From Protology to Eschatology

This volume contains the proceedings of an international conference held in Leuven in June 2017 as a follow-up to a previous meeting that dealt with views on the origin of the cosmos in Greek philosophical and early Christian tradition (published in STAC 104, 2017). The second conference focused on how both traditions have reflected on the end or the goal towards which the cosmos is moving. The Judeo-Christian concept of a creation with temporal development and the philosophical notion of the eternity of the world evidently represent two very different positions. Yet there are also clear signs of convergence and of the latter influencing the former. The essays show there is common interest in reflecting not only on the principles that govern cosmology and on how the cosmos is reverting on its principles, but also on the answers provided in each tradition.Andrea Falcon: Eternalism in Aristotle and After - Alain Lernould: L'interprétation proclienne de la création de la partie immortelle de l'âme humaine dans le Timée de Platon - Marije Martijn: The (Meta)physics of Eating One's Children: Proclus' Interpretation of the Myth of Er - Marc-Antoine Gavray: Éternité ou génération? La controverse entre Simplicius et Jean Philopon sur l'origine du monde - Jörg Frey: From Eternal Life to the Word That Was in the Beginning: The Logic of Johannine Theology - Einar Thomassen: Protology and Eschatology in Gnostic Thought - John D. Turner†: »Where the Beginning Is, There Shall Be the End«: Protology and Personal Eschatology in the Platonizing Sethian Apocalypses Zostrianos and Allogenes - Benjamin Gleede: »Above the Starry Canopy«: Spatial and Non-Spatial Patristic Perspectives on the Christian Hope for Afterlife - George Van Kooten: »Mind the Ontological Gap!«: The Collateral Loss of the Pauline-Stoic Creation »From God« in the Joint Attack of the Arian-Nicene »From Nothing« on the Platonic Creation »From Disorderly Matter«