There's
God Who Saves Metal Saves Slag
and number in His prophetic memory
the moons that will be and the ones that have been.
(Everness, JLB)
The term eternity is usually understood in two ways. In common sense, it means infinite time or infinite duration. Many religions associate the idea of eternity with perpetuity, that is, that which lacks beginning and end. And in this line, eternity is an attribute of God.
But the philosophical implications of this topic are not minor and often result in more intellectualized religious conceptions. Indeed, in the philosophical sense, eternity refers to a time that cannot be measured because it transcends the temporality itself. We will briefly review some of the variants that can be observed in the historical analysis that different thinkers made regarding this complex concept.
Parmenides de Elea attributed to being the attribute of enternity. And in Timeo, Pla to will specifically say that of the eternal essence we can sometimes say that it was or that it will be, but that in truth, we can only say of it that it is, because in fact, what is immobile I could never become young or old. Indeed, for Plato, time was the passing image of eternity that could be equated with divine life.
From eternity it is said qaue “is always”, however, the “being” stands out more than the “always”. It would not be appropriate in this sense to argue that the eternal is equivalent to a projection of time to infinity. Time is rather the moving image of eternity, that is, a lasting image of the eternal moving according to the number. In this way, a contrast between the eternal and the enduring is allowed.
That eternity is not just infinite duration then defines it as something opposite to time? Definitely not. Eternity not only does not deny time but also includes it. Time moves in eternity that is your model.
Aristotle, it would seem to stick in principle to the simplest version of eternity, that is, the idea of infinite duration. But by emphasizing that eternity lacks principle and end, and especially by manifesting that the eternal includes all time, thus being immortal and divine duration, he is also making indirect reference to the notion of an extratemporal time.
Plotinus, framed in NeoPlatonism, will elaborate Platonic ideas taking into account Aristotelian doctrine, will make eternity dependent on the fullness and immutability of the One. He will say that eternity cannot be reduced to mere intelligibility or rest, besides these characters, eternity can also possess two properties: unity and inndivisibility. A reality is eternal when it is not something at a time and something different at another time, but when it is all at once, that is, when it possesses an “indivisible perfection”. Eternity is, so to speak, the “moment of absolute stability of the gathering of the intelligible at a single point. This is the reason why we cannot speak of the future or of the past, the eternal is immersed in a constant present. The point where all the lines are joined and which persists without any modulation in their identity does not have a future that is not already present. By the way, that such being is not a stopo to be a prsenete, in such a case eternity would not be a representation of fleeting. By saying that the eternal is what it is, it is intended to say that it possesses in itself the plenitur of being and that passing and future are in it as concentrated and retracted.
These ideas, among others, had remarkable influences on Christianity and Islam .
Thomas Aquinasaffirmed the psobility of a creation of the world in time, admitting that it could be eternal. He will thus admit the definition with which Saint Augustine completed the neoplatonic tradition for which eternity is the entire, simultaneous and perfect possession of an endless life. And against his detractors, he will defend the idea of the ominisumulaneity of the eternal (when the Biblical scrip tures refer to ideas and to the times of eternity, the reference is always plural) and will justly use this notion to reaffirm the extratemprality of the eternal, allowing a rigorous distinction between eternity and time, while the former is simultaneous and measures the permanent being, the latter is successive and measures the whole movement.
Already in modern times, Espinosa will analyze in his Etica: “For eternity while existence itself is conceived as necessarily following the very definition of an eternal thing. Explanation: Indeed, such existence is conceived as a truth eternal, as if it were the essence of the thing, and therefore cannot be explained by duration or time, even if one thinks of duration as having no beginning and end.” In this way you will be opting for the more intellectual meaning of the notion of eternity .
Other thinkers, such as Locke, will examine the notion of eternity from a different perspective, the psychological formation of the idea. In this line he will affirm that the idea of eternity comes from the same original impression as the idea of time (as succession and duration) but moving it to infinity and conceiving that reason always subsist in order to go further. Thus, he adheres to a concept in which eternity has neither beginning nor end.
The concept of eternity is also present in Eastern philosophy. For example, for Taoism and you can observe its conceptual definition in the first chapter of the book of Tao. Finally, for the Buddhist worldview, eternity is an inextricably long period of time in which different stages are repeated endlessly.
