Time and Eternity in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Thought

399 Pages·2006·2.06 MB·English

by  Rory Fox

OXFORD THEOLOGICAL MONOGRAPHS
EditorialCommittee
m.mcc.adams m.j.edwards
p.m.joyce d.n.j.macculloch
o.m.t.o’donovan c.c.rowland
OXFORDTHEOLOGICALMONOGRAPHS
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Time and Eternity
in Mid-Thirteenth-
Century Thought
Rory Fox
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3
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Preface
This book began life as a D.Phil. thesis (1999) and I would
like to take the opportunity to acknowledge some of the
debts incurred in bringing that thesis to completion. I owe
particular thanks to Professor Richard Swinburne for his
patient and thoughtful supervision of the thesis. Without
hisassistance,Iwouldneverhavebeenabletoembarkupon,
or complete, a research project of this kind.
I would also like to thank Fr. Henry Wansbrough, the
MasterofStBenet’sHall,forextendingthehospitalityofthe
Halltomethroughoutthetimeofmystudies.Iamspecially
grateful to the Warden and Fellows of Keble College for
electing me to the Liddon Junior Research Fellowship
1995–7, and to Merton College for providing means for
me to return to Oxford in the Summer of 2000 to begin
the process of revising the thesis. I am indebted to the
British Academy for financial support and to the Oxford
University Theology Faculty for awarding me the Denyer
and Johnson scholarship. Amongst those who provided
helpful feedback, Iwould like to acknowledge the contribu-
tionsofRichardCross,DominicPerler,JohnMarenbonand
Cecilia Trifogli. Finally, I thank my wife Helen for her help
with the final draft and support throughout.
RF
January 2005
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Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Language of Time 10
2. Temporal Simultaneity 50
3. Priority, Posteriority, and Causality 95
4. Relations and Reductions 130
5. The Reality of Time 165
6. On Measurement and Numbering 193
7. Time and Atemporality 225
8. Sempiternity, Angelic Time, and the Aevum 244
9. Eternity 282
10. God and Time 309
Bibliography 330
Subject Index 359
Index of Ancient and Medieval Text References 366
Index of Ancient Medieval and Pre Modern Authors 382
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Introduction
The purpose of this study is to examine thirteenth-century
viewsabouttime,particularlytheviewsofThomasAquinas
and his contemporaries in the middle of the century. As
medieval thinkers typically considered time to be just an-
other duration alongside the durations of aeviternity (the
aevum)andeternity,thescopeofthestudyextendstocover
allthreedurations, culminating in an examination of God’s
relationship to time.
The motivation for this study arose from a dissatisfac-
tion with standard accounts of Aquinas’ views on the ques-
tion of God’s knowledge of future contingents. Rather than
sensitively exegeting what thirteenth-century thinkers were
actually trying to say, some contemporary treatments
seemed to me to be at risk of eisegeting contemporary
ideas and philosophical frameworks into the medieval lan-
guage and thought which they claimed to be critiquing. In
ordertoavoidthisproblemitseemedtomethatIneededto
give significantly more space thanwas customary, to exam-
ining the framework in which thirteenth-century thinkers
werediscussingthequestionofknowledgeoffuturecontin-