[Previous: lines 691-731]
Jesus is ascending into heaven. Watching him from below his disciples burst into song.
Nec mora; carminibus cœli domus ardua longè-------
auditur resonare, modisque per astra canoris.
Contrà etiam plausere, atque alterna canebant
laeta viri, cœlumque oculis animisque petebant: [735]
“Omnes ô plausu gentes linguisque favete;
atque Deum canite ascensu supera alta tenentem.
Quadrupedum, volucrumque genus, mutaeque natantes
exultent, tractus terrarum ubicunque patentes:
ipsi dent montes, ipsa et dent flumina vocem [740]
laeta suam, et scatebris volventes flumina fontes,
quodque ambit longis terras anfractibus aequor.
Cuncta suum agnoscant auctorem, et carmina dicant.
Semper ut idem ingens regnârit originis expers
cum genitore Deo Deus, omnia numine complens. [745]
Ut nullis mox principiis, aut semine nullo
omnia condiderit, cœlum, terrasque, fretumque,
quaeque vago passim subsunt animantia cœlo.
Ut terras ponto discluserit, aethera terris,
luciferis coeli lustraverit atria flammis, [750]
tellurisque sinum variis appinxerit herbis,
sufficiatque satis fruges, et vitibus almum
humorem. Tu cuncta moves, tibi maximus aether,
quique super latices concrescunt aethere, parent.
Nubila te ventique timent : te vesper et ortus [755]
observant, obeuntque tuo sua munera nutu;
et tibi monstriferi obsequitur plaga cœrula ponti.
Tu manibus validis terrarum pondera libras,
atque gravem vacuo suspendis in aere molem,
rerum elementa locans aeterno fœdere, ut omnia [760]
concordi in medium tendant nitentia motu.
Tu liquidas per inane vias is nubibus actus,
aurarumque sedens veheris pernicibus alis.
Non tibi tempus equis fugit irrevocabile adactis:
semper idem ante tuos oculos, praesensque moratur, [765]
quodque est, quodque fuit, simulet quod deinde sequetur.
Ipse etiam parens tibi, cœli in vertice fixus
sol stetit: ipsa etiam surgens in cornua luna,
Atque suos penitus requiêrunt sidera cursus.
Te mandante, suam vim saepe innoxius ignis [770]
dedidicit: pueri in mediis fornacibus astant
illaesi, iactantque tuas ad sidera laudes.
Tu mare navigerum concreta dividis unda,
et populis medios das ire impunè per aestus:
tu rapidos flectis, ripis mirantibus, amnes. [775]
Tu largam tactis è cautibus elicis undam;
idem largifluos fontes et flumina sistens.
Ipsa tuo tremit aspectu conterrita tellus;
quosque procul tangis, fumant ad sidera montes.
Assurgunt reges pavidi, tibi sceptra, tibi arma [780]
deponunt, longeque tremunt, et numen adorant.”
Immediately heaven’s lofty homes rang out-------
with singing, and melody rose to the stars.
In counterpoint, applauding and chanting,
joyful men set eyes and souls on heaven: [735]
“Praise him, tongues of all you nations!
Sing the ascent of God to his throned height!
Let the four-footed beasts, the birds, mute fish
and the wide world in all directions exult;
let the mountains and the rivers find a voice [740]
of joy, rolling rivers and gushing fountains,
and the sea that encompasses all in its curve.
Let the cosmos recognize its maker in song:
How they have reigned eternal and uncreated
God and the Father of God, all power given. [745]
And how He in time made all things, laid the seeds
for everything—heaven, earth, and ocean,
all the souls that dwell beneath the wandering skies.
dividing the lands from sea, the air from land,
lighting courts of heaven with bright flames, [750]
spangling the tender grass with coloured flowers,
providing food, nurturing the vines’
sweet drink. You move it all, you rule the sky
and the liquid rains that fall from heaven.
The clouds and winds fear you; dawn and twilight [755]
dance attend on your pleasure and obey;
so too the sky-blue sea and its creatures.
With your strong hands you balance the whole earth
suspending its ponderous mass in space,
binding all elements in eternal compact [760]
concordant motion towards a common centre.
You rise on floating clouds through the clear air
drawn along by swift-winged breezes.
The swift horses of irreversible time
do not flee from eternally-constant you [765]
you are what is, what was and what will be.
In obedience to you, the sun itself stood fixed
at its summit, the newborn moon was still,
and the very stars suspended their courses.
You can command fire to become harmless [770]
so that youths can stand inside the furnace
unharmed, singing your praises to the stars.
You turned the sea waves into a solid mass
parting them so your people could pass through:
you bend swift rivers whose banks stare in wonder. [775]
your touch elicits great streams from the rock:
even as you dry-up rivers and fountains.
The earth trembles at the very sight of you;
and at your touch mountains shoot up flames.
Great kings fear you, offering you their sceptres [780]
and armour, trembling, placating your divinity.”
This earnest if, perhaps, overlong hymn of praise to God includes references (in line 768-9) the sun standing still at Joshua's command (in line 770-72) to Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego surviving inside Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace and (lines 773-75) Moses parting the Red Sea. All examples of God intervening into the natural world.
Lines 764-66, on the other hand, lay-out the Christian conception of God as existing outside time, a notion that derives ultimately from the Confessions of Augustine (early 5th century) and Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy (a couple of decades later). Boethius makes a distinction between God’s ‘timeless eternity’ and ‘everlastingness’, which (following Plato) the world itself possesses.
It is the common judgement, then, of all creatures that live by reason that God is eternal. So let us consider the nature of eternity, for this will make clear to us both the nature of God and his manner of knowing. Eternity, then, is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life; this will be clear from a comparison with creatures that exist in time. …for it is one thing to progress like the world in Plato’s theory through everlasting life, and another thing to have embraced the whole of everlasting life in one simultaneous present. [Boethius Consolation, 5.6, transl. V. E. Watts]According to Natalja Deng [‘Eternity in Christian Thought’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2018 Edition)] Augustine saw God’s timeless eternity as evident in two divine aspects: that God is the cause of all temporal states, and that God is immutable.
What times existed which were not brought into being by you? Or how could they pass if they never had existence? Since, therefore, you are the cause of all times, if any time existed before you made heaven and earth, how can anyone say that you abstained from working? (Augustine, Confessions, 11.13).The image at the head of the post is an ascension by Italian artist Dosso Dossi: (c. 1489–1542, real name: Giovanni di Niccolò de Luteri). Like many paintings of this theme it divides its visual field into earthly-below and heavenly-above.
It is not in time that you precede times. Otherwise you would not precede all times. In the sublimity of an eternity which is always in the present, you are before all things past and transcend all things future, because they are still to come. (Augustine, Confessions, 11.13).
In you it is not one thing to be and another to live: the supreme degree of being and the supreme degree of life are one and the same thing. You are being in a supreme degree and are immutable. In you the present day has no ending, and yet in you it has its end: “all these things have their being in you” (Rom.11.36). They would have no way of passing away unless you set a limit to them. Because “your years do not fail” (Ps.101.28), your years are one Today. (Augustine, Confessions, 1.6)
[Next: lines 782-812]
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