¹ This theme of the liberation of man from time by the Word become man — an important, though perhaps a minor one in Augustine's soteriology — has nonetheless received very little attention. For example, in his Le dogme de la rédemption chez saint Augustin (Paris 1933), Jean Rivière makes no mention of it. Nor is there any reference to it in Victorino Capánaga, o.e.s.a., ‘La deificación en la soteriología agustiniana,’ Augustinus Magister (hereafter AM) II 745–54. Even in Eugene TeSelle's excellent work, Augustine the Theologian (New York 1970), there is no mention of this theme. The only explicit discussion of it that I have found occurs in a ‘Note complémentaire’ in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne edition of Tractatus in Ioannis Evangelium (Œuvres de saint Augustin 72: Homélies sur l'Évangile de saint Jean XVII–XXXI [Paris 1977] 850 f.) by Berrouard, M.-F. This note refers to several other works on time in Augustine. Among these are Le Blond, J.-M., Les conversions de saint Augustin (Paris 1950) 246–75; Guitton, Jean, Le temps et l'éternité chez Plotin et saint Augustin (3rd ed. Paris 1959); Marrou, H.-I., L'ambivalence du temps de l'histoire chez saint Augustin (Montréal-Paris 1950); Huftier, M., Le tragique de la condition chrétienne chez saint Augustin (Paris 1964). One work treats the theme in Aquinas and in his commentators: Peter, Carl J., Participated Eternity in the Vision of God. A Study of the Opinion of Thomas Aquinas and his Commentators on the Duration of the Acts of Glory (Rome 1964). Peter gives one reference to St. Augustine (De civitate Dei 9.21; PL 41.274) where he speaks of the angels enjoying ‘participata aeternitate.’ Google Scholar

² I have quoted for the most part from PL, though I have also used the Bibliothèque Augustinienne edition. In the case of the Confessiones, I have not included the references to PL, since they are available in many editions. I have consulted, and at times paraphrased, Ryan's, John K. translation of the Confessions (Garden City, N.Y. 1960).Google Scholar

³ According to Augustine, even though we shall remain mutable in the state of beatitude, yet, insofar as we participate in God's eternity, we will not change in any respect. There will be no yesterday and no tomorrow, but only the lasting today in which nothing passes.Google Scholar

On the one hand, since God's eternity is his substance or nature, our participation in his eternity is our participation in the divine nature. This latter theme is quite common in Augustine. For example, he observes in one sermon: ‘deos facturus qui homines erant, homo factus est qui Deus erat’ (Sermo 192.1; PL 38.1012). In another sermon, he speaks of God as ‘vocans ilium ad divinitatem’ (Mai Sermo 22.1; Miscellanea Agostiniana [hereafter MA] [Rome 1930] 314), a phrase which recalls ‘vocans temporales, faciens aeternos.’ On the other hand, divine eternity interpreted as timelessness — as Augustine and Plotinus do interpret it — seems particularly opaque to the human mind, and human participation in such timeless existence seems to imply a startling transformation of the sort of existence that we know. If Descartes were correct, the situation, of course, would be worse than startling. Of eternity being simul et semel, he says: ‘Hoc concipi non potest. Est quidem simul et semel, quatenus Dei naturae nunquam quid additur aut ab ea quid detrahitur. Sed non est simul et semel, quatenus simul existit: nam cum possimus in ea distinguere partes jam post mundi creationem, quidni illud etiam possemus facere ante earn, cum eadem duratio sit?’ (Manuscrit de Göttingen 5.148f.).

Most contemporary philosophers find the non-bodily survival of death a very difficult concept with which to deal. Augustine's non-temporal survival — albeit with a resurrected body — is surely even more problematic. On the other hand, there are some texts in which Augustine seems to imply that we shall cease to be human beings: e.g., In Ioannis Evangelium Tr. 1.4, where he says, ‘ne simus homines.’ However, he interprets this as the transformation to adopted sonship. Thus in Sermo 166.4.4 (PL 38.909) he says ‘Noli succensere. Non enim ita tibi dicitur ut homo non sis, ut pecus sis: sed ut sis inter eos quibus dedit potestatem filios Dei fieri (Joan. 1.12). Deus enim deum te vult facere: non natura, sicut est ille quem genuit; sed dono suo et adoptione.’

⁴ Though the expression ‘eternal life’ is used fairly frequently in the Scriptures, especially in the Johannine writings, none of these usages suggests anything like the notion of timelessness that is found in Plotinus and Augustine. Even the eternity of God seems to mean no more than that God has neither beginning nor end. In L'éternité dans la vie quotidienne. Essai sur les sources et la structure du concept d'éternité (Bruges 1964) 146f., Jacques Durandeaux sums up the biblical doctrine of eternity: ‘l'éternité est prise, dans la Bible, comme temps qui ne finit pas. …’ He finds 184 occurrences of the term in the Vulgate and breaks them down into various categories: e.g., eternity as attribute of God, as abode of God, as unchangeable, definitive, and transcendent value, as solidity, as the afterlife, as the renewed world of the parousia, and as the abode of man. Traditional theological manuals seem to rely very heavily on Boethius’ definition, ‘interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio,’ and note that the concept of eternity excludes (1) beginning and end and (2) all succession; see, e.g., Dalmau, I. M., ‘De Deo Uno et Trino,’ Sacrae Theologiae Summa II (Madrid 1958) 97f.Google Scholar

⁵ In De trinitate 5.16.17 (PL 42.922), Augustine indicates that what begins to be truly said of God from a certain time is predicated of God relatively, i.e., according to accident. However, the accident in question is not in God, but in some creature with respect to which God begins to be said to be. Thus God began to be called the God of the Patriarchs, not by reason of a change in himself, but by reason of a change in the Patriarchs. Before they existed, God could not be truly said to be their God. Hence, though there was no time when it could not have been truly said of God that he is ‘who is,’ God is truly said to be the God of Abraham only from that point in time when Abraham lived. See my ‘Properties of God and the Predicaments in De Trinitate V,’ The Modern Schoolman 59 (1981) 1–19.Google Scholar

⁶ In De civitate Dei 11.11 (PL 41.478), Augustine seems to equate the eternal life of the angels with endless existence: ‘Neque enim sicut vita, quamdiucumque fuerit, ita aeterna vita veraciter dici poterit, si finem habitura sit; si quidem vita tantummodo vivendo, aeterna vero finem non habendo nominata est.’ Google Scholar

⁷ MA 1.488.Google Scholar

⁸ The next line in the sermon just quoted says that there came to heal our swelling a great physician; ‘swelling’ or ‘tumor’ suggests, in Augustine's works, the sin of pride by which the soul fell into multiplicity, into body, and into times. Cf. Sermo 123.1 (PL 38.684), where Augustine talks of a ‘tumor superbiae.’ Google Scholar

⁹ Cf. ‘The World-Soul and Time in Saint Augustine,’ Augustinian Studies 14 (1983) 77–94, where I argue that the definition of time as distentio animi is not a definition of one kind of time, but a definition of time.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Augustine holds that we become what we love. Thus in Sermo 121.1 (PL 38.678), he observes ‘Amando Deum, efficimur dii: ergo amando mundum, dicimur mundus.’ Similarly, if one wishes to remain eternally, he must love the eternal Word. ‘Omnis enim anima sequitur quod amat…. Verbum autem Domini manet in aeternum. Ecce quod ames, si vis manere in aeternum.’ So, too, he urges: ‘Tenete potius dilectionem Dei, ut quomodo Deus est aeternus, sic et vos maneatis in aeternum: quia talis est quisque qualis ejus dilectio est. Terrain diligis? terra eris. Deum diligis? quid dicam? deus eris? Non audeo dicere ex me, Scipturas audiamus …’ (In epist. Io. ad Parthos 2.14; PL 35.1997).Google Scholar

¹¹ There are several other texts which bear at least indirectly upon this theme. For example, in Enchiridion 56 (PL 40.258f.), Augustine says that the Church is the house in which the Trinity dwells. ‘Quae tota hic accipienda est, non solum ex parte qua peregrinatur in terris … verum etiam ex illa quae in coelis semper, ex quo condita est, cohaesit Deo, nec ullum malum sui casus experta est. Haec in Sanctis Angelis persistit, et suae parti peregrinanti sicut oportet opitulatur; quia utraque una erit consortio aeternitatis….’ Google Scholar

In De doctrina Christiana 1.34.38 (PL 34.33f.), Augustine speaks of Christ who came to free our nature from temporalibus. ‘Ex quo intelligitur quam nulla res in via tenere nos debeat, quando nec ipse Dominus in quantum via nostra esse dignatus est, tenere nos voluit, sed transire; ne rebus temporalibus, quamvis ab illo pro salute nostra susceptis et gestis, haereamus infirmiter, sed per eas potius curramus alacriter, ut ad eum ipsum, qui nostram naturam a temporalibus liberavit, et collocavit ad dexteram Patris, provehi atque pervehi mereamur.’ Thus even the temporal reality of the humanity of Christ, it seems, is not to be clung to. In Sermo 38.3.5, he speaks of our life growing ‘ut fiat aeterna.’

¹² ‘En somme, sauf peut être tempus, Augustin n'a pas eu de nom pour le monde de la genesis. Ce qui s'oppose chez lui à l'esse de l'essentia véritable, c'est cette approximation de l'être dont il répète qu'elle est ‘plus ou moins’ et que, sans être vraiment néant, elle n'est pas “vraiment”’ (Gilson, Étienne, ‘Notes sur l'être et le temps chez saint Augustin,’ Recherches Augustiniennes II [Paris 1962] 212). So too, Huftier, M. (Le tragique 201f.) speaks of time and eternity as characterizing respectively creature and Creator. ‘Exactement, temps et éternité désignent deux modes d'être différents et hétérogènes, caractérisant respectivement la créature et le créateur: d'un côté l'être, l'immobile permanence; nécessité, immutabilité, éternité, sont les caractéristiques de Dieu, les conditions du vere esse; de l'autre, on a un temps lié à la création mobile et changeante — et qui, d'ailleurs, est né avec elle —: les créatures sont à la fois et ne sont pas. Dieu et la créature, l'éternité et le temps, c'est la condition de ce qui est par rapport à ce qui passe et ne tient pas.’ Google Scholar

¹³ Gilson remarks that Marrou has correctly emphasized the pessimistic notion of time in Augustine — a notion that has been strangely neglected by recent commentators. 'L'excuse de ces commentateurs est que, chez saint Augustin lui-même, le temps n'est jamais là que comme ce qui doit être transcendé. Les techniques de rédemption du temps bouchent la vue. Elles occupent d'autant plus de place que, dans une doctrine où Dieu est l'éternité même, le mieux qu'on puisse dire du temps est qu'il est un moindre bien, et comme une tache sur la pureté de l'être, que la vie chrétienne a pour objet d'effacer' (art. cit. 233 n. 43). Along the same lines, Marrou (L'ambivalence 68) speaks of time as having become intimately bound up with ‘le péché, la dégradation et la mort' from the moment of the fall. For Augustine, 'l'insertion dans le temps nous condamne à cet effritement de l'être, à ce lent glissement vers la destruction, vers la mort’ (ibid. 46) Le Blond, however, claims that the time of the Christian, in Augustine's view, is transformed, restored, and saved. ‘Mais cette considération entraîne au delà du temps du pécheur; pour apprécier la pensée d'Augustin sur le temps, le plus important n'est pas d'analyser la durée pécheresse en l'opposant à la stabilité mystérieuse du premier homme, mais d'étudier sa transformation, sa solidification en l'homme racheté; c'est le temps restauré, sauvé par le Christ, aussi bien dans l'individu que dans l'histoire humaine, le temps du chrétien’ (Conversions 271). Despite Le Blond's claim, as far as I can see, Augustine does not see time as transformed or restored or saved. Christ has not come to save time, but to save or free man from time. Time will be transformed — not into a Christian time, but into eternity. (One is tempted to think of Augustinian time as aufgehoben into eternity, in the threefold Hegelian sense.) Google Scholar

In Enarr. in Ps. 38.9 (PL 36.420), Augustine says: ‘Non enim sic Christo induti sumus, ut ex Adam jam nihil portemus. Videte veterascentem Adam, et innovari Christum in nobis….’ He ties this to the Pauline outer man that is being corrupted, while the inner man is renewed (2 Cor 4.16). However, he explicitly links time to our heritage from Adam:

Ergo ad peccatum, ad mortalitatem, ad praetervolantia tempora, ad gemitum et laborem et sudorem, ad aetates succedentes, non manentes, ab infantia usque ad senectutem sine sensu transeuntes, ad haec attendentes, videamus hic veterem hominem, veterem diem, vetus canticum, Vetus Testamentum….

However, the new man, the new day, the new song, and the new convenant are found in the inner man. We pass from the old to the new as the old is corrupted, until we come to the resurrection. We are, that is, being renewed now in the inner man; however, time is still part of our heritage from Adam. ‘Ecce trahit adhuc Adam, et sic festinat ad Christum … Veteres dies ex Adam …’ (ibid.). The coming of Christ has made a difference; however, time is transformed only in spe, not in re, until we come to God's eternity where time will be no more

¹⁴ Augustine also develops the theme of God's having become man in order to make men gods, sharers in his divine nature, and sharers in eternity. Some of Augustine's language, e.g., ‘ne simus homines’ (cf. supra n. 3), may seem to threaten our survival as humans, but in no case does he speak of the Word's freeing us from our being creatures. Our eternity will be a participated eternity.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Thus Le Blond says, ‘C'est donc au péché que l'homme est redevable de sa dispersion dans le temps …’ (Conversions 270). For the Neoplatonists, according to Marrou, ‘l'insertion de l'âme humaine dans le devenir était le mal fondamental dont ils aspiraient à s'affranchir, et à bon droit, car enfermés dans le cercle de la nature dechue, il ne pouvaient connaître ni concevoir d'autre temps que le temps du péché, du vieillissement et de la mort’ (L'ambivalence 73). Marrou recognizes in Augustine traces of such Plotinian views. However, I suspect that he is not correct in implying that Augustine conceives of another time than the time of sin, aging, and death. Man's liberation from time is not, as I read Augustine, a liberation from a kind of time, but from time.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Marrou, (L'ambivalence 65f.) says that historical time, the time since the fall, is only one aspect of time. ‘Il semble bien qu'il faille concevoir ce qu'on pourrait appeler un temps cosmique, le temps dans lequel se déploie l'œuvre de la Création divine: c'est celui que postulent les hypothèses du savant moderne, qu'il soit géologue ou biologiste….’ Similarly, J. Chaix-Ruy (‘La cité de Dieu et la structure du temps,’ AM II 928) distinguishes an essential time before the fall from the existential time after the fall, the latter marked by the sin of the angels and the sin of man. However, he notes, ‘et voici que nous abordons un problème que saint Augustin n'a touché qu'avec d'infinies précautions, en s'excusant presque de le traiter….’ So, too, Marrou passes over the participation of man in this cosmic time before the fall (L'ambivalence 67).Google Scholar

Marrou Perhaps and Chaix-Ruy — neither of whom offers any textual evidence for cosmic or essential time — wisely avoid much discussion of it, for given the Plotinian background, there was no way for Augustine to fit it into his account. It is interesting to note that Gabriel Marcel seems to hold what I read Augustine as holding. ‘… Il n'y a peut-être pas de sens à parler de temps avant la chute. Le temps est relatif au monde — peut-être n'y a-t-il un monde qu'après la chute’ (Présence et immortalité [Paris 1959] 88).

¹⁷ In ‘The World-Soul and Time …,’ I argued that Augustine seems to have held as late as the Confessions that there was an all-soul, of which individual souls were somehow parts and that he avoids a subjective account of time by making time the distention of the all-soul, as Plotinus does. However, it is by the universal soul that the world is formed insofar as that soul falls from contemplation of the eternal into busy activity concerning the world. Thus Augustine seems to tie the beginning of time to the fall of the soul. In Les conversions de saint Augustin, Le Blond appeals to the line ‘In te anima mea tempora metior’ to argue: ‘Certes l'âme dans laquelle Augustin mesure le temps n'est pas l'âme du monde’ (263, n. 88). But he admits that Augustine's account of time is otherwise quite close to Plotinus'. If, on the other hand, soul is both one and many, as De quantitate animae 32.69 suggests, the text Le Blond cites need not count against my argument.Google Scholar

¹⁸ An examination of the meanings of liberare and liberatio in a Latin dictionary indicates that that from which one is freed is something bad or negative, e.g., slavery, an obligation, a debt, a difficulty, fear, taxes. The limited survey of Augustine's use of these terms that I have been able to make would seem to support this idea. For example, he speaks of ‘liberatio ab omnibus peccatis … ab omnibus malis, et ab omni corruptione mortalitatis’ (Contra Iulianum 4.13.40; PL 44.844), and he contrasts ‘liberatio’ with ‘damnatio’ (Enchir. 99; PL 40.278).Google Scholar

¹⁹ ‘Si homo non perisset, Filius hominis non venisset’ (Sermo 174.2.2; PL 38.940). ‘Quare venit in mundum? “Peccatores salvos facere” (1 Tim 1.15). Alia causa non fuit quare venerit in mundum’ (Sermo 174.7.8; PL 38944).Google Scholar

²⁰ ‘Nulla causa fuit veniendi Christo Domino, nisi peccatores salvos facere. Tolle morbos, tolle vulnera, et nulla causa est medicinae. Si venit de caelo magnus medicus, magnus per totum orbem terrae iacebat aegrotus. Ipse aegrotus genus humanum est’ (Sermo 171.1; PL 38.945).Google Scholar

²¹ In De peccatorum meritis et remissione 1.16.21 (PL 44.120f.), Augustine speaks of Adam as losing his stabilitas aetatis, as beginning to die on that day on which he sinned. ‘Non enim stat vel temporis puncto, sed sine intermissione labitur, quidquid continua mutatione sensim currit in finem, non perficientem, sed consumentem.’ Hence, he adds, every man needs to be freed from the condemnation of sin (damnatio peccati). Thus Adam's loss of stabilitas and his insertion, along with all mankind, into the consuming stream of time is part of the damnatio peccati from which we need liberation.Google Scholar

This is an important point, since most treatments of time in St. Augustine deal with it as a question in metaphysics — a question about the nature of the created world — and not as question about sin and the need for salvation. If time is an effect of sin, something from which Christ has come to free us, then it would not seem possible to have a philosophy of time as opposed to a theology of time.

Le Blond (Conversions 270) says, ‘C'est donc au péché que l'homme est redevable de sa dispersion dans le temps….’ So one is obliged to conclude ‘que notre temps a été bouleversé par le péché dans sa contexture la plus intime et que toute étude purement philosophique de la durée est condamnée à demeurer superficielle.’ On the other hand, Marrou (L'ambivalence 64f.) cautions, ‘N'en concluons pas trop hâtivement que le temps lui-même, in se, est nécessairement lié au péché … nous parlons ici simplement du temps historique, le temps d'après la Chute et ce n'est là, bien entendu, qu'un aspect de la temporalité.’ However, Marrou's notion of a ‘cosmic’ time before the fall is, it seems to me, not solidly grounded in the Augustinian text (see supra n. 16).

²² Augustine's Early Theory of Man, A.D. 386–391 (Cambridge, Mass. 1968) 181.Google Scholar

²³ Marrou calls attention to the significance of vetus for the ancients. ‘Ici la notion précieuse à retrouver est celle de vieillissement: saint Augustin ne s'étonne pas de lire en son Psautier …: Ecce veteres posuisti dies meos. … car, à ses yeux l'insertion dans le temps nous condamne à cet effritement de l'être, à ce lent glissement vers la destruction, vers la mort. Nous avons peine, nous modernes, à nous représenter avec exactitude ce qui pouvait signifier pour un Grec ou un Latin le terme de “vieux, ancien,” palaios, vetus: c'était pour eux ce qui, ayant été réel, actif, était maintenant et à jamais dépassé, aboli, rejeté au néant par l'inflexible déroulement de la chaîne des âges’ (L'ambivalence 45f.).Google Scholar

²⁴ The language here calls to mind the language of that most Plotinian and most Christian passage in the Confessions, the vision at Ostia. Perhaps there is more than a superficial similarity of language; as P. Henry (La vision d'Ostie [Paris 1938] 114) remarked, ‘La vie éternelle n'est que la vision d'Ostie prolongée sans fin.’ Google Scholar

²⁵ For the justification of interpreting this passage in the Plotinian sense, O'Connell, Robert s.j., St. Augustine's Confessions: The Odyssey of Soul (Cambridge, Mass. 1969) 143. Cf. O'Connell's whole chapter on Book 11 of the Confessions for the fall of the soul into time.Google Scholar

²⁶ For example, in De vera religione 88 (PL 33.161), Augustine says, ‘Non enim sic quidem ab homine homo diligendus est, ut diligantur carnales fratres, vel filii, vel conjuges, vel quique cognati, vel affines aut cives. Nam et dilectio ista temporalis est.’ And in the next section he adds, ‘Oderimus ergo temporales necessitudines, si aeternitatis charitate flagramus.’ Note, too, the first definition of sin in De libero arbitrio 1.16.34 (PL 32.1240): ‘neglectis rebus aeternis, quibus per seipsam mens fruitur, et per seipsam percepit, et quas amans amittere not potest, temporalia … sectari.’ Google Scholar

²⁷ So Conf. 12.12.15: ‘Duo reperio, quae fecisti carentia temporibus, cum tibi neutrum coaeternum sit: unum, quod ita formatum est, ut sine ullo defectu contemplationis, sine ullo intervallo mutationis, quamvis mutabile, tamen non mutatum tua aeternitate atque incommutabilitate perfruatur; alterum, quod ita informe erat, ut ex qua forma in quam formam vel motionis vel stationis mutaretur, quo tempori subderetur, non haberet.’ Google Scholar

²⁸ Blond, Le (Conversions 369) equates the heaven of heaven with the angels alone. Gilson (The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine [London 1961] 197f.) makes the same identification. Augustine seems rather to have held that the souls of men are quite literally angels fallen into bodies and times. See O'Connell, , Augustine's Early Theory 183, The main contention of this chapter is exactly this: during the years a.d. 389–391, Augustine said, and meant to say, that we were “fallen souls.” Augustine's view of the angels is easily missed if one reads him through Thomistic glasses.’ For example, in De civitate Dei 9.13.3, he defines man as a mortal rational animal and an angel as an immortal rational animal. Of all that he has created there is nothing closer to God than the human soul, which is equal to an angel (De quantitate animae 77f.; PL 32.1077f.). In the resurrection we will be changed from being simply men, so that we are equal to the angels (Enarr. in Ps. 126.3; PL 37.1669). Our body will be changed for the better, i.e., into a spiritual body, when we are made equal to the angels (Matt. 22.30), fit for the heavenly dwelling (De Gen. ad litt. 6.24.35; PL 34.353). However, it is not merely our destiny that will be one with the angels. Confessions 12 seems to say that our origin was one with theirs in the heaven of heaven from which we have fallen and to which we return.Google Scholar

²⁹ Note how Augustine moves here from the singular ‘mind’ to the plural ‘spirits’ and ‘citizens.’ I suspect that there are two problems behind this apparent confusion. One is a metaphysical problem concerning the principle of individuation for Augustinian–Plotinian souls; it seems that they are individuated by the bodies they govern. The other is a textual problem in Plotinus, who has the same position on the relation of the one and the many. Augustine discovered some similarities to this in the language of some scriptural texts.Google Scholar

³⁰ Peregrinatio is usually translated as pilgrimage, and perhaps that is not a bad translation. However, the Latin literally means a wandering away from one's homeland or fatherland. Hence a peregrinus is a stranger, one away from home, from where he belongs, one suffering from nostalgia — like Odysseus or the prodigal son.Google Scholar

³¹ ‘First of all, who except a Christian steeped in the thought of Plotinus would pass so naturally, in a single sentence, from speaking of the spiritalis creatura, the company of angels, as coelum and domus dei to speaking of it as mens (Conf. 12.11 and 15); and where except in Plotinus can we find the conception of a Mind transcending the material world which is both one and many, a community of minds or spirits formed by and united in a single contemplation? St. Augustine's insistence, too, that the spiritual creation is prior to and not subject to time is exactly in accord with the thought of Plotinus’ (Armstrong, A. H., ‘Spiritual or Intelligible Matter in Plotinus and St. Augustine,’ AM 1. 280).Google Scholar

³² O'Connell, (Confessions 20), in dealing with the audiences to which the Confessions were directed, identifies these scriptural exegetes as ‘conservative’ Catholics, who were quite skeptical about accepting Augustine's Plotinian understanding of the Christian faith.Google Scholar

³³ In De libero arbitrio 3.15.42 (PL 32.1292), Augustine even uses the passing character of times as an apologetic argument. ‘Quapropter omnia temporalia, quae in hoc rerum ordine ita locata sunt, ut nisi deficiant, non possint praeteritis futura succedere, ut tota temporum in suo genere pulchritudo peragatur, absurdissime dicimus non debere deficere. Quantum enim acceperunt, tantum agunt, et tantum reddunt ei cui debent quod sunt in quantumcumque sunt.’ So, too, if the first syllable did not pass, he argues, the whole word could not be heard, and no one would want to hear only the first syllable.Google Scholar

³⁴ ‘… quae temporalia et antequam sint non sunt, et cum sunt fugiunt, et cum fugerint non erunt. Itaque cum futura sunt, nondum sunt; cum autem praeterita sunt, jam non sunt. Quomodo igitur tenebuntur ut maneant, quibus hoc est incipere ut sint, quod est pergere ut non sint?’ (De libero arbitrio 3.7.21; PL 32.1281). ‘… tempora surripiunt quod amamus …’ (De vera religione 35.65; PL 34.151).Google Scholar

³⁵ Rouet de Journel's Enchiridion patristicum lists eleven entries on God's eternity prior to the time of Augustine. In most of them, however, God is said merely to be without beginning or end, without a source, unborn, and unmade. Some of these texts seem to indicate that eternity is radically other than time; however, none has explicitly the tota simul element.Google Scholar

³⁶ On the other hand, in METOUSIA TOU THEOU: Man's Participation in God's Perfections according to Saint Gregory of Nyssa (Rome 1966) 137ff., David Balas, S.O. Cist., seems to indicate a clear dependence of Gregory of Nyssa upon Plotinus' conception of time and eternity. Furthermore, Gregory speaks of man's sharing in God's eternity so that memory and hope are excluded.Google Scholar

³⁷ For the claim that Augustine and through him the whole Western Church came to conceive of God as immaterial or spiritual, cf. Verbeke, G., L'évolution de la doctrine du pneuma, du stoicisme à s. Augustin (Louvain 1945) and François, Masai, ‘Les conversions de Saint Augustin et les débuts du spiritualisme en Occident,’ Le Moyen Age 65 (1961) 1–40.Google Scholar

³⁸ The concepts of the spiritual and of the eternal have, after all, a conceptual affinity. For, as ‘spiritual’ entails the absence of extention into length, breadth, and depth, ‘eternal’ entails the absence of extension into past and future. As a spiritual substance is whole everywhere it is, so an eternal substance is whole whenever it is. Since these concepts are in some sense correlative, it seems unlikely that one could conceive the eternal without conceiving the spiritual.Google Scholar

³⁹ In his note, ‘Ce qu'Augustin dit avoir lu de Plotin,’ in the Bibliothèque Augustinienne edition of the Confessions, pp. 686f., A. Solignac lists the following texts from the Enneads as passages in Plotinus possibly corresponding to this section in John: Enneads 5.1.4.21–25, 5.1.10.10–13, and 1.6.6.13–31.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Augustine says, in another context, that ‘quidam philosophi huius mundi’ came to know God through creation. They saw where they must go; ‘viderunt hoc quod dicit Iohannes, quia per Verbum Dei facta sunt omnia.’ And what is even more striking, he says, ‘Illud potuerunt videre quod est, sed viderunt de longe’ (In Joannis Evangelium Tr. 2.4; PL 35. 1390).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Of Augustine's interpretation of ‘in Idipsum,’ which he found in his version of Psalm 4.9, Gilson says: ‘Pour avoir lu dans cet id ipsum, décalque du to auto des Septante, l'immuable identité à soi-même de l'être vraiment être, il faut qu'Augustin ait trouvé dans la lecture de la Bible une irresistible provocation à se souvenir de Platon’ (‘Notes sur l';être’ 207). For a survey of the interpretation of ‘in Idipsum’ see Swetnam, James s.j., ‘A Note on In Idipsum in St. Augustine,’ The Modern Schoolman 30 (1952–3) 328–31.Google Scholar

⁴² In Ennead 1.6.8, Plotinus says, ‘The Fatherland for us is there whence we have come. There is the Father. What is our course ? What is to be the manner of our flight? Here there is no journeying for the feet; feet bring us only from land to land. Nor is it for coach or ship to bear us off. We must close our eyes and invoke a new manner of seeing …’ (tr. O'Brien, Elmer, The Essential Plotinus [New York 1964] 42).Google Scholar

⁴³ ‘Sic est enim tamquam videat quisque de longe patriam, et mare interiaceat; videt quo eat, sed non habet qua eat…. Ut ergo esset et qua iremus, venit inde ad quam ire volebamus. Et quid fecit? Instituit lignum quod mare transeamus. Nemo enim potest transire mare huius saeculi, nisi cruce Christi portatus.’ So, too, in the following column, he upbraids the philosophers for their pride: ‘noluerunt tenere humilitatem Christ, in qua navi securi pervenirent ad id quod longe videre potuerunt, et sorduit eis crux Christi. Mare transeundum est, et lignum contemnis’ (In Ioannis Evangelium Tr. 2.2 and 4; PL 35.1389f.).Google Scholar