Augustine’s Confession of Created Time

As I was helping someone with a current research project, I came across this essay that I wrote about a year ago. I enjoyed reading back through it so much that I thought I would share. It is a long one, but I would love to hear any comments others might have on this Subject.

Augustine’s Confession of Created Time:
Time and Eternity in the Confessions

What is time? Who can explain this easily and briefly? Who can comprehend this in thought so as to articulate the answer in words? Yet what do we speak of, in our familiar everyday conversation, more than of time? We surely know what we mean when we speak of it. We also know what is meant when we hear someone else talking about it. What then is time? Provided that no one asks me, I know. If I want to explain to an inquirer, I do not know.[1]

This popular quote from Augustine’s Confessions should give some intimation of the immensely difficult task set before us. The position a theologian takes on the topic of time and divine eternity has a kind of controlling effect on his or her entire theological vision.[2] It is my contention that this is certainly the case for Augustine. His perception of time and eternity, as expressed in Book XI of the Confessions, has immense implications upon the rest of his theological articulation, and thus influences the whole of Western theological reflection. It is important that we Western Christians, who find ourselves in Augustine’s shadow, have some, albeit limited, understanding of his conception on this point.

It will be my attempt in this brief essay to elucidate, as far as it is possible within the confines of this paper and my own finite understanding, Augustine’s notion of time and eternity as reflected in his Confessions. I will begin by giving some background into his philosophical and contextual influences. A summation of his exploration on this subject in the Confessions will follow. Finally, I will give a concise assessment of the adequacy of Augustine’s notion for contemporary theological reflection and attempt to point forward as we continue to wrestle with the mystery of time and eternity in relation to divine revelation.

Prolegomena:

It is helpful to begin with some general background information both on Augustine’s contextual influences for his particular way of viewing this subject and on broader theological / philosophical reflections concerning time and eternity. His impetus for developing this particular text seems to have been two fold. It was in some sense written as an attempt to respond to critics both inside and outside of the Catholic community, as to the legitimacy of his conversion and his installation as the Bishop of Hippo. It was also written at the behest of a multi-millionaire convert to Christianity, Paulinus of Nola. He was introduced to the writing of Augustine via Alypius, a close companion of the African Father, who was then the Bishop of Thagaste.[3] “The work was written during the last three years of the fourth century AD by a man in his mid-forties, recently made a bishop, needing to come to terms with a past in which numerous enemies and critics showed an unhealthy interest.”[4] We must keep this context and proposed motivation in mind when reflecting on the Confessions as a whole or on any of its subsequent parts.

Within the text itself, which is generally written in some autobiographical style, there is a significant transition from Book X on. In this latter section Augustine is no longer talking about his past, but is focused on giving some clarification of his current state of mind as the new bishop. Ironically, this concrete Christian context of ministry results in an extremely Neo-platonic philosophical excursus. While it is important to remember the context of this discussion, it is also evident that the views expressed in Book XI on time and eternity are central to Augustine’s theological vision and remain relatively consistent regardless of his contextually conditioned responses.[5]

For this particular subject matter we should include a sweeping understanding of the philosophical discussion concerning time that impacted Augustine’s intellectual framework. There are significant allusions to Plato, Aristotle, Porphyry, and Plotinus running throughout this particular reflection. Of these his most important influence is, not surprisingly, the Neo-platonic philosophy of Plotinus. Yet, even in his understanding of time Augustine differs from Plotinus in significant ways, which we will have occasion to investigate further on in this essay. Here it is imperative that we summarily explore the three principle philosophical figures, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, and their considerations on the subject matter at hand.[6]

There is a concern present in all of these thinkers between static and dynamic conceptions of time, eternity and the relationship between the two. In Plato’s Timaeus, time is subject to change, but it is actually created to mimic the changeless. The world soul infuses and envelopes the universe; and this presence of soul is prior to the creation of time. The demi-urgos, as Plato tells the story, rejoicing in the moving, living world creature which he has made in the image of the eternal gods, determines to improve the copy of the original. As far as it is possible, he seeks to make the universe eternal.

However, the eternal nature of the ideal being cannot be given in its fullness to something created. Therefore, he decides to make a ‘moving image of eternity’ (37d).[7] When the demiurge ordered the heavens, he made an image of the eternal, but the image moves according to number, while eternity itself rests in unity. This image of eternity that moves according to number we call time. His conceptuality of time and eternity generally reflects his dualism between form and matter or the intelligible and the sensible worlds, the former being static and the latter being dynamic. Yet, for Plato the relationship of time with eternity is positive because it brings order, predictability, and permanence to unruly matter.

In Book IV of the Physics, Aristotle relates the reality of time to motion (change) and measurement. Time is not itself movement, but it does not exist independent of movement. It is the ‘now’ involved in numbering and dividing motion. His is sometimes referred to as the receptacle view, as time ‘contains’ objects and events. He goes on to describe what it is to ‘be in time.’ “To ‘be in time’ means either to exist when time exists or ‘to be contained by time as things in place are contained by place.’[8] This gives objective reality to time, but Augustine sees this definition of “being in time” as inadequate for understanding what it is to be a self in time. Some of the dimensions between mind and time are not captured, from Augustine’s perspective, in the Aristotelian picture.[9]

It is Plotinus who gives him a basis for contemplating the self-conscious mind’s relation to time. In the Enneads, Plotinus is quite critical of the Aristotelian definition of time as the measurement of motion. “It comes to this: we ask ‘What is time?’ and we are answered ‘Time is the extension of Movement in Time.’”[10] He was convinced that time must be something more than the mere number of movement. Some of Plotinus’ criticisms were likely based on a poor characterization of Aristotle’s idea of time; however, his substantive rejection was certainly valid. This rejection was based upon concerns that Aristotle did not explicitly address, namely the relationship between time and the soul.

For Plotinus time depends on the soul in a metaphysical way that makes physical movement itself a result of the soul.[11] The soul is not an external measurer of the soulless substratum of time, but is rather manifested in movement itself. Time is in some sense ‘in’ the soul or at least a direct result of the soul’s movement. “It is we that must create Time out of the concept and nature of progressive derivation, which remained latent in the Divine Beings.”[12] The soul’s attempt to mimic the eternal results in the creation of time.

In contrast to its positive portrayal in Plato, the idea of mimicry in Plotinus’ thought is dark and destructive. His emphasis is on mutability instead of stability. Time is described as the mimic of eternity in that it ‘seeks to break up in its fragmentary flight the permanence of its exemplar.’[13] Time as a mimic destroys what it seizes. We all participate in the world soul, which going outside of itself, lays aside its eternity and is clothed with time. Time, then, is an unfolding and fragmenting of the soul, which is held in contrast to the rest and unity of the One. The time of the cosmos imitates the movement of the soul, just as the soul imitates the eternal.[14] We will see these themes reoccur in Augustine, but we will also note in what ways he differs from even these perspectives of time.

Our understanding of time is intimately related to our conception of eternity. The three definitions of eternity proposed by Alan Padgett is a helpful framework as we move into Augustine’s discussion of this subject. [15] The idea of eternity that is most evident in the Scriptural witness is that of ‘everlastingness.’ This is the proposal that something is eternal because it always has and always will exist. Nothing exists outside of time, but the eternal is an infinite duration of time. Therefore, that which exists eternally may change as long as it continues to exist and its essence or substance, so to speak, remains the same. The contrasting image is that of ‘absolute timelessness.’ This particular perspective proposes that eternity is that which transcends time, in the sense that past, present and future are simultaneously present in eternity.[16] The mediating position proposed by Padgett is that of ‘relative timelessness.’ From this perspective, God transcends our measured time but is also, in some sense, closely related to time. It is not that God is ‘in’ our time; rather we should say that we are ‘in’ God’s time. The Triune God is the creator of time and space and freely enters into the time He created, but is not subject to time. We must ultimately confess our ignorance on what the Infinite and Eternal One is in himself, we look through a clouded glass and only catch glimpses through His gracious self-revealing.[17] We must now turn to what Augustine has to say about the glimpses.

Augustine’s Confessions of Time and Eternity:[18]

Augustine continually confesses that the God he is praying to transcends time. He begins with the recognition that God’s vision of occurrences in time is not temporally conditioned. This conceptuality in Augustine’s theology is firmly rooted in his unequivocal affirmation of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. God is the creator of all things and time is included in the created realm; therefore, time is not a part of the uncreated realm. This reflects the essential dualism that runs throughout Augustine’s thought between the mundus intelligibilis and the mundus sensibilis. However, it is not a complete reflection of this particular duality, since, for Augustine, even the intelligible world is a part of the created realm and is subject to time and change.[19] In fact, it is in the intelligible world that we come to understand time, for it is in the memory, the mind, the soul that “time” actually exists. Yet, there is here also a duality between the eternal realm and the created realm and for Augustine time belongs only to the latter. Thus, he affirms some form of timeless eternity.

Movement and change, fire and flux, and various other ways of talking about mutability are all closely connected to creation, which is quite distinct from the immutable God. Augustine proclaims that heaven and earth cry aloud that they were made, since they suffer change and variation. “But,” he says, “in anything which is not made yet is, there is nothing which previously was not present.”[20] There is an absolute presence in eternity, which is to say that all things are simultaneously present in the eternal now. Time is obviously a part of creation because it is connected to change, but God does not change. “And so by the Word coeternal with yourself, you say all that you say in the simultaneity of eternity, and whatever you say will come about does come about. You do not cause it to exist other than by speaking. Yet not all that you cause to exist by speaking is made in simultaneity and eternity.”[21]

Nothing corresponding to our human experience offers us any real help in understanding the mystery of a timeless eternity. Presence is the closest experience that we have to guide us. Therefore, Augustine uses the language of today to speak of eternity. As he proclaims,

“all your years subsist in simultaneity because they do not change—your ‘years’ are ‘one day’ (Ps 89:4, 2 Pet. 3:8) and your ‘day’ is Today—Your Today is eternity ‘Today I have begotten you.’ (Ps 2:7, Heb 5:5). You created all times—there was not any time when time did not exist; therefore, time is not permanent.”[22]

We are then faced with the compounding difficulty of responding to questions which arise out of a different conception of eternity. The primary question of this kind that Augustine mentions is, “What was God doing before he made the heavens and the earth?” Though, Augustine seems to be a bit perturbed by this particular question, he says that he rejects the trite response, “He was preparing hell for people who inquire into such profundities.” He would rather answer, “I am ignorant of what I do not know” instead of ridiculing someone who has deep questions.[23] Yet, he goes on to say that these people are full of errors. First, they believe that God’s will belongs to his very substance. They suggest that either God has changed if He has willed something that did not previously exist or if He has willed creation from all eternity then we should assume creation is eternal. Secondly, they do not think of eternity as that which transcends time. His conception of eternity implies that it is improper to speak of a “then” before the creation because temporal language does not correspond to eternity. There was no “then” before creation. We come to the limits of our human knowledge and must remain apophatic at this point.

Returning to the question of time, he begins to inquire into how we should think about and measure time. He offers an atomic description of time in the sense of dividing time into infinitesimal, instantaneous moments that we call the present. In this, he ends up quite close to the Skeptics and Academics, with present moments that have no duration and take up no space. Given the near non-existence of these present moments and the actual non-existence of “past” and “future,” how do we measure time? With this academic understanding in the background, he is perplexed by our existential experience of longer and shorter periods of time. He comes to the conclusion that the locus of past and present, at least what we call past and present, is in the memory. He then suggests that we shouldn’t speak of past, present and future, but rather the present of things past, the present of things present, and the present of things to come. In this our language is inexact, but what we mean is communicated.[24]

He continues to explore the question of how we measure time. Plato’s Timaeus and St. Basil proposed that the movement of sun, moon, and stars constitutes time and the measure of time. Augustine rejects this notion because there is witness in the biblical narrative when the sun stood still. (Josh 10:12ff) Yet, we do say that no body can move except in time. When we measure the time of motion it is measured in the mind. Augustine says, “the impression which passing events make upon you abides when they are gone…present consciousness is what I’m measuring, this is what time is.”[25] Long past is simply a long memory of the past. Future is more complex, but it is similar to reciting a well known Psalm. It exists in the mind before it comes into present existence and passes into memory, and so it extends in two directions.

The pinnacle of his argument is that time, rather than being an ‘objective’ feature of the world, is a distention of the soul. This psychological view of time clearly fits with the narrative self-exploration of the Confessions. The focus in on the existential experience of ‘being in time’. And it is through self-reflection that he turns away from changeable things to the eternal and unchanging One. “Times destructive flight into non-existence is countered by the act of memory. Having found in his own soul the act of attention that approximates in its all encompassing presence the ‘standing present’ of eternity, he will now be free to love the changeable and mortal things in God, who is never lost”[26] Memory and internal reflection, then, yields the clue to the idea of time and eternity.

This psychologizing of time aims to secure the reality of time and to resolve puzzles of its measurement. However, he also offers up an eschatological understanding of the relationship between time and eternity. We live in time and multiplicity, distracted by many things, which is in contrast to the unity of eternity. In response Augustine says, “I am scattered in times whose order I do not understand…until that day when, purified and molten by the fire of your love, I flow together to merge into you…then I shall find stability and solidity in you.”[27] We are still left with many questions as to what it means for the created being to exist in the simultaneity of eternity, but this is the vision offered. We remain in the realm of paradox and mystery, but have enough knowledge to engage in meaningful conversation.

Is Augustine’s an Adequate Christian Conception of Time?

It is quite possible to conclude at this point that Augustine's understanding of time and eternity is primarily rooted in the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, as well as his abstract philosophical reasoning. Stephen Hawking speaks of ‘the fallacy, pointed out by St. Augustine, of imagining God as a being existing in time: time is a property only of the universe that God created.’[28] While we firmly agree with Augustine's confession that God transcends time, we must also recognize that his timeless understanding of God offers a very other worldly theology, which comes dangerously close to his Neo-platonic influences. He goes so far as to introduce the idea of “seminal causes” to deal with the problem of whether creation was made all at once or made in successive stages. His thinking on this point closely resembles the logoi spermatikoi of the Stoics or the “seminal reason” in Neo-Platonism that suggests God created all the principles of development at once, which would only mature later and produce all things that would exist.[29] We quickly find ourselves in terrain that we do not want to traverse.

We continue to stumble over the relationship of the timelessly eternal God with His temporally conditioned creation. We also struggle with his static conception of eternity and God which seems to contradict the dynamic language of Scripture. It is right that we affirm, with Augustine, that God transcends time and the created order, but we must be careful not to bifurcate being and action through a dualistic cast of mind. Unfortunately Augustine's dualism predominates his thinking on time and permeates much of his theology. He fails to grasp the implications of the Incarnation for time and eternity. Instead, he ends up with a philosophical construal of time and eternity tainted by Neo-platonism.

Predestination and determinism are related to this dualism of time and eternity. Mark Ellingsen recognizes this, but proposes that Augustine’s understanding of the simultaneity of eternity gives us a clue as to how we can reconcile human free will and predestination. Since God’s foreknowledge of our action and His decision are simultaneous, predestination does not eliminate free human choice.[30] While I understand and appreciate Ellingsen's overall argument, I don’t find this sort of thinking all that helpful. Yet, the alternative attempt to infer time back into God’s eternity or to say that God is somehow bound by time is also theologically unsatisfying. This perspective, represented in some ways by "Open Theism," fails to take into consideration a Biblical pneumatology which affirms God’s continued relationship with creation through the Spirit. “Determinism is accordingly best avoided not by reading time back into God but by focusing on the action of the Spirit who is the giver of freedom and the one who enables the created order to be itself: to become what it was created to be.”[31] This phrase “what it was created to be” also implies a teleological or eschatological dimension.

Augustine’s dualism between time and eternity renders all kinds of problems for Christian eschatology. How are we to imagine eternal life if time has always been an aspect of the created order? A distinction has been made between the eternity of the heavens and eternity which belongs only to God. “Earthly time is the chronological time of becoming and passing away; heavenly time is the aeonic time of a relative eternity; the eternity of God is unique.”[32] If eternal life is an undisturbed participation in the living God, then eschatological eternity is aeonic time. We may speak both of God’s complete transcendence of time and eschatological relative eternity for creation.

Augustine’s confession of created time is helpful in so far as it uncovers a deeper understanding of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo. However, we ultimately must depart from him in search of a Christocentric and Trinitarian language for time and eternity. We must leave behind his distinctive dualism and instead affirm a relational theological framework. Moreover, the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ must be central to our understanding of eternal God’s interaction with His temporal creation. “Thus while the Incarnation does not mean that God is limited by space and time, it asserts the reality of space and time for God in the actuality of His relations with us, and at the same time binds us to space and time in all our relations with Him.”[33]


[1] Saint Augustine, Confessions, (New York: Oxford University Press 1998), p. 230. One could also possibly build a case that there is some resonance between Augustine’s reflection on the knowledge and articulation of time and Michael Polanyi’s epistemological conception of ‘tacit knowledge,’ which basically affirms we know much more than we are able to articulate.
[2] Alan G. Padgett, God, Eternity and the Nature of Time, (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1992), p. 1
[3] It seems that Alypius was attempting to encourage the generous giving in Paulinus’ life following his conversion, and hoped he might support some of the ascetic foundations in the region. He sent him some of Augustine’s polemical writings against the Manicheans. This piqued Paulinus’ interest who then asked for a autobiography detailing how Augustine had come to accept the ascetic life. This information comes from the introduction to the Confessions by Henry Chadwick, pp. xii-xiii
[4] Ibid, p. xiii
[5] While Mark Ellingsen’s thesis about the pastoral and contextual shape of Augustine’s theology is quite helpful, this is one area of his thought that seems to remain consistent regardless of his contextual concerns, though it doesn’t play as prominent a role in some conversations as it does in others.
[6] The summary that follows is primarily based upon Genevieve Lloyd’s article “Augustine and the ‘Problem’ of Time,” Ch. 3 in The Augustinian Tradition, ed. Gareth B. Matthews, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1999) pp. 39-60
[7] Ibid, p. 49
[8] Ibid, p. 47
[9] Ibid, p. 48
[10] Plotinus, Enneads 3.7.8, quoted in Lloyd, p. 48
[11] Lloyd, p. 49
[12] Enneads 3.7.11
[13] Lloyd, p. 49
[14] The idea of emanation is evident here.
[15] My assessment of Padgett is based upon my own reading of him, God, Eternity, and the Nature of Time, (St. Paul: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), and Dr. T. A. Noble’s notes for his Systematic Theology III class; “IV Creation and Time.” This paragraph is based upon both.
[16] It will quickly become evident that this is Augustine’s primary understanding of eternity, as he continues to speak of God existing in the simultaneity of eternity or the eternal today / now.
[17] We haven’t the space to develop and extended discussion of these three options here, but it is an important framework to recognize, especially as we begin to deal with the theological implications of Augustine’s conception.
[18] This section is essentially a summary of Book XI in the Confessions.
[19] This is one point on which he would differ from Neo-platonic thinking.
[20] Confessions, p. 224
[21] Confessions, p. 226
[22] Ibid, p. 230
[23] Ibid, p. 228
[24] Ibid, p. 235
[25] Ibid, p. 242
[26] Genevieve Lloyd, “Augustine and the ‘Problem’ of Time,” in The Augustinian Tradition, ed. Gareth B.
Matthews, (Berkley: University of California Press, 1999)
[27] Ibid, p. 244
[28] From Hawking’s A Brief History of Time quoted in Gunton, p. 81.
[29] Justo L. González, A History of Christian Thought: Volume II, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987)
pp. 39-40
[30] Mark Ellingsen, The Richness of Augustine: his contextual and pastoral theology, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), pp. 96ff.
[31] Gunton, Triune Creator, p. 86.
[32] Jügen Moltmann, In the End—the Beginning, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004), p. 159. This seems to offer another alternative to the three conceptions of eternity proposed by Padgett.
[33] T. F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation, (New York: Oxford, 1969), p. 67.