Augustinian Studies 22(1991) 191-205

Donald L. Ross

Time, the Heaven of Heavens,

and Memory in Augustine's Confessions

Augustine's discussion of time in Book XI of the Confessions falls

naturally into two parts. In the first part (1.1 - 13.16) time is treated in the
context of a refutation of the Manichean objection to the Christian doctrine
of creation. What was God doing, the Manicheans asked, before he created
heaven and earth? In response, Augustine points out that this question
presupposes a concept of time as a container of events antedating the
creation of the world; and he argues that this is a misconstrual of time, which
is really relational! and was created along with the rest of the world. In the
second part (14.17 - 31.41) Augustine goes on to investigate the nature of
time for its own sake, and ends by making time an "extendedness ... of the
mind itself."2
Now making these two discussions consistent with one another has
required a considerable amount of scholarly ingenuity. Essentially, the
problem is this: in his refutation of the Manichean criticism Augustine
seems to assume that time is something real, yet in his further discussion of
the nature of time he concludes that time is an extension of the mind. Does
this mean that Augustine thinks time is an illusion? But if so, how is this to
be made consistent with the apparent objectivity of time in the first part of
Book XI? There have been many attempts to resolve this problem. In this
essay I will try to further develop one of them.
Interpretations of Augustine's theory of time, as I count them, fall into
five groups. (1) Probably the most popular is the subjectivist interpretation.
This claims the allegiance of no less a group of scholars than Bertrand
Russell,3 Etienne Gilson,4 and R. A. Markus5 - followed by Callahan,6
Rau,7 Whitrow,8 Suter,9 and Mundle. 10 According to this interpretation
Augustine believes that time has no objective existence and is simply a
construction of the mind. (2) Most scholars who reject this interpretation

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adopt the position that in the first part of Book XI, where Augustine
assumes the reality of time, he is talking about time itself, whereas in the
second (subjectivist) part he is talking about the measurement of time. Thus
according to this reading Augustine believes that time itself objectively
exists and that only our measurement of it is mind-dependent. This is the
interpretation of Jordan,1l Lacey,12 and Gundersdorf von Jess. 13 (3) A
more speculative interpretation has also been propounded that time is
indeed mind':dependent, but dependent on minds that are independent of
human minds-angelic minds14 or the mind of the World-Soul. l5 This
would make time, although in reality subjective, objective from our point
of view. (4) Yet another interpretation is to say that Augustine is indeed
talking about two kinds of time - time as it exists objectively and time as
subjectively experienced. This is the contention of Solignac16 and
McEvoy.17 (5) Finally, it has been proposed tha' Augustine's model of time
is that of an extended but nonsequential dimension of reality, analogous to
space. On this interpretation time is absolutely real; only its sequentializa-
tion is mind-dependent. This is the opinion of Hausheer,18 and it is the
position that I will defend in this paper.

II
(1) Initially, it might seem that the subjectivist interpretation of
Augustine's theory of time is inconsistent with his account of creation. God
did not create the universe in time, but with time, as Augustine puts it in De
Civitate Dei. 19 Since "thou madest that very time itself," "there was no time
before heaven and earth.,,20 If, however, time was created along with heaven
and earth, and if humankind was not created until the sixth day, how could
time be subjective? For during the first five days there was no human being
in existence to perceive it. Consequently, the subjectivist interpretation
would seem inconsistent with the fact that Augustine" views time as a
concomitant of the creation of the world.
To this objection, however, the subjectivists have what may be a satis-
factory reply. In De Genesi ad Litteram Augustine makes it clear that he
views the six days of creation as simply different aspects of a single event.
The sequence is logical rather than temporal, and from a temporal point of
view the whole creation occurred simultaneously.21 If this was in the back
of Augustine's mind when he wrote the Confessions, then humans were

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present from the start, so there is no interval during which time is said to
exist before humans came on the scene to perceive it. 22
But there are other more damaging objections that can be made to the
subjectivist thesis. (a) To begin with, in the first part ofhis discussion of time
Augustine speaks as though time is perfectly real: "For thou madest that
very time itself,,,23 and many other similar expressions. Now it is always
possible that Augustine might say, "What I really meant was that God made
time in the sense that he made the human mind, of which time is a
distention." But if that is what he meant, he chose a very misleading way of
putting it. It is very unlikely that one would say that something normally
considered to be non-mental exists if he really meant that it exists as
mind-dependent.
(b) Furthermore, if time is subjective, it follows that there are as many
times as there are minds.24 Again, if this is what is meant by Augustine's
persistent use of "time" in the singular, he will have chosen a singularly odd
mode of expression. The fact is that, as with the previous objection, no one
would express himself in the way Augustine does in the first part of Book
XI if he believed that time was subjective: No one would imply that time is
real if he really meant that time is mental; no one would use "time" in the
singular if he really thought that there are as many temporal series as there
are minds.
(c) But the most serious objection to the subjectivist thesis is that a
subjective theory of time is inconsistent with one of the pillars of Augustin-
ian theology. For Augustine the principal difference between Creator and
creature is that the former is outside, while the latter is inside, time.2S If
time is unreal, what becomes of the difference between the created order
and the eternity of the Creator?26
(2) Of the interpretations of Augustine's theory of time other than the
one I shall defend, the contention that the two parts of Book XI are about
time and the measurement of time respectively has the most plausibility.
For the entire discussion in part two of Book XI is replete with references
to the measurement of time. Nevertheless the fact that Augustine fre-
quently discusses the measurement of time does not prove this interpreta-
tion correct beyond the shadow of a doubt. It is always possible that
Augustine is using his insights into the measurement of time as evidence for
what time itself is - much as many twentieth-century expositions of relativ-
ity theory are couched in terms of the measurement of time, but (by

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employing Occam's Razor to exclude any notion of time over and above
what we can measure) interpret their conclusions as pertaining to the nature
of time itself.
This suspicion is strongly supported by the text. Anticipating his even-
tual solution to the problem of time, Augustine says,
... it is not properly said that there are three times, past, present, and
future. Perhaps it might be said rightly that there are three times: a
time present of things past; a time present of things present; and a
time present of things future. For these three do coexist somehow in
the soul, for otherwise I could not see them. The time present of
things past is memory; the time present of things present is direct
experience; the time present of things future is expectation. Ifwe are
allowed to speak of these things so, I see three times, and I grant that
there are three. 27
Notice that here Augustine speaks of time itself, not of the measurement
of time. The same point is made even more clearly a little later:
From this it appears to me that time is nothing other than extended-
ness; but extendedness of what I do not know. This is a marvel to me.
The extendedness may be of the mind itself.28
In view of the evidence that in the second part of Book XI Augustine is
talking about, not the measurement of time, but time itself, it seems to me
that the interpretation under consideration must be given up.
(3) The next interpretation ascribes time to a mind, such as the angelic
intellect or the intellect of the World-Soul, which is independent of the
human mind. But if this were so, why does Augustine consistently discuss
the subjectivity of time in the first person? And why does he express himself
at the climactic point of Book XI as follows?
It is in you, 0 mind of mine, that I measure my periods of time. Do
not shout me down that it exists; do not overwhelm yourself with the
turbulent flood of your impressions. In you, as I have said, I measure
the periods of time. 29
It is clearly Augustine's own mind to which he is referring here, not an
angelic mind or the mind of the World-Soul.
(a) In defense of his interpretation of time as a distention of the angelic
mind, Morrison cites the account of creation in De Civitate Dei, where time
is said to exist from the beginning, whereas humankind was created only on
the sixth day. Where, then, could time reside, Morrison reasons, except in

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the intellects of the angels, who were also in existence from the beginning?30
(i) Yet we have already seen that inDe Genesi ad Litteram Augustine views
the six days of creation as merely aspects of a single event and not as
successive events. (ii) Moreover, as Gundersdorf von Jess righdypoints out,
the contemporaneousness of time and angels implies that the former is
nothing more than a distention of the latter's mind only under the assump-
tion that time is subjective.31 But we have already rehearsed numerous
reasons for rejecting that interpretation.
(b) In a similar vein, Teske appeals to the following text for a defense of
his hypothesis that time is a distention of the mind of the World-Soul: 32
Surely if there is a mind that so greatly abounds in knowledge and
foreknowledge, to which all things past and future are as well known
as one psalm is well known to me, that mind would be an exceeding
marvel and altogether astonishing. For whatever is past and whatever
is yet to come would be no more concealed from him than the past
and future of that psalm were hidden from me when I was chanting
it: how much of it had been sung from the beginning and what and
how much still remained till the end.33
This passage, however, simply points out that the World-Soul (or the
angelic intellect, as interpreted by some34) is superior to the human mind
in its ability to survey all of time in an act of immediate awareness.3S This
does not imply that time is nothing but that act of awareness.
(4) Another position is that Augustine is really discussing two kinds of
time - physical and psychological. But this interpretation will not work for
two reasons. (a) First, as Teske argues, Augustine's language in Book XI
gives no indication that he is discussing two kinds of time: 36 He nowhere
makes such a distinction; he speaks of "time" all the way through the book.
McEvoy, to be sure, quotes a passage from De Genesi ad Litteram in which
Augustine points out that bodies exist in both space and time whereas minds
exist in time alone. 37 But that in no way means Augustine distinguishes two
kinds of time: both bodies and minds inhabit the same temporal dimension.
Thus there is no solid evidence to support this interpretation.
(b) Even worse, however, this hypothesis trivializes Augustine's whole
discussion of time. For what Augustine is saying under this interpretation
is that physical time is objective and psychological time is subjective. Such
a brainchild is hardly worth writing about, and could hardly have required
such a tortuous process to bring it to birth!

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(5) The proper way to resolve the problem, it seems to me, is to make a
distinction between the extendedness of time and its sequentiality. Time
may be extended without being sequential. Suppose, for example, that the
sequentiality of time is but an illusion, and that time is really just like space.
Time would still be a dimension of reality; but, like space, it would be spread
out all at once. But the reverse does not hold; for if time is sequential, it still
must be extended. Now for Augustine time considered in itself is merely a
dimension of reality; it is non-sequential. It is the sequentiality of time, not
time itself, that is a psychological phenomenon. God, being outside time,38
views it as it really is, in a non-sequential fashion, spread out like space to
his eternal gaze. The human mind, however, is condemned to sequential
experience, even though time as it is in itself is a dimension without
sequence.
To make this clearer, let us examine the concept of time more closely.
In the first place, time, like space, appears to be an extended dimension of
reality. What I mean by this is that time (or space) is either an entity within
which events (or objects) can be located - the absolute theory - or an entity
which is defined in terms of relations between events (or objects)-the
relational theory. This relationship between time and events, whether we
adopt the absolute or the relational point of view, is a necessary condition
for another property of time which appears to be so characteristic of
it - namely, that events in time appear successively and not all at once.
Unlike the relation between time and events, which is analogous to the
relation between space and objects, this property of time has no counterpart
in the spatial realm.39
Given this distinction between the extendedness and the sequentiality
of time, the following three theories of time would seem to be possible. (a)
A thoroughgoing realist would claim that both extendedness and
sequentiality pertain to time as it really is. (b) At the opposite end of the
spectrum, a Kantian idealist would argue that time does not really exist, that
both properties are due to conditions internal to the human mind. (c)
Between these two positions, a moderate realist would maintain that time
is really extended, but that its successive character is mind-dependent.
Basically, the subjectivists interpret Augustine as holding position (b); I see
him as holding position (c).

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What is the evidence for this interpretation? I have found essentially the
same position defended in an article by Herman Hausheer written haIf-a-
century ago. Let me first quote Hausheer's argument:
Whereas men know things temporally, that is, in succession, God
knows eternally, that is, simultaneously. Whereas human conscious-
ness always knows exactly at which point of its unwinding activity it
is, divine consciousness is unchangeably self-subsisting on its lev-
el. ... The infinite moments of time, while perishable for man, coexist
in God's eternal present. They abide in the nunc stans of the scholas-
tics. The souls of men pass through these perishing intervals of time
until they come to rest in God.... While there are infinitely many
things timelessly together in God's eternal present, there are only
minute segments of eternity in man's limited consciousness of the
present. The distribution of the realities of the present among men
is due to their finiteness.... Augustine may give an intimation of all
this in his expression ''we pass through God's today."40
Hausheer's point is that for Augustine God views time stretched out like
space.41 But presumably God's point of view is the correct one. Conse-
quently, time really exists, but it is a dimension that is present all at once.
For Augustine it is the sequentialization of time that is due to the human
mind.

III
This interpretation of Augustine's notion of time sheds light on a
puzzling passage in Book XII of the Confessions. Book XII is divided into
two parts. The first (1.1 - 13.16) is an exegesis of the first two verses of
Genesis; the second (14.17 - 32.43) is an essay on hermeneutics. It is the
first part I wish to consider. There Augustine interprets "heaven and earth"
as the heaven of heavens and formless matter respectively. His conclusions
are summarized in the following passage:
Two things I find which thou hast made, not within intervals of time,
although neither is coeternalwith thee. One of them is so formed
that, without any wavering in its contemplation, without any interval
of change - mutable but not changed - it may fully enjoy thy eternity
and immutability. The other is so formless that it could not change
from one form to another (either of motion or of rest), and so time
has no hold upon it.42

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Both the heaven of heavens and formless matter are said to be outside
time in some sense, yet not coeternal with the Deity. What can this mean?
I suggest that the distinction between the extendedness and the sequential-
ity of time summarized above clarifies the thought behind this passage. The
heaven of heavens and formless matter do not change: the former is
engaged in continual contemplation of God; the latter has no characteristics
from and to which it can alter. What this means is that there is no sequence
of events that pertain to these two things. Thus the sequentiality of time
does not pertain to them. Yet neither of these is eternal; only God is. In
other words, both the heaven of heavens and formless matter are in time,
but are not affected by any sequentiality.
Nevertheless there is a difference between the two: formless matter is
merely a logical distinction and does not really exist, whereas the heaven of
heavens is a separate entity. This is because for Augustine matter was
actually concreated with form-
... matter that was created by thee at the same time that thou didst
form its formlessness, without any intexval of time. Yet, since the
matter of heaven and earth is one thing and the form of heaven and
earth is another thing, thou didst create matter out of absolutely
nothing, but the form of the world thou didst form from formless
matter. But both were done at the same time, so that form followed
matter with no delaying intexval.43
This leaves the heaven of heavens as the only genuine representative of
a kind of being which must be described in terms of time as it really is.
But if time is non-sequential, all things are really extended in time all at
once, even though they are experienced successively by the human mind.
What, then, is so special about the heaven of heavens, that it should be
singled out as describable in non-sequential terms? To answer this question,
we must examine more closely what Augustine says about the heaven of
heavens:
For, clearly, that heaven of heavens which thou didst create in the
beginning is in some wayan intellectual creature, although in no way
coetemal with thee, 0 Trinity. Yet it is nonetheless a partaker in thy
eternity. Because of the sweetness of its most happy contemplation
of thee, it is greatly restrained in its own mutability and cleaves to
thee without any lapse from the time in which it was created, surpass-
ing the rolling change of time. 44

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In other words, the non-sequentiality of the heaven of heavens is expe-

riential. Everything is really non-sequential, but it is the peculiar character-
istic of the heaven of heavens to experience time as it really is.
What lessons may be drawn from this? Since time is truly extended but
non-sequential for Augustine, all things are located in a non-sequential
spatia-temporal manifold from the absolute point of view. The sequentiality
of time is simply a projection of the human mind. But the existence of the
heaven of heavens opens up the possibility that there are certain states of
cognition in which time is experienced as it really is - that is, as non-sequen-
tial. Are there cognitive states other than that of the heaven of heavens that
are capable of apprehending the true nature of time? To answer this
question, we must tum to Augustine's account of memory in Book X.

IV
Book X of the Confessions is likewise comprised of two main sections-
what may be termed the intellectual (1.1 - 26.37) versus the moral (27.38 -
43.70) search for God. It is the first part I wish to examine here. After a brief
introduction, Augustine interrogates the physical world for evidence of its
Creator (6.8 - 6.10). Not finding God there, he turns inward to the soul, first
examining its vital power and then the sensory faculty, but God is not there
either (7.11). Probing more deeply, Augustine at last arrives at his inner-
most self - the faculty of memory. This occupies the bulk of the first half of
Book X (8.12 - 23.34). The discussion of memory is in tum broken down
into an analysis of the memory of bodily images (8.12 - 8.15), of thoughts
(9.16 - 13.20), of emotions (14.21 - 15.23), of memory itself (16.24 - 19.28),
and of happiness (20.29 - 23.34).
It quickly becomes obvious that Augustine's concept of memory extends
far beyond the ordinary sense of the term. It is true that Augustine's
discussions of the memory of bodily images, of emotions, and of memory
itself do not stretch the ordinary usage of the word. But when Augustine
comes to discuss the memory of thoughts and of happiness, both of which
are interpreted in terms of his theory of divine illumination, the concept of
memory accrues additional associations. The memory of thoughts is really
the understanding of the Platonic forms, which Augustine, in keeping with
Roman Platonism, interprets as ideas in the mind of God, whose represen-
tations are somehow infused by God into the human mind. The memory of
happiness is really the mind's dim awareness of God himself. I will call

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memory in its ordinary sense "outer memory" and memory in the extended
sense "inner memory." Although these are not Augustine's terms, "outer"
versus "inner" is a regular Augustinian antithesis. By making this distinction
I do not wish to imply that the memory is not a unitary aspect of the mind;
but I do wish to suggest that the memory is clearly a continuum for
Augustine, stretching from the memory present in our ordinary experience
to our innermost self, which is touched by the hand of God.4S
Let us focus on the inner memory more closely. Augustine feels the need
to posit its existence to explain our knowledge of conceptual abstractions.
In fact, Augustine's doctrine of memory, along with the cognate principle
of divine illumination, takes the place of Plato's theory of recollection. For
this doctrine Augustine gives two very Platonic arguments. First, if such
things were not already in my memory, how could I recognize true state-
ments about them as true the first time I hear them?
Whence and how did these things enter my memory? I do not know.
For when I first learned them, it was not that I believed them on the
credit of another man's mind, but I recognized them on my own; and
I saw them as true, took them into my mind, and laid them up, so to
say, where I could get at them again whenever I willed. There they
were, then, even before I learned them, but they were not in my
memory. Where were they, then? How does it come about that when
they were spoken of, I could acknowledge them and say, "So it is, it
is true," unless they were already in the memory, though far back and
hidden, as it were, in the more secret caves, so that unless they had
been drawn out by the teaching of another person, I should perhaps
never have been able to think of them at al1?46
The second argument is the observation that these ideas are very
different from the instances of them in the physical world:
The memory also contains the principles and the unnumbered laws
of numbers and dimensions. None of these has been impressed on
the memory by a physical sense, because they have neither color nor
sound, nor taste, nor sense of touch. I have heard the sound of the
words by which these things are signified when they are discussed:
but the sounds are one thing, the things another. For the sounds are
one thing in Greek, another in Latin; but the things themselves are
neither Greek nor Latin nor any other language. I have seen the lines
of the craftsmen, the finest of which are like a spider's web, but
mathematical lines are different. They are not the images of such
things as the eye of my body has showed me. The man who knows

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them does so without any cogitation of physical Objects whatever, but

intuits them within himself. I have perceived with all the senses of my
body the numbers we use in counting; but the numbers by which we
count are far different from these. They are not images of these; they
simply are. 47
Thus since for Augustine the memory is the repository of ideas which
are known independently of sense experience, Augustine's usage of the
term goes far beyond the ordinary concept. In fact in his discussion of the
"memory" of happiness, Augustine recognizes that this is not "the same
kind of memory" as memory in the ordinary sense. 48 It extends to the
"memory" of what Augustine elsewhere characterizes as ideas in the mind
of God.
The state of the inner memory seems to resemble the state of the heaven
of heavens. Both are continually illuminated by the light of God. The
difference is that we humans, at least in this life, are rarely aware of that
illumination. The illumination is always there, but our consciousness is more
often directed toward the physical world, our bodily needs, or our phenom-
enal experiences.49 At most our ordinary experience does not extend deeper
than outer memory.
What does this mean about our experience of time? Since the inner
memory appears to exist in a state analogous to that of the heaven of
heavens, it presumably experiences time similarly. We argued earlier that
the heaven of heavens, because of the uninterruptedness of its contempla-
tion of God, experiences time as it really is, as a dimension without se-
quence. Consequently the inner memory, since it too is continually infused
with divine light, must also experience time as extended all at once and not
as sequential.SO

V
Augustine is a very intuitive, concrete thinker. As such, he is at the
opposite pole from someone like Leibniz, whose system is developed
deductively from a few basic principles. Instead, Augustine's writings on
diverse subjects grow out of a framework that was grasped intuitively but
never really stated in the abstract. Moreover, the framework is not static
but grows in various ways as a result of the particular problems that occupy
him at the moment. The problem for the interpreter is to penetrate and

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articulate in the abstract the intuitive framework presupposed by Augus-

tine's concern of the moment.
In this study I have attempted to do just this with Augustine's concept
of time and its corollaries. I have argued that the concept of time Augustine
has in mind in Book XI of the Confessions is that of a dimension of reality
which is extended but not sequential. Moreover, I have contended that for
Augustine there are certain privileged modes of access to the true nature
of time: Both the heaven of heavens of Book XII and the inner memory of
Book X experience time as it really is. Unlike God, they do not view time
from the outside, but unlike our ordinary states of awareness, they do
experience its true nature - a dimension without sequence.

NOTES

1. Cf. De Civitate Dei XI 6 and the analogous discussion of space at XI 5.

2. Confessiones XI 26.33: distentionem .. ipsius animi. All Latin citations are taken
from the Corpus SCriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum edition. All English
translations have been taken from Outler's translation in the library of Christian
Qassics series. Any modifications are noted.
3. Bertrand Russel, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1948), p. 212.
4. Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy ofSaintAugustine (New York: Octagon
Books, 1960), pp. 189 - %.
5. R. A Markus, "Marius Victorinus and Augustine," The Cambridge History ofLAter
Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1967), pp. 402 - 5.
6. John F. Callahan, Four VIeWS of Time in Ancient Philosophy (New York: Green-
wood Press, 1948), pp. 149 - 87.
7. Catherine Rau, "Theories of TIme in Ancient Philosophy," The Philosophical
Review 62 (1953) 514 - 25.
8. G. S. Whitrow, The NaturalPhilosophy o/Tune (New York: Harper & Row, 1961),
pp.47 -49.
9. Ronald Suter, "Augustine on Time with Some Criticisms from Wittgenstein,"
Revue Intemationale de PhiIosophie 16 (1%2) 378 - 94.
10. C. W. 1(. Mundle, "Augustine's Pervasive Error Concerning Time," Philosophy
41 (1966) 165 - 68.
11. Robert Jordan, "Time and Contingency in St. Augustine," Augustine: A Collec-
tion ofCritical Essays, ed. R. A. Markus (New York: Doubleday, 1972), pp. 255 - 79.

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 ROSS: TIME, THE HEAVEN OFHEAYENS, AND MEMORY

12. Hugh M. Lacey, "Empiricism and Augustine's Problems about TIme,"Augustine:

A Collection ofCritical Essays, ed R A Markus (New York: Doubleday, 1972), pp.
280-308.
13. Wilma Gundersdorfvon Jess, "Augustine: A Consistent and Unitary Theory of
Tune," The New Scholasticism 46 (1972) 337 - 51.
14. John L Morrison, "Augustine's Two Theories of Tune," The New Scholasticism
45 (1971) 600 -10.
15. Roland J. Teske, ''The World-Soul and Time in St. Augustine," Augustinian
Studies 14 (1983) 75 - 92.
16. Aime Solignac trans., Saint Augustin,Les Confessions, Oeuvres de S. Augustine,
voIs. 13 - 14 (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1962), vol. 14, pp. 590 - 91.
17. James McEvoy, "St. Augustine's Account of Time and Wittgenstein's Criti-
cisms," Review ofMetaphysics 38 (1984) 547 -77.
18. Herman Hausheer, "St. Augustine's Conception of TIme," The Philosophical
Review 46 (1937) 503 - 12.
19. De Civitate Dei XI 6.
20. Confessiones XI 13.15: id ipsum ... tempus tu feceras .... ante caelum et terram
nuDum erat tempus .... Cf. XI 14.17.
21. De Genesi ad Litteram IV.
22. lowe this observation to Teske,op. cit., p. 86, n. 35.
23. Confessiones XI 13.15: id ipsum enim tempus tu feceras.
24. Cf. Teske: 88 - 89.
25. Cf., for example, Confessiones XI 11.13, 13.16, 30.40, 31.41.
26. Cf. Gundersdorfvon Jess: 337 - 46; Teske: 88.
27. Confessiones XI 20.26: ... nec proprie dicitur: tempora sunt tria, praeteritum,
praesens et futurum, sed fortasse proprie diceretur: tempora sunt tria, praesens de
praeteritis, praesens de praesentibus, praesens de futuris. sunt enim haec in anima
tria quaedam et alibi ea non uideo, praesens de praeteritis memoria, praesens de
praesentibus continuitus, praesens de futuris expectatio. si haec permittimur dicere,
tria tempora uideo fateorque, tria sunt.
28. Confessiones XI 26.33: inde mihi uisum est nihil esse aIiud tempus quam
distentionem: sed cuius rei, nescio, et mirum, si non ipsius animi. See also XI 27.36.
29. Confessiones XI 27.36: In te, anime meus, tempora mea metior. noli mihi
obstrepere, quod est: noli tibi obstepere turbis affectionum tuarum. in te, inquam,
tempora metior. I have altered Outler's translation slightly by replacing "the periods
of time" in the first sentence with "my periods of time," both because is closer to
the original and to emphasize the point I am trying to make.
30. Morrison: 608 - 10.
31. Gundersdorfvon Jess: 346- 48.

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32. Teske: 89 - 92.

33. Confessiones XI 31.41: certe si est tam grandi scientia et praescientia pollens
animus, cui cuncta praeterita et futura ita nota sint, sicut mihi unum canticum
notissimum, nimium mirabilis est animus iste atque ad horrorem stupendus, quippe
quem ita non lateat quidquid peractum et quidquid relicum saeculorum est,
quemadmodum me non latet cantantem illud canticum, quid et quantum eius abierit
ab exordio, quid et quantum restet ad finem.
34. For example, Gilson,op. cit., pp. 197 - 98. See also his History of Christian
Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random House, 1955), p. 73.
35. Below I shall explain the significance of this.
36. Teske: 87.
37. McEvoy: 574 - 75.
38. See the references cited in note 25.
39. Related to the sequentiality of time is another property - the so-called "arrow"
of time (to use Eddington's phrase): time is not only sequential; it is unidirectional.
The arrow of time is not the same as sequentiality: I can imagine another universe
in which I could make time flow forward or backward at will (like running a movie
forward or in reverse), but in such a universe time would still flow. Nevertheless, the
two concepts are related in that sequentiality is a necessary condition for uni-
directionality: time could not flow one-way if it did not flow at all. See the discussions
in Whitrow, op. cit., pp. 5 -12, 268 -88; Setphen W. Hawking,A BriefHistory o/Tune
(Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988), pp. 143 - 53; and Roger Penrise, The Emperor's
New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 302 - 47.
40. Hausheer: 509 - 11.
41. Cf. Confessiones XI 31.41.
42. Confessiones XII 12.15: ... duo reperio, quae fecisti carentia temporibus, cum
tibi neutrum coaetemum sit: unum, quod ita formatum est, ut sine ullo defectu
contemplationis, sine ullo interuallo mutationis, quamuis mutabile, tamen non
mutatum aeternitate atque inconmutabilitate perfruantur; alterum, quod ita in-
forme erat, ut ex qua forma in quam formam uel motionis uel stationis mutaretur,
quo tempori subderetur, non haberet. Cf. XII 9.9,11.12,11.14.
43. Confessiones XIII 33.48: ... simul a te creata materia, quia eius informitatem
sine ulla temporis interpositione formasti. nam cum aliud sit caeli et terrae materies,
aliud caeli et terrae species, materiem quidem de omnino nihilo, mundi autem
speciem de informi materia, simul tamen utrumque fecisti, ut materiam forma nulla
morae intercapedine sequeretur. Cf. XII 12.15.
44. Confessiones XII 9.9: nimirum enim caelum caeli, quod in principio fecisti,
creatura est aliqua intellectualis, quamquam nequaquam tibi, trinitati, coaetema,
particeps tamen aeternitatis tuae, ualde mutabilitatem suam prae dulcedine
felicissimae contemplationis tuae cohibet et sine ullo lapsu ex quo facta est in-
haerendo tibi excedit omnem uolubilem uicissitudinem temporum. Cf. XII 11.12.

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45. a. Confusiones X 17.26: "this I myself am (hoc ego ipse sum). " The distinction
between outer and inner memory is clearly made in De Trinilate XV 21.40 - 21.41.
46. Confessiones X 10.17: unde et qua haec intrauerunt in memoriam meam? nescio
quomodo; nam cum ea didici, non credidi alieno cordi, sed in meo recognoui et uera
esse approbaui et conmendaui et tamquam reponens, unde proferrem, cum uellem.
ibi ergo erant et antequam ea didicissem, sed in memoria non erant. ubi ergo aut
quare, cum dicerentur, agnoui et dixi: "ita est, uerum est", nisi quia iam erant in
memoria, sed tam remota et retrusa quasi in cauis abditioribus, ut nisi admonente
aliquo eruerentur, ea fortasse cogitare non possem? See also Augustine's discussion
of the "memory" of happiness at X 20.29. a. Plato, Meno 7ge7 - 86c6.
47. Confessiones X 12.19: Item continet memoria numerorum dimensionumque
rationes et leges innumerabiles, quarum nullam corporis sensus inpressit, quia nee
ipsae coloratae sunt aut sonant aut olent aut gustatae aut contrectatae sunt. audiui
sonos uerborum, quibus significantur, cum de his disseritur, set illi alii, istae autem
aliae sunt. nam illi aliter graece, aliter latine sonant, istae uero nee graecae nec
latinae sunt nec aIiud eloquiorum genus. uidi lineas fabrorum uel etiam tenuissimas,
sicut mum araneae; sed iliae aIiae sunt, non sunt imagines earum, quas mihi
nuntiauit carnis oculus: nouit eas quisquis sine ulla cogitatione qualiscumque
corporis intus agnouit eas. sensi etiam numeros omnibus corporis sensibus, quos
numeramus; sed illi alii sunt, quibus numeramus, nec imagines istorum sunt et ideo
ualde sunt. a. Plato, Phaedo 72e3 - 78b3.
48. Confessiones X 21.30: ... ita ut memini.... I have repunctuated the phrase
slightly from the CSEL edition by removing a comma between ita and ut. See also
the phrase skut meminimus, used three times later in the same paragraph.
49. This is the point of the second half of Book X The concept derives from the
Plotinian distinction between the higher and lower soul and his theory of continuous
contemplation. a.Enneads IV 8 [6]4,8; V 1 [10] 12; V 2 [11] 1; IV 1 [21] 1.
50. This idea may be what is behind his otherwise unsatisfying argument for the
immortality of the soul in Sololiquia ll.

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