“Since then all that is known is apprehended, as we just now showed, not according to its nature but according to the nature of the knower, let us examine, so far as we lawfully may, the character of the Divine Nature, so that we may be able to learn what its knowledge is.
“The common opinion, according to all men living, is that God is eternal. Let us therefore consider what is eternity. For eternity will, I think, make clear to us at the same time the Divine Nature and knowledge.
“Eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite life. This will appear more clearly if we compare it with temporal things.
“All that lives under the conditions of time moves through the present from the past to the future; there is nothing set in time which can at one moment grasp the whole space of its lifetime. It cannot yet comprehend tomorrow; yesterday it has already lost.
“And in this life of today your life is no more than a changing, passing moment.
“And as Aristotle said of the Universe, so it is of all that is subject to time; though it never began to be, nor will ever cease, and its life is co-extensive with the infinity of time, yet it is not such as can be held to be eternal. For though it apprehends and grasps a space of infinite lifetime, it does not embrace the whole simultaneously; it has not yet experienced the future.”
—from Book 5, Prose 6
The school of hard knocks has taught me to be very careful when someone promises an eternity, almost as much as when someone swears undying love. Combine the two terms together, and you may face the prospect of the gravest disappointment.
This is not necessarily because we don’t mean well, but because we don’t always understand precisely what we are saying. Love isn’t just a current pleasure, and an eternity is something more than just the foreseeable future.
If I am ever going to gain some insights on Divine knowledge, however indirectly and incompletely, I will have to grapple with what it means for such knowledge to be eternal.
Perhaps I am imagining eternity like some line with no beginning and with no ending, always continuing on and on in both directions.
Perhaps it is like an infinite number, where something else can always still be added to it.
Perhaps I am picturing the familiar symbols, that sideways eight, or a snake eating its own tail, where everything is always coming around again, right back to where it started.
Lady Philosophy might say that I am then describing what goes on forever, or what is potentially infinite, but I am not quite describing what is eternal, or what is actually infinite. The distinction will be between what remains determined by time, and what is in and of itself timeless.
My use of words like “continuing”, and “adding”, and “coming and going” are getting in my way.
Both Aristotle and Einstein, working from very different perspectives and in very different circumstances, wondered if time had any absolute existence, or if it was relative.
Both came to the conclusion that time is measured by motion and change, just as space is measure by extension, and that there is no such thing as “time” at all where there is no variation.
Eternity is something far more profound than what is forever. While change might be infinite, as with the Universe Aristotle postulated, eternity is an infinity that is changeless.
It is all as if it were like a constant now, the only analogy I can use to comprehend it. There is no past, because nothing has gone away. There is no future, because nothing will still come to be.
My own life passes, while in the life of God nothing passes at all. It is, in all the beauty of its simplicity and perfection. Where there is only absolute Being, there is nothing lost or gained, because everything is completely present..
“The common opinion, according to all men living, is that God is eternal. Let us therefore consider what is eternity. For eternity will, I think, make clear to us at the same time the Divine Nature and knowledge.
“Eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite life. This will appear more clearly if we compare it with temporal things.
“All that lives under the conditions of time moves through the present from the past to the future; there is nothing set in time which can at one moment grasp the whole space of its lifetime. It cannot yet comprehend tomorrow; yesterday it has already lost.
“And in this life of today your life is no more than a changing, passing moment.
“And as Aristotle said of the Universe, so it is of all that is subject to time; though it never began to be, nor will ever cease, and its life is co-extensive with the infinity of time, yet it is not such as can be held to be eternal. For though it apprehends and grasps a space of infinite lifetime, it does not embrace the whole simultaneously; it has not yet experienced the future.”
—from Book 5, Prose 6
The school of hard knocks has taught me to be very careful when someone promises an eternity, almost as much as when someone swears undying love. Combine the two terms together, and you may face the prospect of the gravest disappointment.
This is not necessarily because we don’t mean well, but because we don’t always understand precisely what we are saying. Love isn’t just a current pleasure, and an eternity is something more than just the foreseeable future.
If I am ever going to gain some insights on Divine knowledge, however indirectly and incompletely, I will have to grapple with what it means for such knowledge to be eternal.
Perhaps I am imagining eternity like some line with no beginning and with no ending, always continuing on and on in both directions.
Perhaps it is like an infinite number, where something else can always still be added to it.
Perhaps I am picturing the familiar symbols, that sideways eight, or a snake eating its own tail, where everything is always coming around again, right back to where it started.
Lady Philosophy might say that I am then describing what goes on forever, or what is potentially infinite, but I am not quite describing what is eternal, or what is actually infinite. The distinction will be between what remains determined by time, and what is in and of itself timeless.
My use of words like “continuing”, and “adding”, and “coming and going” are getting in my way.
Both Aristotle and Einstein, working from very different perspectives and in very different circumstances, wondered if time had any absolute existence, or if it was relative.
Both came to the conclusion that time is measured by motion and change, just as space is measure by extension, and that there is no such thing as “time” at all where there is no variation.
Eternity is something far more profound than what is forever. While change might be infinite, as with the Universe Aristotle postulated, eternity is an infinity that is changeless.
It is all as if it were like a constant now, the only analogy I can use to comprehend it. There is no past, because nothing has gone away. There is no future, because nothing will still come to be.
My own life passes, while in the life of God nothing passes at all. It is, in all the beauty of its simplicity and perfection. Where there is only absolute Being, there is nothing lost or gained, because everything is completely present..
Written in 2/2016
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