The Past, Present And Future

From reading Confessions by Augustine of Hippo [1] I am inspired to write once again on the topic of timelessness.  Augustine of Hippo asked "What, then, is time?  There can be no quick and easy answer, for it is no simple matter even to understand what it is, let alone find words to explain it." [2]

I have the words and therefore answer.

Time - its nature is timelessness which is eternal.  The human can only exist in the finiteness of time.  This is the result of  Adam and Eve's Original Sin.  In the absence of Sin, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden would have been timeless because they were made in the image of God, of Perfection in Eternity.

The finiteness of time is only for the flesh of the sinful.  Our minds and souls exist in eternity.  In God's eternity, the continuum of timelessness, the past and the future become irrelevant since everything simply is.

Augustine asked "how do you reveal the future to us when, for us, the future does not exist?" [3]

Let me answer.

Knowledge of the future does not exist in the minds of men due to Original Sin.  Without Original Sin, "the future" - an earthly concept - is also "the present" because man who is without Sin would be perfect and thus could and would make the present perfect.  In perfection, there is no division among past, present and future because perfection is constant.  It does not change.  It is eternal and is timeless.  Even Hell is perfect and timeless.  Surely nobody wants his mind and soul to end up there however perfect it is.

Augustine was having a lot of trouble separating time on earth and timelessness in God's eternity.  He said, [t]he past increases in proportion as the future diminishes, until the future is entirely absorbed and the whole becomes the past." [4]  He was correct, but only in the life of man which is finite.  In God's infiniteness of time, God's infiniteness of perfection, nothing is gained, nothing is diminished because nothing has to be gained or diminished.  It is perfect as is.

Then he asked, "[b]ut how can the future be diminished or absorbed when it does not yet exist?  And how can the past increase when it no longer exists?" [5]  Then he answered it by pointing to the mind where "there is both expectation of the future and remembrance of the past." [6]  For me, reading this is a bit frustrating.  Augustine could not get his supreme intellect away from earthly concepts and the flawlessness of his logic to focus it on Heaven's perfection.  In Heaven, there is no need for logic or reason for Perfection simply is. [7]




[1] Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (England: Penguin Books, 1961), 262-277.
[2] Ibid, 263-4.
[3] Ibid, 268.
[4] Ibid, 277.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] On earth, we need logic and reason to achieve and justify perfection and even then, nothing is perfect, because of Sin.