Book III, Chapter 51

CHAPTER 51

On Eternity

Still, with the spirit of understanding raising us a little higher, this same truth can be shown by another route, namely the route of *A1 eternity, touched on in the thirtieth of this book. For once this is known, God and His knowing and willing can in some way be known; but if this is unknown, then those too are necessarily unknown. So we must first say a little about ‖A2 eternity itself. It is agreed, according to the opinion of the Philosophers, that a measure ought to be of one kind with the thing measured and similar to it. But man is changeable, and his actions are changeable; therefore they are also measured by a changeable measure, that is, a temporal one, namely time itself or the instant. God, however, and any intrinsic action of His, such as knowing and willing, is wholly unchangeable, as the fifth and twenty-third of the first teach. Therefore neither God nor any intrinsic action of His is measured per se, immediately and properly, by a changeable measure, namely time or the instant, but ‖B1 by an unchangeable, invariable, stable and eternal measure, or rather by eternity itself, remaining wholly unchangeably, without succession, uniformly and stably.

In eternity, you see, there is no divisibility, no greaterness, no lesserness, no priority, no posteriority, no changeability, no approach, no recession, no succession, nothing past, nothing future, and no successive difference at all. It is an indivisible, simple, unique, self-same, non-successive and instantaneous presentiality and simultaneity, as is shown in the first of the first. Indeed it is a super-indivisible, super-simple, super-unique, super-self-same, super-non-successive and super-instantaneous presentiality and simultaneity, beyond the temporal instant.1 For the instant is the end of the past and the beginning of the future; there, however, nothing is past or future. The instant is changeable and in some way successive, because it arrives and departs, begins and ends; not so there. The instant stands present only now, eternity always. And the instant, as time also is, is posterior to eternity and to the eternal instant, and imitates both the one and the other as far as it can.2 Therefore God both knows and wills indivisibly, simply, uniquely, presentially and simultaneously; indeed super-simply, super-uniquely, super-instantaneously, super-presentially, super-simultaneously, beyond the temporal instant.

Who would presume to say that God knows or wills intrinsically now in one way, now in another, according to different successive differences of time? Who would presume to say that the Almighty, wholly sufficient to Himself in every respect and the Creator of time, needs time and the ‖C1 successions of flowing time, as wretched man does in order to know and will anything, or in order to know anything in any manner whatever, intrinsically, contingently, freely, necessarily, or in any other way? For the first supposition, the fifth and twenty-third of the first, and the thirtieth of this book, all aforesaid, forbid it to be said so.

The ancient Philosophers also attest the same view, though obscurely; D1 among them Father Hermes, in On the World and Heaven 1, wrote thus:3 "Whatever is extended in intervals is either long-lived, or age-long, or perpetual, or eternal; the long-lived is dissolved by old age, the age-long by its age, the perpetual by durability, the eternal by infinity. Time, taking its beginning from eternity, is resolved into the bosom of eternity, wearied by a longer circuit, that is, from unity it departs to number, from stability to motion; its moment of time is what is moved; and what extends over the whole must be resolved into eternity, that from which time is born. He also, in the forty-third [chapter] on the eternal word,4 says: 'Eternity is unopposable, immovable and indissoluble; this, then, is eternity, which neither began to be nor ceases, which, fixed by an unchangeable law of running, turns in an everlasting commotion, and rises and sets, often through the limbs of another, so that as times change it rises in those limbs from which it had set.'"

To expound this saying more fully and understand it better, we should note what he writes on the thirty-fourth of the same, saying that God alone is immovable, unless someone should dare to say that His commotion is in eternity; but rather eternity itself is immovable, and in it the agitation of all times remains, and from it the agitation of all times takes its beginning. God, then, has been stable, and always likewise eternity with Him. And so, although eternity is stable, immovable and fixed, yet because the agitation of time, which is mobile, is always called into eternity, and so mobility is turned about by reason of time, it comes about that eternity itself, though alone immovable, seems to be agitated, through the time in which it is, and in which all agitation is. Thus it comes about that the stability of eternity is moved, and the mobility of time becomes a fixed stability by the law *826E·1 of running. So too it is credible that God is agitated in Himself, by the same immobility: for His stability lies in greatness, an immobile agitation, since the law of greatness itself is immobile. What is of such a kind, then, as not to be subject to the senses, is indefinite, incomprehensible, inestimable; it can neither be sustained, nor made, nor tracked down. For where and how, and whence or when or of what kind it is, is uncertain. For it is borne in the highest stability, and in it is its stability, whether God, or eternity, or both, or the one in the other, or both in both, they are.5 Therefore eternity is without the definition of time. For stability, being firmly fixed so that by the benefit of firmness it can sustain what is subject to agitation, rightly holds primacy. Of all things that are, therefore, God and eternity are the first beginnings; the world, however, because it is mobile, does not hold primacy. For its mobility precedes its stability, having an immovable firmness in the law of everlasting agitation.

After him Plato, and certain Platonists, discoursed on eternity, the aeon, and time. 827E·1 Hence Plato, in Timaeus 1, 9, using "aeon" for eternity,6 says: "Days and nights and months and years, which did not exist before the adorning of the heavens, He then ordered to come into being as the world was born. All these are parts of time, and we, together with the aeon, assign them to the same solitary nature, not rightly fashioning parts of a thing that is indivisible. For we say 'was,' 'is,' 'will be'; but to that nature only 'is' belongs, according to its true and certain account, whereas 'was' thereafter and 'will be' do not belong; these are proper to what time engenders. For they are motions, the one of what passes, the other of what impends, not of the aeon but of time; for the abiding of the aeon is perpetual and immutable. Therefore it is neither younger nor older, neither was nor will be, nor will it undergo any of the things which sensible nature undergoes; but all these are the vicissitudes of time, which images the aeon." In Plato, moreover, the same eternity is sometimes called "age" (saeculum). B1 Hence Averroes, on On the Heavens and the World 1, 100, where the translation he expounds has "age," says thus: "Plato called that which was before time existed 'age,' because time is new according to him, and by 'age' he meant the being that bounds all beings, which was before time."

Aristotle too, following them, in On the Heavens 1, 100, divides and distinguishes eternity in two, B2 positing one as the natural period of any life, and the other as that from "always being" (that is, uniformly and immutably), which is named from the immortal divine, that is, from God according to His substance and His every intrinsic disposition, wholly unchangeable and immortal. For anything changed, at least intrinsically, in some disposition, necessarily dies in respect of that disposition, namely the one it loses. Hence he says thus: "This name was divinely pronounced by the ancients. For the end which embraces that which is the time of each one's life, outside of which, according to nature, there is nothing, is called the eternal of each. By the same reasoning, the end of the whole heaven, and all time, and the infinity embracing perfection, is eternal, taking its name from always being, immortal and divine; whence it is communicated also to others, to some more clearly, to others more obscurely, to be and to live. For as has often been declared by reasons in the encyclical philosophical discourses7 concerning things divine, the divine, being unchangeable, must be first and highest, and what is so disposed bears witness to the sayings. For there is nothing else that will move it (that would be more divine); nor has it anything bad, nor is it in need of any of its goods." These three reasons of the Philosopher are to be noted.

Note likewise that where the new translation says that the eternal takes its name from "always being," the translation which Averroes expounds8 says thus: "This name is derived from its act, because it always is." From this it can be drawn out that to be is a kind of acting, or a certain action of a being, as to live is the life of a living thing, as was declared in the eighteenth of the second. Hence it should further be noted that, as according to the Philosopher in Physics 4 flowing time follows flowing action, namely the motion of the heaven, so stable eternity follows stable action, namely the being of God, and is in some way derived from it, flows down and emanates. For as a flowing point makes a line, and an instant makes time, so God, the most stable instant, seems by His act, as by a kind of flux, to cause eternity; and this above all in human cognition, which according to the Philosopher in On Memory and Reminiscence does not come about without continuity, nor without the account of time and motion, although in God there is no flux that is changeably or temporally successive. From these things it seems that eternity can be briefly defined thus: Eternity is the measure, remaining indivisibly and unchangeably, of an act likewise remaining.

The account of the genus and the differences is not hidden. Hence it is also clear that eternity precedes time by nature; for it is a property of what is prior by nature. The being of God and His act is naturally prior to the motion of the Heaven, just as God is naturally prior to the Heaven, and because the one and the other are caused by God, as the second and the fourth of the first show. Hence the Philosopher, Metaphysics 5, 16, says: "Prior things are said of the properties of prior things, E2 as straightness [is prior] to smoothness;9 for this is by itself a property of the line,10 that of the surface." By the same things, it seems, that verse of Exodus 15 can also be expounded: "The Lord will reign for eternity and beyond." E3 For if "eternal" is taken in the first way, it is plainly true; if in the second, then the Lord is still in some way superior to eternity, and transcends it, as a cause, originating and being the principle of its caused thing, which is originated and has a principle: for from Him, in some way, eternity is derived causally, originally, and principially. Hence also the second proposition of On Causes says thus: "Every being is superior, either it is a being superior to eternity and before it, or with eternity, or after eternity and above time."

Nor do I think it should be neglected, for the understanding of Scripture, that frequently, where the new translation has "eternal," the translation which the Commentator expounds sometimes has "age of ages," sometimes "age," sometimes "age of an age," sometimes "ages." Plato, too, sometimes calls eternity "aeon"; whence it seems that these are really the same. In agreement with this Augustine, on that verse of Psalm 105 [106] and 135 [136],11 "Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy is unto the age," says that this Greek word, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα,12 can be translated "unto the age" and likewise "unto eternity." Likewise, on that verse of Psalm 101 [102], "in generation and generation," or, as he has it, "In the generation of generations are Your years," he says that by this expression, "unto the ages of ages," eternity is customarily designated in the Holy Scriptures. And on that verse of Psalm 130 [131], "Let Israel hope in the Lord from now and unto the age," approving in substance both translations and the Philosopher's distinction, he says thus: "What is written in Greek, [Greek phrase not securely read: see note 12], has been rendered 'from now and unto the age.' But 'age' does not always signify this age; sometimes it signifies eternity, since 'eternal' is understood in two ways: 'unto eternity,' that is, always, without end; or, until we come to eternity. So this is how it is to be understood: until we come to eternity let us hope in the Lord God, because when we have come to eternity there will no longer be hope, B1 but the thing itself."

Moreover, the ninth of the twenty-four definitions of God in the Twenty-Four Philosophers says thus: "God is He to whom alone whatever is of His time is present," calling the time of God His eternity. Among all the Philosophers whom I remember having seen, Boethius, the intimate pupil of Philosophy, in Consolation 5, the last prose, expressing more clearly the usefulness of the knowledge of eternity and its aforesaid property, speaks thus: B2 "That God is eternal is the common judgment of all who live by reason."

"Let us therefore consider what eternity is; for this makes plain to us both the divine nature and the divine knowledge. Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of unending life, which becomes clearer from a ‖C1 comparison of temporal things. For whatever lives in time proceeds as a present from the past into the future; and nothing constituted in time can embrace the whole space of its life at once, but it has not yet grasped tomorrow, and has already lost yesterday, and in today's life too you live no more than in that mobile and transitory moment.13 What therefore is subject to the condition of time, even if, as Aristotle held of the world, it never began to be and never ceases, and its life is stretched out with the infinity of time, is nevertheless not yet such as to be rightly believed eternal. For although it comprehends and embraces the space of an infinite life, it does not yet have the whole of it at once; it has not yet the future, and no longer has what is past. Whatever, therefore, comprehends and possesses the whole fullness of unending life together, from which nothing of the future is absent and from which nothing of the past has flowed away,14 is rightly said to be eternal; and it is necessary that such a being, in possession of itself, always be present to itself, and have the infinity of mobile time present.

"For that infinite motion of temporal things imitates this present state of unchangeable life, and since it cannot reproduce or equal it, it falls from immobility into motion, and from the simplicity of presence decreases into the infinite quantity of the future and the past. And since it cannot possess the whole fullness of its life together, by the very fact that it in some way never ceases to be it seems in some measure to emulate that which it cannot fulfil or express, binding itself to the presence, such as it is, of this tiny and fleeting moment, which, since it bears a kind of image of that abiding presence, grants to whatever it befalls that it seem to be. But since it could not remain, it seized upon the infinite journey of time, and in this way it came about that by going on it continued the life whose fullness it could not embrace by remaining. And so, if we wish to give things fitting names, let us, following Plato, say that God is indeed eternal, but the world is perpetual."

In agreement with this, Anselm too, D1 Monologion 24, says: "It is established that the supreme substance is without beginning and without end, and has neither past nor future, nor the temporal present, that is, the slipping present, which ‖E1 we now use, since its age, or eternity, which is nothing other than itself, is unchangeable and without parts. Is it not, then, that 'always,' which seems to designate the whole of time, if it is said of Him, is understood far more truly to signify eternity, which is never unlike itself, than the variety of times, which is always in some respect not like itself? Wherefore if He is said always to be, since for Him to be and to live are the same, nothing better is understood than to be or to live eternally, that is, to hold unending life perfectly, simultaneously, and whole: for His eternity seems to be an unending life existing perfectly, all at once and whole." This same present and uniform ever-standing now of the aforesaid eternity the Prophet shows in Psalm 83 [84].

"Better," he says, "is one day in your courts above thousands" [Ps 83 [84]:11]. It is as if he were saying: in your courts there is only one day, not many, and that in one single manner only, and therefore always indivisibly present 15. This one day can likewise be called many days, and even many years. Hence Job 10 [10:5]: "Are your days like the days of a man, and your years like human times?" And further on, 36 [36:26]: "The number of his years is beyond reckoning." And Psalm 76 [77:6]: "I considered the days of old, and I kept in mind the eternal years." And Psalm 101 [102:28]: "But you are the selfsame, and your years shall not fail." By similar reasoning, all time and all times can be said both in the singular and in the plural. "All time" in the singular, because eternity coexists singularly and indivisibly with every time and is equivalent to it in existing. "All times" in the plural, because it coexists stably with all times and is equivalent to them in existing. It can also be called greater than any time whatever, even an infinite one, if one supposes, following Aristotle, that it is higher than any time and prior to it, as was shown above. Nor does anything there flow away or get taken away, as in fluid time. The whole remains stably together.

Now although eternity can be called, metaphorically, all time and all times, it can also be named an instant, figuratively, according to Ecclesiasticus 42 [42:18]: "The Lord knew all knowledge, and looked upon the sign of the age" 16. Indeed it is more truly an instant than time or times, because without succession, without parts, without change, it stands ever present as the same in number. To confirm this understanding of Sacred Scripture through sacred witnesses, consider Augustine on the text of Psalm 83 [84] cited above. B1 "Let men despise thousands of days," he says, "and desire one day, which has no rising and no setting, one day, the everlasting day, which yesterday does not yield to and tomorrow does not press upon." The same Augustine, expounding the same authority in On Free Choice 3, last chapter, says: "Let the thousands of days be understood as the mutability of time, but let the immutability of eternity be called by the name of one day." The same, in Confessions 1, 6: "You are not changed, nor is today brought to its end in you,

since your years shall not fail. Your years are today. How many of our days, and of our fathers' days, have already passed through your today! And from it they received the measures of their being, in whatever way they have existed, and others will yet pass through and receive, and in whatever way they shall exist. But you are the selfsame, and all tomorrows and all that lie beyond, and all yesterdays and all that lie behind, you will make today, you have made today. What is that to me, if someone does not understand? Let him too rejoice, saying, 'What is this?' Let him rejoice 17. Thus let him also love to find you by not finding, rather than not to find you by finding." The same, on that verse of Psalm 101 [102:25], "Your years are from generation to generation": "Which are your years?" he says. "Which, but those that do not come and pass away? Which, but those that do not come in order not to be? For all the days in this time come in order not to be: every hour, every month, every year. None of these stands still. Before it comes, it will be; when it has come, it will not be. Those years of yours, then, are eternal; your years, which are not changed, will be for generation upon generation. For the years of God are not one thing and God another; the years of God are the eternity of God. The eternity of God is his very substance, which has nothing mutable. There nothing is past, as if it no longer were, and nothing is future, as if it were not yet. There is only 'is.' There is no 'was' and 'will be,' because what was no longer is, and what will be is not yet. Whatever is there, is only 'is.'" And further on, on the verse "Your years shall not fail": "Let us hope," he says, "that we shall come to these standing years, in which the days are not run through by the circuit of the sun, but what is, remains as it is, because this alone truly is." Blessed Gregory also, in Moralia 16, 16, on Job 24 [24:1]: D1 "But those who know him do not know his days." "What," he says, "is called the days of the Lord, but eternity itself? It is sometimes expressed by the substitution of one day, as it is written: 'Better is one day in your courts above thousands'; sometimes, however, it is signified, on account of its multitude, by the name of many days, of which it is written: 'Your years are unto the age of ages.' We, therefore, are rolled about within times, by the fact that we are creatures; but God,

because he is Creator, comprehends all our times in his eternity." The same, earlier, in Moralia 9, 26, on Job 10 [10:5], "Are your days like the days of a man? etc.": "The days and years of man differ," he says, "from the days and years of eternity. For eternity devours our life, which begins in time, while it shapes it within the breadth of its folds. Its immensity, because it stretches over us on this side and beyond, is extended as eternal being without beginning or end of it. For it neither do things past pass away, nor are things still to come lacking, as though they did not appear; for he who has being always beholds all things as present to himself, and since in looking he is not stretched out toward before and after, he is not varied by any change of gaze." Anselm too suggests the same property of eternity, in On Concord 3 and 4, as the twenty-seventh chapter of this book cites. E1 Of it Robert of Lincoln 18, in On Free Choice 8, also says that eternity, at the limit of simplicity, is simpler than any instant. All doctors, ancient and modern, unanimously profess these things also, premised about eternity.

Corollary

A corollary: that there is one and the same instant, wholly immutable, in the whole of eternity; and that the whole of eternity is neither more multiple nor greater than its instant, nor is the instant of eternity simpler than eternity itself, nor less; and so that eternity and its instant are really the same. Moreover, that notwithstanding these things, eternity is said to be whole, great, long, even infinite, and also to have been, to be, and to be going to be; further, that something in it has been, is, and will be. Wherefore also, what is said of God and of his intrinsic act is said by transference 19: he was, is, and will be; but of his extrinsic actions it is said properly and temporally: he made, makes, and will make.

From these things it is evidently inferred that there is one and the same instant, wholly immutable, in the whole of eternity; and that the whole of eternity is neither more multiple nor greater than its instant, nor is the instant of eternity simpler than eternity itself, nor less; and so that eternity and its instant are really the same. Moreover, that notwithstanding these things, eternity is said to be whole, great, long, even infinite; also to have been, to be, and to be going to be; and further, that something in it has been, is, and will be. Wherefore also, what is said of God and of his intrinsic act is said by transference: he was, is, and will be; but of his extrinsic actions it is said properly and temporally: he made, makes, and will make. The first part of this corollary follows evidently, since, according to what was shown earlier, in eternity, which ever stably stands present as an instant, there is no mutability nor any diversity whatever. The second follows from the same things and from the first. The third follows from the second. The fourth is inferred from the second and third. For if eternity and its instant were not really the same, they would differ as time and its instant do; and then eternity would be the more multiple and greater, and the instant simpler and less. The fifth follows likewise from the premises. For eternity coexists with the whole of time, great, long, and even, according to Aristotle, infinite; therefore it also admits from time denominations of this kind by transference. The sixth also follows from this fifth, and is proved likewise as that one is. The seventh ‖C1 is also inferred from the sixth and through the demonstration of that. The eighth part of it can be inferred from the sixth. The cause of this transference is that we have no word that properly signifies the stable abiding of eternity. We are therefore necessarily compelled to transfer, by whatever likeness, our temporal words, according to any temporal differences whatever, to eternity and to the eternal God and his intrinsic acts, which are coeternal, because they coexist with every time and have not been lacking to any time, nor are lacking, nor will be lacking in the future.

Anselm bears witness to this, in On Concord D1 3. "The purpose," he says, "according to which the saints were called in eternity, in which there is nothing past or future, but only present, is immutable in eternity; for nothing was, or will be; there only is. But although there is nothing there but the present, that present is not temporal, as ours is, but eternal, in which all times are contained 20. For just as the present time contains every place and the things that are in any place, so in the eternal present all time is enclosed together, and the things that are in any time. When, therefore, the Apostle says that God foreknew, predestined, called, justified, and magnified his saints, none of these is before or after with God; all are to be understood together in the eternal present. For eternity has its own 'together,' in which are all things, both those that are together in place and time and those that are in diverse places or times. And to show that he had not used those words in a temporal signification, the same Apostle pronounced even those things that are still to come in a verb of past tense. For those whom he foreknew, as yet to be born, he had not yet called, justified, and magnified temporally in that fashion. Hence it can be known that, for lack of a word signifying eternal presence, he used verbs of past signification, since what is past in time is, in likeness to the eternal present, wholly immutable." Is it not also said truly of the Holy Spirit, in the voice of truth, "Whatever he shall hear, he shall speak" (John 16 [16:13])? On this Augustine says, in part 2 on John, homily 45, or the ninety-ninth of the whole: "Let it not trouble you that a verb of future time is used. For it is not said, 'whatever he has heard,' but 'whatever he shall hear, he shall speak.' That hearing is everlasting, because his knowledge is everlasting;

and in what is everlasting, without beginning and without end, a verb of whatever tense is placed, whether past, present, or future, it is not placed falsely. For although that immutable and ineffable nature does not admit 'was' and 'will be,' but only 'is' (for it truly is, because it cannot be changed, and therefore it alone is fitted to say, 'I am who am,' and 'You shall say to the children of Israel: He who is has sent me to you'), nevertheless, on account of the mutability of the times in which our mortality and our mutability are engaged, we do not speak falsely when we say both 'was' and 'will be' and 'is.' He was in past ages, he is in present ones, he will be in future ones. He was, because he never was lacking; he will be, because he never will be lacking; and he is, because he always is. For he does not set with the past, as one who now is not; nor glide away with the present, as one who does not remain; nor rise with the future, as one who had not been. Therefore, since human speech varies according to the revolutions of times, the words of any tense whatever are truly said of him, who through no times could be, or can be, or will be absent. The Holy Spirit therefore always hears, because he always knows; and so he both heard, and hears, and will hear; and so too he knew, and knows, and will know." Gregory agrees with this, in Moralia 23, on Job 33 [33:14], "God will speak once." He says: "That he does not say 'he has spoken' but 'he will speak,' putting not, that is, the past tense but the future, makes it plain to all that neither past nor future tense befits God. So freely, therefore, is any tense whatever placed in him, as none is truly; for any tense whatever could not be freely said, if even one were said properly. Hence it is permitted boldly to say any tense whatever in God, for the very reason that it is permitted to say none properly of him." The last part of this follows manifestly. For as the intrinsic eternal act of God is measured by eternity or by its instant, so his extrinsic temporal action on temporal things is measured by time, or by an instant of time, as is also the action of a creature.