Discussions of the Eternity of the World during the First Half of the Twelfth Century

Abstract

The question of the eternity of the world was much debated in antiquity, for it seemed to be one of the key philosophical differences between the majority of pagan philosophers and the Christians.* Indeed, the whole meaning of the Christian drama was grounded in a historical account of the cosmos, which had an absolute beginning at the Creation, a critical turning point at the Incarnation, and a triumphant conclusion at the Resurrection. But the pagan philosophers, with the possible exception of Plato, who was ambiguous on this point, taught by means of highly sophisticated arguments that the world was eternal. This occasioned a head-on clash between the Fathers and the philosophers,' and it provoked a good deal of thought on the part of the Christian writers. This thought was crystalized in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy and Augustine's Confessions and City of God. The problem seems to have been largely forgotten during the formative period of Latin Christianity from the seventh to the ninth centuries; the traditional Christian version of the beginning was frequently asserted, but the question was not argued, nor was there any attempt to reconcile Genesis with the teaching of the philosophers. With the ninth-century scholar John Scotus Eriugena, interest in the question began to increase, and by the early twelfth century it was the subject of many discussions, some of them highly original, some merely repetitious. Eriugena devoted much of book 3 of his Periphyseon to a discussion of how things could be both eternal and made. He was well acquainted with the works of Augustine and Boethius, both of whom he cites frequently and with approval. But he was also deeply influenced by Gregory of Nyssa, pseudoDionysius, and Maximus, and frequently interpreted or corrected his Latin sources by means of ideas derived from the Greek. His problem was to show how all things, although created from absolutely