"What is time? I do not know."
Augustine
"If matter and its motion disappeared there would 
no longer be any space or time."
Einstein
"The New Testament knows nothing 
of any timeless eternity, or of a God who is beyond 
or outside time and not within it."
Oscar Cullmann
" 'In the beginning' is a technical term 
stating the fact that at this point of sequence there is a creation
out of nothing. Before this there was a personal
existence--love and communication."
Francis Schaeffer
“If it was the eternal will of God that 
the creation should come to be, why, then, is not the 
creation itself also from eternity?"
Opponents of Augustine

Augustine was a Platonist 
"By having thus read the books of the Platonists, and having been taught by them to search for the incorporeal Truth, I saw how thy invisible things are understood through the things that are made. And, even when I was thrown back, I still sensed what it was that the dullness of my soul would not allow me to contemplate. I was assured that thou wast, and wast infinite, though not diffused in finite space or infinity; that thou truly art, who art ever the same, varying neither in part nor motion; and that all things are from thee, as is proved by this sure cause alone: that they exist...I now believe that it was thy pleasure that I should fall upon these books before I studied thy Scriptures, that it might be impressed on my memory how I was affected by them."
--Book VII:20
Augustine confesses he cannot define time 
While saying he cannot tell us what time is, Augustine, nevertheless, gives us two aspects of time; time as past, present, and future, and time as duration.

Augustine "For what is time? Who can easily and briefly explain it? Who can even comprehend it in thought or put the answer into words? Yet is it not true that in conversation we refer to nothing more familiarly or knowingly than time? And surely we understand it when we speak of it; we understand it also when we hear another speak of it. --Book XI:14

What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks me, I do not know. Yet I say with confidence that I know that if nothing passed away, there would be no past time; and if nothing were still coming, there would be no future time; and if there were nothing at all, there would be no present time. --Book XI:14 

And I confess to thee, O Lord, that I am still ignorant as to what time is. And again I confess to thee, O Lord, that I know that I am speaking all these things in time, and that I have already spoken of time a long time, and that "very long" is not long except when measured by the duration of time. How, then, do I know this, when I do not know what time is?" --Book XI:25

Augustine believes time is created by God.
Nothing could be more ironic than this revered theologian saying that he doesn't know what time is on earth but he knows what eternity is in heaven. He creates this problem because he misinterprets and misrepresents scripture when he states that time is created by God. 

Augustine "Thou hadst made time itself." --Book XI:13

The reason Augustine believes that time is created is because he is a theologian and a philosopher, a Christian and a Platonist. His understanding of God is a mixture of Biblical revelation and Greek philosophy. 

Plato “For there were no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven he created them also. They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he 'was,' he 'is,' he 'will be,' but the truth is that 'is' alone is properly attributed to him, and that 'was' and 'will be' only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same, 'is eternal'." --Time 37c-39e

Time is an attribute of God and a characteristic of the world he created.
There is not a single statement in scripture that says God created time. Genesis tells us that there is only a new way of measuring time in the creation.

Oscar Cullmann "The New Testament knows nothing of any timeless eternity, or of a God who is beyond or outside time and not within it."

Genesis 1:3-15  "And God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day...And God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.' And it was so." 

Time is a characteristic of anything that exists and is active. Any kind of movement is a change of some type and incorporates time in three ways: 1. before and after; 
2. past, present, and future; 3. duration. Time does not exist in itself as something material or as an invisible form of energy.

Einstein "If we assume that all matter would disappear from the world, then before relativity, one believed that space and time would continue existing in an empty world. But according to the theory of relativity, if matter and its motion disappeared, there would no longer be any space or time."

Time exists in God because he is active in the world he has created--Revealed Theology. We know that God existed 'before" he created the world and so we can also say that the creation of the world is in his "past". Before the creation of the world there was "movement" within the Trinity. Love and communication are forms of movement. God endures forever, time for God is unlimited, he had no beginning and he will have no end.

Francis Schaeffer "In the beginning' is a technical term stating the fact that at this point of sequence there is a creation out of nothing. Before this there was a personal existence--love and communication. After creation God worked into time and communicated knowledge to man who was in time. And since He did this, it is quite obvious that it is not the same to God before creation and after creation."

If God was timeless, the world would be eternal.
The Greek philosophers said that the ultimate cause of movement, change, and time in the temporal world must be that which is eternally immovable, changeless, and timeless--Natural theology. If this were true, said Aristotle, then logically the world of movement must be as eternal as that which moves it.

Aristotle "Since there were three kinds of substance, two of them physical and one unmovable, regarding the latter we must assert that it is necessary that there should be an eternal unmovable substance. For substances are the first of existing things, and if they are all destructible, all things are destructible. But it is impossible that movement should either have come into being or cease to be (for it must always have existed), or that time should. For there could not be a before and an after if time did not exist. Movement also is continuous, then, in the sense in which time is; for time is either the same thing as movement or an attribute of movement."

"There is, then, something which is always moved with an unceasing motion, 
which is motion in a circle; and this is plain not in theory only but in fact. Therefore the first heaven must be eternal. There is therefore also something which moves it. 
And since that which moves and is moved is intermediate, there is something which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. And 
the object of desire and the object of thought move in this way; they move without being moved...And thought is moved by the object of thought."

Plato states there is a creation of the world has a beginning, but not out of nothing. God creates a disorderly universe into an orderly one. 

Plato "God therefore, wishing that all things should be good, and so far as possible nothing be imperfect, and finding the visible universe in a state not of rest but of inharmonious and disorderly motion, reduced it to order from disorder, as he judged that order was in every way better."

"There were, before the world came into existence, being, space, and becoming, three distinct realities. The nurse of becoming was characterized by the qualities of water and fire, of earth and air, and by others that go with them, and its visual appearance was therefore varied; but as there was no homogeneity or balance in the forces that filled it, no part of it was in equilibrium, but it swayed unevenly under the impact of their motion, and in turn communicated its motion to them. And its contents were in constant process of movement and separation."

Aristotle acknowledges that Plato agrees with him that movement in the world is eternal but criticizes him for calling it random not attributing the cause of it to God.

Aristotle "Plato say(s) there is always movement. But why and what this movement is (he does not) say, nor, if the world moves in this way or that, (he does not) tell us the cause of its doing so. Now nothing is moved at random, but there must always be something present to move it." 

It's irrational and contradictory to say a timeless God created the world
Augustine was faced with a dilemma; God is active--not timeless, according to the Bible and the world is not eternal, but God is timeless--not active, according to Plato and Aristotle and the world is eternal. Augustine forms a synthesis, he takes the timelessness of an immovable God and combines it with the God who is active and creates an eternity that defies logic in which God can be "active" from our finite, temporal perspective as we read our Revelation from him, but "inactive (immoveable) from his infinite, eternal perspective that we know from Greek philosophy. In the Confessions, where Augustine raises the most logical question that could be asked about his synthesis, he gives no answer. Augustine had abandoned rationality in favor of his personal revelation.

Opponents ask "But if it was the eternal will of God that the creation should come to be, why, then, is not the creation itself also from eternity?" --Book XI:10

Augustine's answer "Those who say these things do not yet understand thee, O Wisdom of God, O Light of souls. They do not yet understand how the things are made that are made by and in thee. They endeavor to comprehend eternal things, but their heart still flies about in the past and future motions of created things, and is still unstable. Who shall hold it and fix it so that it may come to rest for a little; and then, by degrees, glimpse the glory of that eternity which abides forever; and then, comparing eternity with the temporal process in which nothing abides, they may see that they are incommensurable? They would see that a long time does not become long, except from the many separate events that occur in its passage, which cannot be simultaneous. In the Eternal, on the other hand, nothing passes away, but the whole is simultaneously present. But no temporal process is wholly simultaneous. Therefore, let it see that all time past is forced to move on by the incoming future; that all the future follows from the past; and that all, past and future, is created and issues out of that which is forever present. Who will hold the heart of man that it may stand still and see how the eternity which always stands still is itself neither future nor past but expresses itself in the times that are future and past? Can my hand do this, or can the hand of my mouth bring about so difficult a thing even by persuasion?" --Book XI:11

There are many contradictory statements in the Confessions that are Augustine's  attempt to help us understand this synthesis of opposing views of eternity. Augustine acknowledges that any sequence of communication from God would prove that God is not timeless so he tells us that all communication, every word,  from God is all at once and never ending. Which would logically mean that we would be unable to comprehend any of it.

Augustine "Thou dost call us, then, to understand the Word...which is spoken eternally and by which all things are spoken eternally. For what was first spoken was not finished, and then something else spoken until the whole series was spoken; but all things, at the same time and forever. For, otherwise, we should have time and change and not a true eternity, nor a true immortality." --Book XI:7

Augustine tells us that God creates by his word and if his word is eternal and continuous than logically the things being created are also eternal and continuously made. But, since that kind of world does not exist, instead of seeing the foolishness of his theory, Augustine simply offers a contradiction.

Augustine "But there is nothing in thy Word that passes away or returns to its place; for it is truly immortal and eternal. And, therefore, the Word is coeternal with thee, at the same time and always thou sayest all that thou sayest. And whatever thou sayest shall be made is made, and thou makest nothing otherwise than by speaking. Still, not all the things that thou dost make by speaking are made at the same time and always." --Book XI:7

Here he states that God created time and God existed before there was time, and yet, because Gods word creates time and his word is eternal he contradicts himself and says time has always existed, then contradicts himself again and says that time is not eternal because only God is eternal.

Augustine "Thou madest all time and before all times thou art and there was never a time when there was no time. There was no time, therefore, when thou hadst not made anything, because thou hadst made time itself. And there are no times that are coeternal with thee, because thou dost abide forever." --Boook XI:13-14




The debate concerning God and time is between two opposing views: Is eternity for God unlimited time or timelessness? 
The Bible literally defines eternity as unlimited time. Timelessness in God is a contradiction to his existence before the creation of the world. Logical fallacies and verses taken out of context are used in attempts to prove that timelessness is Biblical.
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Augustine       Time