Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names · 3 of 4 · tr. C.E. Rolt
Chapter 10, Section 1c
It is spoken of by ail the Christian Mystics as the root of our being, or as the spark, or the Synteresis, etc.
Our perfection consists in this ultimate reality, which is each man’s self, shining through his whole being and transforming it.
Hence man is at last lifted on to the eternal plane from that of time.
The movements of his spirit will then be so intense that they will attain a totum simul .
We get a foretaste of this when, in the experience of deep spiritual joy, the successive parts of Time so coalesce (as it were) that an hour seems like a moment.
Eternity is Rest and Time is Motion.
Accelerate the motion in the individual soul, through the intensification of that soul’s bliss to infinity.
There is now in the soul an infinite motion.
But Infinite Motion is above succession, and therefore is itself a form of repose.
Thus Motion has been changed into Rest, Time into Eternity.
Mechanical Time, or dead Time (of which Aristotle speaks as mere movement or succession) is the Time measured by the clock; developing or living Time (which is Plato’s “incomplete life”) is real Time, and this is Aevum , which partakes both of mechanical Time and of Eternity.
The best treatment of the subject is probably to be found in Bergson’s theory of durée .
(Cf.
Von Hügel’s Eternal Life .) The words “eternal,” “everlasting,” etc., being loosely employed, may refer to three different things: (1) endless mechanical Time, i.
e.
mere endless succession; (2 ) Aevum , or developing and finally perfected living Time; (3) True Timeless Eternity.
And God we must celebrate as both Eternity and Time, 465 465 Vide pp.
169 n.
1, 170 n.
1.
as the Cause of all Time and Eternity and as the Ancient of Days; as before Time and above Time and producing all the variety of times and seasons; and again, as existing before Eternal Ages, in that 173 He is before 466 466 Vide p.
170, n.
2.
Eternity and above Eternity and His Kingdom is the Kingdom of all the Eternal Ages.
Amen.
455 In the Super-Essence each thing has its ultimate and timeless being, 456 In the Super-Essence each thing has the limits of its duration predetermined.
Or else D.
means that in the Super-Essence the movement of Time has the impulse which generates it.
457 Temporal precedence is metaphorically used to express metaphysical precedence.
God cannot in the literal sense of the words, temporally precede time.
458 He transcends both Rest and Motion.
459 Presumably Hierotheus.
460 He is the Source of all extension both in Time and in Space, Unity underlies all counting (for 2, 3, 4, etc.
= twice 1, three times 1, four times 1, etc.).
Hence it is the Origin, as it were, of all number.
And, being at the beginning of the arithmetical series (as youth is at the beginning of life) it is symbolized (according to D.) by youthfulness.
461 Ps.
xxiv.
7 .
462 We cannot help thinking of Eternity as an Endless Time, as we think of infinite number as an endless numerical process.
But this is wrong.
Eternity is timeless as infinite number is superior to all numerical process.
According to Plato, Time is “incomplete life” and Eternity is “complete life.” Thus Eternity fulfils Time and yet contradicts it, as infinite number fulfils and contradicts the properties of finite numbers.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text describes God producing 'all the variety of times and seasons,' suggesting a downward flow of divine attributes.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
Mechanical Time is described as 'dead Time' or mere movement, contrasting with living Time and Eternity.