02/23/2022 – “Who was Boethius (480 a.d. – 524 a.d.) and what was his impact on Christianity?” // His last book: “The Consolation of Philosophy” during imprisonment ending with brutal execution.
https://www.gotquestions.org/Boethius.html
Ok, I think I will copy the final paragraph in order to tease you to read the entire article in the above link.
“The Consolation was an incredibly popular medieval work and served to expand the influence of Platonic thought on medieval theology. According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “Despite the absence of specifically Christian teaching the moral of the Consolation was clear to the medieval commentator: through philosophy the soul attains to knowledge of the vision of God” (Cross, F. and Livingstone, E., eds., Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 220). A century-old biography summarizes the impact of this enigmatic theologian well: “Boethius was the last of the Roman philosophers, and the first of the scholastic theologians” (Stewart, H., and Rand, E., Boethius: The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, Harvard University Press, 1918, p. x).”
Awhile back , I shared with y’all I try not to post anything I haven’t experienced myself. For this one, I am cheating a little bit since I am only 2/3 or so through Boethius’ “Consolation of Philosophy”. I am reading it through a single section among many philosophers in western civiliation through Steven M. Cahn’s Eighth Edition of “Classics of Western Civilization. Just a little preview: I hope to post by week’s end a selection on Anselm’s “Proslogion”, which includes Anselm’s famous logical proof for the existence of God in the 11th century.
“Consolation of Philosophy” :
The book is a dialogue between a questioning Boethius and a fictional goddess character named “Philosophy”. Boethius was indeed an accomplished theologian that drew upon his academic knowledge drawn from Plato , Aristotle and Cicero. Yes, we must remember these men were brought up in pagan cultures. But , I had to chuckle as the dialogue here brings up the old Greek philosophical axiom: “Ex nihilo nihil fit”, or translated: “out of nothing, nothing comes!” It seems the Greek pagans were leaps and bounds above our modern day pagan darwinist cultural marxists.
On the location 14882 page, there is a recommended study:
- “A magisterial study of Boethius’ life and work: “Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981)
The book covers at length the question of how God’s foreknowledge of all future events is consistent with man’s free will. Without quoting the logical support at length, here is the character “Philosophy’s” response to this “old complaint” about Providence:
“It was a topic passionately discussed by Cicero when he broke divination into its constituent parts; you pursued it yourself over quite a long period and at great length. However, up until now it has been in no way adequately dealt with by any one of you in a painstaking and rigorous way. Here is the cause of all this darkness: The motion of human rational argument cannot set itself next to the simplicity of divine of divine foreknowledge.” (*)
(*) p.s. note – Last night after posting this, I finished the book. Don’t for a minute think that Boethius walks away from this truth with just this a one sentence axiom truth. In the last few pages of the book, he methodically lays out a logical proof of how God’s foreknowledge does not conflict at all with man’s free will. It reminded me of the long proofs we would put on the board at the end of the year in geometry class in high school. I had to read entire sections over and over, ever slowly to realize it was a logical proof much like those geometry proofs. Has man gone through a super accelerated de-evolution process over the past 175 years or so? (lol – but seriously, there are awful consequences to turning your back on God as a culture)
When we were extended family visiting together a couple of years ago, I was recalling the hilarious 2006 movie spoof “Idiocracy” where a decisively average guy goes through a top-secret hibernation program ala Rip Van Winkle, except it is 500 years here, not 20 years. When he wakes up, he finds that he is now the most intelligent person alive. I was describing it as a metaphor for our present day. So by popular acclamation, we all watched it together. But you know what, it wasn’t funny anymore, for it was too real! Well, in real life, it was about 14 years, not 500 years. That is a super accelerator! It occured to me that people thought I was nuts 14 years ago, for God was showing me visions of today, for indeed the evil seeds were sprouting all over the field. I praise God that my parents and grandparents didn’t live to see this!
Here is a short section of support (location #14872 in my kindle), as noted by the author in the foreward:
” The Consolation of Philosophy is a dialogue between Boethius and Philosophy, personified as a goddess. The earlier books contain discussions of what constutues the good life, how God is the ultimate good, and how evil can occur in a world governed by God’s providence and justice. (Jimmy note: See: Book of Job in the Bible) In Book V, the final book, Boethius raises the question of how it is possible for humans to have freedom of will if God knows in advance what every human choice will be. Philosophy’s answer is to claim that the way in which a thing is known depends on the way in which the knower knows it, and that God knows things that are future to us as present to him. In arguing for this thesis, Philosophy offers a definition of eternity that came to exert considerable influence in the subsequent history of philosophy:
‘Eternity is ‘a possession of life, a possession simoultaneously entire and perfect, which has no end.’ “
Here is another excerpt from the forward:
“The Council of Chalcedon (451) maintained that Christ was onw person with two natures, ‘truly God and truly Man.’ The expression of these theological doctrines depended heavily on such philosophically significant concepts as substance, relation, person, and nature. Boethius’ theological treatises were efforts to clarify the positions enunciated in Nicaea and Chalcedon, using the tools of Aristotelian logic, not so much in an attempt to demonstrate or prove the positions as to show that some views opposed to them related to confusion.
Soli Deo Gloria!