QUOD NON SIT IN LOCO AUT TEMPORE SED OMNIA SINT IN ILLO.
The Puzzle of God's Eternal Presence
Anselm marvels that God's eternity is not a sequence of past, present, and future but a single, unbroken always.
But if throughout your eternity you were and are and will be, and having been is not about to be, and being is not having been or about to be: how is your eternity wholly always?
Nothing Passes Away in God
Anselm reasons that in God's eternity nothing slips into the past or waits in the future, for God is yesterday, today, and tomorrow all at once.
Does nothing pass by in your eternity, so that it now no longer is, nor is anything future as though it were not yet? You didn't exist only yesterday, nor will you exist only tomorrow, but you are yesterday and today and tomorrow.
Beyond All Time, Holding All Things
Anselm concludes that God does not merely span yesterday, today, and tomorrow but simply is, outside all time, containing all things while being contained by nothing.
Or rather, you are not yesterday, today, or tomorrow — you simply are, outside all time. For yesterday, today, and tomorrow are nothing other than being in time; and you, though nothing exists without you, are nevertheless not in place or time, but all things are in you. Nothing contains you, but you hold all things together.1
Read the original Latin
Sed si per aeternitatem tuam fuisti et es et eris, et fuisse non est futurum esse, et esse non est fuisse vel futurum esse: quomodo aeternitas tua tota est semper?
An de aeternitate tua nihil praeterit ut iam non sit, nec aliquid futurum est quasi nondum sit? Non ergo fuisti heri aut eris cras sed heri et hodie et cras es.
Immo nec heri nec hodie nec cras es sed simpliciter es extra omne tempus. Nam nihil aliud est heri et hodie et cras quam in tempore; tu autem, licet nihil sit sine te, non es tamen in loco aut tempore sed omnia sunt in te. Nihil enim te continet sed tu confines omnia.
Notes
- 1 ↩The verb 'confines' renders a rare/uncertain form (likely confineo, 'you bound/contain'); the sense is that you rather hold all things together, but the precise nuance is uncertain.
Proslogion (Address / Discourse on the Existence of God) companion
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Anselm designed the Proslogion to be read slowly as prayer, and the Chosen Portion app serves it exactly that way — one short portion per day.
- Finish the entire Proslogion in 14 days at about 10 minutes a day
- Modern-English rendering of all 27 chapters, no Latin required
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