ABSTRACT
Aristotle cites these words of the poet Agathon in his Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 2) and lends them his approval. And there ought to be few who do not spontaneously regard what is here asserted to be impossible for the divinity, as something contradictory in itself. Yet there are many who still believe in a beginning of the world and of everything temporal. For it is commonly taught of God that he is nothing temporal, in that there is in his life no course of events and no before and after. It is thereby expressly denied that eternity would be a time distinguished from other times only in that it has neither beginning nor end. The world, which according to them is supposed to have a beginning but no end, could therefore, if it were pleasing to God, also cease to exist as it had begun, for it is only because God’s omnipotence sustains it incessantly that it does not sink back into the void.
