Chapter XXX.—Again He Refutes the
Empty Question, “What Did God Before the Creation of the
World?”
40. And I will be immoveable, and fixed in
Thee, in my mould, Thy truth; nor will I endure the questions of
men, who by a penal disease thirst for more than they can hold, and
say, “What did God make before He made heaven and earth?” Or,
“How came it into His mind to make anything, when He never before
made anything?” Grant to them, O Lord, to think well what they
say, and to see that where there is no time, they cannot say
“never.” What, therefore, He is said “never to have made,”
what else is it but to say, that in no time was it made? Let them
therefore see that there could be no time without a created
being,
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and let
them cease to speak that vanity. Let them also be extended unto
those things which are before,
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and understand that thou, the
eternal Creator of all times, art before all times, and that no
times are co-eternal with Thee, nor any creature, even if there be
any creature beyond all times.
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He argues similarly in his
De Civ. Dei
, xi.
6: “That the world and time had but one beginning.”
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Phil. iii. 13
.