Moralia in Job 810

Chapter 24, Verse 1. — From the Almighty the times are not hidden; but those who know him are ignorant of his days. 54. God's day is his eternity. God is what he has. — What is called the day of God, if not his very eternity? This is sometimes expressed by the naming of a single day, as it is written: Better is one day in thy courts above thousands (Psalm 83:11). But sometimes, on account of its length, it is signified by the naming of many days, of which it is written: Thy years are unto generation and generation (Psalm 101:25). We therefore are turned about within the compass of times, in that we are creatures. But God, who is the creator of all things, comprehends our times by his eternity. He says therefore:

From the Almighty the times are not hidden; but those who know him are ignorant of his days. For he indeed beholds our affairs comprehensively, but we can in no way comprehend those things that are his. Yet since the nature of God is simple, it is greatly to be wondered at why he says: Those who know him are ignorant of his days. For his day and he himself are not one thing and another. For God is that which he has. He has eternity, but he himself is eternity. He has light, but his light is himself. He has brightness, but he himself is his own brightness. There is not therefore in him one thing to be and another to have. What then is it to say, Those who know him are ignorant of his days, but that even those who know him still do not know?

For even those who now hold him by faith still do not know him through open vision. And although he himself is his own eternity, whom we truly believe, yet how his eternity itself is, we do not know. For in that which we hear concerning the power of the divine nature, we are sometimes accustomed to imagine those things which we know through experience. For everything that begins and ceases is bounded by a beginning and an end. And if it is deferred by some little delay before it ends, it is called long; and in that very length, when anyone leads back the eyes of his mind by memory, and stretches forward by expectation, he as it were dilates it in his mind through a span of time.

And when he hears of the eternity of God, in human fashion he sets before his intent mind long spaces of life, in which he may always measure both what has gone by behind, which is retained in memory, and what remains before, which is awaited by expectation. 55. In eternity there is nothing past or future. — But as often as we think of that eternity in this way, we have not yet come to know eternity. For there is that which is neither begun by a beginning nor terminated by an end, where neither is that awaited which shall come, nor does that pass by which ought to be remembered, but there is one thing which is always to be.

And although we and the angels, together with a beginning, begin to see that we exist, yet we see this existence to be without beginning, where thus to be is to be forever without end, so that the mind never stretches itself toward things that follow, as if the things that are were multiplied and became long. For although through the spirit of prophecy it is said: O Lord, who reignest for ever, and unto the age, and beyond (perhaps Exodus 15:18, where it reads: The Lord shall reign for ever [Hebrew: unto the age] and beyond), after the manner of sacred speech, the Spirit spoke to men in human fashion, so as to say there beyond, where no expectation was present.

For eternity does not have any 'beyond,' since it has to be always; in it no part of its length passes away that another part may succeed, but the whole is to be all at once, so that nothing seems to be lacking which it does not behold; in which the mind sees that all that is, is both not slow and yet long. But in speaking these things about the days of eternity, we are striving rather to see something than we actually see. Let it be rightly said, then: But those who know him are ignorant of his days; because although we now know God through faith, yet how his eternity is — without a past before the ages, without a future after the ages, without long delay, without perpetual waiting — we do not see.

Blessed Job, therefore, bearing the type of holy Church, since he governs himself under the great bridle of knowledge, lest he be wise above what it behooves to be wise, and testifying that the days of God cannot be comprehended, presently turns the regard of his mind back to the pride of heretics, who desire to be wise in lofty matters, and boast that they perfectly know what they cannot in any way grasp. For there follows: