The word "finite" means that something has limits or boundaries. It comes from the same root word as finish, as in the finish line in a race. When something is finite it means that if you go on far enough, you will come to an end. If there is no end, then it's not finite; it's "infinite".

Similarly, the word "eternal" means unbounded by time.

We can almost, but not quite, imagine something that is infinite and eternal. To think of something that is really really big, or that takes a really long time, isn't quite accurate, because we really need to think of something that transcends physical size and duration. But it's at least a start, in stretching our minds to consider what the nature of God could be.

Here we have a physical universe. It must have come from something. Plus, we have these glimpses that there are spiritual realities, too. Mathematics suggests that there are more "dimensions" needed to help make sense of the physical world. Some people have near death experiences. Some dying people seem to communicate with people who have already died. These things are at least suggestive that there could be an afterlife, and/or a spiritual plane of existence — and that God exists.

In New Christian theology, we believe that there is an infinite, eternal God. He is Divine Love, which is the wellspring of everything, and Divine Wisdom, which gives form to that love. He is unbounded by space or time.

That conception might make God seem distant and impersonal, but logically, that doesn't need to be the case. An infinite God is "big enough", capable enough to be both creating and sustaining the universe AND flowing into each one of us in ways attuned to our ability to receive his influx. A God who has the perspective of eternity also has the ability within that to operate in our lives, in our time, even if we can't perceive it.

These concepts are at the limits of many kinds of thought — science, philosophy, mathematics, and religion. There IS an underlying harmony of those disciplines, but it's hard to see sometimes, particularly because we can be blocked by preconceptions and because we're operating with finite minds, wrestling with things that we can only really see appearances of.

(For reference, see True Christian Religion 27-33)

26. When I had listened to this, the angels perceived that I was thinking about the generally held ideas of the Christian church concerning a Trinity of Persons in One God, and the oneness of these Persons in a Divine Trinity; as well as about the birth of the Son of God from eternity. Then they said: 'What is this that you are thinking? Surely these ideas are derived from natural enlightenment, which is at variance with our spiritual enlightenment? So if you do not rid yourself of the ideas you are thinking, we shall close heaven to you and go away.'

But I replied: 'Please penetrate further into my thinking, and you may find there agreement.' They did so, and saw that by three Persons I understood the three attributes which proceed from God, Creation, Redemption and Regeneration, and that these are the attributes of the one God: that by the birth of the Son of God from eternity I understood His birth foreseen from eternity, and provided for in time; to think that there is any Son of God born from eternity is not superior, but contrary to the natural and rational faculties, but rather the Son born of God by the Virgin Mary in time is the single and only-begotten Son of God; to believe otherwise is a huge mistake.

[2] I then told them that my natural thought about the Persons of the Trinity and their Oneness, as well as about the birth of the Son of God from eternity, was taken from the Church's doctrine of faith, which bears the name of Athanasius.

'Good,' said the angels, and asked me to say at their dictation that if anyone does not approach the God of heaven and earth Himself, he cannot enter heaven, because it is that one God who makes heaven to be heaven, and that same God is Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah the Lord, the Creator from eternity, the Redeemer in time, and the Regenerator for eternity to come. Thus He is at once Father, Son and Holy Spirit; this is the Gospel to be preached.

After this the heavenly light which I had seen before returned to above the opening, and by stages came down from there filling the interiors of my mind and illuminating my ideas about the Trinity and the Oneness of God. Then I saw that the ideas I had originally formed on these subjects, which were purely natural, were separated, as chaff is separated from the wheat by the movement of a winnowing fan, and carried away as by a wind to the north of heaven, until they were lost to view.