ABSTRACT
St Thomas turned to Aristotle's views on matter, and accepted all the central ones concerning time without demur, though with various complicating additions. The chapter suggests that every change is a change of magnitude, and every change is measured by time. But, since magnitude is continuous, so must change and time be. St Thomas discusses four cases: the beginning of time, the ending of time, the moment of transubstantiation, and the time of the justification of the ungodly. An angel has a spatio-temporal location, not as a thing contained by the place, but rather as a thing that in someway contains the place. For Thomas, God does indeed precede the world by duration, not of time but of eternity, since God's existence is not measured by time. Nor was there real time before the world, but only imaginary time; thus now we can imagine an infinite space of time running with eternity and preceding the beginning of time.
