Catholic Thought discussion

I haven't caught up with my reading yet... Feel free to comment on this chapter, and I will join you when I get there :)

An interesting question at the start of this book: Is God aware of what is going on in our time when He is in eternity or as I understand it has all of history behind and before Him also “at the same time”? (my quotation marks) Is God aware of an event as it happens? St. Augustine recalls what Jesus said "Your Father knoweth what things you need before you ask him." (Matthew 6: 8) St. Augustine also confesses and prays in humility but he does ask for greater enlightenment and to reveal to him “an interval for my meditations on the hidden things of Thy law . . . and that the secret things of Thy Word may be opened to me when I knock.” (Coulter transl. Chapter II)

He considers the creation of all things in Chapter XI and they “cry aloud” to him that they were made. His speculation on how God made heaven and earth become to me a bit murky. If he seeks to fathom secrets of God how can he expect to be able to understand them if they are to be revealed to him in this life? These somewhat nebulous ruminations made me interested in his resulting conclusions. He begins speculating on time first and concludes that eternity always stands still and “is itself neither future nor past but expresses itself in the times that are future and past.” (Chapter XI) I wonder if that is an idea I can understand. But C. S. Lewis wrote something along this line in “Screwtape Letters” that I am now reading: “The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”(Letter 15. The “Enemy” referred to is God.)

Further on in this book, St. Augustine handles a question that may be asked after reading the first sentence of Genesis “What was God doing before he made heaven and earth?” He answers first with “I do not know what I do not know.” But he admits that he wishes he knew all that he desires to know. Then he decides it’s an improper question because if there was no time before God created it how can we ask what was before time was created.

During his discussion of how we observe time St. Augustine arrives at the well-thought-out idea that time is a subjective experience. He believes that times present and past do exist and he asks God to let him further seek because he wishes to know where they are. He thinks that both times past and future are in time present because they are conceived in memory and the mind, the past because it is remembered in the present and future because it can be predicted as at sunrise which is now and is seen. But as soon as he arrives at these conclusions he feels he must say that this is an improper way of speaking as there are neither times future nor times past “though we understand one another’s meaning.” (Chapter XX)

St. Augustine prays to God, towards the end of this book, to open up his eyes to understand the scriptures and the “intricate enigma” of things he does not know. Time is still the big enigma and he continues to speculate about its “power and nature.” He spends some space disputing a claim he hears that time is the motion of the body. It cannot be he says because time continues even if a body is not in motion but standing still. He asks how we measure time itself. I don’t know if he was familiar with water clocks of his period in history but I don’t think he is writing about measuring time by mechanical means. His enigma is that there is no way of measuring the present because it has no extension, not the past because it is no longer, and not the future because it is not yet. Yet we measure times though none of these.

I have finally finished book XI and reading what Galicius wrote I really don't have to add anything in terms of introducing the contents.

It was a dry segment to read. Summarizing the recurrent theme: existence happens in the present moment. If God is in the Eternal Now, then it is in the present moment we encounter God.

I heard St. Augustine wrote Confessions during bouts of insomnia to past the time.

Kenneth wrote: "I heard St. Augustine wrote Confessions during bouts of insomnia to past the time."

I am much interested in your source of this information about how St. Augustine passed his time.