Access to God in Augustine's Confessions: Books X-XIII

2. The Problem of Time (Book XI)

101 2 The Problem of Time (Book XI) Augustine’s discussion of the nature of time calls our attention to the contrast between time and eternity and places it within a context in which both issues are crucial themes. In addition, Augustine’s analysis of the nature of time is usually considered in abstraction from the larger context in which he embeds it.1 However, the difficulty with approaching Augustine’s conception of time in this way is that he develops it not only by discussing the contrast between time and eternity, but also by engaging in an act of confession that binds time and eternity together. If we are to understand his reasons for calling our attention to the paradoxes of time, we must approach it as part of a comprehensive way of dealing with the relations between time and eternity and between God and the soul. In the last three Books of the Confessions, Augustine turns his attention to the exposition of Scripture, where the first themes that he considers are creation ex nihilo and the speaking Word that makes creation possible. Divine creation is one of the central themes of the Confessions, and the speaking Word is the generative power that brings the temporal order into existence from absolute nonbeing. The mystery of eternity and the intelligibility of the world are brought together by the power of creation that expresses itself in an act of speaking. Yet this creative act also leads to a philosophical problem with a mysterious dimension of its own. Having claimed that God creates the world ex nihilo and that a radical contrast obtains between time and eternity, Augustine asks and responds 102 ACCESS TO GOD IN AUGUSTINE’S CONFESSIONS to a question that continues to perplex the philosophical consciousness: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know”; but if I wish “to explain it to someone who . . . [asks] me, I do not know” (11.14.17). The remainder of Book XI is devoted to showing why this problem is so intractable, not only theoretically, but also existentially, and to point the way to a resolution of it. Augustine’s discussion of the nature of time displays spatial, temporal, and eternal dimensions, all of which must be taken into account if we are to understand the problem before us. When he distinguishes the past, the present, and the future and takes up the question of how time can be measured, Augustine spatializes the temporal continuum (11.11.13; 11.16.21).2 When he asserts that the modes of time are aspects of the soul that express themselves in memory, apprehension, and expectation, he temporalizes his earlier spatialization to give it human significance.3 And when he speaks about himself as stretched out, gathered up, and stretching forth toward God, he eternalizes time as the existential and reflective medium in which he seeks to understand the ground of his existence.4 Taken together, these ways of understanding the nature of time constitute a place that grounds and reflects the stages of Augustine’s journey toward God and of his encounters with him. The spatialization of time involves a transition from the past to which Augustine gives us access in the experiential parts of the book to the framework of the past, the present, and the future in which it has its proper place. From this point of view, Books I–IX point to the past; Book X focuses on the present; and Books XI–XIII evoke the future. The temporalization of time is a different way of generalizing the earlier discussion , moving from memory as a mode of temporality to remembering, apprehending, and expecting as the wider context of which memory is a part. If memory is both an ontological condition that makes acts of remembering possible and an imagistic reflection of them, time is the condition for and image of the entire range of Augustine’s experience. Finally, the eternalization of time points to the past in which Augustine is fragmented , to the present in which he is unified, and to the future in which he longs to participate. Here Augustine brings the structure of his experience and the nature of time together by developing the distinctions between being stretched out as a fallen creature, being gathered together in conversion, and stretching forth toward God as a member of a transformed community. Augustine’s analysis of the nature of time begins with a...