What is absolute reality?

I have already said, the nature of the proof demonstrates that I cannot form an idea of the thing proved in itself. But there is clearly seen eternal power and godhead. And here note that creative power involves eternal power, for all begins by creation, and all creation begins. But what creatures must be, that is, exist absolutely without a beginning. "I am," therefore, or absolute existence, is the one just revelation of God as such.

Corresponding to the third finger of the hand is the name "Everlasting Father" of A.V., but literally, "the Father of Eternity." That is the logical consequence of the preceding title. Eternity is infinite for all purposes yet there is one who took eternity in the "Cradle" of His hand, so only God is really infinite. The thought is stupendous! The One who is the Son of God's love created all things in heaven and in earth visible (thrones and dominions) and invisible (principalities and powers). All created by and for Him! He is (not was, because "He is" implies the present) before all things and by Him all things subsist (Col. 1:16-17). All the glories of creation are relative. The Creator alone is absolute and supreme! But an even greater thought than that is enunciated in the expression "Father of Eternity." He Who is the Son is its Author!

God inhabits eternity. He fills all things. He is everywhere. He is the uncreated, self-existent source of all things, yet knowing no source for Himself. He created all things out of nothing. Such a conception satisfies because it is beyond conception. We bow before this glorious Being with holy joy. Our hearts trust Him, for He is utterly beyond the littleness and frailty and sinfulness of men. He is in one sense unmoved by any impulse, save that which springs from Himself. He is all goodness, all love, all righteousness, all holiness, all faithfulness. Every attribute and quality that we can admire is absolute in its fulness in Him. In short, a Being who is love, who is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, satisfies the cry of our hungry hearts for omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, all serve His love, and therefore serve us. This could not be known without revelation, nor fully known apart from the Cross, where God manifested Himself fully in Christ.

There is, in the very nature of things there can be, but one First Cause of everything. There is such an One — the living and true God. He is, self-existent, never had beginning, eternal; never ending, everlasting; the alone infinite in power, and therefore irresponsible, and knowing no check or impediment to His will or action, save that of His own character and essential goodness and truth. "The right" is always His, Himself is the standard of what is right; He is the One First Cause, originating source of everything that ever was brought into creature-existence, Sustainer in being, and Controller here or elsewhere, of everything, the End for whom it was formed, to be to His glory and praise.

God is. His essential name in the Old Testament is Jehovah — the "I am that I am," the living, eternal, self-existing, unchangeable One, acting from Himself and according to Himself in all that He does.

Man's intelligence cannot understand it. It is folly to reason about Him. We would have to be God to comprehend Him. But it becomes us as His creatures to accept and hold fast in simple faith what He has been pleased to tell us in His Word about His eternal being.

God is. His essential name in the Old Testament is Jehovah — the "I am that I am," the living, eternal, self-existing, unchangeable One, acting from Himself and according to Himself in all that He does.

Man's intelligence cannot understand it. It is folly to reason about Him. We would have to be God to comprehend Him. But it becomes us as His creatures to accept and hold fast in simple faith what He has been pleased to tell us in His Word about His eternal being.

He exists in the powers of His own existence - not caused - and in the will of His existence, not by it so as to make it a cause of His own existence, which is simply absurd, but in it, as we say self-existent, which happily hides the infirmity of human thought.

8 I do not connect omnipresence and eternity as attributes with God, not because they may not, in an ordinary sense, be said to be so; and Scripture itself so speaks practically, and it always speaks practically, because truly; but that in our minds they are connected with time and space, which do not apply to God. There is no time when God is not; no place where His eye and hand, to use human language, are not. "I AM" is the proper expression of His existence. While time rolls on "I am" remains unchanged, and when time has rolled away "I am" subsists the same. It can hardly be called an attribute. This being understood, we may speak of eternal as a natural attribute of God.

God, and God only, has self-being. He is the "I am," and so speaks of Himself. He is the Most High, the Almighty, and the Eternal, and thus made His name known in due time; and He alone can rightly say "I will." So said the Son when incarnate here below; which could not be, if He were not one with the Father, as truly God, and therefore as competent by the sacrifice of Himself to save righteously as to create.

Nor can I conceive non-existence absolutely, for I must conceive something. It is an intuitive knowledge of God, when we come to the point of beginning; hence beginning, or causation, is carried to all beings out of God, i.e., I am led up to a Being with no beginning, and a will - the former inconceivable to me - and hence to the absolute dependence for existence of all else, which involves beginning - an absolute beginning. Nor do I see any necessary thought or judgment, save that the creation is a creature - is not God - which may produce itself in different forms perhaps; and this can only be necessary supposing there is a creature. The only necessary thing, I repeat, is God - all else is contingent, i.e., dependent on His will, not denying a finite will in man, who was made in His image, but this is no more necessary than his existence - cannot be.