On the Eternity of the World (De title: Aeternitate Mundi) Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation ; 16 author: Thomas; Siger; Bonaventure; Vollert, Cyril publisher: Marquette University Press isbn10 | asin: 0874622166 print isbn13: 9780874622164 ebook isbn13: 9780585141152 language: English subject Cosmology. publication date: 1984 lcc: BD493.O513 1984eb ddc: 230.6 subject: Cosmology. Page i On the Eternity of the World (De Aeternitate Mundi) St. Thomas Aquinas Siger of Brabant St. Bonaventure Second Edition Translated from the Latin With Introductions by Cyril Vollert, S.J., S.T.D. Professor of Theology St. Mary's College Lottie H. Kendzierski, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy Marquette University Paul M. Byrne, L.S.M., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Philosophy Marquette University Marquette University Milwaukee, WI U.S.A. Page ii Library of Congress Card Number: 64-7796 Copyright, 1964, 1984, The Marquette University Press Milwaukee, Wisconsin Manufactured in the United States of America I.S.B.N. 0-87462-216-6 Page iii CONTENTS Preface v St. Thomas Aquinas Translator's Introduction 2 On the Eternity of the World 18 Summa Contra Gentiles, Book II Chapter 31: That Creatures Need Not Have Existed 25 Always Chapter 32: Arguments of Those Who Seek to Prove the 27 Eternity of the World from God's Standpoint Chapter 33: Arguments of Those Who Seek to Prove the 30 Eternity of the World from a Consideration of Creatures Chapter 34: Arguments to Prove the Eternity of the 32 World from the Viewpoint of Creative Action Chapter 35: Solution of the Arguments Alleged Above, 34 and First of Those Derived from the Standpoint of God Chapter 36: Solution of the Arguments Alleged on the 37 Part of the Things Produced Chapter 37: Solution of the Arguments Drawn from the 39 Creative Action Chapter 38: Arguments by Which Some Endeavor to 41 Prove that the World is Not Eternal On the Power of God 45 Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question XLVI Article 1: Whether the Created Universe Has Existed 59 Forever Article 2: Whether It Is an Article of Faith that the World64 Had a Beginning Compendium of Theology, Part I Chapter 98: Question of the Eternity of Motion 69 Chapter 99: Controversy of the Eternity of Matter 70 Bibliography 73 Page iv Siger of Brabant Translator's Introduction 76 Question on the Eternity of the World 84 Bibliography 96 St. Bonaventure Translator's Introduction 101 In II Sent. d.1, p.1, a.1, q.2 106 Collationes in Hexaemeron IV, 13 114 Collationes in Hexaemeron V, 29 115 Collationes in Hexaemeron VI, 2-5 115 Collationes in Hexaemeron VII, 1-2 117 Breviloquium 1, 1-3 118 Page v PREFACE This volume makes available in English translation the works of St. Thomas Aquinas and Siger of Brabant entitled On the Eternity of the World as well as a few texts on the topic from various works of St. Bonaventure. If the order of presentation were chronological, which it is not, it would probably be St. Bonaventure, St. Thomas, and then the work of Siger. Since, however, the translation of St. Thomas' De Aeternitate Mundi contra murmurantes as well as other texts on this subject by Fr. C. Vollert, S.J., is preceded by an excellent and extensive introduction to the whole problem, we have decided to lead off with this work. This is followed by L. H. Kendzierski's introduction to and translation of Siger of Brabant's De Aeternitate Mundi. Finally, there is appended a translation of some texts from various works of St. Bonaventure, inevitably lifted out of a complexly interwoven context, together with a brief introduction by P. M. Byrne. Why present twentieth century readers with thirteenth century views on the eternity, or more precisely perpetuity of the world? Very simply, the mysteries and problems, questions and intelligibilities involved in and implied by our speaking of an eternal God creating a temporally limited universe have always been "contemporary" ever since men in the Judeo-Christian intellectual tradition have reflected upon their linear view of time and history as over against the cyclic conception of the pagan Greek. Evidence for this "contemporary" character ranges back in time from current periodical literature to the Acts of the Apostles. The 1964 Presidential Address to the Metaphysical Society of America is entitled "Toward a Metaphysics of Creation,''1 but the first confrontation of "the metaphysic of the Bible and the metaphysic of the Gentiles" is described for us in Acts 17: 16-33. There we read of that wonderful scene at the Areopagus in Athens when St. Paul brought something new to the Greek philosophers, namely, the absolute beginning to be of a creature totally dependent for its being on a Creator or, in other words, the very "newness" of the world itself. ''No townsman of Athens, or stranger visiting it, has time for anything else than saying something new, or hearing it said." This interesting human comment on Athenian ways appears within the account that follows. 1. Peter A. Bertocci, "Toward a Metaphysics of Creation," in Review of Metaphysics, XVII (June, 1964), 493-510. Page vi And while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his heart was moved within him to find the city so much given over to idolatry, and he reasoned, not only in the synagogue with Jews and worshippers of the true God, but in the market place, with all he met. He encountered philosophers, Stoics and Epicureans, some of whom asked, "What can his drift be, this dabbler?" While others said, "He would appear to be proclaiming strange gods"; because he had preached to them about Jesus and the Resurrection. So they took him by the sleeve and led him up to the Areopagus: ''May we ask,'' they said, "what this new teaching is thou art delivering? Thou dost introduce terms which are strange to our ears; pray let us know what may be the meaning of it." So Paul stood up in the full view of the Aeropagus, and said, "Men of Athens, wherever I look I find you scrupulously religious. Why, in examining your monuments as I passed by them, I found among others an alter which bore the inscription, to the unknown God. And it is this unknown object of your devotion that I am revealing to you. The God who made the world and all that is in it, that God who is the Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples that our hands have made; no human handicraft can do him service, as if he stood in need of anything, he, who gives to all of us life and breath and all we have. It is he who has made, of one single stock, all the nations that were to dwell over the whole face of the earth. And he has given to each the cycles it was to pass through and the fixed limitations of its habitation, leaving him to search for God; would they somehow grope their way towards him? Would they find him? And yet, after all, he is not far from any one of us; it is in him that we live, and move, and have our being; thus, some of your poets have told us, for indeed we are his children.2 This familiar passage has been the subject of the following incisive comment by Claude Tresmontant: 2. Acts 17:16-29 Page vii By declaring, in the very heart of Athens, that God created the cosmos, St. Paul made a frontal attack on the fundamental principle of all the philosophy of antiquity. According to that philosophy, the cosmos is God, uncreated, existing from eternity; it has no need of a creator, it is all- sufficient, necessary, it is consistency itself. At most, it requires a demiurge to put it in order, for order is preceded by chaos. For Aristotle, the stars are gods, "distinct substances," eternal, outside any becoming; astronomy is not a physical science but a theology. Nor can the uncreated stars ever perish. Since a becoming, from birth to death, must be recognized in our sublunary world, it was said to be cyclic, recurring: time chases its own tail. This is the "endless returning" of the metaphysics, cosmogonies and mythologies of pagan antiquity.3 So it was when St. Paul brought something new in theology and philosophy to the philosophers of Athens in the first century. The situation is almost exactly the reverse when we turn to thirteenth century Paris. Now the theologian-philosophers of Paris were being confronted with something "new," the moving cause, the eternal motion and eternally moved world of Aristotle's Physics and Averroes' commentaries as well as the necessarily, and so eternally, produced world in the Avicennian version of Aristotle's thought. The suspicion of and hostile reaction to this new naturalistic Greek world-view leading to the condemnations of 1210, 1215, and 1270 is of course well known. St. Bonaventure led what Gilson had aptly termed the "theological reaction" that eventually culminated in the condemnation of 1277.4 In the title of St. Thomas Aquinas' work De Aeternitate Mundi contra murmurantes, the ''murmurantes" refers to the Augustinian theologians, and in particular St. Bonaventure, of whom St. Thomas is quite critical and whose arguments for a temporal creation he regards as entirely ineffective, if not ludicruous. St. Thomas will admit the rational possibility of an eternal world, but he will not grant, nor will his own metaphysics of efficient creative