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the particular nature of the argument from the infinity of souls again in De Aeternitate Mundi.
There, Aquinas clearly states that God could have made the world without men, or He could
have made men some finite time ago and the rest of the world from all eternity. Finally, Aquinas
states that “it has not yet been demonstrated that God could not make an actual infinity of
things.” 99 While Aquinas clearly finds the question of the actual infinity of human souls
troublesome, he ultimately judges it as not demonstrative; moreover, Aquinas seems to be
wavering in his earlier absolute prohibition of actual infinity.
Neither Aquinas nor Bonaventure considered the arguments from infinity as definitive
proofs for the temporal beginning of the world. While Aquinas and Bonaventure find the
objections from infinity worth considering and responding to, the strongest arguments against
and for demonstrability of the temporal beginning of the world lie elsewhere. For Bonaventure,
the impossibility of eternal creation arises from his understanding of creation. Moreover,
Bonaventure also finds the possibility of a past infinite world irreconcilable with Christian view
of the universe. At the very end of his response to the question treating the eternity of the world
in his Commentary on the Sentences, Bonaventure states that to avoid actual infinity it is
necessary either to posit corruptibility of human souls, reincarnation or existence of one rational
soul shared by all men. Each of these solutions results in impossibility of beatitude and hence
ends in a worse error than it began with. 100
Aquinas is certain that a demonstration from reason alone of either temporal or eternal
character of the world is impossible. He argues that the “nature of a thing is quite different in its
99
Baldner and Carroll, Aquinas on Creation, 122.
Dales, Medieval Discussions, 94.
100
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