It is also important to contrast, Aristotle and Augustine on time. Aristotle‘s definition leads him to say the material universe is without beginning. And so he must explain eternal change. Eternal change cannot be linear. It must be circular. Augustine argues that time itself had a beginning because what is eternal cannot be changing, and therefore changing beings came into existence, which is also the beginning of time. The early Christian philosophers knew very well that Aristotle’s system taught an uncreated world and that Christianity taught taught God the creator and so Aristotle was an opponent.
Yeah, thanks for the input, Dr. Anderson. I was sort of planning to read Augustine’s Confessions XI on time with Unit 3, when we’ll be talking about the eternity of God, but City of God XI.4–6 (on creation) immediately after Aristotle (maybe June or July).
It wasn’t just early Christian philosophers, either. Here’s Philo of Alexandria in his De opificio mundi:
Moses says also; “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth:” taking the beginning to be, not as some men think, that which is according to time; for before the world time had no existence, but was created either simultaneously with it, or after it; for since time is the interval of the motion of the heavens, there could not have been any such thing as motion before there was anything which could be moved; but it follows of necessity that it received existence subsequently or simultaneously. It therefore follows also of necessity, that time was created either at the same moment with the world, or later than it–and to venture to assert that it is older than the world is absolutely inconsistent with philosophy.
The idea isn’t quite as well developed here as it is by Augustine (What would it even mean to have time created “later than” the world?), but I find it fascinating how much of an impact Genesis 1:1 has had on our understanding of time.
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