- In Book 11 Augustine points out that during the creation in Genesis there is an apparent separation of God (who is eternal) and his creation (trapped in time 'temporality')
- while writing the book he continually asks God to help keep his mind focused (i could use with some help too...) serving the purposes of reducing the criticisms of Augustine putting his philosophical views over God and to keep readers from giving up on intricacies of argument as God has helped him keep his mind focused showing the importance of the details
- all of his confessions are in praise of God
[XI.1-16]
Time
Following the theme in Genesis of 'beginning', Augustine tries to determine when time started and God's relation to 'beginning'. Augustine makes it clear that God did not make creation of the heavens and earth in a literal sense or within the universe at all since nothing could exist before this act of creation. The 'making' of the universe suggests that God had materials in which to 'make' the universe. And therefore Aug. shows that the words in Genesis are to be taken spiritually rather than literally.
"by your word you made (the creation)...but how did you speak?"
God created the universe with a 'word' but not like that in normal speech. Normal speech is known and successive, part of a language- it is shared. This cannot be the case with God's word of creation as it would require a succession of that 'word', that creation. And God's word cannot have succeeded in time(as time did not yet exist) so must have been spoken eternally.
The 'word' and creation of God does not become over time rather it is constant and continuously spoken.
If the 'word' is continuously spoken then how could creation be temporal and continuously change. Aug. suggests that things change but only according to God's whole eternally uttered Word and unchanging design. Everything that exists and ceases to exist, in the eternal reason where nothing changes, it is known that there is a reason for its beginning or end.
Beginning
Aug. states that the beginning is God himself or Christ, the living 'word' of God, not that he was first as there was no 'first' as God is eternal and transcendent, but rather that God is the fixed point as he is the first cause and the source of all things.
The same interpretation allows us to refer to Christ, the 'beginning' as 'wisdom' as it is the route where one can seek the wisdom of God. "Wisdom is the beginning, and in the beginning you made heaven and earth". This is a profoundly spiritual reading and has moved away from the temporal beginning and rather just focuses on the eternal wisdom in which God creates the world accessible through Christ.
Neoplatonist Porphyry (disciple of Plotinus) validly argued that the creation was impossible as there must have to be a moment when God made the decision to create. As the will of God (unchanging) would have had to change in order to create.
However Aug. claims that Porphyry failed to recognize the eternal and constant sense of the word 'creation'. God did not create the universe at a given time as for God there is no time as he is transcendent. The time that we know and follow does not apply to God and is only a feature of the creation world. The act of creation is both instantaneous and eternal. "There was no 'then'", there was no before. God created the ability to have a 'before'.
[XI.17-41]
In this section Aug. begins to consider time itself as the creation in which we live in still seems to exist in time. Following Aristotle, Aug. notes that everyone thinks they know what time is, at least they are asked...
[dictionary definition of time: the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present and future regarded as a whole]
Aug. strengthens his proof on the non-existence of time using the three defining elements of time; past (passing away), present(existing) and future(things arriving). It seems that time depends entirely on a movement toward non being as time just passes away without any purpose. Time doesnt exist except in the sense that it tends towards non-existence. This is similar to people questioning the meaning of life. He states that neither past or future actually exist and if they were they would be the present. The present can't truly be said to exist either as the present occupies 'no space' and has 'no duration' as any duration would immediately become past or future which can't exist. Hence time has no real existence at all.
However we can measure it and talk about time so it must exist. Aug. states that time can only exist in the present through memory and predictions. The past is made up only by memory images that exist in the present and the future only get its existence from predictions of signs existing in the present. Aug. stated that time has no duration- but how can we measure something if it has no duration and no extension? the answer may lay in the fact that we seem to measure time as it passes through the present moment.
But still, how and with what can we measure something that has no duration? Aug. dismissed any temporal measurements put forward by others particularly the astronomically inspired idea that time is measured by the movements of the heavenly bodies as the heavenly bodies moved in time and therefore not definitive in themselves of time.
Aug. suggests that time seems to be a form of distention(stretching) of the soul. The soul (abiding in eternal present-no other time exists) becomes stretched out into temporality into an apparent successiveness of events.
Plotinus wrote that time as a spreading out of life. However Aug. surprisingly sees this distension as a painful fall away from God. This is another version of God's eternal, unified and unchanging essence into the created world of multiplicity and temporality.
Aug. however does confirm that time is a property of the soul itself rather than the external world. That when we appear to be measuring time we are actually measuring our own memory as the past does not exist only the images of the past's existence. Hence time seems to be a property of the mind or soul perhaps as a distension.
Aug. compares his own existence of temporality with God's existence in eternity and being omniscient at all times, in a single timeless eternity...
