“What we should rightly call eternal is that which grasps and possesses wholly and simultaneously the fullness of unending life, which lacks nothing of the future, and has lost nothing of the fleeting past; and such an existence must be ever present in itself to control and aid itself, and also must keep present with itself the infinity of changing time.
“Therefore, people who hear that Plato thought that this Universe had no beginning of time and will have no end, are not right in thinking that in this way the created world is co-eternal with its Creator. For to pass through unending life, the attribute which Plato ascribes to the Universe is one thing; but it is another thing to grasp simultaneously the whole of unending life in the present; this is plainly a peculiar property of the mind of God.
“And further, God should not be regarded as older than His creations by any period of time, but rather by the peculiar property of His own single Nature. For the infinite changing of temporal things tries to imitate the ever simultaneously present immutability of His life: it cannot succeed in imitating or equaling this, but sinks from immutability into change, and falls from the single directness of the present into an infinite space of future and past.
“And since this temporal state cannot possess its life completely and simultaneously, but it does in the same manner exist for ever without ceasing, it therefore seems to try in some degree to rival that which it cannot fulfill or represent, for it binds itself to some sort of present time out of this small and fleeting moment; but inasmuch as this temporal present bears a certain appearance of that abiding present, it somehow makes those, to whom it comes, seem to be in truth what they imitate.
“But since this imitation could not be abiding, the unending march of time has swept it away, and thus we find that it has bound together, as it passes, a chain of life, which it could not by abiding embrace in its fullness. And thus, if we would apply proper epithets to those subjects, we can say, following Plato, that God is eternal, but the Universe is continual.”
—from Book 5, Prose 6
When I first read this passage many years ago, I was immediately taken by the image of the creatures, existing in the limits of time, striving to grow in perfection, and trying to emulate the completeness of the Creator, existing beyond the limits of time.
Yes, it is partly the hopeless romantic in me, I’m sure, but I would like to think that it is also a hazy reflection of what actually goes on, each and every day, as people rise and fall, succeed and fail, learn to love and learn to let go.
There is a reason why we fight tooth and nail to become richer in being, even if we don’t always understand what we are doing, or why we are doing it. Even when we confuse right and wrong, better and worse, that irresistible urge gets to the heart of the matter. I can deny God all I want, and yet everything I do is to become more like Him. The concept of God is only a hindrance when I am thinking too small.
I must be careful here not to conceive of a Divine transcendence at the expense of a Divine immanence, as if what is beyond time is somehow far distant from me.
I remember what Lady Philosophy told me earlier, that while the lower cannot exist in the same way as the higher, the higher always includes within itself the lower. Providence is closer to me than I am to myself, though I do not see it at the time.
Perhaps my choice of saying that God is “beyond” time is not quite right; perhaps it would be better to say that I don’t quite live up to the eternity, that I am mere becoming instead of being. What I am is only one tiny aspect of All that is.
Following St. Augustine, I once again also remember:
And I viewed the other things below You, and perceived that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are they not. They are, indeed, because they are from You. But they are not, because they are not what You are. For that truly is which remains immutably.
There is no part without the whole, nothing relative without the absolute, no change without the changeless.
Time may go on forever and ever, but creatures have their bounds. Accordingly, they undergo a process, where the end of one thing transforms into the beginning of another. I have a lovely image of one of my other heroes, Marcus Aurelius, nodding his head in approval.
Will I end, at least in the form I am now? Yes, and that is right and good. Will God end? It’s a nonsense question, since what is eternal has no beginning or end, and that is what is best.
Written in 2/2016
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