The truth is that, when we use the phrase in question, we express what is in our imagination, and not in our intellect. We imagine that before time there was eternity because we cannot picture to ourselves eternity, except by the phantasm of infinite time. It is for this reason that in speaking of eternity we use the terms by which we are accustomed to express the relations of time. The words “Before creation” are therefore to be understood of a time which was possible in connection with some possible anterior creation, but which has never existed. This amounts to saying that the before which we conceive has no existence except in our imagination.
S. Thomas proposes to himself the question whether, when we say that God was before the world, the term “before” is to be interpreted of a priority of nature or of a priority of duration. It might seem, says he, that neither interpretation is admissible. For if God is before the world only by priority of nature, then it follows that, since God is ab æterno, the world too is ab æterno. If, on the contrary, God is before the world by priority of duration, then, since priority and posteriority of duration constitute time, it follows that there was time before the creation of the world; which is impossible.[92]
In answer to this difficulty the holy doctor says that God is before the world by priority of duration, but that the preposition “before” designates here the priority, not of time, but of eternity. Or else we must answer, he adds, that the word “before” designates a priority, not of real, but of imaginary, time, just as the word “above” in the phrase “above the heavens there is nothing” designates an imaginary space which we may conceive by thinking of some imaginary dimensions superadded to the dimensions of the heavens.[93]
It strikes us that the first of these two answers does not really solve the difficulty. For the priority of eternity cannot mean but a priority of nature and of pre-eminence, by which God’s permanent duration infinitely excels, rather than precedes, all duration of creatures. In accordance with this, the objector might still urge on his conclusion that, if God does not precede the world, the world is ab æterno like God himself. The second answer agrees with what we ourselves have hitherto said. But as regards the objection proposed, it leaves the difficulty entire. For, if God was before the world by a priority, not of real, but of imaginary time, that “before” is imaginary, and not real. And the consequence will be that God was not really “before” the world, but we imagine him to have been so.
We must own that with our imperfect language, mostly fashioned by imagination, it is not easy to give a clear and popular solution of the objection. Perhaps the most summary manner of dealing with it would be to deny the inference in the first horn of the dilemma—viz., that if God is before the world by priority of nature only, then the world will be ab æterno as much as God himself. This inference, we say, is to be denied; for it involves the false supposition that a thing is ab æterno if there is no time before it; whereas that only is ab æterno which has no beginning of duration.
Thus there is no need of saying that God precedes the world in duration; for it suffices to admit that he was before the world by priority of nature and of causality. The duration of eternity has no “before” and no “after,” though we depict it to ourselves as extending into indefinite time. Even the verb was should not be predicated of God; for God, strictly speaking, neither was, nor will be, but permanently is. Hence it seems to us that it would be a contradiction to affirm that God was before the world by the duration of his eternity, while we acknowledge that in his eternity there is no “before.” But enough about this question.
The duration of rest.—Supposing that a body, or an element of matter, is perfectly at rest, it may be asked how the duration of this rest can be ascertained and measured. Shall we answer that it is measured by time? But if so, our reader will immediately conclude that time is not merely the duration of movement, as we have defined it, but also the duration of rest. On the other hand, how can we deny that rest is measured by time, when we often speak of the rest of a few minutes or of a few hours?
We might evade the question by answering that nothing in creation lies in absolute rest, but everything is acting and acted upon without interruption, so that its movement is never suspended. But we answer directly that, if there were absolute rest anywhere in the world, the duration of that rest should be measured by the duration of exterior movements. In fact, rest has no before and after in itself, because it is immovable, but only outside of itself. It cannot therefore have an intrinsic measure of its duration, but it must borrow it from the before and after of exterior movement. In other words, the thing which is in perfect rest draws no line of time; it has only a statical now which is a mere term of duration; and if everything in the world were in absolute rest, time would cease altogether. Hence what we call the duration of rest is simply the duration of a movement exterior to the thing which is at rest.
This will be easily understood by considering that between a flowing and a standing now there is the same relation as between a moving and a standing point.
Now, to change the relation of distance between two points in space, it suffices that one of them move while the other stands still. This change of distance is measured by the movement of the first point; and thus the point which is at rest undergoes, without moving, a continuous change in its relation to the moving point. In a similar manner, two nows being given, the one flowing and the other standing, the time extended by the flowing of the first measures the change of its relation to the second, and consequently, also, the change of the relation of the second to the first. This shows that the time by which we measure the duration of rest is nothing but the duration of the movement extrinsic to the thing at rest.