Constanter igitur et fideliter. Peter Damian’s Theological Paradigm in the Prologue of De divina omnipotentia

Abstract

The studies on Peter Damian’s De divina omnipotentia generally approached it from the first chapter, where the issue of the divine capacity to restore the lost virginity of a maiden is introduced. The brief prologue, instead, has received little attention. Aim of this paper is: 1) to focus on this prologue, showing how it contains in nuce (together with his epilogue in the XVI chapter) the foundations of the theological paradigm by which Peter Damian discusses the temporal dilemma and his relationship with the divine omnipotence; 2) to explain how this paradigm is to be understood as the horizon of meaning that supports and explains the Peter Damian’s conception of the eternity as a divine cognitive mode, so resolving, from an epistemic point of view, the problems about the necessity of the past in relation to God’s omnipotence.  

Keywords: Omnipotence; Monastic Theology; Eternity; Benedictine Rule; Dialectics.