In Preface of Book I, Augustine writes, “I treat of [City of God] both as it exists in this world of time, a stranger among the ungodly, living by faith, and as it stands in the security of its everlasting seat.”
Augustine’s conception of time underlies his view of history. In his Confessions, his writes that time exists only within the material world as God’s creation, which is subject to change, whereas the Creator transcends time and is immutable. The history of the world is to God what a finished screenplay is to the mind of the playwright: it is present to him all at once, from the beginning to the end, and nothing is lost, not even the minutest detail.
To use a geometric analogy, the Greco-Roman conception of time is a line with a fixed start point, i.e., the past, where present and future are but a long shadow of the past, for everything was predetermined by fate; the Jewish conception of time is a line with a fixed end point, i.e. future, where past and present are a long ladder that lead up to the future, and when the end is reached, the ladder can be done away with.
By contrast, the Christian conception of time is a circle, not in the sense of its being repetitive, but in the sense that past, present and future co-exist with one another as a unity. What is done in the present affects both the past and the future, like a ripple that extends in all directions. If one wants to change the past, there is no need for time travel, only act in the present, and the whole shall be changed. Perhaps this is why, in the tradition of the Church, prayers are offered for the departed. For people of the past are separated from us by time, just as people in distant parts of the world are separated from us by space. Yet all live in the unity of Christ, the Wisdom and Power of God, who upholds all things, and all live to Him.
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