The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

It is impossible to believe that God’s Providence is fallible or dependent on temporal events; and yet foreknowledge, if it is to be truly knowledge, seems to impose a necessity upon events and actions which makes something monstrous of reward and punishment by God.

he could find no satisfaction in any consolatory belief in predestination.

so he presses the argument forward until he can justify a belief in a human freedom sufficient to make room for moral responsibility.

His solution is provided by the combination of tw...

First, the argument that the quality of knowledge depends on the capacity of the knower to know, not on the cap...

second, the comparison of God’s capacity to k...

Plato’s idea of time as a moving image of eternity.

Boethius’s development is expressed with such lucidity and compactness that – like a number of his other definitions – it was accepted as authoritative by St Thomas Aquinas and the medieval schoolmen.

Eternity is explained not in terms of quantity of life, but in term...

in virtue of His complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life, God, in Whom there is no past or future, but only timeless present, is eternal, while the world which only attains an endless series of momen...

Boethius is pressing at the limits of what l...

This definition, the theory of knowledge, and the Aristotelian theory of the two kinds of necessity, form the core of Boethius’s explanation of the compatibility of God’s ...

God is like a spectator at a chariot race; he watches the actions the charioteers perform, bu...

Similarly, God’s vision of events which is eternal in the sense that God is eternal, means that He is a kind of spectator of all things simultaneously, past and future in one timeless present, without causing them. God is thus able to have knowledge of that which ...

‘it is not allowed to man to comprehend in thought all the ways of the divine work.’

and in his firm insistence on the two opposing principles of human freedom and divine omniscience Boethius maintains a position perfectly in accord with Christian belief.

By a stroke of calculated art we are left at the end with Philosophy’s final exhortation, on a high plane, our gaze directed upwards, oblivious of the prison house.

That which there is

is not of fundamental significance in the Consolation.

Boethius’s God is a personal God, a God to whom one can and should pray, as he reminds us in the closing words of the Consolation.

It seems strange, nevertheless, that writing in the presence of death Boethius still prefers reason to faith, and makes no mention of what must be the only fully meaningful consolation for a Christian, the Incarnation of Christ and the doctrine of grace.

But the Boethian doctrine of salvation, the ascent of the unaided individual by means of philosophical introspection and meditation to the knowledge of God, for all the closeness between Neoplatonic philosophy and post-Augustinian Christianity, is essentially pagan in inspiration.

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Boethius professed a sort of christianisme neutralise.

‘Boethius needs neither word nor Spirit nor mercy, neither church nor fellow-Christians in order to be what he is.

It is therefore no accident but entirely appropriate that his last confession does...

He belonged to an age in which the ancient classical culture had become assimilated to Christian...

The schools, for instance, were ...

Boethius had not undergone the inner conversion of a Sidonius or an Ennodius: the ancient learning still preserv...

may be, however, that the question of Boethius’ Christianity has not been correctly formulated. It may be that if more were known of the intellectual climate of Roman society at the time the problem would appear in a different light.

Between the days of Augustine and those of Siger of Brabant it was the universal conviction among those who thought seriously that there was a single true rational account of man and the universe and of an omnipotent and provident God, as valid in its degree as the revealed truths of Christianity.

The great men of old, pagan though they might have been, had attained and expressed this truth in their philosophy could one but reproduce their teaching faithfully, and with their aid a true and sufficient answer could be given to the problems of human life and destiny.

It was with these answers that the philosophical mind could meet the world and all the disasters of life. Behind the rational arguments, no doubt, in the unseen realm of the soul, an individu...

He has forgotten for a while who he is, but he will soon remember once he has recognized me.

To make it easier for him I will wipe a little of the blinding cloud of worldly concern from his eyes.’

I saw that it was my nurse in whose house I had been cared for since my youth – Philosophy.

This is hardly the first time wisdom has been threatened with danger by the forces of evil.

The sole cause of their tragic sufferings was their obvious and complete contempt of the pursuits of immoral men which my teaching had instilled in them.

here I am, nearly five hundred miles away, condemned to death and to have my property confiscated, silenced, and with no opportunity to offer a defence, all because of a somewhat too willing support of the Senate.

the wickedness of it is that it is from you yourself that they obtain their trust in this great accusation.

the very fact that I am steeped in your teaching and trained in your morality seems to them to prove that I have been engaged in evil practice.

It is not enough that my devotion to you has not helped me at all, but you are now made the victim of the hatred tha...

It is always the unfortunate who are first to be deserted by the goodwill of men.

Corrupted men sit throned on high; By strange reversal wickedness Downtreads the necks of holy men. Bright virtue lies in dark eclipse By clouds obscured, and unjust men Heap condemnation on the just; No punishment for perjury Or lies adorned with speciousness.

it is you yourself that have been the instrument of it.

‘Do you believe that this life consists of haphazard and chance events, or do you think it is governed by some rational principle?’

‘I could never believe that events of such regularity are due to the haphazards of chance.

since you have no doubts that the world is governed by God, what are the means by which you think He guides it?’

‘I can’t answer the question,’ I replied, ‘because I don’t understand what it means.’

‘I was right, then,’ she said, ‘in thinking that some...

Your defences have been breached and your mind has been infiltrated by the fever ...