Digital Continent Digital Continent_Template amended | Page 28

changing temporal world, something Boethius attributes to divine simplicity. 45 According to
Shanley: “According to Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between time
and change, what cannot possibly change cannot be measured by time.” 46 The Immutable God,
therefore, is not measured by time while the past infinite world is changing and hence is
measured by time. Therefore, the eternity of the world is not the same as the eternity of God.
Moreover, divine “eternity is not an extrinsic measure of the divine esse, but rather is identical
with the divine esse.” 47
Expanding on the difference between the divine eternity and the infinite duration of the
world, Aquinas gives three main ways in which something can be limited: (1) by having a
beginning and an end, (2) by having a flow of temporal parts, and (3) by a particular finite mode
of existing through reception of a form. 48 The divine eternity lacks all of these limitations while a
45
Ibid, 537.
Ibid, 539.
47
Ibid, 531.
48
Ibid, 529.
46
Page 18 of 62