Monologion: Chapter 22
MONOLOGION
instead is supremely simple* and supremely unchangeable—if he is one thing at one time and something else at another,and if he has parts distributed through time? Or instead, if those earlier conclusions are true—rather, since they are quite clearly true—how are these later conclusions possible?
So neither the creating essence nor his life nor his eternity in any way has a past or a future. For how can it be that he has no present, if he truly exists?
But "he existed" signifies the past, and "he will exist" signifies the future. So he never existed and never will exist.25 Therefore, he does not exist as a whole at individual times either distinctly or all at once.
So if, as I have argued, he does not exist as a whole in all places and times in such a way that he exists as a whole in all of them at once and through his parts in each of them individually, or in such a way that he exists as a whole in each of them individually, it is evident that he in no way exists as a whole in every place or time. And since I have likewise discerned that he does not exist in every place or time in such a way that one part exists in every place and time and another part exists outside every place and time, it is impossible for him to exist everywhere and always. For he cannot at all be understood to exist everywhere and always unless he does so either as a whole or in part.
Now if he does not in any way exist everywhere and always, either he exists determinately in some place or time, or else he exists in no place and time.
And I have already shown that he cannot exist determinately in some place or time.26 Therefore, he exists in no place or time. In other words, he exists nowhere and never. For if he exists at all, he must exist either in every place and time, or in some place or time. And yet, once again, since it is irrefutably established not only that he exists through himself, without beginning and without end,27 but also that without him nothing exists anywhere or at any time,28 he must exist everywhere and always.
Chapter 22 How he exists in every place and time and in no place or time How, then, will these two conclusions, which are presented as so contrary but proved as so necessary, be reconciled? Perhaps the supreme nature exists in place or time in a way that does not prevent him from existing as a whole all
25 To put Anselm's point somewhat less boldly:"he existed" is never true of God, and "he will exist" is never true of him, since both of those expressions signify temporal categories that do not apply to God.
26 In Chapter 20.
27 In Chapter 18.
28 In Chapter 20.
BASIC WRITINGS
at once in individual places or times, but so that there are not several* wholes, but only one whole, and so that his life, which is nothing other than true eternity, is not divided into past, present, and future. For this law of place and time seems to constrain only those things that exist in place or time in such a way that they do not transcend the expanse of space or the duration of time. Of such things, therefore, it is most truthfully asserted that one and the same whole cannot exist as a whole all at once in different places and times; but that conclusion does not apply with any necessity to things that are not of that sort.
For it seems correct to say that a thing has a place only if its quantity is circumscribed by a place that contains it and contained by a place that circumscribes it, and a thing has a time only if its duration is somehow bounded by a time that measures it and measured by a time that bounds it. Therefore, if something is such that its size or duration is not set against any boundary, whether by place or by time, no place or time properly applies to it. For since no place does to it what place does, and no time does to it what time does, we may reasonably say that no place is its place and no time is its time. Now if something is seen to have no place or time, it is certainly shown to be in no way subject to any law of place or time. Therefore, no law of place or time in any way constrains a nature that no place or time encloses in any confinement.
Does not every reasonable way of looking at this utterly exclude the possibility that the creating substance, supreme among all things—who is necessarily alien to and free from the nature and law of all the things that he himself made from nothing—is enclosed in the confines of any place or time, since instead his power, which is nothing other than his essence, encloses all the things he made by containing them under himself? And how is it anything but shameless folly to say that any place circumscribes the size of the supreme truth, or that any time bounds his duration, since absolutely no greatness or smallness of extension in place or time applies to him?
This, then, is the condition of place and time: whatever is enclosed within their boundaries does not escape being characterized by parts, whether the sort of parts its place receives with respect to size, or the sort its time suffers with respect to duration; nor can it in any way be contained as a whole all at once by different places or times. By contrast, if something is in no way constrained by confinement in a place or time, no law of places or times forces it into a multiplicity of parts or prevents it from being present as a whole all at once in several places or times. And so, since this is the condition of place and time, the supreme substance, who is not enclosed by any confinement of place or time, is undoubtedly not constrained by any of their laws.
Therefore, since an inescapable necessity demands that the supreme essence be present as a whole in every place and time, and since no characteristic of place and time prevents him from being present as a whole in every place and time, he must be present as a whole all at once in each and every place
MONOLOGION
and time. For the fact that he is present in a given place or time does not prevent him from being simultaneously and similarly present in this or that other place or time. Nor does the fact that he existed or exists or will exist mean that something of his eternity has vanished from the present time with the past, which no longer exists; or passes away with the present, which barely exists;29 or is yet to come with the future, which does not yet exist. For that which in no way confines its existence within place or time is not at all compelled or forbidden by the law of places or times to exist or not to exist anywhere or at any time.
For if that supreme essence is said to exist in a place or a time, even though the very same expression is used both of him and of localized or temporal natures because of our customary way of speaking, there is a different meaning because of the dissimilarity of the things themselves.When it comes to localized or temporal natures, this one expression signifies two things: that they are present at the times and places in which they are said to exist, and that they are contained by those times and places.But in the case of the supreme essence,only one of these meanings applies, namely, that he is present, not that he is contained by them.
Consequently, if our ordinary way of speaking permitted, it would seem more appropriate to say that he exists with a time or place rather than in a time or place. For saying that something exists in another thing implies more strongly that it is contained than does saying that it exists with that thing. And so he is properly said to exist in no place or time, since he is in no way contained by any other thing. And yet he can be said in his own way to exist in every place or time, since whatever else exists is sustained by his presence so that it does not fall into nothingness. He exists in every place and time because he is absent from none; he also exists in none, because he has no place or time.Nor does he receive in himself the distinctions of places or times,such as here or there or somewhere, or now or then or sometime. Nor is it the case that he exists in the fleeting present time that we experience, or that he has existed or will exist in the past or future, since these are proper to circumscribed and changeable things,which he is not. And yet they can in some sense be said of him,since he is present to all circumscribed and changeable things just as if he were circumscribed by the same places and changed by the same times.
And thus it is evident—enough so to dissolve the contradiction that arose earlier—how the supreme essence of all exists everywhere and always, as well as nowhere and never, that is, both in every place and time and in no place or time, according to a harmonious truth understood in different ways.
29 The present, as Anselm is thinking of it, exists only for a moment, and so it no sooner exists than it passes away.