Christians confess the end; Porphyry mocks; against Plato, Xenophanes, Aristotle, Averroes on eternity
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And indeed this dogma has always been among the things confessed among Christians, whom therefore Porphyry mocks, as Augustine witnesses (City of God book 20, chapter 24), following Plato, who in the Timaeus hands down that the world began but will not perish.Others also withdrew further, as Xenophanes, who thought the world neither began nor will cease, as Plutarch is author in On the Opinions of the Philosophers book 2, chapter 4, and that long before Plato.For Xenophanes lived around the sixtieth Olympiad, that is, in the times of Cyrus and Tarquinius Superbus.Aristotle with great effort defends this sentence of Xenophanes (Physics book 8 and On the Heavens).Averroes defends Aristotle tooth and nail in his first disputation On the Eternity of the World, where he answers Algazel's solutions.
Latin
Et sane semper hoc dogma in confesso apud Christianos fuit, quos idcirco deridet Porphyrius, teste Augustino lib. 20. de C.D. cap. 24. Platonem secutus, qui in Timaeo tradit mundum coepisse, at non interiturum. Alii etiam longius recesserunt, ut Xenophanes, qui nec coepisse, nec desituram mundum putabat, ut auctor est Plutarchus de placitis philosophorum lib. 2. cap. 4, idque longe ante Platonem. Vixit enim Xenophanes circa olympiadem 60. hoc est, Cyri & Tarquinii Superbi temporibus. Hanc Xenophanis sententiam magno nisu tuetur Aristoteles 8. auscult. & libris de caelo. Aristotelem mordicus defendit Averroes disp. 1. de aeternitate mundi, ubi Algazelis solutionibus respondet.