God’s Eternity in Creation in Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram
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Babeș-Bolyai University / Cluj University Press
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For Augustine, eternity holds a special significance, because understanding this concept correctly enabled him to understand God as he truly is: eternal, stable, unchangeable. For this reason, eternity is a key point in understanding how God created all things. God is eternal, and yet he created a world that is not eternal. How is this possible? Augustine attempts to answer this question, inter alia, in his extensive commentary on Genesis, De Genesi ad Litteram. Following the first chapter of Genesis, Augustine presents God as the eternal being who speaks, acts, and knows everything, but who in no way diminishes itself in the process of creating the caelum et terram. This paper aims to present specifically the way Augustine understood divine eternity in the creation process.