature, yet it could mean something else such as that an infinitely high temperature was a characteristic of the space that expanded and that did not dissipate until later after being cut off from the umbilical jet of expanding mass-space-time or after a collision of membranes let the reverberations tone down a little.

What came before the inflation or singularity is challenging to think of. It is a greatly interesting topic however. The word of God uttered a word to start; an instruction to a quantum computer, a part of Spirit letting a relativistic mass arise from nothing to be and become through a singularity, bubble spherical membrane or ? It is interesting to speculate about and correlate a little to Genesis paradigmata.

The Unity of God

Watson; “There is but one only, the living and true God. That there is a God has been proved; and those that will not believe the verity of his essence, shall feel the severity of his wrath. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.' Deut 6:4. He is ‘the only God.' Deut 4:39. ‘Know therefore this day, and consider it in thy heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath, there is none else.' ‘A just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me.' Isa 45:21.”-page 100

I like these points that Watson made about God's unity;

Watson-“II. There is but one infinite Being, therefore there is but one God. There cannot be two infinites. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth, saith the Lord?' Jer 23:24. If there be one infinite, filling all places at once, how can there be any room for another infinite to subsist?

III. There is but one Omnipotent Power. If there be two Omnipotents, then we must always suppose a contest between these two: that which one would do, the other power, being equal, would oppose, and so all things would be brought into confusion.”-page 100

Of course there are innumerable mathematical infinities-perhaps an infinite number of infinities logically enough. It is challenging to say that every mathematical concept or configuration of infinites must have a corresponding actual physical universe infinity in a multiverse setting-probably not. Obviously Watson probably means that there is only one infinite omniscient, omnipotent being as one sees must be implied from his second point.

Watson wrote about an “infinite being” however. That is different from an infinite set that is implicitly finite in all dimensions besides those elements in which it is contained or entails. I suppose that every infinite set is finite in an infinity of other definitions and sets of infinities in which it does not fit. God however transcends or comprehends all possible infinites and finite infinite sets (i.e. the infinite set of even numbers does not include odd numbers). His Spirit transcend mass, energy, space-time and sets finite, infinite or actual.

Cantor's discovery of trans-finite series and ordinality of infinite series must apply to the mathematical set of all possible infinite series and a corresponding representative set of all possible actual Universes.

The infinite set of all sets including itself must be an incomplete set I think, according to Godel's incompleteness theorem. God has the certain answer to that sort of thing and probably a calculator and program to compute it correctly if he had a need to do so however improbable that would be.

The Eternity of God

Watson-”Study eternity. Our thoughts should chiefly run upon eternity.

We all wish for the present, something that may delight the senses. If we could have lived, as Augustine says, a cunabulis mundi, from the infancy of the world to the world's old age, what were this? What is time, measured with eternity? As the earth is but a small point to the heaven, so time is but, nay scarce a minute to eternity! And then, what is this poor life which crumbles away so fast? Oh, think of eternity! Annos aeternos in mente habe. Brethren, we are every day travelling to eternity; and whether we wake or sleep, we are going our journey. Some of us are upon the borders of eternity. Oh study the shortness of life and length of eternity!

More particularly think of God's eternity and the soul's eternity. Think of God's eternity. He is the Ancient of Days, who was before all time. There is a figurative description of God in Dan 7:7. ‘The Ancient of Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool.' His white garment, wherewith he was clothed, signified his majesty; his hair, like the pure wool, his holiness; and the Ancient of Days, his eternity. The thought of God's eternity should make us have high adoring thoughts of God. We are apt to have mean, irreverent thoughts of him. Psa 50:0I. ‘Thou thoughtest I was such an one as thyself,' weak and mortal, but if we would think of God's eternity, when all our power ceases, he is King eternal, his crown flourishes for ever, he can make us happy or miserable for ever, this would make us have adoring thoughts of God. Rev 4:40. ‘The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat upon the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever; and cast their crowns before the throne.' The saints fall down, to signify by that humble posture that they are not worthy to sit in God's presence.”-page 64

People today don't take this seriously as often as they should. With the rise of modern science and medicine and longer average life spans along with reinforcing Darwinian evolution insights the brief minute of human existence became magnified in importance to people. Instead of life being inevitably nasty, brutish and short full of pain as a poor shadow walks about strutting and fretting its hour upon the stage (this paragraph had more than one paraphrase in it (Hobson and Shakespeare) the pleasures of life and the prospects for a meaningless afterlife of nothing-a kind of Buddhist utopia of nothingness have become popular.

Nevertheless human life is less significant in the context of eternity than a shadow ghost blip on a radar screen disappeared into the past. God as an eternal being has eternity to punish his enemies. Watson uses much of this section to remind the reader or listener to his sermons of the horrible, unmixed nature of eternal punishment.

Watson-”We must hold with Augustine, ‘that God's judgements on the wicked, occultu esse possum, injusta esse non possum, may be secret, but never unjust.' The reason why sin committed in a short time is eternally punished, is, because every sin is committed against an infinite essence, and no less than eternity of punishment can satisfy. Why is treason punished with confiscation and death, but because it is against the king's person, which is sacred; much more that offence which is against God's crown and dignity is of a heinous and infinite nature, and cannot be satisfied with less than eternal punishment.”-page 63