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Definition 2024


aeviternal

aeviternal

English

Adjective

aeviternal (not comparable)

  1. (theology) Pertaining to aeviternity, a state between eternity, which is unchanging and outside of time, and temporality, which is subject to change and to death or annihilation. Things aeviternal are creations, like the temporal, but everlasting, like the eternal.
    • 1862, (St. Thomas Aquinas), Summa Theologica - Volume 1, ISBN 1593774958, page 78:
      Further, if there is no before and after in aeviternity, it follows that in aeviternal things there is no difference between being, having been, or going to be. Since then it is impossible for aeviternal things not to have been, it follows that it is impossible for them not to be in the future; which is false, since God can reduce them to nothing.
    • 1992, Stella Kramrisch, The Presence of Siva, ISBN 0691019304, page 268:
      In aeviternal rhythms the current of time would be channeled in the cosmos, reflecting not only the pulsation of life within the microcosm, but with it also the possibility of realization, in samadhi, of timelessness.
    • 2001, Eva Brann, What, Then, Is Time?, ISBN 1461621755, page 214:
      And in general, memory and imagination, bygone facts and aeviternal fictions, are closely intermingled, since the factual memory, as it drops back, is almost inexorably transformed into a fictive image, while imagined images are often artfully assimilated to the factual past.
    • 2014, Justin Nnaemeka Onyeukaziri, Echoes of the Good News, ISBN 1493134787, page 93:
      It is hard because it is very difficult to convert our thinking from the physical to the spiritual; from time to aeviternal and more so to eternity.

See also