Although most of us think of “eternity” as that which goes “on and on,” Boethius explains, we should actually call that, “perpetuity.” Perpetuity is nothing more than an endless chain of brief moments, connected together. And given that eternity, on the other hand, is the “actual and timeless fruition of illimitable life,” Boethius can call time an imitation of eternity. Time, as it were, is almost a “parody” of eternity, a “hopeless attempt to compensate for the transitoriness of its ‘presents’ by infinitely multiplying them.”23 God, of course, is not perpetual, but eternal. And so, what, in
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