M. B. PRANGERSo much, then, for finding a way to raise thecivitas permixtaabove a ‘‘river-run’’ flow
of time by articulating something in time’s depths. But what about my other promise, to
demonstrate that there is in time not only more flux but also more stability than the
civitas permixtaseems to allow? Surely, inside thesaeculumwe have no reason to expect
the durability of a mystical body. Conversely, the fact that ‘‘the world is being madewith
time’’ is hardly promising with regard to any extension of its existence beyond time. We
must then face the question of how to reconcile the presence of the city of God inside the
heart of the created world—that is, within time—with its atemporal status. How can we
measure what is beyond measure yet conditions, underlies, and is present within the very
temporality and historicity in which we live and move? Just as, in theConfessions, continu-
ous attention and focus ultimately direct and contain thedistentio animi, the spreading
out of the soul in the the world (theregio dissimilitudinis), or, to put it in terms of history,
in the pilgrimage of the heavenly city on earth, so, inThe City of God, the stretch of time
between the beginning and the end, between Creation and the Last Judgment, is given
durability in the Jerusalem that is above and yet imposes a stronger presence upon time
and history than their own weak selves could produce. When God created the world and
established the days, Augustine says, he purposely omitted to mention the creation of
night as one of his activities:
Now the knowledge of the creature is a kind of twilight, compared with the knowl-
edge of the Creator; and then comes the daylight and the morning, when that knowl-
edge is linked with the praise and love of the Creator; and it never declined into
night, so long as the Creator is not deprived of his creature’s love. And in fact Scrip-
ture never imposes the word ‘‘night,’’ in the enumeration of those days one after
another. Scripture never says, ‘‘Night came’’; but, ‘‘Evening came and morning came;
one day.’’ Similarly on the second day and all the rest. The creature’s knowledge, left
to itself, is, we might say, in faded colours, compared with the knowledge that comes
when it is known in the Wisdom of God, in that art, as it were, by which it was
created. For that reason it can more appropriately be described as evening than as
night. And yet that evening turns again to morning, as I have said, when it is turned
to the praise and love of the Creator.^22There is more to this passage than just allegorical niceties. Leaving outnoxdoes the
trick and ‘‘solves’’ our problem. If anyone has spent his energy in measuring and describ-
ing the night of human sin, it surely is Augustine. Consequently, eliminatingnoxfrom
specifically being created should not, of course, be taken as an attempt to overlook the
problems of evil and sin. Nor are we supposed to put up with life as one uninterrupted
twilight. This skipping of the night prevents the city of God from materializing as a
Platonic idea come true or, for that matter, from being present throughout as the inner
structure of being. Duration has become a matter of a voice exorcising the invading, alien
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