Augustine's Theory of Time
INTRODUCTION
Augustine, in Book XI of the Confessions2, offers a memorable exploration of one of the
recurring subjects of philosophical analysis, namely time. His treatise represents not only a
synthesis of the ancient philosophers’ musings on the subject but goes further by providing an
account of time which ‘underlines the moral and spiritual element in man and the task of
liberation from waste and dispersal’3. Time, for Augustine, is presented as fundamental to his
theory of the human subject. It is therefore no coincidence that he should accord it special
significance in his autobiography. His approach is one of intense sensitivity ‘to the pathos of
mutability, of the rapidity, transitoriness and irreversibility of time’4. For these reasons, it comes
as no surprise that he should be hailed as ‘the first thinker to take time seriously’5.
The purpose of this paper is to critically assess Augustine’s dialectical investigation into this
complex subject and the extent to which he succeeds in presenting a cogent philosophy of time
and its measurement.
THE INCOMMENSURABILITY OF TIME AND ETERNITY
Augustine embarks upon his exploration of the nature of time by addressing a controversy
which finds its origins in the ancients6 and which had been resurrected by the followers of Mani
as a supposed refutation of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo7. The question, ‘What was
God doing before he made heaven and earth?’ invites a response which juxtaposes time and
eternity.8 The former is seen as unchanging unity or constancy out of which the latter proceeds
in multiplicity. For Augustine, there was no time before creation for time is a creature. The
question posed is therefore rendered otiose.9 When compared to the immutable, simultaneous
presence that is the eternity of God, time is seen as a successive state of motion or experience10
which ‘contains . . . negation of the fullness of being from which it flows out’11. For the same
reason, then, eternity cannot be seen as time extended to infinity in some form of everlastingness,
for ‘[i]n the eternal, nothing is transient, but the whole is present’12. Rather, eternity must
transcend time entirely and be seen as stability; an unchanging, simultaneous presence.13 In this
way, Augustine is seen to remain faithful to the heritage of Neoplatonism14; by placing Him
outside of time and space, the dignity of God is preserved and ‘eternity and time are [seen as]
absolutely incompatible . . . [and] [t]heir differences . . . absolute’15 In short, only God is
eternal. Life after death, therefore, is best described as everlasting rather than eternal, for unlike
God, mankind admits of a beginning.
THE NATURE OF TIME: ‘WHAT THEN IS TIME? PROVIDED THAT NO ONE ASKS ME, I KNOW;
IF I WANT TO EXPLAIN IT TO AN INQUIRER, I DO NOT KNOW’16
As Augustine moves through his dialectic he at once stumbles upon three apparent paradoxes
which seem to expose, as logically contradictory, our commonsense assertions about time.
Firstly, ‘we cannot truly say that time exists except in the sense that it tends towards nonexistence’
17, for the future is not yet, the past is no more, and only the present has real being.
Secondly, ‘we speak of ‘a long time’ and ‘a short time’, and it is only of the past or the future
that we say this..[b]ut how can something be long or short which does not exist? For the past
now has no existence and the future is not yet.’18 Thirdly, ‘the present occupies no space’, for
it is extensionless and indivisible.19
McEvoy cautions against interpreting this triad of apparent paradoxes as ‘flat, apodictic
statements of final contradictions’20. Rather, they ought to be regarded as ‘a movement in a
dialectic’ that is progressing ‘towards that sane wholeness of view, to which it has not yet
attained’21. Augustine makes clear that it is not his intention to overthrow the use of ordinary
language22 in his quest to capture metaphysical reality and he readily admits that ‘[t]here are few
usages of everyday speech which are exact, and most of our language is inexact.’23 Despite this,
‘what we mean is communicated’24.
That said, does his dialectic investigation arrive at that sane wholeness of view which he
seeks? O’Daly would argue that Augustine errs when he asserts that only the present ‘is’,
despite being extensionless and without duration.25You cannot at once have the possibility of ‘a
minimal present time which is indivisible, a “time-atom” ’26 and at the same time argue that the
present cannot be extended: ‘an indivisible minimum time is . . . necessarily extended, and so
cannot constitute a present’27. Does the notion that the present constitutes a dimensionless point
betray commonsense belief? McEvoy would refute such criticism as ‘wholly premature’28.
There is no ‘sceptical betrayal of commonsense belief’ for Augustine quickly ‘reinstates our
ordinary awareness’ with his introduction of the notion of measurement.29 This operates as a
prelude to his unfolding of the nature of the present.30
Augustine invites us to speak not of the three grammatical tenses, but rather of three present
tenses, all of which ‘coincide by the grace of the mind’31. Whilst the present of things present
can be said to exist in the now, the present of things past and the present of things future exist
as ‘objects of intellectual perception’32. The past exists in the memory as ‘images . . . fixed in
the mind like imprints as they passed through the senses’33. The future exists in expectation as
pre-existing concepts which can be seen as if already present to one’s mind.34
THE MEASUREMENT OF TIME: ‘SO IT IS IN YOU, MY MIND, THAT I MEASURE PERIODS
OF TIME’35
Faithful to the Aristotelian tradition36, Augustine asserts that one’s experience of time is not
reducible to a material component of the external world such as the revolution of the sun37.
Rather, time is one of the incorporeals and thus our understanding of it transcends the idea of
physical motion to reside in the psyche as an object of thought.38 This is demonstrated by the
fact that one’s sense of time can be sufficiently Archimedean as to be able to observe, for
instance, the acceleration of a body: the body’s movement being one thing, the period by which
we measure it another.39 Time then can be seen as a psychological phenomenon which ‘like
lekta has no independent existence but is rather something which rational beings make use of
in order to explain the movements of bodies’40.
Whilst our sense of time is not reducible to physical motion, it is amenable to measurement.
This measurement, however, is not the mechanical ticking of a clock upon the wall or a
metronome atop a piano, but a faculty of the mind41. Through memory, awareness and expectation,
the mind has the ability to ‘retain an ever-extending past and . . . to diminish the future
correspondingly’42. Whilst the mind never arrives at an exact measure of time, a well-practised
sense of timing, as is often encountered in artistic performance, offers something of an approximation
to a certa mensura. Take for instance, the metric measure by which the recitation of a
line of verse is ordered43. Absent the faculty of memory, each syllable uttered in any such
recitation would be immediately consigned to the past. It would be impossible to set upon any
metric measure of poetry for ‘. . . when one syllable sounds after another, the short first, the long
after it, how [does one keep hold] on the short, and how use it to apply a measure to the long,
so as to verify that the long is twice as much?’44 The answer to this quandary must be that time
is measured in the memory, ‘for in the memory, as part of the mental powers, the impress of
things past is retained; and that memory is made present, by recall’.45
WITTGENSTEIN’S CRITICISMS
Wittgenstein saw himself as engaged in ‘a fight against the fascination which forms of expression
exert upon us’46 and for this reason, he recoils at Augustine’s supposed attempt at
supplanting the ordinary language of common parlance with a language of exactitude. It seems,
however, that such criticism is misplaced. Augustine himself concedes, with neither argument
nor objection, that whilst it is incorrect to say that there are three times, past, present and future,
custom allows it.47 All that could be said of one trained in oratory and rhetoric, and possessed
of a natural gift for exactitude in thought, is that he was motivated by a desire for ‘choice of the
right word’.48 His ‘was not the standard of the logician or of the mathematic scientist’, but rather
one who ‘respected linguistic custom and tried only to avoid the misconceptions to which it may
expose us.’49
Wittgenstein further argues that Augustine has confused two senses of the word measure.
Augustine’s analogy between temporal and spatial measurement, he believes, militates against
any attempt at linguistic exactitude.50 The metaphor of measuring time as distance between two
marks on a travelling band that passes us or the simile of time flowing by us ‘as logs of wood
[that] float down a river’51 are apt ‘to conjure, to trick or to fascinate, the language-user’52.
Again, McEvoy53 cogently refutes these alleged embarrassments. Firstly, he reminds that
Augustine expressly acknowledges the difference between temporal and spatial measurement:
‘. . . we measure poems . . . not by the number of pages – for that would give us a measure of
space, not of time.’54 It seems reasonable to interpret Augustine as regarding spatial measurement
as an external act which ‘gives an evident basis for exact comparisons of lengths’55.
Temporal measurement, on the other hand, belongs to the ‘realm of interior experience’56.
Secondly, when Augustine uses the language of time as passing, or flying, he does not seek to
‘assimilate time to passing objects’ but rather to ‘exhibit the gulf that exists between time that
passes and eternity which stands still’.57
Finally, Wittgenstein argues that an explanation cannot be something private; it cannot ‘be
sought for within certain ‘states’of consciousness that elude observation and appraisal by any but
myself’58. For Augustine it is the human soul, transcendent to matter, that is the measure of all
things and that is itself measured only by God who cannot be said to have measure for he is above
every measure.59With such emphasis on ‘the spirituality of the soul, on inwardness, and on the
life of the mind’60, has Augustine produced a philosophy of time and its measurement that is
irredeemably idealist, or subjectivist? The answer must be in the negative.Whilst his account is
personal and interior, he draws a distinction between time in the physical sense and time in the
experiential sense. It is the latter ‘in which the experience of a rational creature unfolds, the time
we know ‘from within’ is of a higher nature than physical time, because it is human’61. If this
amounts to idealism, it is not that which flows from Cartesian thought62 but rather the idealism of
the Platonic and Christian traditions which ‘exclude[s] nothing from reality’63.
THE HERMENEUTICAL KEY: TOLERANCE
As this exploration of Augustine’s temporal philosophy nears its end, it might be instructive to
consider how best to interpret time and its place within the broader Augustinian corpus.64Wetzel
observes that ‘the metaphysics of time, though always diverting, is rarely discomforting’65.
Augustine’s dialectic on temporal distentio might appear, at first sight, to betray Wetzel. The
‘psychological spreading out of the soul in successiveness and in diverse directions is a painful
and anxious experience’66. How then, does Augustine bring his dialectic to a consoling end? The
answer might well be found in his philosophical method: ‘Augustine prays as he reflects and
reflects as he prays. He is not a philosopher who happens also to pray, but a philosopher who
philosophises by praying’.67 Augustine is one who knows the limits of philosophical inquiry. He
knows also that ‘faith has a philosophical genealogy’68. The two then – faith and philosophy –
are inextricably linked. To seek to ‘sort out his religious from his philosophical interests’69 is to
embark on a futile endeavour likely to render interpretations which are at best, incomplete.
The problem of time, for Augustine, becomes the problem of sin. The Confessio, ‘his
masterpiece of self-revelation’, is above all, ‘an experiment in memory, whose object has been
to recollect sin’.70 According to Wetzel, however, it is ‘a failed experiment in memory’71.
Augustine is acutely aware of this and it is this failure he seeks to represent: ‘[s]in perplexes him
because he can confess sin only as an end of desire, and yet he can recollect sin only as desire
without an end’72. The perplexity is resolved with the realisation that ‘sin’s time is not time but
time’s absence’73. Sin then, is the giving up of time. And, if time can somehow be reclaimed,
forgiveness is made possible: ‘[t]o look at time through God’s eyes is to see life gathered from
death, a distention inverted’74.
Allied to time – and its absence, sin - is the notion of tolerance. For Augustine, it is tolerance
which ought to characterise the ecclesial societas permixta. It falls to the lay faithful to observe
a ‘dynamic form of tolerance for the sake of the sinner’s correction and conversion’75. In this
way, their reconciliatory role is exercised76 and ecclesial unity preserved. The present nighttime
of the Church is to be interpreted as a tempus misericordiae during which toleration affords a
suspension of judgment77: ‘God tolerates all so that sinners might repent and return to him. The
locus of that toleration is the Church’. The fruits of justice can only be reaped in the context of
ecclesial peace and ‘[t]he love, which animates that peace, expresses itself in tolerance’78. The
hermeneutical key that unlocks Augustine’s temporal philosophy must, then, be tolerance, a
tolerance motivated by pastoral charity. It is tolerance which inverts – or at least, suspends –
time’s distentio and makes possible forgiveness.
CONCLUSION
It can be deduced from the foregoing arguments that Augustine offers a theory of time and its
measurement which is both eloquent and illuminating. His analysis of time as amounting to
three present tenses offers a more rationally defensible view of metaphysical reality than that
offered by the three grammatical tenses. His account of the relationship between temporal
experience, duration and movement, is particularly insightful and offers ‘a synthesis of many of
the ancient philosophical treatises’79 on the subject. Perhaps his ‘greatest originality lies in his
insistence on the indispensable function of memory in all time calculation’80. What is clear is
that, in his exploration of the relationship between time and eternity, Augustine demonstrates
the latter’s salvific ability to deliver man from the distentio animi. The ‘concrete fullness of life’
which eternity holds out offers consolation ‘for man [whose] life is wasted because it flows,
because it dissipates and consumes itself in time’.81 In offering an explanation of the timeprocess
itself82, one which gives its distractions and scatteredness meaning, purpose and unity,
Augustine not only breaks new ground83 but appears to have brought a difficult yet worthwhile
endeavour to a consoling end.
Bibliography
Translation of Augustine’s Confessions – Chadwick (Oxford: 1991)
O’Donnell, Augustine Confessions: Commentary on Books VIII–XIII (Oxford: 1992)
Books
Carola, Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in Ecclesial Reconcilliation, (Rome, 2005)
Stump and Kretzman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, (Cambridge, 2001)
Articles and Essays:
Hausheer, ‘St. Augustine’s Conception of Time’, 46 (5) The Philosophical Review 503
McEvoy, ‘Augustine’s Account of Time and Wittgenstein’s Criticisms’, 37 The Review of Metaphysics 547
O’Daly, ‘Augustine on the Measurement of Time: Some Comparisons with Aristotelian and Stoic Texts’, in
Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, Essays in Honour of AH Armstrong, ed. HJ Blumenthal and RA
Markus (Variorum Publications, 1981)
Wetzel, ‘Time After Augustine’, 31 (3) Religious Studies 341
Other Sources:
Catechism of the Catholic Church (Dublin: 1995)
Notes
1 McEvoy, ‘Augustine’s Account of Time and Wittgenstein’s Criticisms’, 37 The Review of Metaphysics
547, at p. 550.
2 The translation used in this paper is that of Henry Chadwick, (Oxford: 1991). See generally, Stump and
Kretzman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, (Cambridge, 2001).
3 Ibid., at p. 576.
4 Hausheer, ‘St. Augustine’s Conception of Time’, 46 (5) The Philosophical Review 503.
5 Ibid., at p. 512.
6 The controversy concerning the temporal beginning of the world can be observed in debates between
Epicureans and Stoics, and by ‘some Platonists against others who, taking the Timaeus myth literally, believed
in creation’. Cf. McEvoy, ibid., at p. 553.
7 ‘God needs no pre-existent thing or any help in order to create, nor is creation any sort of necessary
emanation from the divine substance.’ Dei Filius, cann. 2–4: DS 3022–3024. God creates freely ‘out of nothing.’
AUAGUUGSTUISNTEIN’SET’SHTEHOEROYROYFOTFIMTIEME 6653
Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 800; DS 3025. ‘If God had drawn the world from pre-existent matter, what
would be so extraordinary in that? A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God
shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants.’ St. Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum II,
4: PG 6, 1052. See generally, Catechism of the Catholic Church, 296: 317–318.
8 Conf. XI.10.12.
9 ‘Thus, sinceYou are the Maker of all times, if there actuallywas any time beforeYou made heaven and earth,
how can it be said thatYou were not at work? If there was time,You made it, for time could not pass beforeYou
made time. On the other hand, if before heaven and earth were made there was no time, then what is meant by the
question, ‘What wereYou doing then?’ If there was not any time, there was not any “then”.’ (Conf. XI.11.13)
10 ‘. . . temporal successiveness’. Ibid.
11 McEvoy, loc. cit., at pp. 553–554. Cf. Augustine, De Genesi contra Man. 1.2.3.
12 Conf. XI.11.13.
13 Ibid.
14 Cf. infra., no. 36. Augustine is faithful to both Neo-Platonist and Aristotelian thought. The synthesis of
these diverse philosophical traditions within his temporal philosophy bears testament to Augustine’s genius.
15 Hausheer, loc. cit., at p. 509.
16 Conf. XI.14.17.
17 Ibid.
18 Conf. XI.15.18.
19 Conf. XI.15.20.
20 McEvoy, loc. cit., at p. 556.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., at p. 568.
23 Conf. XI.20.26.
24 Ibid.
25 O’Daly, ‘Augustine on the Measurement of Time: Some Comparisons with Aristotelian and Stoic Texts’,
in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought, Essays in Honour ofAHArmstrong, ed. HJ Blumenthal and RA
Markus (Variorum Publications, 1981), at p. 172.
26 Ibid. O’Daly here refers to Conf. XI.15.20.
27 Ibid. O’Daly recognises that this ‘philosophical blunder’ (p. 177) is a conceptual presupposition inherited
from the ancient Greek philosophers (p. 172). He prefers Locke in this regard: ‘Every part of duration is duration
too, and every part of extension is extension, both of them capable of addition or division in finitum’. (An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, ed.JWYolton (London, 1961). See also, Janich, ‘Augustins Zeitparadox und
seine Frage nach einem Standard der Zeitmesung’, Arch. Gesch. Phil. 54 (1972), at pp. 168–186.
28 McEvoy, loc. cit., p. 556.
29 Ibid. ‘Nevertheless, Lord, we are conscious of intervals of time, and compare them with each other, and
call some others shorter. We also measure how much longer or shorter one period is than another, and answer
that the one is twice or three times as much as the other, or that the two periods are equal.’ Conf. XI.16.21)
30 ‘Perhaps it would be exact to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present,
a present of things to come. In the soul there are these three aspects of time, and I do not see them anywhere
else. The present considering the past is the memory, the present considering the present is immediate
awareness, the present considering the future is expectation.’ Conf. XI.20.26.
31 Hausheer, loc. cit., at p. 508.
32 O’Daly, loc. cit., at p. 173.
33 Conf. XI.18.23.
34 Conf. XI.18.24.
35 Conf. XI.27.36
36 Cf. supra, no. 14.
37 Conf. XI.23.30.
38 Cf. O’Daly, loc. cit., at p. 173 ff.
39 Conf. XI.24.31.
40 Long, Helenistic Philosophy (London, 1974), at p. 138. Quoted in O’Daly, loc. cit., at pp. 173–174.
41 Conf. XI.27.36.
42 McEvoy, loc. cit., p. 561.
43 ‘. . . we measure poems by the number of lines, lines by the number of feet, feet by the number of
syllables, and long vowels by short, not by the number of pages (for that would give us a measure of space, not
of time).’ Conf. XI.26.33.
6664DODMOINMIICNIMCcMGRcGARTATATTNAN
44 Conf. XI.27.35.
45 McEvoy, loc. cit., at p. 561.
46 Wittgenstein, The Blue Book, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1972), at p. 27. Quoted in McEvoy, ibid., at p. 564.
47 Conf. XI.20.26.
48 McEvoy, loc. cit., at pp. 566–567.
49 Ibid.
50 Cf. Wittgenstein, op. cit., at pp. 26; 107.
51 Ibid., at p. 26.
52 Ibid., at p. 107.
53 McEvoy, loc. cit., at pp. 568–570.
54 Conf. XI.26.33.
55 McEvoy, loc. cit., at p. 569.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., at p. 570.
58 Ibid., at p. 565.
59 Conf. XI.13.15.
60 McEvoy loc. cit., at p. 574.
61 Ibid., at p. 575.
62 Contra Hausheer, loc. cit., at p. 503 ff.
63 McEvoy, loc. cit., at p. 576.
64 Augustine’s temporal philosophy is part of a much wider opus, the tenor of which is intensely pastoral.
Remember Augustine was a bishop when he wrote his Confessio and so the guidance of his flock in the way of
truth would have been the primary impetus for such a work.
65 Wetzel, ‘Time After Augustine’, 31 (3) Religious Studies 341, at p. 341.
66 ‘. . . so that he [Augustine] can speak of salvation as deliverance from time. The theme is developed . . .
especially . . . where St. Paul’s language about ‘being stretched’ (Phil. 3:13) becomes linked with the thought
of Plotinus that multiplicity is a falling from the One and is ‘extended scattering’. Augustine, in the development
of the concept of distentio is influenced by Plotinus who talks of time as ‘a spreading out (diastasis) of life . . .
the life of the soul in a movement of passage from one way of life to another’. Chadwick, op. cit., at p. 240.
‘Time is the distension of the eternal; eternity is an immutable present, which is neither preceeed nor followed
by another moment’. Hausheer, loc. cit., at p. 509. See also, O’Donnell, Augustine Confessions: Commentary
on Books VIII–XIII (Oxford: 1992), esp. pp. 289–290; 292.
67 Wetzel, loc. Cit., at p. 345.
68 Ibid., at p. 342.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid., at pp. 352–353.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 Ibid., at p. 355.
74 Ibid.
75 Carola, Augustine of Hippo: The Role of the Laity in Ecclesial Reconcilliation, (Rome, 2005), at p. 219.
76 Carola seeks to demonstrate how the lay faithful concretely perform this reconciliatory role and administer
according to their proper vocation the keys to the kingdom which have been entrusted to the Church. The
role is characterised by fraternal correction, intercessory prayer, and tears. See generally, Carola, ibid., esp. pp.
219–287.
77 ‘. . . certainly on man’s part and in fact also on the part of the Just Judge’. Ibid., at p. 223.
78 Ibid., at p. 232,
79 McEvoy, loc. cit., at p. 550.
80 O’Daly, loc. cit., at p. 177.
81 Hausheer, loc. cit., at p. 509.
82 Hausheer’s interpretation is particularly pleasing: ‘time [for Augustine] is not a perpetual revolving image
of eternity, but is irreversibly moving in a definite direction. It has an organic finality. Creation has had an
absolute beginning and travels to an absolute goal. There can be no return. That which is begun in time is
consummated in eternity.’ Ibid., at pp. 511–512.
83 Hausheer would argue that whilst Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus had written about time, their endeavour
was to explain it away. In contrast, Augustine can be seen as ‘the first thinker to take time seriously’ and to truly
discover its meaning. Ibid., at p. 512.
