Any creation of God's is not "new" to God. For it would mean that God did not know this new creation. Yet we know that an effect pre-exists in the mind of its efficient cause. Hence, whatever exists must pre-exist in God, who is its efficient cause.
The Bible begins, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," Gen. 1:1. The bible was addressed by God to all classes of people, therefore it employs the ordinary language of daily life, and not the technical language of philosophy.
The Hebrew term bereshith (lit. "in beginning") is indefinite, so naturally it gives rise to the question, "In the beginning of what?" It would seem best to take the expression in the absolute sense as an indication of the beginning of all temporal things and even of time itself; but some hold that it refers to the beginning of the work of creation. Technically speaking, it would not be correct to assume that time was already in existence when God created the world, and that God at some point in that existing time, called "the beginning", brought forth the universe. Time is only one of the forms of all created existence, and therefore could not exist before creation. For that reason it would be more correct to say that the world was created with time than to assert that it was created in time.
The significance of the opening statement of the Scriptures lies in its teaching that the world had a beginning. Scripture speaks of this beginning also in other places, Matt. 19:4,8; Mark 10;6; John 1:1,2; Heb. 1:10. That the world had a beginning is also clearly implied in such passages as Ps. 90:2, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God."; and Ps. 102:25, "Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands."
To get to a plausible solution we need to establish the proper idea of the relation of eternity to time. A great deal of the difficulty encountered in these sort of discussions is no doubt due to the fact that we like to think of eternity too much as an “indefinite extension of time”, as, for instance, when we speak of the ages of comparative inaction in God before the creation of the world. God's eternity is not indefinitely extended time, but something essentially different, of which we can form no conception.
God’s is a timeless existence, an eternal presence. The ageless past and the most distant future are both present to God. He acts in all His works, and therefore also in creation, as the Eternal One, and we have no warrant to draw creation as an act of God into the temporal sphere. In a certain sense this can be called an eternal act, but only in the sense in which all the acts of God are eternal.
They are all as acts of God, works that are done in eternity. Theologians generally distinguish between active and passive creation, active denoting creation as an act of God, and passive creation, its result, the world's being created. Active creation is not, but the passive creation is, marked by temporal succession, and this temporal succession reflects the order determined in the decree of God. As to the objection that a creation in time implies a change in God, creation is not the Creator's but the creature's passage from potentiality to actuality.
Let's summarize a few points. God's eternity may be defined as that perfection of God whereby He is elevated above all temporal limits and all succession of moments, and possesses the whole of His existence in one indivisible present.
God is infinite in relation to time. Time does not apply to God. God was before time began. God is not restricted by the dimension of time. That God is not bound by time does not mean that God is not conscious of the succession of points in time that He has created. God knows what is now occurring in human experience. God is aware that events occur in a particular order. God is equally aware of all points of that order equally vividly. God is aware of what is happening, has happened, and what will happen at each point in time. Yet at any given point in time God is also conscious of the distinction between what is now occurring, what has been, and what will be.
There is a successive order to the acts of God and there is a logical order to his decisions, yet there is no temporal order to God’s willing. God’s deliberation and willing take no time. God has from eternity determined what He is now doing. Therefore God’s actions are not in any way reactions to developments. God does not get taken by surprise or have to create contingency plans.
