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De civitate Dei (CCSL)

Caput XIII: Quid respondendum sit his, qui primam conditionem hominis tardam esse causantur.

Quod autem respondimus, cum de mundi origine quaestio uerteretur, eis, qui nolunt credere non eum semper fuisse, sed esse coepisse, sicut etiam Plato apertissime confitetur, quamuis a nonnullis contra quam loquitur sensisse credatur: hoc etiam de prima hominis conditione responderim, propter eos, qui similiter mouentur, cur homo per innumerabilia atque infinita retro tempora creatus non sit tamque sero sit creatus, ut minus quam sex milia sint annorum, ex quo esse coepisse in sacris litteris inuenitur. si enim breuitas eos offendit temporis, quod tam pauci eis uidentur anni, ex quo institutus homo in nostris auctoritatibus legitur: considerent nihil esse diuturnum, in quo est aliquid extremum, et omnia saeculorum spatia definita, si aeternitati interminae comparentur, non exigua existimanda esse, sed nulla. ac per hoc si non quinque uel sex, uerum etiam sexaginta milia siue sescenta, aut sexagiens, aut sescentiens, aut sescentiens miliens dicerentur annorum, aut itidem per totidem totiens multiplicaretur haec summa, ubi iam nullum numeri nomen haberemus, ex quo deus hominem fecit: similiter quaeri posset, cur ante non fecerit. dei quippe ab hominis creatione cessatio retrorsus aeterna sine initio tanta est, ut, si ei conferatur quamlibet magna et ineffabilis numerositas temporum, quae tamen fine conclusa certi spatii terminatur, nec saltem tanta uideri debeat, quanta si umoris breuissimam guttam uniuerso mari, etiam quantum Oceanus circumfluit, conparemus; quoniam istorum duorum unum quidem perexiguum est, alterum incomparabiliter magnum, sed utrumque finitum; illud uero temporis spatium, quod ab aliquo initio progreditur et aliquo termino cohercetur, magnitudine quantacumque tendatur, conparatum illi, quod initium non habet, nescio utrum pro minimo an potius pro nullo deputandum est. hinc enim si a fine uel breuissima singillatim momenta detrahantur, decrescente numero licet tam ingenti, ut uocabulum non inueniat, retrorsum redeundo - tamquam si hominis dies ab illo, in quo nunc uiuit, usque ad illum, in quo natus est, detrahas - quandoque ad initium illa detractio perducetur. si autem detrahantur retrorsus in spatio, quod a nullo coepit exordio, non dico singillatim minuta momenta uel horarum aut dierum aut mensum aut annorum etiam quantitates, sed tam magna spatia, quanta illa summa conprehendit annorum, quae iam dici a quibuslibet conputatoribus non potest, quae tamen momentorum minutatim detractione consumitur, et detrahantur haec tanta spatia non semel atque iterum saepius que, sed semper: quid fit, quid agitur, quando numquam ad initium, quod omnino nullum est, peruenitur? quapropter quod nos modo quaerimus post quinque milia et quod excurrit annorum, possent et posteri etiam post annorum sescentiens miliens eadem curiositate requirere, si in tantum haec mortalitas hominum exoriendo et occubando et inperita perseueraret infirmitas. potuerunt et qui fuerunt ante nos ipsis recentibus hominis creati temporibus istam mouere quaestionem. ipse denique primus homo uel postridie uel eodem die posteaquam factus est potuit inquirere, cur non ante sit factus; et quandocumque antea factus esset, non uires tunc alias et alias nunc uel etiam postea ista de initio rerum temporalium controuersia reperiret.

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The City of God

Chapter 12.--How These Persons are to Be Answered, Who Find Fault with the Creation of Man on the Score of Its Recent Date.

As to those who are always asking why man was not created during these countless ages of the infinitely extended past, and came into being so lately that, according to Scripture, less than 6000 years have elapsed since He began to be, I would reply to them regarding the creation of man, just as I replied regarding the origin of the world to those who will not believe that it is not eternal, but had a beginning, which even Plato himself most plainly declares, though some think his statement was not consistent with his real opinion. ¹ If it offends them that the time that has elapsed since the creation of man is so short, and his years so few according to our authorities, let them take this into consideration, that nothing that has a limit is long, and that all the ages of time being finite, are very little, or indeed nothing at all, when compared to the interminable eternity. Consequently, if there had elapsed since the creation of man, I do not say five or six, but even sixty or six hundred thousand years, or sixty times as many, or six hundred or six hundred thousand times as many, or this sum multiplied until it could no longer be expressed in numbers, the same question could still be put, Why was he not made before? For the past and boundless eternity during which God abstained from creating man is so great, that, compare it with what vast and untold number of ages you please, so long as there is a definite conclusion of this term of time, it is not even as if you compared the minutest drop of water with the ocean that everywhere flows around the globe. For of these two, one indeed is very small, the other incomparably vast, yet both are finite; but that space of time which starts from some beginning, and is limited by some termination, be it of what extent it may, if you compare it with that which has no beginning, I know not whether to say we should count it the very minutest thing, or nothing at all. For, take this limited time, and deduct from the end of it, one by one, the briefest moments (as you might take day by day from a man's life, beginning at the day in which he now lives, back to that of his birth), and though the number of moments you must subtract in this backward movement be so great that no word can express it, yet this subtraction will sometime carry you to the beginning. But if you take away from a time which has no beginning, I do not say brief moments one by one, nor yet hours, or days, or months, or years even in quantities, but terms of years so vast that they cannot be named by the most skillful arithmeticians,--take away terms of years as vast as that which we have supposed to be gradually consumed by the deduction of moments,--and take them away not once and again repeatedly, but always, and what do you effect, what do you make by your deduction, since you never reach the beginning, which has no existence? Wherefore, that which we now demand after five thousand odd years, our descendants might with like curiosity demand after six hundred thousand years, supposing these dying generations of men continue so long to decay and be renewed, and supposing posterity continues as weak and ignorant as ourselves. The same question might have been asked by those who have lived before us and while man was even newer upon earth. The first man himself in short might the day after or the very day of his creation have asked why he was created no sooner. And no matter at what earlier or later period he had been created, this controversy about the commencement of this world's history would have had precisely the same difficulties as it has now.