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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
Both the Bible and the earliest Greek philosophers begin with accounts of the world's genesis. It is thus not surprising that medieval cosmological thought was preoccupied, perhaps obsessed, with the issue of creation. But what about the end of the world? If the universe had a beginning, does it necessarily have an end? Does creation imply destruction? On this topic the Bible is not so explicit and unambiguous. Greek philosophy, however, was virtually unanimous in claiming that whatever has a beginning will have an end, and that whatever will have an end had a beginning. If this cosmological principle is construed strictly, then the world's past and its future are essentially and necessarily linked together, such that the finitude of one entails the finitude of the other. This would mean that if the temporal history of the world is finite a pane ante, then by virtue of this cosmological principle it will have a temporal end a pane post. The most vigorous and detailed defense of the strict interpretation of this general principle was given by Aristotle, who attempted to prove it in his treatise On the Heavens. Henceforth, I shall refer to this principle as “Aristotle's theorem.”
1. Aristotle, On the Heavens 1. 10–12.
2. Plato, Timaeus 28–34, 37–42. Since Stoic and Epicurean cosmologies play at best a minor role in our discussion, we can ignore them. It is sufficient to note that they too adhere to Aristotle's theorem (Seneca, Natural Questions 3. 28–30; Lucretius, On the Nature of Things 5, 11. 226–434).
3. Philo's views on the world's end are not clear, since the topic is discussed in detail in only one book, whose authenticity some scholars have doubted, De aeternitate mundi. F. H. Colson discusses this matter in the introduction to his translation of this work in the Loeb Classical Library series.
4. Gaon, Saadia, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. Rosenblatt, S., Yale Judaica Series (New Haven, 1948), bk. I, chap.Google Scholar 1.Wolfson, H., “The Kalam Arguments for Creation in Saadia, Averroes, Maimonides, and St. Thomas”, in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, II, Saadia Anniversary Volume (New York, 1943), pp. 197–45; idem,Google ScholarThe Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 373–82;Davidson, H., “John Philoponus as a Source of Medieval Islamic and Jewish Proofs of Creation”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 85 (1965): 318–327; idem, “The Principle That a Finite Body Can Contain Only Finite Power,” in Studies in Jewish Religious and Intellectual History, ed. S. Stein and R. Loewe (University, Ala., 1979), pp. 75–2.Google Scholar
5. Steinschneider, M.Al-Farabi (St. Petersburg, 1869), pp. 152–176;Google ScholarMahdi, M., “Al Farabi Against Philoponus”, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 26 (1967): 233–60;CrossRefGoogle Scholar.Pines, s., “An Arabic Summary of a Lost Work of John Philoponus”, Israel Oriental Studies 11 (1972): 320–352;Google ScholarSorabji, R., Time, Creation and the Continuum (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983) hereafter cited as TCQ.Google Scholar
6. Plato, Republic 5. 478e–79e; Timaeus 28a. Plotinus, Enneads 2. 1. 2–3.
7. In their aforementioned studies (n. 4) Wolfson and Davidson utilized material primarily from Philoponus' treatise Contra Arislotelem, as it is preserved in Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics. Additional and more detailed material is found in Philoponus' treatise De aeternitate mundi contra Proclum, ed. H., Rabe (Berlin, 1899), particularly bk. 6. 28, p. 230,11. 6–22 and bk. 9. 6, pp. 336–337. Cf. Sorabji, TCC, chap. 14.Google Scholar
8. Aristotle, On the Heavens 1. 5–7; Physics 8. 10.
9. It will be useful, as well as both philosophically and philologically accurate, to keep distinct the terms “eternal” 
and “everlasting” 
. To say that the universe is eternal is to claim that it has neither a beginning nor an end; to say that it is everlasting is to claim only that it has no end. The former is the thesis of Aristotle; the latter is the thesis of Plato, Maimonides, and Gersonides. In medieval philosophical Hebrew “eternal” was usually rendered by kadmon, and “everlasting” by niẓḥi. But this practice was not always or consistently adhered to. In his translation of Maimonides' Guide, Samuel ibn Tibbon makes this terminological distinction. Gersonides more frequently uses the compound phrase biiti yifased, i.e., “incorruptible,” than niẓḥi (Gersonides, The Wars of the Lord [Milḥamot Hashem], bk. 6, pt. 1, chaps. 16 and 27).
10. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 2:27–29.
11. The term “major” has to be used here to allow for miracles, which are, for Maimonides, only temporary changes in nature.
12. Guide 2:30. The rabbinic passage is from Genesis Rabbah 3.
13. Already in Plato we find the seeds of this argument, which are nurtured later by Proclus into an even stronger version of the world's indestructibility (Plato, Timaeus 30a–d, 33a–d, 37d; Proclus in Philoponus, De aeternitate 8–9).
14. Guide 2:27 and 29. Thomas Aquinas seems to have the same position on this matter as Maimonides (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q. 104 a.4).
15. Feldman, S., “Platonic Themes in Gersonides' Cosmology”, in Salo W Baron Jubilee Volume (1975), vol. 1, pp. 383–405.Google Scholar
16. Gersonides, Wars of the Lord, bk. 6, pt. 1, chap. 16; Aristotle, On Generation and Corruption 1. 7.
17. Gersonides, Wars ofthe Lord, bk. 6, pt. l.chap. 27; Aristotle, On theHeavens 1.12;Williams, C.J., “Aristotle and Corruptibility”, Religious Studies 1 (1965): 95–107, 203–215;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWaterlow, S., Passage and Possibility (Oxford, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18. Aristotle, Physics 8. 10; On the Heavens 1. 5–7; Davidson, “The Principle.”
19. Davidson, , “The Principle” H. Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), pp. 271–273.Google Scholar
20. Gersonides, Wars of the Lord, bk. 5, pt. 3, chap. 6; bk. 6, pt. 1, chap. 14; Touati, C., La Pensée philosophique el théologique de Gersonide (Paris, 1973), pp. 308–315.Google Scholar
21. Here Gersonides agrees also with Proclus (Philoponus, De aeternitate bk. 1. 3; bk. 9. 6). Leibniz admitted that God could choose to annihilate the universe but just wouldn't (Leibniz, Monadology, pars. 4–6; Letters to Clarke, V, pars. 73–76).
22. Crescas, The Light of the Lord (Or Adonai), bk. 3, principle 1, chap. 5; bk. 4, question 1; Feldman, S., “The Theory of Eternal Creation in Hasdai Crescas and Some of His Predecessors” Viator 11 (1980): 289–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
23. Philoponus, De aetemitate, bk. 4. 9, p. 78, 11. 6–10, p. 79, 11. 4–11; bk. 6. 4, p. 130,1. 22–p. 131, 1. 10.
24. Crescas does not appear to be committed to the Leibnizian claim that God must create the best possible world. For a contemporary discussion of this problem, see Adams, Robert, “Must God Create the Best? Philosophical Review” 81(1972): 317–32. The argument against the successive divine creation of several worlds of increasing perfection appears in Aristotle's early De Philosophia, fragment 19C. See Sorabji, TCC, p. 281.Google Scholar
25. Crescas, Light of the Lord, bk. 6, question 1.
26. Abravanel, Isaac, The Deeds of God [Mifalot Elohim] (Venice, 1952), bk. 8. In my exposition I have not followed the exact sequence of Abravanel's argumentation, but have rearranged his arguments according to the common medieval practice of distinguishing between theological and scientific arguments for creation or destruction.Google Scholar
27. Abravanel, Deeds of God 4:2,.8:1, 53d–54a. In late Scholastic philosophy the distinction was made between the ordinary, natural course of things originally ordained by God, potential Dei ordinata, and His power to suspend this natural order, potentia Dei absoluta (E. Grant, “The Condemnation of 1277, God's Absolute Power and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Vges,” Viator 10 [1979]: 211–44).
28. On this point Abravanel sides with Avicenna and Maimonides against Averroes, who bllows the Aristotelian interpretation of Themistius, according to which the heavenly bodies ire simple substances lacking matter (Wolfson, Crescas' Critique of Aristotle, pp. 103–104, 94–00; Themistius, In de Caelo 14. 13–4 [I owe the reference to Themistius to Richard sorabji]).
29. Abravanel, Deeds of God 8:1, 54a–b; Plato, Republic 5; Philoponus, De aeternitate bk. 28, p. 230, 11. 6–2; bk. 8. 1, p. 302, 1. 25–p. 303, 1. 2; bk. 9. 5, p. 333, 11. 7–4.
30. Abravanel, Deeds of God 8: 2, 54b. Galileo made a similar criticism a century later Vallace, W., Galileo's Early Notebooks: The Physical Questions [Notre Dame, 1977], p. 118, par.Google Scholar
31. Philoponus, Contra Aristotelem, as quoted by Simplicius in his In de Caelo 142. 7 ff., and in his In de Physica 332. 15 (S. Sambursky, The Physical World of Late Antiquity, pp. 161–163).
32. Abravanel, Deeds of God 8:2, 54c–d. Abravanel cites Al-Ghazzoli's Incoherence of the Philosophers, Second Discussion (Averroes, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, trans. van, S. den Bergh [London, 1954], vol. 1, pars. 126 ff.).Google Scholar
33. Philoponus appeals to the greater bulk of the heavenly bodies to explain their slower rate of change (Philoponus, in Simplicius, In libra de caelo 1:3, p. 142, 11. 7–25; Sambursky, Physical World, pp. 162–165).
34. Abravanel, Deeds of God 8:2, 54d–55a. Maimonides refers to peonia in Guide 3:37.
35. Abravanel, Deeds of God, 56d. Sorabji, TCC, pp. 281–282.
36. Abravanel, Deeds of God, 53d–54a.
37. ibid., 56d–57a.
38. ibid., 56b.
39. ibid., 61c–62c.
40. B.T. Rosh Hashanah 31a; Sanhedrin 97a.
41. Abravanel, , Deeds of God, 49a–d; Commentary on Genesis (New York, 1959), pp. 33c–34a.Google ScholarTanna Debe Eliyyahu, trans. Braude, W. and Kapstein, I. (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 52. Maimonides, Guide 2:29.Google Scholar
42. Abravanel, Deeds of God, 76a.
43. ibid., 77a.
44. ibid., 76d. Aristotle, On the Heavens 1. 5–7; Physics 8. 10.
45. Abravanel, Deeds of God, lib. This was one of the criticisms made by Leibniz against Newton. For the latter bodies lose force, which is preserved only by divine intervention (Koyré, A., From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe [Baltimore, 1968], chaps. 11–12).Google Scholar
46. The Alexanderian-Avicennian solution suffers from the same artificiality noted by Abravanel in his criticism of Averroes' theory.
47. Abravanel, Deeds of God, 77c–78a. As far as I know, Abravanel does not discuss Gersonides' claim that a body, under certain conditions, is inherently capable of indefinite motion, and hence can be indestructible.
