Nathaniel Perrin

*Fast Antiates Maiores* reconstructed. [Source URL](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Museo_del_Teatro_Romano_de_Caesaraugusta.43.jpg).

The calendar occupies a strange place between man and cosmos. On the one hand it is a technology for the organization and division of time in the human reckoning of things. On the other a system for mapping the cycles of the stars and planets onto our terrestrial plane.

Our English rendering *calendar* flows down to us from old Roman custom. 

The Romans counted their months by dividing them between three principal days of the lunar cycle: the calends, the nones, and the ides.

The calends was the first day of the month and occurred when the first sliver of the moon appeared in a new moon cycle. Unlike other calendar systems built upon decentralized mathematical and scientific calculations, the Roman calends could only be dictated by the priesthood. When the priests determined it was the first day of the month from their vantage point on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, a priest would stand and call out (*calo*) and herald the coming of the new month.

One must remember that Rome has a long heritage of centralized, pontifical authority. Where persons and offices determine what is true *ex cathedra*, more true than individual observation or conviction.

The calends was noteworthy in the Roman world not merely for the cosmic alignment of moon, sun, and earth to form a new moon but also because it was the day of debts. On the first day of the month, debts could be collected. 

Our word "calendar" derives from *calendarium* which was the name given to this book of debts, an accounting ledger both in a cosmic and fiscal sense which marked how much was owed and by whom.

In the world of modern accounting, we maintain some downstream variation of this in our governmental tax structures, reckoning debts to the state at the level of the year, aligned with the cosmic revolution of the earth around the sun.

But this modern rendering is decoupled from the religious significance of such accounting. And this marks what perhaps is the deepest guilt of modern society, an obligatory truth we have forgotten.

To be born is to exist in debt.

Debt in contemporary vernacular usage has been constrained greatly in scope, often only to refer to fiscal or material forms of obligation.

But debt exists in a much broader scope as its Latin origin indicates. For the original word functions much like an English helping verb indicating that one *ought* to do something, one *should* do something, one *must* do something.

Debt in this sense is deeply tied to concepts of duty, the ethics of obligation.

And the calendar in this light is not just a table for the division of days, weeks, months, and years according to the ways of the gods and the ways of men. It is a cosmic ledger of our debts. The debt of our time.

This is a chief insight of Protestantism, as Weber observes. That our time is not our own. Nothing at all is our own in an absolute sense. All we have and are and will gain is due to God. We are merely borrowers of the thousand talents. One of modern conservatism's fundamental errors is to elevate the notion of property above all else, failing to recognize that all which is owned is also owed.

In the world of finance, we have finite sums that we may can spend or use. In the world of life, we have finite time that me way spend or use until our allocation is extinguished in the embrace of death.

This finite sum is a gift. And it is not one to be squandered.

Richard Baxter treated this theme most exhaustively in his sermon "The Redemption of Time". Much like our life has been redeemed by Christ, so too must we redeem our time, to make it of good use in service to the God who has granted us such time.

In one section, Baxter points to the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus teaches that we shall all on the day of judgment have to explain *every* useless (ᾱ̓ργός) word we have ever spoken. The Greek here is the antonym of ἔργον which is used to indicate any work, labor, deed, or task. The Twelves Labors of Hercules, Hesiod's *Works and Days*, etc. What we do with our lives in the short time we have been granted.

One can get a sense for the Puritan interpretation of time here by his reading:

Now then if there be an account to be given, and a reckoning to be made for these rubbish speeches, judge, if it be not a want of redeeming the time, to lay it out in such a thing as will bring a sore and heavy burden afterwards without repentance to cast it off; and judge if he which makes much of time had not need take much heed of this ill-spent breath. Not alone then wicked speak∣ing when one bel•heth forth lewd and filthy words, not slanderous and backbiting talk, (when one whispers of his neighbour's faults behind his back, uttering (perhaps) also lying reports, and fathering that upon him which he never did or meant;) but even vain, needless, and unprofitable words..."

Biblical ethics places great emphasis on the sins of the tongue, the words spoken and the things said. But there is a sense in the Puritan reading where the sin is not just a matter of the motives or consequences of the words, but the fact that they misuse the time granted us.

This may seem rather extreme in a contemporary lens, but it does make one wonder the exactitude to which God would judge us for redeeming the time. For as history shows time and again, the extremeness of a belief has little to do with its usefulness. Extreme views quite easily become mainstream and former commonplace wisdom can become taboo even within the space of a generation.

This uneasiness we feel toward the use or misuse of our time can be seen as the wellspring of guilt. It is no coincidence that the Germans use the one word *Schuld* for both guilt and debt.

We feel guilt at the theological debt owed.

And this brings us back to Rome.

The *calendarium* appears twice in Seneca's "De Beneficiis", a Stoic treatise on gifts, charitable services, essentially giving something without anything ostensibly being required in return.

The gift has taken on a new level of significance in 20th century philosophy as a central theme in Derrida and other postmodern writers who write on how even a "free" gift introduces social or psychological obligations that consequently mean the gifter actually is receiving something in return.

In simple terms, it is why ancient kings would give away lavish gifts or Caesars would give bread and circuses for the poor. Not out of charitable selflessness but rather as ostentatious display or politicking. One can readily see this in modern philanthropy and the tax exemption structures built around the nonprofit industrial complex which fund lucrative or desirable outcomes. This is a primary mode of dark liberalism which leverages capital to the benefit of the giver but behind the safety net of sanctimonious platitudes.

This idea was brought back to the forefront by Marcel Mauss in his famous seminal essay "The Gift", but it should be noted that this essay is itself deeply indebted to Seneca's work "De Beneficiis".

Seneca refers to calendars twice. In the first instance he writes, "Nemo beneficia in calendario scribit" (*De Beneficiis* I.2). In translation this can be rendered as "No one records gifts in the book of debts (calendar)".
This highlights the spontaneity of the gift as something falling outside the exact, deterministic ordering of time. At the same time, one does not record or remember a gift because as a gift it is not a debt to be owed. One does not remind the recipient of a debt to be collected.

In a later passage, Seneca is characterizing gold, silver, and iron as evils the gods buried beneath the earth but which we have dug up to inflict evil upon one another to satiate our vindictive greed. And then he writes,

"Et tamen adhuc ista aliquam materiam habent; est, in quo errorem oculorum animus subsequi possit. Video istic diplomata et syngraphas et cautiones, vacua habendi simulacra, umbracula avaritiae quaedam laborantis, per quae decipiat animum inanium opinione gaudentem. Quid enim ista sunt, quid fenus et calendarium et usura, nisi humanae cupiditatis extra naturam quaesita nomina?" (Ibid. VII.10 )

To paraphrase in translation: And yet even these things have some substance; there is something for the mind's eye is able to follow. I see bonds and contracts, securities, empty symbols (*simulacra*) of possession, some kind of shelter for laboring greed, through which the mind is deceived, rejoicing in the illusion of ownership. For what are these very things, what are interest and ledgers (*calendarium*) and loans, but names for human desire sought beyond nature.

Again, Seneca introduces the calendar as a nefarious force. One that constricts and confines us as tools of human greed. Taken on its own, this quote shows remarkable applicability for a global financial market which recently crashed from collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and once again chokes the middle class out of home ownership through real estate investment trusts (REITs). 

For time immemorial, financial systems and institutions have concocted a panoply of wizardry and fancy terminology to camouflage the unending extraction of wealth.

But moralisms aside, one should consider this from the viewpoint of temporal debt.

If God has granted us time, is it as a gift or as a loan?

The concept of "redeeming the time" runs the risk of casting God as a greedy lender who is waiting to pounce on his returns. We must not forget that Jesus also parables God as a generous master who forgives debts. How Pauline theology underscores Christ as a liberator who grants us freedom.

The guilt of debt lends itself to legalism. That life must be crushed in the grindstone to extract every kernel of worth.

If grace is given to us as a gift, then in what ways could we say that time is also a gift to us. To enjoy without use or end goal. And in enjoying this gift to thereby redeem it, perhaps.

It is a difficult question and one that cannot be answered here. Only posed. How we can balance the obligation we owe to the divine versus the freedom we have in what we have been granted.

And there are much broader investigations we could make. A structural comparison of how calendars ranging from the Mesoamerican to the Mesopotamian to the Chinese illustrate cultural or universal characterizations of the relation between man and cosmos, debt and time. This is only one strand.

It is perhaps most fruitful to reflect in closing on Christmas, a calendar holiday most associated with gift giving. How in the Christian understanding, Christ is the gift God gave to the world.

We commemorate this holiday not because God instructs us too, but rather, as is good etiquette for any recipient of a particularly lavish gift, we make sure to remember and express our gratitude for what we have been given. 

The calendar implication of Christmas is that we are marking our own accounting books to remember the debt that we paid in our sin. But one that we have been redeemed of. A transaction that has been zeroed out on our behalf. And to be freed from debt is something to rejoice in. As we augur a new year, a new cycle of time that we have been granted. To use in grace, not just for ourselves as some idea of property, but as something for the larger whole.


A quick reflection on the Roman and Christian implications of the calendar

Calendratics: debt and time