P R E F A C E

...is accustomed to last. What more? Let us ask those who claim the world is eternal: why has there not been the culture we now enjoy through so many countless series and cycles of ages? Why was there no use of letters, by which alone memory supports eternity? original: "cur non literarum usus, quo solo memoria fulcitur aeternitas?" This refers to the idea that if the world were infinite, we should have records of infinitely old civilizations. Why are some things only now becoming known, which—if the world were eternal—ought logically to have reached us and our awareness so many infinite ages ago? Furthermore, since it is established that the world is governed by Divine Providence The belief that God actively directs and cares for the universe., and that by this same power things are both made and destroyed, it will certainly not be far-fetched to believe that this same God also fashioned this universe. Therefore, the world has not existed from eternity. And the world itself at last, as Augustine St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD), an influential theologian who argued extensively for the creation of the world in time in his work 'The City of God'. says, testifies of itself that it was made. For by its most orderly mutability and mobility, and by the most beautiful appearance of all visible things, it demonstrates in a silent way that it was made, and it proclaims that it could not have been made except by a God ineffably and invisibly great, and invisibly beautiful. Therefore, he who denies that the world was made must admit either that God is not the creator of things original: "rerum opificem", or that He can do nothing that is supremely excellent and extraordinary—something which no one of sound mind concedes; rather, everyone asserts the existence of an almighty God by a certain natural instinct. Now, if they also concede this—that He Himself is the supreme and greatest craftsman—it will surely be necessary to admit that the greatest and most beautiful work that can be conceived in the mind or found anywhere was made by Him. And what, finally, will that work be? Is it not the world? But if these arguments seem to that Peripatetic A follower of Aristotle, whose school was known as the Peripatetic school because he taught while walking (peripatētikos) in the Lyceum.—who asserts the world is eternal—to be more dialectical or probable than apodictic Strictly demonstrative or providing absolute certainty, as opposed to merely being "likely." or scientific, Against Aristotle on the eternity of the world. let us proceed further with him using arguments drawn from nature. And first, indeed, it is established that it is impossible for anything to be eternal that is composed of principles subject to corruption, such as we know the world to be, whose parts are constantly changing while some things are born and others perish. Nor does it matter that some make the most noble part of the world—namely, heaven—immortal and subject to no dissolution...