Goodness Versus Omnipotence In The Controversy Over The Eternity Of The World

Whether the world is eternal or has beginning is one of the most important issues of dispute between Platonists and Christians.In his On the Eternity of the World,Proclus the famous Platonist proposes eighteen arguments to demonstrate that the world is eternal.Against Proclus’ s view of the eternal world,Christian thinker Philoponus proposes a series of counter-arguments demonstrating the God’s creation of the world from a beginning,which has far-reaching influence in the history of religion and philosophy.These eighteen arguments and counter-arguments contain a wide range of topics,among which this thesis selects four most crucial ones as the subject of research.All these four core arguments concentrate on the concept of God.Each of the four discusses one set of concepts and all of them form an interconnected and progressive whole: namely,God’s Goodness/Omnipotence,Energeia/Dunamis,Energeia/Kinesis,Boulesis/Voluntas.Regarding these four topics,this thesis offers detailed analyses of Philoponus’ counter-arguments and Proclus’ s and other Platonists’ possible responses,and excavates the philosophical origin of both sides of the arguments,with a view to revealing their respective starting-points and fundamental disagreements concerning God,time,eternality and cosmos.At a deeper level,this thesis also traces the above disagreements to Platonists’ and Christians’ different conceptions of theodicy.Author seeks to show that the difference between Proclus’ and Philoponus’ answers to the question of whether the world is eternal or has beginning is rooted in another fundamental disagreement between them,namely,under the premise of creationism,facing the difficulties of theodicy,Proclus emphasizes the goodness of God,whereas Philoponus emphasizes the Omnipotence.Through this study of Against Proclus: On the Eternity of the World,this thesis endeavors to provide a new perspective for the millennia-old question of the eternity of the world in the history of philosophy,and to deepen our understanding of the controversy between Platonism and Christianity.