Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/624

 ETERNITY

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ETERNITY

may be divided, wliereas a spirit cannot be divided. Spirit exists wliole and entire wlierever it exists at all; and though it may fill the space occupied by a human body, let us say, it is whole and entire in every possible part of it; not quite unlike the continuous line. If we further think of the entl or limits of the line as re- moved, of the earth's axis, for instance, as extending indefinitely into space, the line is not only continuous or unbroken but infinite, without end or beginning, yet still divisible; like, but so unlike, the immensity of God. For God is a spirit, and as the human soul fills the space occupied by the body to which it is united, yet is whole and entire in every possible part of that space, so God fills all space whatsoever, extending without limit in all directions, and yet is whole and en- tire everywhere, in the smallest conceivable point, in the very loose or improper sense in which we may think or speak of God as being "whole". Even the spatial relations of the soul to the body are coarse as compared to those which God's existence bears to that of creatures and the spaces in which they exist or may exist. For however free from extension created spirits may be, they are not incapable of real internal change, real mo- tion of some kind within themselves; whereas God, filling all space, is incapable of the least change or mo- tion, but is so truly the same throughout that He is best conceived as an infinitely extended point, the same here, there, everywhere.

If, now, we apply to the time-line what we have been attempting in that of space, the infinite, unchangeable point which was immensity becomes eternity; not a real succession of separate acts or changes (which is known as "time"); nor even the continuous duration of a being which is changeless in its substance, how- ever it may vary in its actions (which is what St. Thomas understands by an cevum) ; but an endless line of existence and action which not only is not actually interrupted, but is incapable of interruption o"- of the least change or movement whatsoever. And as, if one instant should pass away and another succeed, the present becoming past and the future present, there is necessarily a change or movement of instants; so, if we are not to be irreverent in our concept of God, but to represent Him as best we can, we must try to conceive Him as excluding all, even the least, change or succession; and his duration, consequently, as being without even a possible past or future, but a never be- ginning and never-ending, absolutely unchangeable " now ". That is how eternity is presented in Catholic philosophy and theology. The notion is of special in- terest in helping us to realize, however faintly, the re- lations of God to created things, especially with regard to His foreknowledge. In Him there is no before or after, and therefore no foreknowledge, objectively; the distinction which we are wont to draw between His knowledge of intelligence or science or prescience and His knowledge of vision is merely our way of repre- senting things, natural enough to us, but not by any means objective or real in Him. There is no real ob- jective difference between His intelligence and His vis- ion, nor between either of these and the Divine sub- stance, in which there is no possibility of difference or change. That infinitely perfect substantial intelli- gence, immense as it is eternal, and withal existing en- tire and immutable as an indivisible point in space and as an indivisible instant in time, is coextensive, in the sense of being intimately present, with the space-ex- tension and the time-succession of all creatures; not beside them, nor parallel with them, nor before or after them; but present in and with them, sustaining them, co-operating with them, and therefore seeing — not foreseeing — what they may do at any particular point of the space-extension, or at any instant of the time-extension, in which they may exist or oper- ate. God may be consid(-red as an immovable point in the centre of a world which, whether as a more or less cloijcly connectc<l group of granulated individuals,

or as an absolutely continuous ether mass, turns round Him as a sphere may be sup])osed to turn in all direc- tions round its centre (St. Thomas, Cont. Gent., I, c. Ixvi). The imagery, however, must be corrected by noting that while in the time-line God's duration is an ever-enduring point or "now", his immensity in the space-line is not at all like the centre of a circle or sphere; but is a point, rather, which is coextensive with, in the sense of being intimately present to, every other point, actual or possible, in the continuous or dis- continuous mass that is supposed to move around Him.

Bearing this correcting notion well in mind, we may conceive Him as this immovable point in the centre of an ever-moving, though here and there continuous, circle or sphere. The space and time relations are con- stantly changing between Him and the moving things around Him, not through any change in Him, but only by reason of the constant change in them. In them there is before and after, but not in Him, Who is equally present to them all, no matter how or when they may have come into being, or how they may succeed one another in time or in space. Some of them are free acts; and almost from the time the human mind began to speculate on these questions, and wherever still there are any even rudimentary speculations, the question has arisen and does arise as to how an act can be free not to happen if, as we suppose, God's abso- lutely infallible foresight saw from all eternity that it was to be. To this Catholic philosophy supplies the only answer which can be given; that it is not true to say that God either saw or foresaw anything, or that He will see it, but only that He sees it. And as my seeing you act does not interfere with your freedom of action, but I see you acting freely or necessarily, as the case may be, so God sees all finite things, quiescent or active, acting of necessity or freely, according to what may be objectively real, without in the least interfer- ing thereby with the mode or quality of their existence or of their action. Here again, however, care must be taken not to conceive the Divine knowledge as being determined by what the finite may be or do; some- what as we see things because the knowledge is borne in upon us from what we see. It is not from the finite that God gets His knowledge, but from His own Di- vine essence, in which all things are represented or mirrored as they are, existing or merely possible, neces- sary or free. On this aspect of the question see God. When, therefore, one is asked or tempted to ask, what God did or where He was before time and place began, with the creation of the world, the answer must be a denial of the legitimacy of the supposition that He was " before". It is only in relation to the finite and mutable that there can be a before and after. And when we say, that, as faith teaches, the world was created in time and was not from eternity, our mean- ing should not be that the existence of the Creator stretched back infinitely before He brought the world into being; but rather that while His existence remains an unchangeable present, without possibility of before or after, of change or succession, as regards itself, the succession outside the Divine existence, to each in- stant of which it corresponds as the centre does to any point in the circumference, had a beginning, and might have extended indefinitely further backward, without, however, escaping the omnipresence of the eternal "now" (See Billot, De Deo Uno et Trino, q. 10, p. 122).

So far for the strict or proper notion of eternity, as applying solely to the Divine existence. There is a wide or improper sense in which we are wont to repre- sent as eternal what is merely endless succession in time, and this even though the time in question should have had a beginning, as when we speak of the reward of the good and the iiunishment of the wicked as eternal, meaning by eternity only time or succession without end or limit in t he future. In the Apocalypse there is a well-known pa.ssage in which a great angel is