Memory, self-examination, and time › The question before the question about time

Book XI turns to the opening of Genesis and the creation of heaven and earth. Augustine considers the question of what God was doing before creation. He rejects the assumption that an unlimited sequence of empty years had already passed while God waited to act (XI.13).

On his account, God creates time along with the temporal creation. Asking what happened before all time consequently assumes the very temporal framework whose origin is being considered. The word before cannot simply retain its ordinary chronological meaning in that question.

Augustine contrasts succession with divine eternity. Eternity is not an indefinitely extended period in which God waits through one moment after another. His argument describes God's life as lacking the passing away that characterizes ours. Whether one accepts that theology or not, the distinction is needed to understand the question he proceeds to ask about temporal existence.

This discussion does not supply a physical cosmology or anticipate a specific modern scientific model. Its role is conceptual: it questions whether time should be treated as an independent background in every explanation. The subsequent inquiry asks how temporal succession itself can be understood.