When will then be now?!
As I was finishing off St. Augustine’s Confessions, I read the section in Book Eleven where he devotes a substantial amount of ink to the subject of time:
Who is there who can say to me that there are not three times… the past, present, and future, but only present, because these two are not? Or are they also; but when from future it becomes present, comes it forth from some secret place, and when from the present it becomes past, does it retire into anything secret?
For where have they, who have foretold future things, seen these things, if as yet they are not? For that which is not cannot be seen. And they who relate things past could not relate them as true, did they not perceive them in their mind. Which things, if they were not, they could in no way be discerned. There are therefore things both future and past. – The Confessions, Book XI, Chapter 17, St. Augustine
As I was reading this, I couldn’t help but think of this scene from the Star Wars spoof, Spaceballs:
I really hope I’m not the first person to have read The Confessions and thought of this…
The article When will then be now?! first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net