Tag: Godhead

On Presentism – Augustine

Synopsis:

Augustine dedicates room in his Confessions for a discussion of the essence of God vis-à-vis time. Within such a context, Augustine analyzes how time interacts within human perception – and advances a thesis of presentism. God, Augustine decides is beyond space time – but humanity exists within a third dimensional space of three dynamic presentisms.

Excerpts:

“It will see that a long time is long only because constituted of many successive movements which cannot be simultaneously extended. In the eternal, nothing is transient, but the whole is present. But no time is wholly present. It will see that all past time is driven backwards by the future, and all future time is the consequent of the past, and all past and future are created and set on their course by that which is always present.

“You created all times and you exist before all times. Nor was there any time when time did not exist… you made time itself. No times are coeternal with you since you are permanent. If they were permanent, they would not be times.

“When a true narrative of the past is related, the memory produces not the actual events which have passed away but words conceived from images of them, which they fixed in the mind like imprints as they passed through the senses. Thus my boyhood, which is no longer, lies in past time which is no longer. But when I am recollecting and telling my story, I am looking on its image in present time, since it is still in my memory.

“What is by now evident and clear is that neither future no past exists, and it is inexact language to speak of three times – past, present, and future. 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.

“A long future is a long expectation of the future. And the past, which has no existence, is not a long period of time. A long past is a long memory of the past.

*All excerpts have been taken from Confessions, Oxford University Press.

The Image of God – Origen

Synopsis:

In his essay on ‘the image of God’ the Roman Christian theologian Origen brings forth his thoughts on the image of God in Man. Utilizing Neoplatonist dynamics Origen reasons that the image of God exists in Man as the vital spirit.

Excerpts:

“Consequently that first heaven, which we have called spiritual, is our mind, which is itself spirit; it is our spiritual human being who sees and gazes upon God. But this corporeal heaven, which is called firmament, is our external human being, which sees corporeally.

“Not therefore from works does the root of justice grow, but from the root of justice grows the fruit of works.

“…the one who was made ‘in the image of God’ is our internal human, invisible and incorporeal and incorrupt and immortal.

“We are not commanded to tear out and destroy the natural impulses of the soul, but to purify them, that is, to purge and drive out the dirty and impure things which have come to them by our negligence so that the natural vitality of its own innate power might shine forth.

“We shall be like him’ (cf. Jn 3:2), this likeness is not due to nature but to grace. For example if we say that a portrait is like the one whose image is seen expressed in the portrait, the similarity is due to the quality of the expression – grace -, while in substance the two remain quite different.

*All excerpts have been taken from Origen: Spirit & Fire, The Catholic University of America Press.