For Plato, time is the moving image of eternity: the closest thing to the eternal that a world which has come into being can have. The definition appears in the Timaeus and carries an almost grammatical consequence: of what is eternal we can only say that it is, never that it was or that it will be. This article shows how Timaeus reaches this idea, what it says about the heavens, and why Augustine took it so seriously.
The problem: the model is eternal and the world came into being
In the Timaeus, the craftsman who orders the world looks to a model, and the model is eternal. But the world came into being, and something that came into being cannot be eternal in the same way as the model. Here lies the problem: how do you make a world as much like the eternal as a world that came into being can be? (The background is in Why was the world created according to Plato?.)
The solution: an image that moves
Timaeus answers that the craftsman then made the closest thing possible. He set out to build a moving image of eternity, and that, Timaeus says, is what we call time (37d). Time is not the eternal. It is its image: something that resembles eternity, but moves.
Time is born with the heavens
The idea has a concrete consequence. The days, nights, months and years did not exist before the heavens. They were born together with them. And the Sun, the Moon and the planets were set there to mark time, like the hands of a clock (38b-c).
The time Timaeus speaks of here is the time counted in days, nights, months and years, and it is the heavens that count it. The Greeks had yet another word for time, the one for the opportune moment, and the difference between the two is the subject of Chronos and Kairos.
Of the eternal we can only say that it is
Timaeus draws an almost grammatical consequence from this. When we speak of what is eternal, we can only say what it is. To say that it was, or that it will be, is to apply to it something that holds only for what passes (37e-38a).
Think about the verbs. "Was" and "will be" are tenses for what has a past and a future, for what is measured by days, nights, months and years, and these were born with the heavens. The eternal was not born with the heavens. That is why the only tense that suits it is the present.
Augustine takes the idea seriously
The class makes a promise here: a man born in North Africa in the fourth century is going to take this idea very seriously. It is Augustine. The idea of time as a moving image of eternity, he embraces almost in full.
In the City of God (XI, 6), Augustine writes that the world was made not in time, but with time. And in the Confessions (book XI), he tells how someone asked, ironically, what God was doing before creating heaven and earth. And how some would answer with a joke: God would be preparing hell for people who ask questions like that.
Augustine rejects the joke and gives a serious answer, one that takes the Timaeus' idea to its end. For him, the question does not even make sense. There was no "before" the creation, because time itself was also created by God. Time began together with the world. The question has its own article in What was God doing before creating the world? Saint Augustine, and Augustine's thinking about time, in book XI, in What is time, according to Saint Augustine.
To take away
For Plato, time is an image: moving, because it moves, and of eternity, because the model is eternal. It is born with the heavens, has the heavenly bodies as its hands, and leaves the eternal a single tense, the present. Augustine takes up this idea and carries it to the question that the irony had asked: before there was time, there was no "before". Whoever wants to know the whole book will find the route in Timaeus, by Plato: summary and how to read it.
This article paraphrases the Timaeus and does not reproduce the text of any translation. The references 37d, 37e-38a and 38b-c follow Stephanus pagination, which lets you locate the passage in any edition. Augustine's passages are also paraphrased.
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See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
What does "moving image of eternity" mean?
It is Timaeus' definition of time in Plato's dialogue. The model of the world is eternal, but the world came into being and cannot be eternal in the same way; so the craftsman made the closest thing possible, an image of eternity that moves. That, Timaeus says, is what we call time (Timaeus, 37d).
Why of the eternal do we only say "is"?
"Was" and "will be" speak of a past and a future, and they apply only to what passes, to what is in time. Of what is eternal, we can only say what it is (Timaeus, 37e-38a). Timaeus' conclusion is almost grammatical: the verb tenses belong to the world that changes.
Did time exist before creation?
For Plato, days, nights, months and years did not exist before the heavens: they were born together with them. Augustine, who took the idea seriously, concluded that there is no "before" the creation, because time itself was created by God and began together with the world.
What are the "clock hands" of time in Plato?
The Sun, the Moon and the planets. In the Timaeus, they were placed in the heavens to mark time, like the hands of a clock (Timaeus, 38b-c).
Continue: What was God doing before creating the world? Saint Augustine · Why was the world created according to Plato? · Plato's Timaeus: summary and how to read it · Without God, Is Everything Permitted? Camus's Answer
Source class: Timeu, de Platão | Formação em Filosofia e Teologia do Nous