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Hypothetical nature of the question of the eternity of the world. Bonaventure gives
the formal and magisterial treatment of the question of the eternity of the world only in his
Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard. 35 Aquinas, however, returns to this topic
throughout his life in all of his major works: Writings on the Sentences, Summa Contra Gentiles,
De Potentia Dei, Summa Theologica and has a treatise devoted solely to the question of the
eternity of the world, De Aeternitate Mundi. 36 Clearly this was a topic of importance for
Aquinas, but it is necessary to clarify that the question of the eternity of the world for Aquinas
was purely hypothetical. Aquinas is not asking whether this present world is eternal; in fact, “it
was very important to St. Thomas that the divine will created the world, de facto, with a
beginning of time.” 37 Aquinas is not questioning the doctrine of temporal creation but asks
35
Stephan Baldner, "St. Bonaventure on the Temporal Beginning of the World," New Scholasticism 63, no. 2
(1989): 207.
36
The dating of the mentioned works of Aquinas and the consequent theories on the development over time of
Aquinas’s position of the possibility of eternal creation are beyond the scope of this thesis. However, readers
interested in these topics should consult: Thomas Bukowski, "Understanding St. Thomas on the Eternity of the
World: Help from Giles of Rome?" Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 58 (1991): 113-125, Ian Wilks,
"Aquinas on the past Possibility of the World's Having Existed Forever," The Review of Metaphysics 48, no.2 (1994):
299-329, John F. Wippel,"Aquinas on Creation and Preambles of Faith," The Thomist 78, no. 1 (2014): 1-36, as well
as "Did Thomas Aquinas Defend the Possibility of an Eternally Created World? (The eaternitate mundi Revisited),"
Journal of the History of Philosophy (Johns Hopkins University Press) 19, no. 1 (1981): 21-37.
37
Bukowski, “Understanding,” 125.
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