If God is eternal
Pe. Dilonei Pedro MÜLLER
Original title: Se Deus é eterno
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Being, Duration, Eternity, God, Time.
This study focuses on comprehending some of the aspects about God’s eternity in São Tomas. He talks about the question of the eternity of God in the first part of the Summa Theologiae, the tenth question. The eternity concept acquires itself throughout the knowledge of time. Such as to the knowledge of the simple things gets through the knowledge of the composed things, and the knowledge of God’s eternity is acquired through the knowledge of time. Time is the enumeration of the movement one second before and one second after and characterizes itself by own succession. In a not moving endowed being, which, in fact is always the same one, there isn’t one second before and one after. This comprehension derives the idea of eternity. So, what is totally immutable doesn’t carry any succession, and, because of this it doesn’t have either a beginning or an end.
In perfect future. The End of Time in Augustine, the apocalyptic and Gnostic
Luis Felipe JIMÉNEZ JIMÉNEZ
Original title: En futuro perfecto. El fin del tiempo en Agustín, los apocalípticos y los gnósticos
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Apocalypse, Christianity, Culture, Gnosticism, Philosophy of History, Time.
Augustine's reflection on time, from the level of individual salvation and the transcendence of the heavenly city located from the beginning on Earth, able to characterize or shape of medieval culture, but it is also clear that the expectations generated apocalyptic positions – better known as millenarian sects – and the Gnostics did not fail to weigh heavily in the collective imagination that went through the end of the Roman Empire and the so-called Middle Ages. So the contrast between conceived notions about the future in these three directions, it allows you to understand the full extent the meaning and significance of the choice of linear and finite time, hidden under mythical notions as Revelation, Last Judgment, Kingdom of God, eternal salvation, is at the bottom of the beliefs that have been – and somehow still blowing – life to Western culture.
Narratives of time: Augustine and Joachim of Fiore
Noeli Dutra ROSSATO
Original title: Narrativas do tempo: Agostinho e Joaquim de Fiore
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Augustine, History, Joachim of Fiore, Time, narrative.
The Book XI of Augustine's Confessions is analyzed based on the mutual implication between the themes of triplicate present and distention of the soul. The solution shown is that of the ontological paradox and to that of the measure of time being linked to both these themes, and that the notion of narrative presents itself as a possibility of resolution of the paradox between the time of the soul and the time of the world. Lastly the history theory of Augustine and Joachim of Fiore are analyzed from the narrative perspective.
The Annunciation as the locus of return of the figured logos
Alexandre Emerick NEVES
Original title: A Anunciação como o locus de retorno do logos figurado
Published in
Keywords: Annunciation, Medieval aesthetics, Modes of figuring the body, Movement, Place, Stoicism, Time.
The approximation of philosophical thought with theological precepts has brought about the conciliation of the presuppositions of Greco-Roman culture with Christian mysticism, of the concepts erected by rationalism with what is supposed divinely revealed, which seems to intuit the dimension of this event so represented in medieval aesthetics and Renaissance, namely, the annunciation of the logos taken as the divine virtue in the way of being fully revealed and manifested in the pictorial locus. More than a religious motif, it is the proclamation of a thought based on Aristotelian metaphysics, modeled on Stoicism and refined by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, manifested in medieval aesthetics, especially in the retable of Simone Martini. The mystery of the incarnation intuits the convergence of the suprasensible with the world of appearances. Anticipated by the figuration of the Word announced, it presupposes the ontological status of origin and the speculative treatment of time, movement and place, from a comparative exercise between the descriptive aspects of the biblical narrative and its return figured in artistic beauty.
The end of time (or times) as end of the History. A discussion about the mutations of the conception and perception of the Time between the last old period and the coming of the Christianity
Ronaldo AMARAL
Original title: O fim do(s) tempo(s) como o fim da História. Uma discussão sobre as mutações da concepção e percepção do Tempo entre o último período antigo e o advento do Cristianismo
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: History, Mutations, Perception, Time, Transition.
The mutations/continuities that marked the transition of the old thought for the Christian were multiple and deep, and so much in the ambit of the ideas as of the sensibilities. And here the time. Perhaps for this time conception and perception, resulted of that couple mutations/continuities, giving emphasis here verified them mutations, have been the most significant contribution for the constitution of a new worldview in the breast of the Christian society, since it would impose to the followers no less than the man's own place in the world and of the world in the man, and of both in the ambit of God.
Time and Eternity in Saint Augustine
Marcos Roberto Nunes COSTA
Original title: Tempo e Eternidade em Santo Agostinho
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Eternity, Manichaeism, Neoplatonism, Saint Augustine, Time.
Every Augustinian disputation regarding to time - eternity relation arises from the need of combating the Manicheans and, by indirection, all those ones that affirmed, asserted world eternity, that denied ex nihilo Jewish - Christian Creation principle. Saint Augustine, departing from Genesis Scriptural Book in order to present a revelational founding and neoplatonic philosophy, in order to impart philosophic maintenance to the above - mentioned thesis, has ended up by moving away from not only Manichaeism, but from Neo-Platonism itself which has worked as philosophical foundation for contesting those ones.
Time and Eternity in Saint Thomas Aquinas
Carlos NOUGUÉ
Original title: Tempo e Eternidade em Santo Tomás de Aquino
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Eternity, God, Thomas Aquinas, Time.
Analysis of the concepts of time and eternity in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.
Time and eternity: a model in John Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) and a note on Francis of Mayrone (c. 1280-1327)
Roberto Hofmeister PICH
Original title: Tempo e eternidade: um modelo em Duns Scotus (c. 1265-1308) e uma nota sobre Francisco de Meyronnes (c. 1280-1327)
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: Divine Knowledge, Eternity, Francis of Mayrone, John Duns Scotus, Time.
Since a seminal study by Richard Cross doubts were raised about some Scotist passages concerning God’s knowledge of future contingents, where the Subtle Doctor would have adopted, atipically, a kind of presentism about time. Making use of McTaggat’s expressions, Cross recognized that Scotus is bound to a A-theory (presentism) language. This brings some difficulties to the interpreter, but it should not prevent anyone from concluding that Scotus seems at the end to favour a B-theory (here called “staticism”) on the nature of time. The exposition of time as a “fluent now” would occur for the first time in Lect. I d. 39. Scotus rejects there what he sees as Aquinas’ view on God’s timelessness – which would entail a B-theory, and therefore that a A-series of “past, present, and future” does not exist. In this study, a clarification of the dilemmas is pursued through the analysis of three key texts by Scotus on the subject – Lect. I d. 39 q. 1-5, Ord. I d. 38 q. 2 and d. 39 q. 1-5, and Rep. exam. I d. 38 q. 1-2, which deal with the question of the knowledge that God has of all things according to every temporal condition of existence. A short note on the position of Francis of Mayrone concerning the ontological status of time can confirm the approach offered here.
Time, History, and Providence in the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa
Jason ALEKSANDER
Original title: Time, History, and Providence in the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa
Published in Nicholas of Cusa in Dialogue
Keywords: Divine Providence, Nicholas of Cusa, Philosophy of History, Temporality, Time.
Although Nicholas of Cusa occasionally discussed how the universe must be understood as the unfolding of the absolutely infinite in time, he left open questions about any distinction between natural time and historical time, how either notion of time might depend upon the nature of divine providence, and how his understanding of divine providence relates to other traditional philosophical views. From texts in which Cusanus discussed these questions, this paper will attempt to make explicit how Cusanus understood divine providence. The paper will also discuss how Nicholas of Cusa’s view of the question of providence might shed light on Renaissance philosophy’s contribution in the historical transition in Western philosophy from an overtly theological or eschatological understanding of historical time to a secularized or naturalized philosophy of history.
Uranus, Cronus and Zeus: Greek mythology and its differents conceptions about time
Ana Teresa M. GONÇALVES and Ivan VIEIRA Neto
Original title: Uranos, Cronos e Zeus: a mitologia grega e suas distintas percepções do tempo
Published in The Time and the Eternity in the Ancient and Medieval World
Keywords: History, Sacred and Profane, Time.
Reality of Time is an abstract and intuitive concept. Temporality can be experienced and understood, but cannot be felt. Even the experience of Time becomes ambiguous if we think in natural time (as eternal and unchanging) and human time (as changeable and finite) as two distinct instances of a common reality. Depending on this perception, Time is simultaneously, as defined by Mircea Eliade, “sacred” and “profane”: eternal and recoverable, historical and irreducible. In this article, we intend to examine briefly the figures of Uranus, Cronus and Zeus as symbolic representatives of these two different conceptions of Time in the ancient Hellenic imagination.
