Contents – Book XI
Chapter I
By confession he desires to stimulate towards God his own love and that of his readers.
Chapter II
He begs of God that through the Holy Scriptures he may be led to truth.
Chapter III
He begins from the creation of the world—not understanding the Hebrew text.
Chapter IV
Heaven and Earth cry out that they have been created by God.
Chapter V
God created the world not from any certain matter, but In his own word.
Chapter VI
He did not, however, create it by sounding and passing word.
Chapter VII
By his co-eternal word he speaks, and all things are done.
Chapter VIII
That word itself is the beginning of all things, in the which we are instructed as to evangeelical truth.
Chapter IX
Wisdom and the beginning.
Chapter X
The rashness of those who inquire what God did before he created Heaven and Earth.
Chapter XI
They who ask this have not as yet known the eternity of God, which is exempt from the relation of time.
Chapter XII
What God did before the creation of the world.
Chapter XIII
Before the times created by God, times were not.
Chapter XIV
Neither time past nor future, but the present only, really is.
Chapter XV
There is only a moment of present time.
Chapter XVI
Time can only be perceived or measured while it is passing.
Chapter XVII
Nevertheless there is time past and future.
Chapter XVIII
Past and future times cannot be thought of but as present.
Chapter XIX
We are ignorant in what manner God teaches future things.
Chapter XX
In what manner time may properly be designated.
Chapter XXI
How time may be measured.
Chapter XXII
He prays God that he would explain this most entangled enigma.
Chapter XXIII
That time is a certain extension.
Chapter XXIV
That time is not a motion of a body which we measure by time.
Chapter XXV
He calls on God to enlighten his mind.
Chapter XXVI
We measure longer events by shorter in time.
Chapter XXVII
Times are measured in proportion as they pass by.
Chapter XXVIII
Time in the human mind, which expects, considers, and remembers.
Chapter XXIX
That human life is a distraction, but that through the mercy of God he was intent on the prize of his heavenly calling.
Chapter XXX
Again he refutes the empty qquestion, “What did God before the creation of the world?”
Chapter XXXI
How the Knowledge of God differs from that of Man.