. . . “But what avails it? No liberty
is left to hope for. Would that there were any! I would answer in the words of
Canius, who was accused by Gaius Caesar, Germanicus' son, of being cognizant of
a plot against himself: ‘If I had known of it, you would not have.’
“And in this matter grief has not so
blunted my powers that I should complain of wicked men making impious attacks
upon virtue. But at this I do wonder, that they should hope to succeed. Evil
desires are, it may be, due to our natural failings, but that the conceptions
of any wicked mind should prevail against innocence while God watches over us,
seems to me unnatural.
“Wherefore not without cause has one of
your own followers asked: ‘If God is, whence come evil things? If He is not,
whence come good?’
“Again, let impious men, who thirst for
the blood of the whole Senate and of all good citizens, be allowed to wish for
the ruin of us too whom they recognize as champions of the Senate and all good
citizens. But surely such as I have not deserved the same hatred from the
members of the Senate too?” . . .
—from
Book 1, Prose 4
Boethius
is worried that there is really no prospect for making any of these things
better. He thinks of the times of Gaius Caesar, son of Germanicus, better known
as Caligula, when tyranny, oppression, lies, schemes, and plots were all tangled
together. How can an honest man know what to do?
His
concerns show more than just a feeling of general frustration, but they begin
to reveal a clear order of reasoning. They are not just vague complaints about unfairness,
but they consider a distinction on exactly why he thinks certain things are
unjust. In the simplest of terms, the problem isn’t just that people are
vicious, but that people are somehow rewarded for being vicious.
My own
experience has shown me something quite similar. I can still come to terms with
the fact that a man’s thoughts may be selfish, his intentions may be hateful,
his words may be dishonest, and his actions may be violent. This is, so to
speak, just still within my “comfort zone”, where life provides an obstacle,
but the obstacle can still be overcome. It may take some effort, there may be
some sacrifices, and it won’t happen overnight, but by the end, the wrong will
have been made right. Good wins.
No, the
real horror is not only that the wrong never seems to be made right, but also
that the wrong just seems to become ever more wrong. All the disordered
thoughts, intentions, words, and actions bring the wicked man to even greater
success. He not only wants all the
wrong things, but he is actually given
everything that he wants. His achievement is built on the suffering of the
innocent. This is the most unbearable aspect of a world where there is evil.
We can
consider the same problem on a higher, and deeper, level, as a question of
metaphysics and cosmology, of the order of the Universe itself. This makes it
all the more disturbing, and it seems all the more insurmountable.
If we
are to posit a God who rules over everything, all-knowing and all-powerful, it
doesn’t seem right for him to allow such injustices to occur on his watch.
Boethius must confront a question most everyone faces, in one form or another:
If God exists, why does he permit the existence of evil? If God does not exist,
where is there any hope for a stable good?
These
two questions must necessarily go together. God might not exist at all, or at
the very least He is too unaware, too weak, or too disinterested to care for
such matters, which effectively amounts to much the same thing. Many of us will
indeed come to this sort of conclusion, because it is the easiest solution to
the fact that our lives are not as fair as we would happen to like them to be.
We may,
however, have gone from the fat into the fire. Where can we discover any
absolute measure of the good, if God is not its ultimate source? In trying to
explain evil by explaining away God, have I not also explained away any
possibility of the very just world I would so like to see?
Boethius’
dilemma seems quite formidable, and you and I also struggle with it in our own
ways. We might see why God could allow there to be bad men, so that we can
learn to fight the good fight. But this seems pointless if there is no chance
of winning the fight against them. They always seem to be one step ahead of us.
Written in 6/2015
Caligula: Would you trust this man to be your Emperor, or even sell you a used car?
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