Reading: Ecclesiastes 3

The Concept of Time

Time is a constant reality in our lives. But the question arises for a philosopher what is time,
actually? What is this thing that we become aware of as we grow up?
A Time for Everything
1For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
7a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
The God-Given Task
9What gain has the worker from his toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to the
children of man to be busy with. 11He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has
put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the
beginning to the end. 12I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to
do good as long as they live; 13also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all
his toil—this is God’s gift to man.
14I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor
anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. 15That which is,
already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven
away.a

Reading: Three Videos describing time philosophically

In this activity, you are given the opportunity to watch three videos which attempt to give us a
sense of what time is philosophically. I encourage you to watch all three (if only to pass the
quiz!) God has put time into the creation. But how we understand time is an elusive thing. What
exactly is time? Why does it seem time moves fast or slow during various events? How is time
to be understood, especially when we say with the Scriptures that Christ was born in the
fullness of time? Ask yourself as you are watching the videos, what do I as a Christian say
about the concept of time?

The presenter is a man who has studied the philosophy of time and tries to help us understand
his ideas.
A second video which tries to present an understanding of the McTaggert Paradox
A half hour video on the way quantum physics looks at time
Reading: St. Augustine Addresses the Reality of Time
What is time?

One of the earliest, and most famous, discussions of the nature and experience of time occurs
in the autobiographical Confessions of St Augustine. Augustine was born in Numidia (now
Algeria) in 354 AD, held chairs in rhetoric at Carthage and Milan, and become Bishop of Hippo
in 395. He died in 430. As a young adult, he had rejected Christianity, but was finally converted
at the age of 32. Book XI of the Confessions contains a long and fascinating exploration of
time, and its relation to God. During the course of it Augustine raises the following conundrum:
when we say that an event or interval of time is short or long, what is it that is being described
as of short or long duration? It cannot be what is past, since that has ceased to be, and what is
non-existent cannot presently have any properties, such as being long. But neither can it be
what is present, for the present has no duration. (For the reason why the present must be
regarded as durationless, see the section on the specious present, below.) In any case, while
an event is still going on, its duration cannot be assessed.
Augustine's answer to this riddle is that what we are measuring, when we measure the
duration of an event or interval of time, is in the memory. From this he derives the radical
conclusion that past and future exist only in the mind. While not following Augustine all the way
to the mind-dependence of other times, we can concede that the perception of temporal
duration is crucially bound up with memory. It is some feature of our memory of the event (and
perhaps specifically our memory of the beginning and end of the event) that allows us to form a
belief about its duration. This process need not be described, as Augustine describes it, as a
matter of measuring something wholly in the mind. Arguably, at least, we are measuring the
event or interval itself, a mind-independent item, but doing so by means of some psychological
process.
Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time-experience/

-------------------------------------
The following is excerpted from Moore and Bruder, p 79.

The ex nihilo theory (God created the world out of nothing) invites a troublesome question for
Christian theology: Why did God choose to create the world at the time he did and not at some
other? Thanks to Plato and Plotinus, Augustine was able to provide a potentially reasonable
answer to this question.
According to Augustine, the question rests on a false assumption that God (and his actions)
exists within time. On the contrary, Augustine maintained, God does not exist in time; instead,
time began with the creation by God of the world. God is beyond time. In this way the timeless
attribute of that Plato’s Good and Plotinus’s One was transferred by Augustine to the Christian
God
But what exactly, Augustine wondered, is time? Here Augustine broke new philosophical
ground by coming forth with a very tempting answer to question
“What, then, is time?” he asked. “If no one asks of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who
asks, I know not.” On one hand, only the present exists for the past is no more, and the future
is not yet. But, on the other hand, certain things did happen in the past, and other things will
happen in the future, and thus past and future are quite real. How can the past and the future
be both real and nonexistent?
Augustine’s answer to this almost hopelessly baffling question is that past and future exist only
in the human mind. “The present of things past is a memory; the present of things present is
sight; the present of things future is expectation.”
Augustine’s analysis of time is that it is a subjective phenomenon. It exists “only in the mind
(Thus, before God created us, there was no time.) As will be discussed in Chapter 7, the idea
that time is subjective was later developed by the eighteenth century philosopher Immanuel
into the theory that time, space, causation, other basic “categories” of being are all subjective
impositions of the mind on the world. The same idea was then carried to its ultimate conclusion
by the Absolute Idealists, who said that the world is mind.

Readings in St. Augustine’s Confessions in which he develops some of his thoughts on

the nature of time.
Chapter I.—By Confession He Desires to Stimulate Towards God His Own Love and That of
His Readers.
1. O Lord, since eternity is Thine, art Thou ignorant of the things which I say unto Thee? Or
seest Thou at the time that which cometh to pass in time? Why, therefore, do I place before
Thee so many relations of things? Not surely that Thou mightest know them through me, but
that I may awaken my own love and that of my readers towards Thee, that we may all say,
“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.” 999 I have already said, and shall say, for the love
of Thy love do I this. For we also pray, and yet Truth says, “Your Father knoweth what things
ye have need of before ye ask Him.”1000 Therefore do we make known unto Thee our love, in
confessing unto Thee our own miseries and Thy mercies upon us, that Thou mayest free us
altogether, since Thou hast begun, that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves, and that
we may be blessed in Thee; since Thou hast called us, that we may be poor in spirit, and
meek, and mourners, and hungering and athirst after righteousness, and merciful, and pure in
heart, and peacemakers.1001 Behold, I have told unto Thee many things, which I could and
which I would, for Thou first wouldest that I should confess unto Thee, the Lord my God, for
Thou art good, since Thy “mercy endureth for ever.

Chapter VI.—He Did Not, However, Create It by a Sounding and Passing Word.
8. But how didst Thou speak? Was it in that manner in which the voice came from the cloud,
saying, “This is my beloved Son”?1031 For that voice was uttered and passed away, began and
ended. The syllables sounded and passed by, the second after the first, the third after the
second, and thence in order, until the last after the rest, and silence after the last. Hence it is
clear and plain that the motion of a creature expressed it, itself temporal, obeying Thy Eternal
will. And these thy words formed at the time, the outer ear conveyed to the intelligent mind,
whose inner ear lay attentive to Thy eternal word. But it compared these words sounding in
time with Thy eternal word in silence, and said, “It is different, very different. These words are
far beneath me, nor are they, since they flee and pass away; but the Word of my Lord
remaineth above me for ever.” If, then, in sounding and fleeting words Thou didst say that
heaven and earth should be made, and didst thus make heaven and earth, there was already a
corporeal creature before heaven and earth by whose temporal motions that voice might take
its course in time. But there was nothing corporeal before heaven and earth; or if there were,
certainly Thou without a transitory voice hadst created that whence Thou wouldest make the
passing voice, by which to say that the heaven and the earth should be made. For whatsoever
that were of which such a voice was made, unless it were made by Thee, it could not be at all.
By what word of Thine was it decreed that a body might be made, whereby these words might
be made?

Chapter XI.—They Who Ask This Have Not as Yet Known the Eternity of God, Which is
Exempt from the Relation of Time.
13. Those who say these things do not as yet understand Thee, O Thou Wisdom of God, Thou
light of souls; not as yet do they understand how these things be made which are made by and
in Thee. They even endeavour to comprehend things eternal; but as yet their heart flieth about
in the past and future motions of things, and is still wavering. Who shall hold it and fix it, that it
may rest a little, and by degrees catch the glory of that everstanding eternity, and compare it
with the times which never stand, and see that it is incomparable; and that a long time cannot
become long, save from the many motions that pass by, which cannot at the same instant be
prolonged; but that in the Eternal nothing passeth away, but that the whole is present; but no
time is wholly present; and let him see that all time past is forced on by the future, and that all
the future followeth from the past, and that all, both past and future, is created and issues from
that which is always present? Who will hold the heart of man, that it may stand still, and see
how the still-standing eternity, itself neither future nor past, uttereth the times future and past?
Can my hand accomplish this, or the hand of my mouth by persuasion bring about a thing so
great?1039

Chapter XIII.—Before the Times Created by God, Times Were Not.

15. But if the roving thought of any one should wander through the images of bygone time, and
wonder that Thou, the God Almighty, and All-creating, and All-sustaining, the Architect of
heaven and earth, didst for innumerable ages refrain from so great a work before Thou wouldst
make it, let him awake and consider that he wonders at false things. For whence could
innumerable ages pass by which Thou didst not make, since Thou art the Author and Creator
of all ages? Or what times should those be which were not made by Thee? Or how should they
pass by if they had not been? Since, therefore, Thou art the Creator of all times, if any time
was before Thou madest heaven and earth, why is it said that Thou didst refrain from working?
For that very time Thou madest, nor could times pass by before Thou madest times. But if
before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it asked, What didst Thou then? For there
was no “then” when time was not.
16. Nor dost Thou by time precede time; else wouldest not Thou precede all times. But in the
excellency of an ever-present eternity, Thou precedest all times past, and survivest all future
times, because they are future, and when they have come they will be past; but “Thou art the
same, and Thy years shall have no end.” Thy years neither go nor come; but ours both go and
come, that all may come. All Thy years stand at once since they do stand; nor were they when
departing excluded by coming years, because they pass not away; but all these of ours shall
be when all shall cease to be. Thy years are one day, and Thy day is not daily, but today;
because Thy today yields not with tomorrow, for neither doth it follow yesterday. Thy today is
eternity; therefore didst Thou beget the Co-eternal, to whom Thou saidst, “This day have I
begotten Thee.” Thou hast made all time; and before all times Thou art, nor in any time was
there not time.

Chapter XIV.—Neither Time Past Nor Future, But the Present Only, Really is.
17. At no time, therefore, hadst Thou not made anything, because Thou hadst made time itself.
And no times are co-eternal with Thee, because Thou remainest for ever; but should these
continue, they would not be times. For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who
even in thought can comprehend it, even to the pronouncing of a word concerning it? But what
in speaking do we refer to more familiarly and knowingly than time? And certainly we
understand when we speak of it; we understand also when we hear it spoken of by another.
What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know; if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know
not. Yet I say with confidence, that I know that if nothing passed away, there would not be past
time; and if nothing were coming, there would not be future time; and if nothing were, there
would not be present time. Those two times, therefore, past and future, how are they, when
even the past now is not; and the future is not as yet? But should the present be always
present, and should it not pass into time past, time truly it could not be, but eternity. If, then,
time present—if it be time—only comes into existence because it passes into time past, how do
we say that even this is, whose cause of being is that it shall not be—namely, so that we
cannot truly say that time is, unless because it tends not to be?

Chapter XV.—There is Only a Moment of Present Time.

18. And yet we say that “time is long and time is short;” nor do we speak of this save of time
past and future. A long time past, for example, we call a hundred years ago; in like manner a
long time to come, a hundred years hence. But a short time past we call, say, ten days ago:
and a short time to come, ten days hence. But in what sense is that long or short which is not?
For the past is not now, and the future is not yet. Therefore let us not say, “It is long;” but let us
say of the past, “It hath been long,” and of the future, “It will be long.” O my Lord, my light, shall
not even here Thy truth deride man? For that past time which was long, was it long when it was
already past, or when it was as yet present? For then it might be long when there was that
which could be long, but when past it no longer was; wherefore that could not be long which
was not at all. Let us not, therefore, say, “Time past hath been long;” for we shall not find what
may have been long, seeing that since it was past it is not; but let us say “that present time was
long, because when it was present it was long.” For it had not as yet passed away so as not to
be, and therefore there was that which could be long. But after it passed, that ceased also to
be long which ceased to be.
19. Let us therefore see, O human soul, whether present time can be long; for to thee is it
given to perceive and to measure periods of time. What wilt thou reply to me? Is a hundred
years when present a long time? See, first, whether a hundred years can be present. For if the
first year of these is current, that is present, but the other ninety and nine are future, and
therefore they are not as yet. But if the second year is current, one is already past, the other
present, the rest future. And thus, if we fix on any middle year of this hundred as present, those
before it are past, those after it are future; wherefore a hundred years cannot be present. See
at least whether that year itself which is current can be present. For if its first month be current,
the rest are future; if the second, the first hath already passed, and the remainder are not yet.
Therefore neither is the year which is current as a whole present; and if it is not present as a
whole, then the year is not present. For twelve months make the year, of which each individual
month which is current is itself present, but the rest are either past or future. Although neither is
that month which is current present, but one day only: if the first, the rest being to come, if the
last, the rest being past; if any of the middle, then between past and future.
20. Behold, the present time, which alone we found could be called long, is abridged to the
space scarcely of one day. But let us discuss even that, for there is not one day present as a
whole. For it is made up of four-and-twenty hours of night and day, whereof the first hath the
rest future, the last hath them past, but any one of the intervening hath those before it past,
those after it future. And that one hour passeth away in fleeting particles. Whatever of it hath
flown away is past, whatever remaineth is future. If any portion of time be conceived which
cannot now be divided into even the minutest particles of moments, this only is that which may
be called present; which, however, flies so rapidly from future to past, that it cannot be
extended by any delay. For if it be extended, it is divided into the past and future; but the
present hath no space. Where, therefore, is the time which we may call long? Is it nature?
Indeed we do not say, “It is long,” because it is not yet, so as to be long; but we say, “It will be
long.” When, then, will it be? For if even then, since as yet it is future, it will not be long,
because what may be long is not as yet; but it shall be long, when from the future, which as yet
is not, it shall already have begun to be, and will have become present, so that there could be
that which may be long; then doth the present time cry out in the words above that it cannot be
long.
Retrieved from http://www.ccel.org/print/schaff/npnf101/vi.XI.XV

Reading: Advice to Christian Philosophers by Alvin Plantinga

And the Christian philosophical community ought to get on with the philosophical questions of
importance to the Christian community. It ought to get on with the project of exploring and
developing the implications of Christian theism for the whole range of questions philosophers
ask and answer. It ought to do this whether or not it can convince the philosophical community
at large either that there really is such a person as God, or that it is rational or reasonable to
believe that there is. Perhaps the Christian philosopher can convince the skeptic or the
unbelieving philosopher that indeed there is such a person as God. Perhaps this is possible in
at least some instances. In other instances, of course, it may be impossible; even if the skeptic
in fact accepts premises from which theistic belief follows by argument forms he also accepts,
he may, when apprised of this situation, give up those premises rather than his unbelief. (In
this way it is possible to reduce someone from knowledge to ignorance by giving him an
argument he sees to be valid from premises he knows to be true.)
But whether or not this is possible, the Christian philosopher has other fish to fry and other
questions to think about. Of course he must listen to, understand, and learn from the broader
philosophical community and he must take his place in it; but his work as a philosopher is not
circumscribed by what either the skeptic or the rest of the philosophical world thinks of theism.
Justifying or trying to justify theistic belief in the eyes of the broader philosophical community is
not the only task of the Christian philosophical community; perhaps it isn't even among its most
important tasks.
Philosophy is a communal enterprise. The Christian philosopher who looks exclusively to the
philosophical world at large, who thinks of himself as belonging primarily to that world, runs a
two-fold risk. He may neglect an essential part of his task as a Christian philosopher; and he
may find himself adopting principles and procedures that don't comport well with his beliefs as
a Christian. What is needed, once more, is autonomy and integrality.
IV. Theism and Persons
My third example has to do with philosophical anthropology: how should we think about human
persons? What sorts of things, fundamentally, are they? What is it to be a person, what is it to
be a human person, and how shall we think about personhood? How, in particular, should
Christians, Christian philosophers, think about these things?
The first point to note is that in the Christian scheme of things, God is the premier person, the
first and chief exemplar of personhood. God, furthermore, has created man in his own image;
we men and women are image bearers of God, and the properties most important for an
understanding of our personhood are properties we share with him. How we think about God,
then, will have an immediate and direct bearing on how we think about humankind.
Of course we learn much about ourselves from other sources-from everyday observation, from
introspection and self-observation, from scientific investigation and the like. But it is also
perfectly proper to start from what we know as Christians. It is not the case that rationality, or
proper philosophical method, or intellectual responsibility, or the new scientific morality, or
whatever, require that we start from beliefs we share with everyone else-what common sense
and current science teach, e.g.-and attempt to reason to or justify those beliefs we hold as
Christians. In trying to give a satisfying philosophical account of some area or phenomenon,
we may properly appeal, in our account or explanation, to anything else we already rationally
believe- whether it be current science or Christian doctrine.
Let me proceed again to specific examples. There is a fundamental watershed, in philosophical
anthropology, between those who think of human beings as free-free in the libertarian sense-
and those who espouse determinism. According to determinists, every human action is a
consequence of initial conditions outside our control by way of causal laws that are also
outside our control. Sometimes underlying this claim is a picture of the universe as a vast
machine where, at any rate at the macroscopic level, all events, including human actions, are
determined by previous events and causal laws. On this view every action I have in fact
performed was such that it wasn't within my power to refrain from performing it; and if, on a
given occasion I did not perform a given action, then it wasn't then within my power to perform
it. If I now raise my arm, then, on the view in question, it wasn't within my power just then not to
raise it.
Now the Christian thinker has a stake in this controversy just by virtue of being a Christian. For
she will no doubt believe that God holds us human beings responsible for much of what we do,
and thus properly subject to praise or blame, approval or disapproval. But how can I be
responsible for my actions, if it was never within my power to perform any actions I didn't in fact
perform, and never within my power to refrain from performing any I did perform? If my actions
are thus determined, then I am not rightly or justly held accountable for them; but God does
nothing improper or unjust, and he holds me accountable for some of my actions; hence it is
not the case that all of my actions are thus determined.
The Christian has an initially strong reason to reject the claim that all of our actions are
causally determined-a reason much stronger than the meager and anemic arguments the
determinist can muster on the other side. Of course if there were powerful arguments on the
other side, then there might be a problem here. But there aren't; so there isn't.
Now the determinist may reply that freedom and causal determinism are, contrary to initial
appearances, in fact compatible. He may argue that my being free with respect to an action I
performed at a time, for example, doesn't entail that it was then within my power to refrain from
performing it, but only something weaker-perhaps something like if I had chosen not to perform
it, I would not have performed it. Indeed, the clearheaded compatibilist will go further. He will
maintain, not merely that freedom is compatible with determinism, but that freedom requires
determinism. He will hold with Hume that the proposition S is free with respect to action A or S
does A freely entails that S is causally determined with respect to A-that there are causal laws
and antecedent conditions that together entail either that S performs A or that S does not
perform A. And he will back up this claim by insisting that if S is not thus determined with
respect to A, then it's merely a matter of chance-due, perhaps, to quantum effects in S's brain-
that S does A. But if it is just a matter of chance that S does A then either S doesn't really do A
at all, or at any rate S is not responsible for doing A. If S's doing A is just a matter of chance,
then S's doing A is something that just happens to him; but then it is not really the case that he
performs A-at any rate it is not the case that he is responsible for performing A.
And hence freedom, in the sense that is required for responsibility, itself requires determinism.
But the Christian thinker will find this claim monumentally implausible. Presumably the
determinist means to hold that what he says characterizes actions generally, not just those of
human beings. He will hold that it is a necessary truth that if an agent isn't caused to perform
an action then it is a mere matter of chance that the agent in question performs the action in
question. From a Christian perspective, however, this is wholly incredible.
For God performs actions, and performs free actions; and surely it is not the case that there
are causal laws and antecedent conditions outside his control that determine what he does. On
the contrary: God is the author of the causal laws that do in fact obtain; indeed, perhaps the
best way to think of these causal laws is as records of the ways in which God ordinarily treats
the beings he has created. But of course it is not simply a matter of chance that God does what
he does-creates and upholds the world, let's say, and offers redemption and renewal to his
children. So a Christian philosopher has an extremely good reason for rejecting this premise,
along with the determinism and compatibilism it supports.
What is really at stake in this discussion is the notion of agent causation: the notion of a person
as an ultimate source of action. According to the friends of agent causation, some events are
caused, not by other events, but by substances, objects-typically personal agents. And at least
since the time of David Hume, the idea of agent causation has been languishing. It is fair to
say, I think, that most contemporary philosophers who work in this area either reject agent
causation outright or are at the least extremely suspicious of it. They see causation as a
relation among events; they can understand how one event can cause another event, or how
events of one kind can cause events of another kind. But the idea of a person, say, causing an
event, seems to them unintelligible, unless it can be analyzed, somehow, in terms of event
causation. It is this devotion to event causation, of course, that explains the claim that if you
perform an action but are not caused to do so, then your performing that action is a matter of
chance. For if I hold that all causation is ultimately event causation, then I will suppose that if
you perform an action but are not caused to do so by previous events, then your performing
that action isn't caused at all and is therefore a mere matter of chance.
The devotee of event causation, furthermore, will perhaps argue for his position as follows. If
such agents as persons cause effects that take place in the physical world-my body's moving
in a certain way, for example-then these effects must ultimately be caused by volitions or
undertakings-which, apparently, are immaterial, unphysical events. He will then claim that the
idea of an immaterial event's having causal efficacy in the physical world is puzzling or dubious
or worse. But a Christian philosopher will find this argument unimpressive and this devotion to
event causation uncongenial. As for the argument, the Christian already and independently
believes that acts of volition have causal efficacy; he believes indeed, that the physical
universe owes its very existence to just such volitional acts-God's undertaking to create it. And
as for the devotion to event causation, the Christian will be, initially, at any rate, strongly
inclined to reject the idea that event causation is primary and agent causation to be explained
in terms of it. For he believes that God does and has done many things: he has created the
world; he sustains it in being; he communicates with his children. But it is extraordinarily hard
to see how these truths can be analyzed in terms of causal relations among events. What
events could possibly cause God's creating the world or his undertaking to create the world?
God himself institutes or establishes the causal laws that do in fact hold; how, then, can we see
all the events constituted by his actions as related to causal laws to earlier events? How could
it be that propositions ascribing actions to him are to be explained in terms of event causation?
Some theistic thinkers have noted this problem and reacted by soft pedaling God's causal
activity, or by impetuously following Kant in declaring that it is of a wholly different order from
that in which we engage, an order beyond our comprehension. I believe this is the wrong
response. Why should a Christian philosopher join in the general obeisance to event
causation? It is not as if there are cogent arguments here. The real force behind this claim is a
certain philosophical way of looking at persons and the world; but this view has no initial
plausibility from a Christian perspective and no compelling argument in its favor.
Reprinted from Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers vol. 1:3,
(253-271), permanently copyrighted October 1984. Used by permission of the Editor. New
preface by author. Journal web site: www.faithandphilosophy.com
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 A Christian Approach to the Philosophy of Time
David Bradshaw
University of Kentucky
dbradsh@uky.edu

Views in the philosophy of time are traditionally categorized into presentism, which
regards only the present as real, and eternalism, which assigns reality equally to the past, present,
and future. An intermediate view (that of the so-called “growing block universe”) assigns reality
to the past and present, but not the future. I will not attempt to review here the various
arguments for and against each of these views. The important point for my purposes is the
sharply dichotomous terms in which they are presented: they invite us to assign reality either to
the present alone, or to the entirety of time without distinction, or to some subdivision thereof.
There is a similar dichotomous character to contemporary discussions of the relationship
between God and time. For classical theists, God does not so much act at different times as
perform—or, perhaps better, constitute—a single eternal act that has many temporal
manifestations. Likewise there is no succession in God’s knowledge, since all that occurs within
time is eternally and unchangingly present to the divine mind. By contrast, process theologians
and open theists maintain that God exists temporally and grows in knowledge. Here too there is
also an intermediate view, namely that God exists eternally and timelessly prior to creation, but
becomes temporal when He creates.
The common feature linking these controversies is the difficulty shared by participants on
all sides in conceiving how time and eternity could be equally real. In the philosophy of time,
this difficulty manifests itself as a tendency to believe either in the full reality of temporal
succession, such that only the present is truly real, or in the full reality of eternity, such that our
experience of temporal succession is merely a subjective epiphenomenon. In the philosophy of
religion, there is a parallel tendency to believe either in the full reality of time—so that God, to
be worthy of the name, must be temporal—or in the full reality of eternity, with time being
merely a derivative appendage. In both cases we seem to be faced with the necessity of choosing

1
either time or eternity as the paradigm of reality. Such a choice inevitably renders the status of
the other problematic.
My aim in this paper is to suggest a radically different way of thinking about time and
eternity. It is drawn from the Greek Church Fathers. That I have turned to the Greek Fathers is
no accident, for I believe that the source of the polarization I have mentioned lies in the Latin
theological tradition. Augustine, Boethius, and those who followed them hold two views which
together make a dichotomous separation between time and eternity inevitable. One is that
eternity in the strict sense is solely an attribute of God; the other is that time (or temporal
succession) is solely an attribute of creatures. Time and eternity thus stand as two sharply
different modes of being which obtain of two sharply different kinds of entity. Each could
conceivably exist without the other, for there is no intrinsic, genetic relationship between them.
This sharp division is itself a consequence of one of the most fundamental tenets of the
Latin theological tradition, the doctrine of divine simplicity. Given divine simplicity as the Latin
tradition understands it, God is identical with His own eternity, as He is identical with all of His
essential attributes. This means that, as Augustine remarks, “eternity is the very substance of
God.”1 Plainly since eternity is the divine substance, it cannot be shared by creatures.2
It is important to recognize that in the Christian East neither Augustine nor Boethius had
any appreciable influence.3 Accordingly one might expect to find there a somewhat different
approach to the relationship of time and eternity. In order to explicate this alternative tradition I
shall begin with St. Athanasius, the fourth-century Chuch Father who played a decisive role in
defeating the heresy of Arianism. The Arian slogan, “there was when the Son was not,” was
taken by the orthodox as implying the existence of a temporal interval (διάστηµα) during which
the Father had not yet begotten the Son.4 St. Athanasius vigorously attacks this allegedly Arian
view. He observes that in Scripture Christ is the maker of all the ages (αἰῶνες), and so must be
before any sort of interval whatsoever:

The words addressed to the Son in the hundred and forty-fourth Psalm, “Thy kingdom is
a kingdom of all ages,” forbid anyone to imagine any interval (διάστηµα) in which the
Word did not exist. For if every interval in the ages is measured, and of all the ages the
Word is King and Maker (Heb. 1:2, 11:3), therefore, whereas no interval at all exists

2
 prior to Him, it would be madness to say, “There was once when the Everlasting was
not.”5

Creatures, he says, “have a beginning of existence connected with an interval” (διαστηµατικὴν

ἀρχὴν τοῦ εἶναι ἔχει), in that they were created “from some beginning when they were not yet.”6
The Word, by contrast, “has no beginning of its being . . . but has always been.”7 Thus
Athanasius posits a general distinction between the existence of creatures, which is “diastemic”
in that it is characterized by interval, and God, which is “adiastemic.”
This distinction was developed further by the primary defenders of Nicaea after
Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers. According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, creation “journeys to
its proper end through intervals of time (χρονικῶν διαστηµάτων),” whereas the life of God “has
no extension (διαστήµατος) accompanying its course and therefore no span or measure.”8
Gregory views this as a philosophical truth grounded in God’s being what He is without
participation. As he writes in his Against Eunomius:

Wide and insurmountable is the interval that fences off uncreated from created nature.
The latter is limited, the former has no limit . . . . The latter is stretched out by a certain
degree of extension (διαστηµατικῇ τινι), circumscribed by time and place; the former
transcends all conception of interval (διαστήµατος ἔννοιαν), baffling curiosity from every
point of view . . . [It is] ever the same, established of itself, not traveling on by intervals
from one thing to another in its life. Nor does it come to live by participating in the life
of another, so that one could consequently conceive a beginning and limit of its
participation. But it is just what it is, Life made active in itself (ζωή ἐν ἑαυτῇ
ἐνεργουµένη), not becoming greater or less by addition or diminution.9

Elsewhere Gregory goes so far as to say that “διάστηµα is nothing other than the creation
itself.”10 He infers that, since creatures are bound by their own diastemic perspective, there is no
possibility for a creature to apprehend the pre-eternal and adiastemic nature of God.11
One question this distinction raises is how we are to understand the eternity of creatures
such as angels. St. Gregory Nazianzen defines angelic eternity as “a certain timelike movement
and extension (διάστηµα)” that is coextensive with the angels, although not itself divided or

3
measured by any motion.12 St. Basil likewise states that what time is for sensible objects, the
nature of the eternal is for angels, so that διάστηµα is the constitution common to both.13 Indeed,
time as we experience it is an image (εἰκών) of this eternity. Commenting on the statement of
Genesis 1:5 that “the evening and the morning were one day,” Basil observes that God made the
week “revolve upon itself,” forming it out of one day revolving upon itself seven times. He
notes, “such is also the character of eternity (αἰῶνος), to revolve upon itself and to end nowhere.”
The reason the Septuagint refers to “one day” rather than the “first day” is to show the kinship of
this primordial day with eternity. The first created day is an image (εἰκόνα) of the angels’
eternity, and hence the “first fruit of days” that is the basis for all others.14
Thus even angelic eternity is diastemic. How then does it differ from time? The answer
is that it does not involve the “knife-edge present” of temporal succession. Gregory of Nyssa
develops this thought in a passage of his Homilies on the Song of Songs. Distinguishing God and
the angels as two species of the “intellectual nature,” he explains:

The intellectual nature that is brought into being by creation always looks toward the first
cause of beings and by association with its superior is forever kept in the good and in a
manner of speaking is always being created (κτίζεται) because of its increase in goodness
through its alteration for the better, so as never to possess any limit or be circumscribed
in its growth toward the better by any boundary. But its ever present good—however
great and perfect it may seem to be—is the commencement of an additional and greater
good, so that in this respect the apostolic word seems to be true, when it speaks of
forgetting the acquisitions of the past in reaching forth to the things that are before (Phil.
3:13). For he who is always finding a greater and supreme good and devoting all his
attention to his share in it, is not allowed to look to the past, and just because of his
enjoyment of what is more precious loses his memory of what is less so.15

For the angels, whatever good has been acquired is always only the beginning of an even greater
good; hence they have no need of memory, for the past good is always contained within that of
the present, even as they strain forward to the yet more comprehensive good to come. Thus
although their state is diastemic, they are not constrained to the knife-edge of the present.

4
Gregory also gives a similar description of the life of the blessed in heaven, describing it as an
ever-growing enjoyment of the good in which all need for memory or hope is left behind.16
This sheds some light on what it means to speak of time as an image of the eternity of the
angels. We may think of time as narrowing into a moving point, as it were, the ever-growing
enjoyment of the Good that constitutes the angelic life. Yet precisely as an image time also
points forward to its heavenly archetype. Time is not only linear but also circular, “revolving
upon itself” in a weekly pattern that points to what the Church Fathers called the “Eighth Day,”
the day of the new creation.17 This means that time and angelic eternity are not entirely distinct
modes of being, but constitute, respectively, a more partial and a fuller arena in which the ever-
forward movement into God is accomplished.
Although these ideas are suggestive, they do not directly address the question of the
relationship between divine eternity and time. For this we must turn to the writings of St.
Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500 A.D.). Dionysius takes the innovative step of regarding both
time and eternity—meaning divine eternity, not that of the angels—as divine processions.
‘Procession’ is Dionysius’ term for the perfections that God imparts to creatures, such as
goodness, beauty, being, unity, and life. At first glance his understanding of them appears
somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, he says that God is goodness, beauty, being, and so on,
so that each of the processions in some sense is God. Yet he also states that God is beyond them
as their source, which would suggest instead that they are acts that God performs. Putting these
two aspects of his thought together, it would seem that the preocessions are God as He is
manifest in His activity.18 This need not be puzzling if we recall that the activity of God
constitutes the reality and perfection of all things. As Dionysius puts it, God is the Life of the
living, the Being of things that are, and so on.19 Created reality is thus for Dionysius a kind of
theophany, one that is not only upheld in being by God’s activity, but quite literally is His
activity. One can legitimately refer to each of its perfections as God, provided that in doing so
one does not suppose that this perfection, or all of them together, is anything more than a
manifestation of their transcendent source.
Let us see how Dionysius applies this pattern of thought to time and eternity. He writes:

Scripture does not call eternal (αἰώνια) [only] things that are altogether and absolutely
ingenerate and eternal (ἀΐδια), and imperishable, immortal, immutable, and so forth. For

5
 instance, there is “Rise up, you eternal gates (πύλαι αἰώνιοι)” (Ps. 24:7, 9), and the like .
. . . Yet we know that more properly Scripture discusses and denotes by eternity the
things that are, and by time the things that come to be. It is necessary therefore to
understand that the things called eternal are not simply co-eternal (συναΐδια) with God
who is before eternity (πρὸ αϊῶνος). Following without deviation the sacred Scriptures,
one must take such things as both eternal and temporal, in the ways appropriate to them,
and as between the things that are and those that come to be; that is, as things which in
one way partake of eternity, and in another of time. But one must praise God as both
eternity and as time, as the cause of all time and eternity, and the Ancient of Days; and
as before time, and beyond time and the immutable “seasons and times,” and again
existing before the ages (πρὸ αἰώνων), inasmuch as He is before eternity and beyond the
ages, and His kingdom “is a kingdom of all the ages.” Amen. (X.3 937C-940A)

Dionysius distinguishes “the things that are,” which are eternal in the proper sense, from those
called eternal in Scripture. The reference to the “eternal gates” indicates that by the latter he has
in mind primarily the angels and the heavenly realm.20 The identity of the “things that are” is not
immediately clear, but since they are “absolutely ingenerate” and thus cannot be creatures, I
would suggest that he has in mind the divine processions.21 The angels and the heavens are
“between the things that are and those that come to be,” partaking both of eternity and of time.
By contrast, God is not to be located at any particular point within this structure. He permeates
and encompasses the whole, being identical both to eternity and to time, and yet prior to them
both. Thus God is eternal in a different way from that of creatures, by Himself being Eternity.
He is also the source of eternity, for creatures are eternal, to the extent that they are, by
participating in Him.
This raises an interesting question. Would it not follow by parity of reasoning that since
God is also Time, He must be temporal in a way surpassing that of creatures? Dionysius in fact
draws this very conclusion.

God is the the source and measure of being and eternity (αἰών), since He is before
substance and being and eternity, and the substance-making source, middle, and end of
all. That is why in Scripture the truly Pre-existent is multiplied (πολλαπλασιάζεται) in

6
 accordance with every conception of beings, and “was” and “is” and “will be” (τὸ ἦν καὶ
τὸ ἔστι καὶ τὸ ἔσται) and “became” and “is becoming” and “will become” (τὸ ἐγένετο καὶ
γίνεται καὶ γενήσεται) are properly hymned of Him. For, to those who hymn them in a
God-fitting way, all these signify that He exists supersubstantially in accordance with
every conception, and that He is the cause of all that in any way are. (V.8 824A)

This passage is all the more striking because earlier Dionysius had explicitly denied that
temporal language—including not only “was” and “will be,” but even “is”—applies to God (V.4
817D). Such simultaneous affirmation and denial is typical of Dionysius’ use of language as a
way of reorienting the reader away from the attempt simply to describe God, and toward the
attempt to render Him fitting praise. Temporal language, in particular, is for Dionysius a way of
“multiplying” God, exhibiting God’s presence within the multiplicity of the created world.22 The
“multiplication” here is much like that in Neoplatonism of each higher level of reality within the
subsequent level.23 The difference is that, since there is no distinction in hypostasis, any
temporal affirmation must always be balanced by the apophatic insistence that God is beyond
such multiplicity as its source. This tension is one that Dionysius embraces, for he finds in it the
only language adequate to God as both truly present in creation and beyond it as its cause.
Viewing time and eternity as divine processions is a striking innovation, but it also raises
many questions. Most obviously, what becomes of the traditional view that time is a feature of
the physical cosmos? How can this be, if it is also a divine procession, and thus one way of
apprehending God himself? For an answer can turn to the earliest Byzantine commentator on
Dionysius, John of Scythopolis (writing in the mid-sixth century).
John follows the Cappadocians in defining divine eternity as “unextended (ἀδιαστάτου)
and infinite life,” or more fully as “the life that is unshaken and all together at once, already
infinite and entirely unmoving, standing forth as a unity.”24 He also notes repeatedly that God is
eternal by Himself being Eternity, whereas creatures are eternal by partaking of eternity.25 Yet
he does not neglect that God can also be identified with Time. Immediately after his definition
of eternity, he continues:

Thus also time, being once at rest in He Who Always Is, shone forth in its descent (καθ’
ὑπόβασιν) when later it was necessary for visible nature to come forth. So the procession

7
 (πρόοδον) of the goodness of God in creating sensible objects, we call time. For the
movement of intervals (ἡ κίνησις τῶν διαστάσεων) into portions and seasons and nights
and days is not time, but homonymous with time. Just as we are accustomed to call by
the same name that which measures and that which is measured, so is it here—as for
instance, when that which is measured by a cubit, such as a foundation or wall, we call a
cubit. According to the verse, “let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for years”
(Gen. 1:14), the motions of the stars were made by God for us for the sake of clear
division and distinction [of time]. Hence the One who ordered them is Himself these
things, supereternally (ὑπεραιωνίος) and timelessly, as their cause.26

There are here two distinct ways in which God can be referred to as Time. One is in reference to
time in the proper sense, “the procession of the goodness of God in creating sensibles.” Time in
this sense is God just as any of the divine processions is God, although He also remains beyond
it as its source. (Indeed, it was “once at rest in He Who Always Is,” prior to its shining forth in
the creation of the sensible world.) Second there is time as “the movement of temporal
intervals,” that which is measured by time in the first sense. God can also be called Time in this
sense, just as He can be called by the name of any of His creatures, since they pre-exist in Him as
their cause. By way of analogy, we might distinguish two ways in which God can be referred to
as the Good: goodness as a divine procession, and “the good” as referring collectively to those
creatures that partake of the Good in the first sense. John is careful to qualify this second way of
referring to God as Time by the adjectives “supereternally and timelessly,” so as to make it clear
that in using the name of creatures for God there is no diminishment of divine transcendence.
Even more striking is the light that this passage sheds on the relationship between divine
eternity and time. Time qua divine procession is the unfolding of divine eternity—the life of He
Who Always Is—within the act of creating sensible beings.27 Contrary to the normal tendency in
Dionysius, eternity and time are here decidedly asymmetric, for eternity is identified with the
divine life, whereas time, although it is equally a divine procession, comes forth only as God
creates. John may well have been inspired at this point by Plotinus, for whom eternity is the life
of Intellect and time the life of Soul.28 Unlike Plotinus, however, John does not assign time and
eternity to separate hypostases, but views them both as different forms of divine self-
manifestation. In fact the logic of John’s position would seem to call for a distinction between

8
types of eternity parallel to that between types of time. First there is eternity as a divine
procession, albeit one that exists independently of creation; second, there is eternity as the
“timelike movement and extension” (in the phrase of Gregory Nazianzen) that is coextensive
with the life of the angels. Eternity in the second sense is the mode in which creatures partake of
eternity in the first sense.
If we now draw together these various elements from the Cappadocians, Dionysius, and
John, we arrive at a fourfold structure:

(1) (a) Eternity as a divine procession, “the life that is unshaken and all together at once, already
infinite and entirely unmoving, standing forth as a unity.”
(b) Angelic eternity, the “timelike movement and extension” that is coextensive with the life
of the angels.
(2) (a) Time as a divine procession, “the procession of the goodness of God in creating sensible
objects.”
(b) Time as a creature, the “movement of intervals into portions and seasons and nights and
days.”

There are several links binding this structure together. As I have mentioned, (2)(a) is the
unfolding within the creative act of (1)(a), and in each pair (b) is the mode in which creatures
participate in (a). Furthermore, according to Basil, (2)(b) is an image or icon (εἰκών) of (1)(b).
One way to summarize these various relations is to recognize here a repeated pattern of
procession and return. (1)(a) and (2)(a) are the processions of God within the intelligible and
sensible realms, respectively; (1)(b) and (2)(b) the corresponding acts of return. In adopting this
Neoplatonic language, however, one must be careful not to import any suggestion either of
necessary emanation or of a hierarchy of being in which the lower levels serve only as a ladder to
the higher. Both eternity and time are ways in which the unknowable God freely manifests
Himself. It is true that time is an “icon” of eternity, but this means only that it finds there its
final meaning and consummation, not that it is valueless in its own right.
One point which deserves further comment is in what sense time as a divine procession is
the “unfolding” of divine eternity. Both are acts which God freely performs and which manifest
His character, but this does not mean that they are entirely separate and independent. By analogy

9
we might consider the acts of a husband in loving his wife and kissing her. Both are acts which
the husband freely performs. He could love her without kissing her, or kiss her without loving
her; yet given that he does both, plainly the kissing is an expression of the love, its “unfolding”
into a particular time and place. In this sense one might say that the act of kissing is
“precontained” in the act of loving, not as an instrumental constituent (he does not love her by
kissing her) but as one way, among many that are possible, of giving the act of loving particular,
articulate expression. I take it that something like this is what John sees as the relationship
between the act of divine eternity and the act of time.
Plainly, on the view that I have described time and eternity are not wholly separate and
distinct ways of being. God is both Time and Eternity, and yet is beyond them both as their
cause. Likewise creatures partake of both time and eternity, in different ways and according to
their own appropriate measure. We need not choose between time and eternity as the paradigms
of reality, for both are equally (although differently) real—much as are, in my analogy, the act of
loving and the act of kissing. We also need not assume that God is to be described in terms only
of time or eternity, but not of both. Surely God’s knowledge does undergo temporal sequence,
for time is His action, and He knows it in the act of doing it. He knows that it is now 10:42 just
as surely as, a few moments from now, He will know that it is now 10:43. Likewise He knows
what I am now thinking and saying, not from some eternal perspective, but because He is
Himself the temporal context of my utterance. Yet because eternity is also His action, of which
time is the unfolded expression, He also knows time and all that takes place within time in an
entirely different way. I am inclined to think that the Neoplatonists were right in holding that
this other way of knowing ought not to be thought of as propositional: that it is more like the
intutive, all-at-once understanding that a master geometer has of a proof, as opposed to the
laborious, step-by-step understanding of the novice.29 Perhaps we can return to this point in
discussion.
In closing I would like to leave aside philosophical controversies for a moment in order
to observe that what the Greek Fathers are proposing is not only a different theory of time, but a
different way of experiencing time, one which sees it as an icon of eternity. This iconic
orientation is particularly evident in the Eastern liturgy, and may perhaps be better experienced
than described. (One thinks, for example, of the Cherubic hymn, in which the body of
worshippers are said to “mystically represent” the Cherubim around the throne of God.)

10
Nonetheless I would like to cite one passage where St. Basil speaks explicitly of time as an icon.
He is discussing the practice, which was universal in the ancient church, of praying without
kneeling on Sunday.

We make our prayers standing on the first day of the week, but all do not know the
reason for this. For it is not only because we are risen with Christ and that we should
seek the things which are above, that on the day of the Resurrection we recall the grace
that has been given us by standing to pray; but also, I think, because this day is in some
way the image (εἰκών) of the future age. This is why also, being the first principle
(ἀρχή) of days, it is not called the “first” by Moses, but “one.” “There was,” he says, “an
evening and a morning, one day” (Gen. 1:5), as though it returned regularly upon itself.
This is why it is at once one and the eighth, that which is really one and truly the eighth,
of which the Psalmist speaks in the titles of certain Psalms [the “ogdoad”], signifying by
this the state that will follow the ages, the day without end, the other aeon which will
have neither evening, nor succession, nor cessation, nor old age. It is, then, in virtue of
an authoritative claim that the Church teaches her children to say their prayers standing
on this day, so that, by the perpetual recalling of eternal life, we may not neglect the
means which lead us to it.30

To pray without kneeling on Sunday is not only a commemoration of the Resurrection, but a
foretaste of the age to come, as befits Sunday, which is itself an icon of that age. In such an act
one deliberately lives within the iconic meaning of time, accepting time as the expression, within
our current sensible existence, of the immeasurable fulness of eternal life. It is this iconic form
of life that the eastern Church Fathers open up for us today.

11
1
Expositions of the Psalms, Homily 2 on Psalm 101, ch. 10 (PL 37 1311).
2
It is true that Aquinas speaks of angels and the blessed as “participating” in eternity, but on
close examination this turns out to be an intentional rather than an ontological relationship. Such
creatures participate in eternity only inasmuch as they take on the divine essence as an
intelligible species. Given the identity of the act of understanding with its object, this means that
they are united to God, as Aquinas puts it, not “in the act of being, but only in the act of
understanding.” Summa Contra Gentiles III.54.9; cf. III.61.3.
3
The earliest translation of either author into Greek was in the late thirteenth century, when
Augustine’s On the Trinity and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy were translated by
Maximus Planudes. It is also likely that Maximus the Confessor read Augustine during his
sojourn in Carthage, although the traces of Augustine’s influence in his work are rather scanty.
See Dom E. Dekkers, “Les traductions grecques des écrits patristiques latins,” Sacris Erudi 5
(1953), 193-233; G.C. Berthold, “Did Maximus the Confessor Know Augustine?” Studia
Patristica 17 (1982), 14-17.
4
Alexander of Alexandria, Epistle 6 (PG 18 557A-B); cf. the Symbol of Antioch set forth in
345 A.D. (PG 26 729A).
5
Orations against the Arians I.12 (PG 26 37A-B; tr. NPNF II.4, 313).
6
Ibid., II.57 (PG 26 268C; tr. NPNF II.4, 379).
7
Ibid., 269A.
8
Ibid., I.365-66. For the text see Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. Werner Jaeger et al. [= GNO]
(Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960-96), vol. 1, 135; tr. NPNF II.5, 69.
9
Ibid., II.69-70 (GNO I, 246; NPNF II.5, 257).
10
Homilies on Ecclesiastes 7 (GNO V, 412).
11
Ibid. (GNO V, 413-14). For further references and discussion of this theme in Gregory see
Brooks Otis, “Gregory of Nyssa and the Cappadocian Conception of Time,” Studia Patristica
14.3 (1976), 327-57; David L. Balás, “Eternity and Time in Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra
Eunomium,” Gregor von Nyssa und Die Philosophie, ed. Heinrich Dörrie, Margarete
Attenburger, and Uta Schramm (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), 128-55; T. Paul Verghese,
“∆ΙΑΣΤΗΜΑ and ∆ΙΑΣΤΑΣΙΣ in Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction to a Concept and the Posing
of a Problem,” Ibid., 243-60.
12
Orations 38.8 (PG 36 320B); cf. Orations 29.3.
13
Against Eunomius II.13 (PG 29 596C).
14
On the Hexaemeron II.8 (PG 29 49C, 52B); see also a similar explanation at On the Holy
Spirit XXVII.66 (quoted below).
15
Homilies on the Song of Songs 6 (GNO VI, 174). I use the translation of Otis, “Gregory of
Nyssa,” 344, slightly modified.
16
On the Soul and Resurrection (PG 46 92A-96C), Homilies on the Song of Songs 8 (GNO VI,
245-47); cf. the discussion in Otis, “Gregory of Nyssa,” 344-46.
17
On the Eighth Day see Jean Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1956), 255-75.
18
See further my Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 179-82.
19
Divine Names I.3 589C.

12
20
See Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy, 304-07, and his The Angels and Their Mission
(Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1957), 38-41.
21
Dionysius most frequently uses τὰ ὄντα in an indefinite way, meaning “the things that are,
whatever they may be.” There are at least two passages, however, where it must refer to the
divine processions (DN V.4 817D1, V.5 820A9). The first of these exhibits both uses: God is
the source of τὰ ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν ὄντα, “the things that are in the things that are.”
22
On such “multiplication” cf. DN II.11 649B.
23
See Porphyry, Sententiae 33 (ed. Lamberz, 36.4), where the intelligible is multiplied
(πολλαπλασιάσθεν) within sensible objects; Proclus, Elements of Theology Props. 27, 152, 155
(ed. Dodds, 32.8, 134.7, 15, 136.18).
24
Τὴν ἀτρεµῆ ἐκείνην καὶ ὁµοῦ πᾶσαν ζωὴν, καὶ ἄπειρον ἤδη καὶ ἀκλινῆ πάντη, καὶ ἐν ἑνὶ, καὶ
προεστῶσαν; Scholia on the Divine Names (PG 4 313D, 316A). The phrase ὁµοῦ πᾶσαν is an
echo of Plotinus and ultimately derives from Parmenides. For John’s knowledge of Plotinus see
Rorem and Lamoreaux, John of Scythopolis, 119-37.
25
Scholia on the Divine Names 208B, 229A-B, 313D, 385C-D.
26
Ibid. 316A-B.
27
John frequently repeats the traditional derivation of αἰών from ἀεὶ ὤν, ever being (208B,
209A, 313C).
28
Enneads III.7.11.43-57.
29
See Divine Names VII.2 869A-C. I leave aside questions pertaining to divine foreknowledge
and human freedom, which require a separate treatment.
30
On the Holy Spirit XXVII.66 (PG 32 192A-B), tr. Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy, 263.

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