QUOMODO SOLUS SIT INCIRCUMSCRIPTUS ET AETERNUS, CUM ALII SPIRITUS SINT INCIRCUMSCRIPTI ET AETERNI.
The Unbounded and Eternal God
Because nothing greater than God can be confined by place or time, God alone is unbounded and eternal.
But anything confined in some way by place or time is less than what no law of place or time restrains. Since, then, nothing is greater than you, no place or time confines you, but you are everywhere and always. Because this can be said of you alone, you alone are unbounded and eternal.
A Question About Other Spirits
If God alone is unbounded and eternal, how can other spirits also be described this way?
How, then, are other spirits also said to be unbounded and eternal?
God Alone Is Truly Eternal
God alone is eternal because alone among all beings God neither begins nor ceases to exist.
And you alone are eternal, because you alone of all beings neither cease nor begin to be.
What Uncircumscribed Truly Means
God alone is uncircumscribed because only God is wholly present everywhere at once, whereas bodily things cannot be whole in more than one place.
But how are you alone uncircumscribed? Surely a created spirit compared to you is circumscribed, yet uncircumscribed compared to the body?1 Doubtless, that is altogether circumscribed which, when it is whole somewhere, cannot at the same time be elsewhere — a property observed only in bodily things.2 But that which is wholly present everywhere at once — and this is understood of you alone — is uncircumscribed.
The Mixed Status of Created Spirits
Created spirits are both circumscribed and uncircumscribed in different respects, and so other spirits too share in unboundedness and eternity without rivaling God's uniqueness.
But that which is at once both circumscribed and uncircumscribed is that which, when it is whole somewhere, can at the same time be whole elsewhere, yet not everywhere — a property known from created spirits.3 For if the soul were not wholly present in each individual limb of its body, it would not feel wholly in each one. You therefore, Lord, are uniquely uncircumscribed and eternal, and yet other spirits too are uncircumscribed and eternal.
Read the original Latin
Sed omne quod clauditur aliquatenus loco aut tempore, minus est ta quam quod nulla lex loci aut temporis coercet. Quoniam ergo maius te nihil est, nullus locus aut tempus te cohibet sed ubique et semper es. Quod quia de te solo dici potest, tu solus incircumscriptus es et aeternus. Quomodo igitur dicuntur et alii spiritus incircumscripti et aeterni?
Et quidem solus es aeternus, quia solus omnium sicut non desinis, sic non incipis esse. Sed solus quomodo es incircumscriptus? An creatus spiritus ad te collatus est circumscriptus, ad corpus vero incircumscriptus? Nempe omnino circumscriptum est, quod cum alicubi totum est, non potest simul esse alibi; quod de solis corporeis cernitur. Incircumscriptum vero, quod simul est ubique totum; quod de te solo intelligitur. Circumscriptum autem simul et incircumscriptum est, quod cum alicubi sit totum, potest simul esse totum alibi, non tamen ubique; quod de creatis spiritibus cognoscitur. Si enim non esset anima tota in singulis membris sui corporis, non sentiret tota in singulis. Tu ergo, domine, singulariter es incircumscriptus et aeternus, et tamen et alii spiritus sunt incircumscripti et aeterni.
Notes
- 1 ↩The question is genuinely interrogative (an introduces a rhetorical question), probing how created spirits relate to God and body. Vero marks the contrast between the two relations.
- 2 ↩Cum here is temporal ('when') rather than causal; the clause describes the condition under which something is circumscribed.
- 3 ↩Cum is temporal ('when') rather than concessive; tamen marks the limitation 'yet not everywhere.'
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
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