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eternity of the world. Augustine held that the world was without beginning but created. He drew
attention to the different meanings of the word “before” and stressed that God was before the
world by eternity not time. Augustine thought that the concept of “the time before the world was
created” was meaningless because the world was created with time, not in time. Therefore, it is
correct to say that the world always was, for there was no time when the world was not. 8
Augustine was also responsible for the argument later adopted by Robert Grosseteste stating that
the notion of perpetuity was a conceptual error because nothing created can be perpetual, for
creation implies a beginning. 9 However, for Augustine, the beginning necessitated by creation
need not be temporal, and hence Augustine could hold that the world both had a beginning and
was beginningless. 10
8
Ibid, 13.
Ibid, 12.
10
Ibid, 17.
9
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