Augustine on Time in his Confessions

             I would like to explore the notion of time with Augustine in Confessions. 

In 1.6, he makes his first observation concerning time. In God, today never comes to an end, while the human experience of today ends in God. The reason is that time exists in God. If it did not, it would have no means of passing. Since God does not end, “today” is all that God experiences. “The countless days of our lives and of our forefathers' lives have passed by” within one divine today. From the divine today, human days receive their duration and existence. So it will be with all the other days that are still to come. 

            In Book 11, Augustine begins a discussion of time and eternity. It is worth exploring in some detail, given its influence in the history of philosophy.

            In 11.1, he refers to God as being “outside time in eternity.” Beginning with this assumption, his question is quite pertinent. Is God unaware of the things he says to God? Does God see “in time the things that occur in it?” If God does see them, why does he lay before God this lengthy record of his life? True, the Lord knows what we need before we ask. Yet, “by confessing our own miserable state and acknowledging your mercy towards us we open our hearts to you, so that you may free us wholly, as you have already begun to do. Then we shall no longer be miserable in ourselves, but will find our true happiness in you.” 

            It appears that Augustine has created a problem for himself in that if eternity is so different from the human experience of time, he wonders how God could even communicate with him. He will need to turn himself to this question in a serious way later. 

            In 11.2, he says that his pen is his spokesperson. “Every particle of sand in the glass of time is precious to me,” he notes. He does not wish to allow his time to slip away. He wants the Lord to grant his desire, for he does not desire for himself alone, for his desire is to serve the love he bears to others. No moment of time passes except by divine will. 

            In 11.3, he wants to hear the meaning of the words, “In the beginning God made haven and earth.” The writer wrote these words “and passed into your presence, leaving this world where” God spoke to the writer. The writer is no longer here. He can no longer see the writer face to face. Yet, if he could, he would want more explanation. In 11.4, he notes that the fact that he can see earth and the heavens suggests that they were created. They are subject to change. If anything exists that was not created, there is nothing in it that was not there before there. The meaning of change is that something is there that was not there before. Earth and the heavens proclaim that they did not create themselves. For to make themselves, they would have to exist before their existence began, which would be an absurdity. Therefore, the Lord made them. Since what God has made is beautiful, God must be beautiful. Since what God has made is good, God is good. Since earth and heaven are, God is. Yet, Augustine presses the question in 11.5. By what means did God make heaven and earth? He stresses that we cannot use the analogy of human craft, in which the mind conceives and directs a project by making one thing out of something else. How did God create the heavens and the earth? Simply put, God spoke them into existence. In 11.6, he pursues even further, asking how God spoke. He refers to the Mount of Transfiguration scene, in which the voice of God said, “You are my Son.” At that time, the divine voice sounded and then ceased. It was speech with a beginning and an end. In 11.7, he says that in the divine Word, all is uttered at one and the same itme, yet eternally. If it were not so, the divine Word would be subject to time and change, and therefore would be neither truly eternal nor truly immortal. This Word must be “co-eternal” with God, for God says all at one and the same time, God saying all that God wants to say eternally. By this Word all things have been made. God creates all things by the Word alone. Yet, these things that God has made do not into being at the same time, nor are they eternal. For him, in 11.8, the eternal reason is the divine Word. This Word, in 11.9, is the beginning in which God has made heaven and earth. This divine Word is also divine strength, wisdom, and truth. He admits he is quite different from this Word. Yet, “in so far as I am like it, I am aglow with its fire.” This Word is the is the light of Wisdom, which at times shines upon him, parting the clouds that often obscure his vision. In 11.10, he pursues another question, “What was God doing before God made heaven and earth?” He says they are steeped in error. In 11.11, he wishes their minds could be seized and held steady. They would glimpse the splendor of eternity, “which is forever still.” They would then contrast eternity with time. Time is never still. We cannot compare time with eternity. Time derives its length from a great number of movements constantly following each other into the past, because they cannot all continue at the same time. In eternity, nothing moves into the past. Everything is present. In time, everything cannot happen at once. The past is always driven on by the future. The future always follows on the heels of the past. Both past and future have their beginning and end in the eternal present. He bursts out, that if only the minds of people could be seized and held still. They would see how eternity, in which there is neither past nor future, determines both past and future time. He wants his words to accomplish this task. In 11.12, his answer to those who ask what God was doing before God made heaven and earth is not the “frivolous retort” that God is preparing Hell for people who pry into mysteries. He considers this an effort to evade the point of the question. Such a retort is an effort to make fun of the questioner. The one who has the question deserves a serious answer. Before God made heaven and earth, God made nothing. In 11.13, he points out that the problem with the question is that it assumes eternity is still a progression of time past, and thus, there were ages of idleness before creation. Persons with such a question need to shake off their dreams and think carefully, because the wonder they express behind their question has a basis in a misconception. God is the maker of all time. Even if there was a “time” before God made heaven and earth, God would have “made” that time as well, for time cannot elapse unless God made it. However, if we assume that God made time along with the universe, we have no basis for asking what God was doing before “then,” for there was no “then.” True, God is before time, yet, it would not be appropriate to think that God “precedes” time, in time. If that were so, God would not be before all time. Rather, eternity is supreme over time, and therefore God is at once before all past time and after all future time. What is now the future, once it comes, will become the past. Yet, God is unchanging. The years of God do not come and go. Human years pass and other come after them, so that they all may come in their turn. Divine years are completely present, because they are at a “permanent standstill.” they do not move, forced to give way before the advance of others, because they never pass at all. Human years will all be complete only when they have all moved into the past. Divine years are one day, today, because the divine today “does not give place any tomorrow, nor does it take the place of any yesterday.” The divine today is eternity. God made all time. God is before all time. Therefore, the time, if such we call it, when there was no time, was not time at all.

             In 11.14, Augustine makes it clear that no time can be co-eternal with God, because God does not change. Yet, if time never changed, it would not be time. What then is time? He warns us that there is no quick and easy answer. He finds it difficult to understand what it is, let alone find words to explain it. Yet, few words are as familiar as time. We seem to know what it is. Yet, he says, if someone asks him what it is, he is baffled. He is confident of this: if nothing passed, there would be no past time, if nothing were going to happen there would be no future time, and if nothing were, there would be present time. His puzzlement begins immediately, however, for of these three aspects of time, how can past and future “be,” when the past no longer is and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time but eternity. Now, if the present is time only because it moves on to become the past, it also “is” not. In other words, he says, “we cannot rightly say that time 'is,' except by reason of its impending state of “not being.” In 11.15, Augustine pursues the notion of duration. When we say a long time or a short time, we refer to the past or to the future. Yet, how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? The past “is” no more and the future “is” not yet. We would increase our accuracy if we would say that it “was” a long time or “will be” short time. Still, when we refer to a long time in the past, do we mean that it was when it was already past or before it became the past and was still the present? It could only to long when it was there to be long. One it was past it “is” no longer. If it no longer was, it could be long. We could only be speaking of a time when it was present. Yet, we need to pursue the question of whether the present time can be long, for we have the ability to feel and measure intervals of time. We could speak of the “present” century, of course, but some of the years of this century are in the past, and some are in the future. We could speak of the “present” year, but run into the same problem. Some of the year is past, and some of the year is future. We could speak of the “present” day, but the same problem remains. Thus, we can see that a century, a year, a day, is not “present.” The difficulty in all of this is that the “present” cannot possibly have duration. In 11.16, he points to the human experience of awareness of periods of time. Our use of language suggests it. We compare them one with another, some being longer and some being shorter. We calculate how much loger or short one period is from another. If we measure them by our own awareness of time, we must do so while it is passing, for no one can measure it either when it is past or future. 

            In 11.17, he says that that he has presented only tentative theories, rather than downright assertions. In his childhood, he learned of past, present, and future. However, some people might say there “is” only present, since neither past nor future exist. Another might suggest that past and future do exist, but that time emerges from some secret refuge when it passes from the future to the present, and goes back into hiding when it moves from the present to the past. This might explain prophecy. It might also explain why people can describe the past, since they can “see” it in their minds. Thus, our conclusion must be that past and future do “exist.” In 11.18, he wants to explore where the past and future “are,” if they do in fact exist. Now, if the past no longer “is” and the future “is” not yet, then the only place either can “be” is in the present. At this point, he explores the notion of memory. When we describe the past, what we are describing is the words based on our memory-pictures of the facts of the past. When they happened, they left an impression on the mid, by means of our sense-perception. His own childhood no longer exists and is in the past, which also no longer exists. However, he remembers those days and describes them, it is in the present that he pictures them to himself, because their picture is still present in his memory. He is not sure whether some similar process enables the future to be “seen.” Yet, he knows that general we think abut what we are going to do before we do it. This preliminary thought is in the present, whereas the action that we premeditate does not yet exist, since it is future. When we start to act upon the preliminary thought, it becomes present. The mind forms of a concept of things that are still future, and is thus able to “predict” them. The future is not yet, and thus, “is” not at all and cannot be “seen.” It can be foretold from things that are present, because they exist now and can therefore be seen. In 11.19, he wonders how God reveals the future to people. It may be that God only reveals present signs of things that are to come. In 11.20, it might be correct to say that there are three time, a present of past things (memory), a present of present things (perception), and a present of future things (expectation). Such different things exist only in the human mind. He will accept the common language use of three periods of time, but he also says that “our use of words is generally inaccurate and seldom completely correct, but our meaning is recognized note the less.” In 11.21, he reminds us that he recently stated that we measure time as it passes. We know this because we do in fact measure time. While we are measuring it, where is it coming from, what is it passing through, and where is it going? It can only be coming from the future, passing through the present, and going into the past. It is coming out of what does not yet exist, passing through what has no duration, and moving into what no longer exists. Yet, we must have some measurable period against which we measure time. In 11.22, he says that his “mind is burning to solve this intricate puzzle.” The word “time” is often on our lips. How long did he speak? How long is it since I have seen it? This syllable is twice the length of that. We seem to know what we mean, yet, their true meaning is concealed from us. 

            At this point, I want to pause and consider if the rather primitive notion of language that Augustine proposes in Book 1 is not failing him here. He puzzles over time because it does fit the rather limited use of words as referring to things that he has already expressed. To what “thing” could the words past, present, and future possibly refer? I think it quite possible that he another understanding of language in order to solve the intricate puzzle he has set for himself.

            In 11.23, Augustine objects to the idea that time is nothing more than the movement of sun, moon, and stars. He did not agree, although it might be more accurate that time is what moves the heavenly bodies. If the movement of the heavenly bodies ceased, would time cease? Of course, by their movements, as Genesis 1:14 says, we mark time, day from night, and the passing of days.  The problem he has before himself is to discover the fundamental nature of time and what power it has. Thus, another biblical story, in Joshua 10:13, has a man stopping the movement of the sun so that the battle could go on. Time is an extension of some sort, he thinks. Yet, does he really see this or only seem to see it? In 11.24, he notes that no material body moves except in time. Therefore, time cannot be the movement of a material body. Rather, we measure the movement of a material body by time. 

            In 11.25, he admits that he still does not know what time is. Yet, he is aware that he is saying this time, that he has been writing about time for a long time, and that this time would not be long were it not passing. He knows all this, while not know what time is. However, he might know what time is, but not know how to put it into words. He admits that he is in a sorry state, for he does not even know what he does not know. In 11.26, he admits that he can measure time, but he does not know what he measures. Time seems to be merely an extension, though of what it is an extension he does not know. He begins to wonder if it is an extension of the mind itself. In 11.27, he explains that the length of a sound or a syllable is something that occurs because we have memory of its beginning and end. Therefore, it is his own mind that he measures time. He must not allow his mind to insist that time is something objective. He measures time in his mind. Everything that happens is an impression in the mind, and the impression remains after the thing itself has ceased to be. What he measures is the impression in his mind, since it is still present. The thing itself makes the impression as it passes and moves into the past. When he measures time, he is actually measuring this impression in his mind. He then says that either this is what time is, or else he does not measure time at all. If we measure, silence, then, we measure it mentally, not objectively. The attentive mind, which is present, is relegating the future to the past. The past increases in proportion as the future diminishes, until the future is entirely absorbed and the whole becomes past. In 11.28, he reminds us that he has said the future does not exist, so how can the mind actually “do” something to something that does not exist? He says that the attentive mind can do this only by the mind, which regulates this process, performing the three functions of expectation, attention, and memory. It seems common sense to say that the future does yet exist and the past no longer exists. It also seems that the present has no duration. Yet, all of them exist in the mind as expectation, memory, and attentiveness. 

            Augustine starts to bring his reflections on time to an end. In 11.29, he says that he looks forward, not to what lies ahead of him in this life will surely pass away, but to his eternal goal. He does want to be distracted from that goal. God is eternal. However, he experiences a division between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to him. His thoughts, the intimate life of his soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. His life will be like this until he is purified and melted by the fire of divine love and fused into oneness with God.