A Note: Semiosis and Subjective Time in the Afterlife Based on St. Augustine

A nonmutable self, by being a self, could be assumed to have an internal representation of time. This, in turn, opens the somewhat paradoxical possibility for the existence of a subjective time in which the self could be presented with simultaneous and incompatible options. We could venture the hypothesis that semiosis and subjective time condition each other, and thus, to prove the existence of one would prove the existence of the other. The thesis entertained here is a situation in which the theological problem is the following paradox: if a self exists in the afterlife, then the possibility of semiosis exists, and if semiosis is actualized in the afterlife, then there is dynamicity in the afterlife. As a result, proving the existence of subjective time itself proves to be very challenging. However, the attempt to prove the existence of semiosis is fruitful. God, at least as pictured by Augustine, removes the distraction that is clouding the eyes of a human being, which creates a form of simultaneity, but, at the same time, still leaves a human as a participant of communication with God, which requires intensity and relief, question and response – time.