Eternity [addendum 2]
Islamic and Jewish philosophy emerged from a Hellenistic climate in which the universe was taken to be an everlasting emanation from a unitary source (Plotinus), so the debate that ensued among thinkers in these two traditions had to reconcile this philosophical conviction with the pronouncement of their respective revelational books: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth" (Genesis 1.1) and "God said 'be' and it is" (Qurʾan 2:117). An absolute beginning linked to an initial moment of time is conflated here with the freedom of the creator to create. Plotinus never denied emanation to be free, although that freedom appropriate to the One would be vastly different from creatures: not being faced with anything—including alternatives—freedom in the One (so far as humans can grasp it) would be more like pure assent.
Al-Fārābī (d. 950), the first of the Muslim philosophers to elaborate this subject, introduced necessity into the founding emanation by modeling it on logical deduction: everything that is derives from a single premise. Ibn Sīnā (979–1037), "Avicenna" to Europeans and North Americans, refined this scheme to align it with the "wandering" heavenly bodies (planets)—identified as successive spheres—to create a philosophical cosmology to articulate, after a fashion, the transition from one to many. On the Muslim side, al-Ghazālī (1058–1111) countered this necessary emanation (proposed as an adaptation of the Qurʾan) with the charge of unbelief (kufr), whereas Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), the Jewish thinker imbued with Islamic philosophy, took these charges and elaborated them into a strict division of creator from creatures in order to safeguard the freedom and transcendence of the creator from creation.
Thus the crucial distinction between everlasting and eternal emerges: while what always was ("everlasting") might not have been, it is impossible for the One source of all that is not to be, so the One must be said to be "eternal." By connecting eternal with origins and with an adequate distinction of creator from creatures (which al-Farabi's logical model failed to do), these thinkers could affirm the creator God's eternity without further exploring the issue. Timelessness will be a feature of the eternal One because time itself is created; but eternity will comprise more than timelessness (which could also be said of mathematical entities) because its reality explains the existence of the universe. This discussion can be distinguished from the question of whether the origin of the universe requires an initial moment of time; the creator God would have to be eternal even if some creatures were everlasting. One can detect a Neoplatonic concern for the origin of all things in a unitary source, here adapted to a free creator whose transcendence can be removed from any hint of anthropomorphism by the assertion of necessary existence (Ibn Sīnā), and by distinguishing even everlasting things that are created from their uncreated eternal source.
Bibliography
Burrell, David. Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986.
Frank, Daniel H., and Oliver Leaman, eds. History of Jewish Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Gerson, Lloyd. God and Greek Philosophy : Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein, and Oliver Leaman, eds. History of Islamic Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1996.
This is the complete article, containing 531 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
