B. About the Opinion of the Theologians

65. The theologians commonly maintain the opposite.

66. For this they adduce authorities and reasons:

One authority is Isaiah 60.19 (and it is in Lombard’s text, Sent. IV d.48 ch.5 n.5), “For you there will be sun no more to give light through the day.” But this authority, as Master Lombard replies adducing Jerome On Isaiah XVII.60 19, “does not say that sun and moon do not then shine (which however the words seem to indicate), but what is signified is that there is no use of light for those who will then be in eternal life and beatitude.” Hence Jerome says, “The office of sun and moon will cease, and the Lord himself will be the light in perpetuity for his own.” The like meaning has the authority from Revelation 21.23, “The city does not need light.”

67. Another authority adduced is from Revelation 10.6-7, “The angel swore an oath that, after this, there will be no more time.” But it could be given an exposition, that ‘there will be no more time’ for the fulfilment of prophecy, because now all will be fulfilled.

68. The reason is brought forward of this sort: the motion of the heavens is for generation and corruption as though for its end; therefore when generation ceases, such motion will be vain. And this is confirmed by On Generation 2.11.338b1-5, where the Philosopher maintains that the carrying round of the sun in an oblique circle by the daily motion is necessary so that the generation and corruption of things here below may be continuous; and by Physics 2.2.194a34-35, “For we are in a way the end of all things.”

69. But the Philosopher would deride this reasoning. For never would he posit a more ignoble thing as the end of a more noble thing, when speaking of a perfecting end, but only of a consequent or terminating end in some way or other. And then from the failing of such end, which failing however he would deny, he would posit that there will be a future end of the more noble thing, because he posits perpetual generation just as also motion of the heaven. However, from this failing, if it were posited, the failing of the motion of the heaven would not follow, just as neither does the failing of the cause follow from the failing of the effect, especially if the failing of the effect is not because of the failing of this cause but of some other cause - the way a theologian must say that generation does not fail because of the failing of the heaven in its causality, but because of the divine will.

70. And when it is said the motion is vain [n.68], this has no plausibility, because a thing is not vain if it has its perfecting end, even though no further extrinsic end, which is not a perfecting end, come from it - just as neither was God vain from eternity though he had not created things externally, which things are in a way an end.

71. The authority from Physics 2 [n.68] can be given exposition: ‘end of all things’, supply ‘of all generable and corruptible things’, because man is noblest among those, and is in this respect in some way a perfecting end.