Cosmological aspects of the teaching of blessed Aurelius Augustine about time and its relationship with eternity

The article examines the cosmological aspects of the teaching of Blessed Aurelius Augustine about time in the context of his analysis of the biblical story about the creation of the world, as well as about the relationship between created time and Divine eternity. It is indicated that according to Augustine, before the creation of the world, God was in timeless eternity, which is an integral property of the unchanging Divine being (esse) and coincides with the Divine essence itself (substantia, essentia); in it there is not and cannot be a place for any temporal sequence, but the whole integral eternal being of God is an eternally lasting present (est); there was no time before the creation of the world; time is God’s creation; it had a beginning and is not coherent with the Creator, and its origin coincides with the creation of the universe; time is a property or condition for the existence of all created substances, both spiritual and bodily; it is associated with their changes and movements, which have a certain duration; time is what we measure the movement of things in our soul, but it itself is not identical with movement; it is the measure or number of movements in relation to precedence and succession; thus, time ensures the sequence of the existence of both individual things and the linear history of the whole world as a whole from its creation at the beginning to the eschatological end. It is shown that the eternity of God comes into contact with the temporal existence of the world not directly, but only indirectly: first, ideally, through eternal Divine ideas, and, second, causally, through the instantaneous combined creation of the foundations and causes of all things embedded in the world matter together with the temporal sequence of their occurrence; at the same time, in the eschatological perspective, time as a form of existence of the created world will be transformed together with the world elements and the resurrected bodies of the saints and will be swallowed up by unchanging eternity in the future eternal Heavenly Kingdom.