God and Time

Plato and Aristotle

with his idea (form) of the Good, Plato (428–348 BCE) did not directly mention God. But the universal good, as characterized in The State, has qualities similar to those of God in the Christian tradition: eternal, indivisible, beyond space and time. In the Platonic dialogue Timaeus, God is spoken of as the dmiourgs (demiurge), who built the world out of basic material. But this God is neither the Christian God, nor a creator out of nothing. He has only the function of giving order and reason to the qualities of the cosmos.

Aristotle (384–322 BCE), student-scholar of Plato, speaks in the Physics and in the Metaphysics of the (first) Unmoved Mover. This first principle, which gives motion to everything in the cosmos, does not itself move. The first principle is loved by everything, so all things in the cosmos move toward it as an aim (télos) in circles. By this non-moving quality, the Unmoved Mover is beyond time, because moving can be measured only within time. The first principle is always the same; it is the “thinking of thinking” (nsis noses), unchangeable like God. Though it is not the Christian God, the first principle is called “God” (thes) by Aristotle.

Augustine and Aquinas

Saint Augustine's (354–430) thoughts on time are embedded in his interpretation of Genesis as he presented them in book X, and especially in book XI, of his Confessions. According to Augustine, time (tempus) is linked with the Divine Creation (creatio). “Time” has no meaning before the Creation. Time did not exist before God created the universe. However, one could say that time [Page 602]was within God before the Creation. So it makes sense to speak of “time” only when there are processes of becoming and vanishing. Time gives natural processes both a basis and a framework in which they can progress.

Augustine is very honest when he says that he knows quite well what time is, as long as he is not asked to describe it. But when he is asked what time is, he does not know how to answer this question: “What is ‘time’ then? If nobody asks me, I know it; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not” (Quid est ergo tempus? Si nemo ex me quaerat, scio; si quaerenti explicate velim, nescio). Therefore, one can say that time is very difficult to explain, but at first easy to understand. This sounds a bit paradoxical, but Augustine wants to reach a deeper philosophical understanding of time. So, he goes on with his own investigation.

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