Anything created has a beginning; its creation is its beginning. God is the Creator of all things. God existed before all the things that God created. If God were a created thing, then something would have to exist before God in order to create God. But God is the Creator of all things. Therefore, God must be Uncreated.

The Uncreated has no beginning, because a thing’s creation is its beginning. Anything that exists and has no beginning must always have existed. God exists and is uncreated, therefore God has no beginning and has always existed. God exists always, even before Time began, even beyond Time. Time is a created thing, and so Time had a beginning, but God has no beginning and no end. Time cannot always have existed, because then Time would be an uncreated thing, like God. There is only one God. God is the One Creator of all things, therefore there is only One that is uncreated. God alone is Uncreated.

Time is the ordering and separation of events into a fixed sequence of before and after. Within Time, events occur in a certain sequence which cannot be changed. First one event happens; next another event happens. The ordering is absolute in the sense that, once a sequence of events has occurred, the order of the events cannot be changed. The order is fixed and cannot be altered. Events are not only ordered by Time, they are also separated by Time. Time orders and separates events.
For example, if you (a) break a vase, and then (b) glue the vase together, you cannot then change the order of those events to (b) glue the vase, and then (a) break a vase. You could follow the gluing of the vase with a new third event, (c) breaking the vase again. But you cannot change the order of past events.

In another example, the things you did on Monday were followed by the things you did on Tuesday. But on Wednesday you cannot change the order, so that the things you did on Tuesday were placed before the things you did on Monday. For the things you did on Monday are separated in Time from the things you did on Tuesday, and so on. Events within Time are separated and ordered, and as a result, the order of events within Time is fixed. Time is the fixed ordering and separation of events into before and after.

Place is also an ordering and separation of things. Place is the separation and ordering of things and events into here and there. Notice that the definition of Place is basically the same as the definition of Time. Time and Place are fundamentally the same. Some scientists talk about a space-time continuum, i.e. that time and space are different aspects of the same thing. Time and Place order and separate events and things.

Time and Place is the ordering and separation of created things. Without created things, there is no Time or Place. God created all things from beyond Time and Place. God created Time and Place by creating all things.

Time and Place are basically the same, and so timelessness is basically the same as placelessness. Therefore, Eternity must be both timeless and placeless, and must be both beyond Time and beyond Place. God created all things from Eternity. But Eternity itself is not a created thing: rather it is a description of God. God is Love, but God is also Existence, and Will, and Eternity, and Truth, and Mercy, and so on. And all these are One in God.

[Excerpted from my booklet: God is One Divine Eternal Act]

by
Ronald L. Conte Jr.
Roman Catholic theologian and
translator of the Catholic Public Domain Version of the Bible.