Augustine
on time and eternity
In
the Eleventh book of his Confessions Augustine tries to place
his personal history within a larger and general framework, which at the same
time concerns the fate of everyone. This chapter is concerned with Creation. It
is about the first line of the Holy Scripture: What does mean: In the beginning God created heaven and earth ? And with this first Bible verse he has in fact already connected
time and eternity.
When Augustine begins his Eleventh book, he addresses God with the words Lord, yours is eternity. He Himself, aware that He stands within time, recognizes that his Creator is eternal . This means that God as perfect Being is not bound to the category of time. In the future he will always talk about time before the Eternal. He does not have to tell his story to the Eternal, as if He did not know this. But nevertheless he tells his story to his readers to praise God's greatness.
What does mean creation for Augustine?
This
view is based on a Platonic worldview, in which everything in this world has
its own existence, but is at the same time a sign of a spiritual reality. All
things in heaven and earth exist in themselves. They are good and beautiful,
but at the same time they point to an absolute Goodness and Beauty, that is to
say to the one from whom they derive their existence.
In
the Tenth Book of his Confessions,
which precedes this book, Augustine wonders why not everyone sees a
relationship in things to their maker. I quote that passage:
Isn't the beauty of the universe
visible to anyone with good senses? Why doesn't she speak the same language to
everyone? The animals, from small to large, see her, but cannot ask questions
about it. They have no reason to judge what their senses report. But man can
ask questions. Their minds can see God's invisible essence in the things that
are created (Rom.1:20).
But because of their desire for the
visible, they become dependent on it and are therefore no longer able to judge
it. Created things only answer those who question and judge them. Of course,
they always speak the same language: that of their beauty. When one person only
sees that beauty and the other also asks questions while seeing it, they appear
not different to one person than to another. But though they have the same
appearance, their beauty is mute to the one and speaks to the other. Or rather, she
speaks to all, but only they understand her, who test her voice that comes from
without by the truth that is within them. And that truth tells me: Your God is
not the heavens, nor the earth, nor any other bodily being. Their nature makes
that clear. To anyone who sees, all that is matter is less in its parts than in
its whole. (Confessions X. 10)
Augustine
refers here to a property of everything that is matter, namely their extension.
All material things occupy space and therefore they are divided into different
parts. And while they are one in some respect, they are not totally one,
because they are spatially divided. To that extent you cannot attribute the
quality of being to things . They are not wholly
insofar as they are many and not
wholly one.
Above,
Augustine already established that material things constantly change and vary.
This also shows that they are not
complete but are in a process of coming
into being . They are in a constant flow of developing and disappearing.
And with that we touch on the phenomenon of time.
The material world is shows temporality and therefore also transience.
All this shows that heaven and earth did not make themselves, but that there
must be some spiritual principle that created them and continues to maintain
them.
Creation through the Word
In
the Eleventh Book, Augustine tries to
discover a spiritual meaning of the words In
the beginning God created heaven and earth. It becomes problematic when you
take that in the beginning literally and
understand the act of creation materially, as taking place in time and space.
God is eternal and therefore does not work at certain points in time. He is
outside of time, because he also created time itself as part of the material
world. For that reason, creation did not take place at a specific point in time.
But
how should we understand In the beginning? Augustine points out that heaven and earth were not created from any
matter, but were created from nothing by God's Word. It is clear that we
should not represent that Word physically either. It is the expression of God's spiritual creative
Power that exist with Him outside of time for all time. When
you speak of In the Beginning, this Word is without beginning, because it has always been there. And as a
creative principle it is at the same time the Beginning of the entire
universe.
We must understand In the beginning more as it is expressed in the Prologue of the Gospel of John: When all things began there was already the Word. The Word dwelt with God and what God was was also the Word. So the Word was with God in the beginning, and through Him all things came into being. And without Him, none of what came into existence came into being. And of everything that came into life He was the light. (John 1:1).
When
we speak of the incarnation of God's Word, it becomes clear that God has
incarnated Himself in His creation through His Word from the beginning.
In this context, creation appears not to be a one-time divine act, but a
continuous process that does not end. The divine Word therefore not only
brought everything into existence, but also continuously maintains everything.
Augustine uses for the divine Word the Latin term Verbum, a term which is the equivalent for Logos in the original Greek. So in the beginning there was the divine Logos . In Greek this means not only word , but also reason . This term therefore contains more than our concept of spoken or written word. Augustine speaks in this eleventh book also of the divine Reason (Ratio ) ( Confessions XI,8)
The Logos is therefore the divine creative power that is active in all that exists. It is therefore not so much, as in the current concept of reason or ratio, a cold measuring instrument, but a dynamic force that carries everything created to its completion. This ultimately means that everything is returned to its divine origin. Augustine puts it this way:
We come back to where we came from. Yes, the Word is the Beginning, for if He were not abiding when we wander, we would have nothing to return to. He teaches us, for He is the Beginning and speaks to us. (Confessions XI,10)
The Logos spermatikos
If the Logos is a living force operating in all creation, then He is pre-eminently present in the consciousness of every human being. In the spiritual tradition this is called the Logos spermatikos, the divine presence planted like a seed deep in human consciousness . Although to my knowledge Augustine does not use the image of the seed, it does express well what was particularly important to him. God is interior intimo meo , more inner than my deepest inner self. It is a hidden presence that people must become aware of and develop further in life.
As this
consciousness grows it becomes clear that this life has an eternal, timeless
dimension. But then, as Augustine mentioned earlier, we must leave the world of
the senses and turn inward. However, we are so used to thinking in space and
time that even the word eternal literally
suggests endless time and that is something that frightens. It is better to
approach eternity from a negative
perspective and realize that it is about what is timeless .
What is time?
Now
that Augustine has established that God also in creating the world also created
time, he seeks to define what time is. We know the famous statement from him: When no one asks me, I know, when I have to
explain it to someone who asks me, I don't know . ( Confessions XI,17). On the one hand, we are so familiar with time,
that we think we know it, but in the sequel, Augustine, rhetor as he is,
manages to raise so many questions that it makes your head spin. Because just
when you think you have a handle on time, it turns out to slip through your
hands again.
Starting
from the familiar division of time into three parts: past tense, present tense and
future tense, Augustine asks
himself, in short, the following questions: How can we speak of the past tense
as a reality, while it has passed away and no more exists? And how can we
speak of the future tense as if it were a reality, when it does not yet exist?
And what about the present tense? Is that a reality to which we can cling, even
though the moment it exists has already passed and is no more? He puts it as
follows:
“If the present tense were always
present and did not pass into the past, there would no longer be time, but
eternity. But if it is the case that the present becomes time, wich passes
into the past, how can we say that it realy
ís
? For it derives its existence from the
fact that it ceases to be .
Can we then really say that time is when
it only strives not to be
?“(Confessions XI,17)
These questions about
the nature of time are clearly intended to gradually convince the reader that
time does not exist as a physical reality, but must be approached from a
different angle. It will not be surprising that Augustine sees time as a
reality of the mind.
It has now become clear that future and past things do
not really exist. So one cannot actually say that there are three tenses, the
past, the present and the future. It is better to say that there are three
tenses, by which we mean: the presence of things past, the presence of
things present, and the presence of things to come. Those three aspects of
time are in the soul and I do not see them elsewhere. The presence of things
past is memory, the presence of things present is immediate sensation, and the
presence of things to come is expectation. (Confessions XI,26)
There are three
processes present in the mind: the expectation of what will come, the attention
to what is present and the memory of what is passed away. These three coincide
in one movement, which passes like a stream from the future via the present to
the past. Augustine illustrates this by singing a song. In the beginning, the
anticipation is focused on the entire song that has to be sung. But once
begun, each of the parts to be sung passes into the past and then becomes
part of the memory, so that at the end of the song there is no expectation left
and everything has become past. Based on this image of the continuous flow in
time from what is not yet to what is no longer, Augustine concludes:
What is true of the entire song is also true of each
individual part of the song and each of its syllables. It also applies to a
longer action of which this song may be only a part. It also applies to the
entire life of man, of which every action is a part. This also applies to the
entire human race, of which all people are a part. (Confessions XI,38)
So time is a reality
of the human mind. It is man who has expectations and memories. But
this also means he is constantly divided about what is yet to come and what
has already passed. This condition led Augustine to the conviction that time is
a distentio animi , which means that
the human mind is, as it were, stretched
out and divided between future
and past and therefore subject to the temporality of existence. (Confessions XI,33)
The distentio animi
I
return briefly to Augustine's statement above about the division of everything
that is matter: For everyone who sees,
everything that is matter is less in its parts than in its whole. (Confessions. X.10) Therefore he argued that they lack unity . Their essence consists in
extension and therefore they are divided into multiplicity .
If
you follow Augustine's view, you could also attribute the same kind of
imperfection to time, since it was created with the material world. Also time as
a part of this world lies apart. And
that means that the human mind, which essentially strives for unity, is
divided and, as it were, torn apart in
time.
This
view of distentio animi is strongly
inspired by the philosophy of Plotinus, who calls existence a diastasis, a lying apart. His view is that man comes from
the One , but in this life is spread
over many and will have to try to
return to his origin, the One . Augustine
adopts this image, but interprets it according to his Christian philosophy. It
is the philosophy of the divine Logos who operates throughout the cosmos
and who has descended in time to return men to the One . And thus He has sanctified the temporal by making it a
passage to eternity.
This
philosophy appears not to be a casual reflection on the nature of creation. It
is about the existence of man within this whole. What is his fate, what his
destiny? Augustine leaves no doubt that this temporary life is not his final
destination, but a passage to the real Being, which he was able to experience
in his life. His philosophy is not a theory, but is based on something he has
personally experienced, the taste of the eternal, of complete being, which only
can fully fulfill his desire. After these experiences there is always a
setback in time. In that respect, you could say that Augustine suffered from
time, knowing that there was more to come. From this tension between time and eternity testifies the
penultimate chapter of the Eleventh Book:
Your mercy is better than all lives.
See how my life is stretched out on many sides. But Your right hand has
received me to my Lord, the Son of Man, the mediator between You, the One, and
us who are many, who live in a multitude of dispersions. Therefore I grasp Him
by Whom I am also seized. Thus I leave my old days behind and am gathered to
follow the One. And I forget the past and leave behind me the things to come
that are passing away and I reach forward to what is before me, not divided,
but with full concentration. So I pursue the palm branch of Him who calls
above, where I will hear your song of praise and behold your glory, which has
no coming or passing away.
But now my years pass away in sighs.
You are my comfort, my Lord and Father, You are eternal, but I am scattered in
the times whose order I do not know. The storm of incoherent events tears apart
my thoughts and the deepest bowels of my soul, until, melted and purified in
the fire of your love, I merge into You. (Confessions XI,39)
Good times or bad times?
From the foregoing you could perhaps deduce
that Augustine regards this temporary existence as something bad that should be
left behind as soon as possible. In light of the timeless life he expects, this
existence appears to be far from perfect indeed. It is full of suffering and
trial and ultimately transient and impermanent. However, that does not mean it
has no value. He sees this life as a passage, a journey to the homeland. The
road matters. In the flow of time, the traveler can become aware of what is
important and what can hinder him from completing the journey. Time is a
creation of God. Here too, creation is good and beautiful. But the good and
beautiful that this existence offers points to a timeless goodness and beauty.
I quote from the Seventh Book of the Confessions
So I
saw and it became clear to me that You have made all things good and that there
is absolutely nothing that You have not made. And since You have not made all
things equal, all things are good in their indiduality, and all
things together are very good, for our God has made all things very good.
(Confessions VII,18)
and further:
I no
longer just longed for things that are better, because I looked at the whole.
Of course I saw that the things of higher value are better than those of lower
value. But a sounder judgment led me to believe that the whole of creation is
better than the higher alone. (Confessions VII, 19)
It is therefore important to embrace this entire
divine system of creation and agree that it is very good. That is what
Augustine wants to tell us about time and eternity.