122 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
cessive state of duration (measured out by the sidereal rota-
tions of the heavens) by which things that cannot exist in their
entirety all at once are allowed to unfold their essences through
diachronic extension and through a process of arising and per-
ishing; the latter is characterized by changelessness and reple-
tion, the totality of every essence realized in its fullness in one
immutable state. Thus, the aeon above is the entire ''.Age" of the
world, existing all at once in a time without movement (which
is to say, change), wherein nothing arises or perishes, while
chronos is the "moving image of the aeon," the dim reflection
of that heavenly plenum in a ghostly procession of shadowy
fragments. Hence, Plato does not really use aionios to indi-
cate endless duration, because (to employ a slightly later ter-
minology) all duration is a "dynamic" process, a constant pas-
sage from possibility to actuality; in the aeon, however, there
is no unrealized dynamis or "potency" requiring actualization,
as all exists in a state of immutable fullness, and so nothing
technically "endures" at all. Hence also, for Platonic tradition
as a whole, it may very well be the case that the aeon above is
thought to persist only so long as the present world-cycle en-
dures, and that at the end of the Platonic Year, when the stars
begin their great rotation anew, one heavenly Age will succeed
another. This notion of a changeless heavenly aion or (in Latin)
aevum, moreover, which stands utterly distinct from the mu -
tability of terrestrial chronos or tempus, was very much a part
of Christian cosmology from late antiquity well into the late
Middle Ages: here below, the time of generation and decay;
there above, the angelic "age," the ethereal realm of the celes-
tial spheres; and then also, still higher up, the empyrean of
God in himself, "beyond all ages." In a similar but not iden-
tical way, aion also came in ancient usage to mean, as it fre-
quently does in the New Testament, one or another universal