The paper analyses two parallel passages, De sancta trinitate 4 (Moreschini 175,231–176,248) and Philosophiae consolatio V (Prosa 6,4–14), devoted by Boethius (d. 524/525) to time, sempiternity (sempiternitas or perpetuitas) as the infinite time of the world, and God’s eternity (aeternitas) understood as an unchanging and unextended “now” in which everything is at once equally present. The distinction between divine eternity and the infinite time of the world, known to Augustine (whom Boethius follows in many ways), was elaborated in the later Neo-Platonic tradition (e.g. Proclus), which equally might have influenced Boethius. The idea of two kinds of the present (praesentia), eternal and temporal, in Boethius’ account from the Philosophiae consolatio corresponds to two kinds of “now” (nunc) in his treatise De sancta trinitate. Among Boethius’s Christian predecessors, this last idea has an analogue especially in Marius Victorinus, whom Boethius followed in his work as a translator and commentator of ancient writings on Aristotelian logic.
Lenka Karfíková (Mon,) studied this question.