Preston Grissom

Outside Reading #1

Augustine’s Confessions

            St. Augustine published his Confessions as a self-discovering autobiography of sorts.  There are many things about the nature of thought, remembrance, pain and the like that he notes in this book.  However I stumbled upon this not too long ago.  He says, “How can the past and future be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet?  As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time, but eternity.” 

At first I thought he was agreeing with Heraclitus when he says, “You can’t step in the same river twice.”  I don’t know why I thought of that but I did. 

But then I saw more clearly that Augustine seems to be saying that we are living in eternity.  That time is not necessarily linear but is in fact all intertwined and categorized as eternal.  Time as we perceive it does not exist.  It is much more mystical than it seems and (as Einstein predicted) it is relative.  This is a fascinating thought from a man who was rambling more than 1600 years ago.