Eternity Defined: Boethius's 'Tota simul et perfecta possessio', the Now of Time, and Future Contingents

Orientation #

He picks up the Boethian definition of eternity (“let’s just come down … to the actual statement of the definition”), refers back to the Categories chapter on before and after “I gave you”, and to “last week” on the now corresponding to the body in motion (prev. lecture). He does not say what comes next; the recording cuts off mid-anecdote. The previous class treated Aristotle on time and introduced Boethius as the source of the definition of eternity.

The class, in order #

1. The Latin definition, word by word (“tota simul et perfecta possessio vitae interminabilis”) #

Point: to get a close English rendering of Boethius’s definition before trying to understand it.

• simul is the opposite of before and after. In the Categories the chapter on before and after (proteron / husteron; Latin prior / posterior) is followed by the chapter on simul (Greek hama), translated “together” or “at once”; “simultaneous” events are not one before or after the other.
• tota from the Latin for “whole”, sometimes with the sense of “all”; so “the whole together” or, idiomatically, “all at once”.
• et “and”; perfecta “perfect”; possessio “possession”; vitae genitive, “of life”; interminabilis negative, without a term or end.
• Rendering reached: “the all at once and perfect possession of unending life.”

2. Eternity as negations of what belongs to time (“eternity is to an unchanging thing”) #

Point: Thomas in the Summa takes up this definition right after showing there is no motion in God; eternity is to an unchanging thing something like time is to a changing thing, and as “unchanging” negates change, the definition negates things pertaining to time and also to the now of time.

• “Unending” negates beginning and end in time. Mozart (born 1756, died 1791, in his 36th year) chosen because the bicentennials of both his beginning and end fell within the speaker’s own life: a life measured by time has a beginning and an end in time; God’s life has neither.
• Aside on “end”: in “the fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V] one point of a line is the beginning and the other the end, yet we also call both “end points”; so one can speak of the beginning and end of Mozart’s life or of “the ends” of it. The Latin there is terminus. “Limitless” would do, but he prefers “unending”.

3. Eternity is not endless time (“a moving image of God’s”) #

Point: many think of eternity as endless time; it is not, though they share being endless (Plato in the Timaeus calls endless time a moving image, but “not the same thing”).

• Argument by example: suppose Brookings never began and never ceases, so that no year is found before or after in which he was not; still there would be before and after in his life (last year before this year, this before next). Endless time keeps before and after; eternity has no before and after, which is what “all at once” says.
• So two things are said of a human life, both negated of the divine life: (1) beginning and end in time, (2) before and after in time. Having before and after would subject God to some kind of change. To grasp both negations one needs that things measured by time have beginning and end, and that time is the number of before and after in motion.

4. The now of time and the now of eternity (“the now that stands still makes eternity”) #

Point: the now of time also has no before and after, so what distinguishes it from the eternal now?

• Boethius’s contrast (not in the definition itself): the now that flows along makes time; the now that stands still makes eternity. Recalled: the now corresponds to the body in motion, the same throughout but always in another place.
• What in the definition separates the two nows: “possession, especially”: possession implies something firm, usable whenever you want (the ballpoint pen you can pick up at will).
• Compared with Aristotle on wisdom in the proemium (the “third reading”): looking knowledge, free, and “not a human but a divine possession”; Thomas’s comment: not that man cannot get wisdom, but man is in many ways enslaved, pulled away to eat, sleep, wash the car, go to the doctor. So too the now of time cannot be possessed, being always other; “possession” negates the flowing character of the now and brings out that the divine now stands still.
• Examples of the fleeting now: “all good things must come to an end” (parents at bedtime); “I wish this moment could last”; a sunset you must look at at once; his brother Mark’s “the second beer doesn’t taste as good as the first, in fact the second swallow”; the law of diminishing returns in eating; students jumping out of the car at the gates of old Quebec City reviving, but never quite recapturing, one’s first enthusiasm; a second visit to Rome or St. Peter’s; his mother’s “climax spoils the romance”; “time waits for no man”.

5. “Perfect”: how little life is in the now (“how much life would you have in that now”) #

Point: the now of time is not only fleeting; almost nothing of life is possessed in it.

• Fiction can freeze the now: the fairy-tale witch’s spell, the whole court frozen (the servant with the bird on a plate) until the prince’s kiss. Freeze the now of time and you have “hardly any” life: one cannot do an article of the Summa or go through an argument in the now.
• So the word “perfect” [transcript has “fleeting”, evidently an ASR error] negates the imperfection of the life we have in the now of time; God has a perfect possession of life in the eternal now.
• False imagination of eternity: that God, having willed once, can never change his will sounds “awfully confining” because we always change our wills (“never say never”); we falsely imagine God frozen in our now, whereas in the now of eternity he is actually choosing everything with full knowledge of what and why.

6. Thomas’s comparisons: all times present to God (“you were there … you’ll be there”) #

Point: past, present and future are all present to God in his eternity.

• The circle: points on the circumference are before and after one another, but all are equally “right across from” the centre, which is not part of the circle. A “homely” image of the now of eternity against the now of time.
• His old teacher Kasurik’s joke on the radio programme “You Were There” (reenacting Socrates’ trial, Lincoln’s assassination): when you see God, “you’ll be there.”
• This follows Aristotle’s insight that the way we know need not be the way things are; otherwise past and future could not be present to God.
• The man on the mountain sees together three travellers on the path who cannot see one another.
• Memory as a faint imitation: the past is present to me now in memory, and I try to anticipate the future now; neither is false, so long as I do not say the past is here now; but I am surer of the past than the future.

7. Future contingents; prophecy and miracles (“God knows what they call future contingents”) #

Point: a future contingent (may happen or not) cannot be known with certainty by us, but God knows it now as we know the present.

• Whether he will be standing or sitting ten minutes from now is undetermined for us; God knows it as surely as you now know he is standing, so cannot be mistaken.
• Scripture: “announce the future to us and we’ll declare you gods.”
• Vatican I on the motives of credibility proportioned to everyone: fulfilment of prophecies and miracles; miracles a sign of divine power, fulfilled prophecy a sign of [the transcript repeats “divine power”; his point is knowledge of a future contingent].
• Examples of foreknowledge given from God: St. Margaret Mary Alacoque telling Claude de la Colombière whom he would meet in England, and he did; Churchill’s escape from the Boers, knocking on the one door in the district with an English affiliation, which no one could foresee.

8. The sin of Adam and Eve as pride seeking knowledge of future contingents (“a very intellectual sin in a way”) #

Point: on Thomas’s understanding their first sin was wanting a knowledge of future contingents, “knowing good and bad” in that sense, which man cannot have.

• Not a carnal sin (“they discovered sex … some stupid explanation”): in the original state, so long as reason and will were subject to God, body was subject to soul and passions to reason and will; recognising their nakedness came after, as punishment. So the first sin had to be a spiritual sin, pride, as the devils’ sin is pride and then envy (he thinks Augustine has the same explanation).
• Proportionate punishment: if you are not subject to whom you should be, what should be subject to you revolts. David revolts against God and is punished by his son’s revolt; parents not subject to God sometimes punished by children not subject to them (not always, he warns); as forgiving others is the condition of being forgiven.
• Not a knowledge of the moral law, which they had in a better condition than we; rather foresight of the unintended good or bad consequences of their actions, i.e. self-sufficiency in directing their own actions. The devil’s promise “you’ll be like God” is thus in a way man cannot be like God.
• Student: did they think they could get this from the devil? Reply: pride blinds; the appeal had to be intellectual, not to concupiscence, which was in no disorder.
• Reason directs man’s actions naturally but not infallibly: foresight (the virtue is prudence; prudentia comes from providentia, as the Latin dictionary confirms, not an Isidorian etymology; Thomas, on the integral parts of prudence, answers the objection that they mean the same by saying the whole virtue is named from its crowning part). Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt both like the word “foresight”. Drugstore example: the light turns green, you go, someone runs the red and hits you.
• Student links this to the Holy Father’s “Veritatis Splendor”: sin as desire to determine good and evil. Reply: he thinks so; the Pope targets people who make themselves the measure of good and bad (whatever I want is good), a “more stupid” thing than Abelard’s position. Pride defined as disordered love of one’s own excellence; directing oneself is an excellence (as praising a student who can “move in his own mind”), but man depends on God because of contingents.
• Not even the angels know future contingents; divine providence extends down. Old Testament account (book forgotten) of two angels in conflict, the guardian wanting his client out of danger, the higher seeing the whole picture: higher angel illuminating lower, the more universal good. Paul: all things work for the good. St. Fulgentius: God as a father who has run ahead and removed the stumbling block. Sapientia books: “uncertain are the providences of men.”
• Asides: men less willing than women to ask directions (pride or better sense of direction, “or both”); Thomas guesses the devil was the highest angel, since unless extremely excellent how would he be tempted to rest in himself; Eve more deceived than Adam, the devil craftily coming to the weaker, Adam going along with “flesh of my flesh”; hence the redemption begins with Mary’s yes and is completed by Christ, a redemption of woman as of man.

9. Truth a greater friend than Plato (“care a lot about the truth and a little about Socrates”) #

Point: Adam should have answered Eve as Aristotle answers the Platonists.

• Nicomachean Ethics I: hard to attack the Platonists since they are friends, but impious to prefer friends to truth; piety refers to God and God is truth itself; “Plato is a friend, but truth is a greater friend.”
• Socrates in the Phaedo (he corrects himself from “Apology”): Simmias and Cebes might withhold objections to the immortality of the soul out of concern for a man about to die who would face death with more courage if convinced; so Socrates tells them to care much for truth and little for Socrates. Thomas commenting notes Socrates and Plato said it before Aristotle.
• Aside: a famous European philosopher asked another to support his position out of friendship, “contrary to both” teachings. The recording ends as he begins a play in which “the duke or somebody asks the fool, ‘how are you doing?’” [cut off].

His words #

• simul / hama: “together”, “at once”; negation of before and after.
• proteron / husteron, prior / posterior: before and after.
• tota: “whole”, sometimes “all”; with simul, “all at once”.
• interminabilis: without a term; “unending” (preferred to “limitless”).
• “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V], where terminus is used of the ends of a line.
• “looking knowledge” [ed.: theoretical/speculative knowledge], of wisdom.
• the now that flows makes time; the now that stands still makes eternity (Boethius).
• “future contingent”: something in the future that could happen or not happen.
• “foresight”: his English for prudentia, from providentia.
• pride: disordered love of one’s own excellence.
• “motives of credibility” (Vatican I): fulfilment of prophecies and miracles.

Texts #

Read in class

• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy: the definition of eternity, in Latin, parsed word by word (locus not stated).

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Categories: chapters on before and after and on simul (given to the class earlier).
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: eternity treated after God’s unchangingness; the article on providentia as integral part of prudentia; Thomas’s comment on Aristotle’s proemium on wisdom as a divine possession.
• Aristotle, “fifth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics V], on terminus.
• Plato, Timaeus: time a moving image.
• Scripture: “announce the future to us and we’ll declare you gods”; David and his son; the two angels (book not recalled); Paul, all things work for the good; Sapientia books, “uncertain are the providences of men”.
• Vatican I on the motives of credibility; the Holy Father’s Veritatis Splendor (raised by a student).
• St. Fulgentius, the father who runs ahead; St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and Claude de la Colombière; Churchill’s account of his escape in the Boer War; biographies of Theodore Roosevelt.
• Plato, Phaedo (Simmias, Cebes); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I; Thomas’s commentary on it.

His questions #

• Simul is the opposite of what? Before and after.
• What does “unending” negate? The beginning and end in time that Mozart’s life or ours has.
• Is eternity endless time? No: both are endless, but eternity is all at once, with no before and after.
• Is there a before and after in the now of time? No; the now shares this with eternity.
• What in the definition separates the now of eternity from the now of time? “Possession, especially”: firmness, against the flowing now.
• If you could freeze the now of time, how much life would you have in it? Hardly any; hence “perfect”.
• What did Adam and Eve seek? Knowledge of future contingents, to direct themselves self-sufficiently; a sin of pride, not of the flesh.
• Did they think they could get it from the devil? Pride blinds; the appeal was intellectual since they had no disordered concupiscence.
• Do angels know future contingents? No, not even the angels.
• Is men’s reluctance to ask directions pride or a better sense of direction? “Or both” — left open, as a joke.