William of Conches (1080–1154)

William of Conches (Guillelmus de Conchis), a commentator on the philosophical works known to the first half of the 12th century, is one of the major figures in the circle around the famous school of Chartres. On the topics of time and eternity, William is interested in fine distinctions. Thus, he discusses the different meanings of eternal (aeter-num), sempiternal (sempiternum), and perpetual (perpetuum). According to him, the first expression designates something without a beginning and without an end (i.e., God), the second something with a beginning before time but without an end (i.e., the world), the third something without an end but with a temporal beginning (i.e., the human soul). The last two definitions show problems typical of a Christian Platonist, whereas his ancient pagan predecessors had no need of such a distinction because of their assumption of the eternity of the world and of human souls, which migrate from one body to the next one.

While commenting on Plato's Timaeus 37c-38b, William defines eternity and gives no fewer than three definitions of time: Eternity, “the presential state of everything what is, what was and what will be,” is reserved to God alone, such that he had to create an image of that eternity when creating the material world. This image, time, can be defined in a general way as “the dimension of duration and movement of the changeable things.” This definition, which is borrowed verbatim from John Scotus Eriugena, is “general” (generalis), according to William, because it designates time both as a whole and regarding its parts. The second definition is “time is that space which has begun with the world and will end with the world.” This definition, which William ascribes to the Timaeus, is “total” (totalis), because it concerns only time as a whole (totum). The definition in Cicero's De inventione, “time is a certain part of eternity, i.e., of that large space, with the signification of the certain space of a day, a night or a month” (which is discussed also by William's contemporary Peter Abelard) designates, according to William, only the parts of time that in his mind, however, exist in reality (and not only in human language, as Abelard puts it). The difference between eternity and its image, that is, time, is precisely that time consists of a succession of moments, whereas in eternity everything is comprehended at one time (comprebendetur simul). By distinguishing two meanings of “day,” William attempts to eliminate the difficulty that time is created, according to Plato, at the moment of the creation of the world, while the Bible presupposes that there were already days when God started the process of creation: According to William, the Book of Genesis meant by “day” the span of 24 hours, while Plato meant the determination of the day as the span of time between sunrise and sunset. William can be regarded as one of the first representatives of Christian Platonism in the Scholastic period; similar ideas can be found in many Christian philosophers with a Platonic standpoint up to Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus).

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