In hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the ages began;
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Ambrose of Milan
AD 397
But God can neither be in doubt, nor can he be deceived. For he only is in doubt who is ignorant of the future. One who has predicted one thing while something else has happened is deceived about the future. Not so with God. What is plainer than the fact that Scripture states the Father to have said one thing of the Son and that the same Scripture proves another thing to have taken place? The Son was beaten, he was mocked, was crucified and died. He suffered much worse things in the flesh than those servants who had been appointed before. Was the Father deceived? Was he ignorant of it? Was he unable to give help? The One who is the truth cannot make a mistake. It is written that “the evertruthful God cannot lie.” How could he who knows all be ignorant? What could he not do, who could do all? Of the Christian Faith–.
I confess that I do not know what ages passed before the human race was created, yet I am perfectly sure that no one creature is coeternal with the Creator. Curiously enough, the apostle uses the expression tempora aeterna in reference not to the future but to the past. Thus he says: “in the hope of eternal life which God, who does not lie, promised before the eternal times, he has in due times manifested, his word.” He seems to be saying that time stretches backward eternally; yet time is not coeternal with God, since not only did God exist “before eternal times” but he promised eternal life which he manifested in his own time, that is, in due time. Now, what he promised was his Word. For the Word is eternal life. But how did he make this promise, since it was made to those who certainly did not exist before the “eternal times”? The meaning, then, must be that what was to take place in its own time was already predestined and determined in his eternity and in his coeternal Word.
Having then this hope [in the resurrection], let our souls be bound to him who is faithful in his promises and just in his judgments. He who has commanded us not to lie shall much more himself not lie; for nothing is impossible with God, except to lie.
Who lieth not, or who cannot lie, being truth itself.
Hath promised; that is, decreed to give life everlasting to his faithful servants.
Before the times of the world. Literally, before secular times. (Witham)
Since the periods of time, therefore, come within the scope of our knowledge or speculations, we pass judgment upon them according to the understanding of human reasoning. In this way we believe ourselves justified in saying about anything: “It has not been before it is born.” The times that have already past always come before the origin of everything. Since in the things of God, that is, in the birth of God, everything is before the eternal time, then we cannot say of him: “Before he was born.” Nor can we say that he to whom the eternal promise was made before the eternal time has the “hope of life everlasting,” according to the statement of the apostle, which the God who does not lie has promised to him before the eternal time, nor can we say that at one time he had not been. We cannot assume that he whom we must confess as being before the eternal time has had his beginning after something.
That is, not now upon a change of mind, but from the beginning it was so foreordained. This he often asserts, as when he says, Separated unto the Gospel of God. Romans 1:1 And again, Whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate. Romans 8:29 Thus showing our high origin, in that He did not love us now first, but from the beginning: and it is no little matter to be loved of old, and from the beginning.
Which God, that cannot lie, promised. If He cannot lie, what He has promised will assuredly be fulfilled. If He cannot lie, we ought not to doubt it, though it be after death. Which God, that cannot lie, he says, promised before the world began; by this also, before the world began, he shows that it is worthy of our belief. It is not because the Jews have not come in, that these things are promised. It had been so planned from the first. Hear therefore what he says,
But has in His own times manifested.
Wherefore then was the delay? From His concern for men, and that it might be ...
