MIZAEL PINTO DE SOUZA

It was a consensus among medieval theorists in the Latin West that, properly speaking, the term eternity can only be applied to God. In this case, when inserted in the phrase “‘eternity’ of the world”, we are using it in an equivocal way to think about a world that never had a beginning. For these reasons, theologians and philosophers of the time preferred to speak of a world without a principle of duration to refer to the thesis of an “eternal” world. One of the authors to specifically address the topic was Thomas Aquinas, even dedicating a booklet to it: “De aeternitate mundi”. In relation to this work there is a debate among interpreters about what the author's thesis or theses would be. Basically, two positions stand out on this point: (i) Thomas would be defending the possibility that the world is eternal, or (ii) Thomas would be defending that the world could have been eternal. The research aims to: (a) introduce the problem posed, (b) clarify its development and the current state of the debate, (c) show why we consider the question open and, as a result, (d) justify the present research.