Latin scholastics on the eternity of the world and eternal creation on the part of the creature: did they amount to the same thing?

This article examines medieval scholastic treatments of two philosophical theories that the world is eternal in the context of their conflict with Christianity: Aristotle’s natural philosophical theory, and Eternal Creation, from Neoplatonic and Islamic metaphysics traditions. Notwithstanding the theories’ different fields, principles and arguments, scholastic treatments used a single set of arguments to try to prove their impossibility. Some showed instead that the arguments could be rebutted, making the theories philosophically possible. Interestingly, owing to the theories’ underlying principles, there were different implications regarding their transgressive nature: Aristotle’s theory contradicted the Bible and was potentially heretical, while Eternal Creation arguably was not.