Eternalism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The view that time resembles space and thus past and future events are in some sense coexistent. uncountable
  2. 2
    The view that matter is uncreated and has existed, and will exist, eternally. uncountable

    "[The earth’s] history stretched indefinitely or even infinitely into past and future and involved no unique and unexplained events such as the Flood; indeed, earth history was “without vestige of a beginning, without prospect of an end.” […] Most significantly, the virtual eternalism of such theories was extended, often explicitly, to the history of mankind[…]. Mankind could thus be claimed as uncreated and therefore not subject to any of the traditional moral and social constraints."

Example

More examples

"[The earth’s] history stretched indefinitely or even infinitely into past and future and involved no unique and unexplained events such as the Flood; indeed, earth history was “without vestige of a beginning, without prospect of an end.” […] Most significantly, the virtual eternalism of such theories was extended, often explicitly, to the history of mankind[…]. Mankind could thus be claimed as uncreated and therefore not subject to any of the traditional moral and social constraints."

Etymology

From eternal + -ism.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.