ABSTRACT
Eternity in the past is one of the properties of the necessary Being. If the necessary being were not eternal its existing would need some other source than itself. But we have already shown that if the necessary is not self-existent it does not correspond to its own proper definition—which is contradictory and impossible. The necessary being, further again, has an essential simplicity. It is non-composite. For were it not so, the constituent elements in its complexity must each pre-exist the whole which is the essence. The necessarily existent is alive, though with a life different from that of the contingents. Knowledge is among the things necessary to perfection of existence so it may be considered an attribute of the necessary Being. After we have affirmed that He who grants being to contingents is necessarily existing and knowing, and that every actual contingent exists only by His knowledge, it is necessarily also affirmed that He wills.
