Boethius, The Consolation 1.25

“First then,” she continued, “will you let me find out and make trial of the state of your mind by a few small questions, so that I may understand what should be the method of your treatment?”

“Ask,” I said, “what your judgment would have you ask, and I will answer you.”

Then she said, “Do you think that this Universe is guided only at random and by mere chance? Or do you think there is any rule of reason constituted in it?”

“No, never would I think it could be so, nor believe that such sure motions could be made at random or by chance. I know that God, the founder of the Universe, does look over His work, nor ever may that day come that shall drive me to abandon this belief as untrue.”

“So is it,” she said, “and even as you cried just now, and only mourned that mankind alone has no part in this Divine guardianship, you were fixed in your belief that all other things are ruled by reason. How strange!

“I wonder how it is that you can be so sick, though you are set in such a health-giving state of mind! But let us look deeper into it. I cannot but think there is something lacking. Since you are not in doubt that the Universe is ruled by God, tell me by what method you think that

government is guided?”

'I scarcely know the meaning of your question, much less can I answer it.”

“Was I wrong,” she said, “to think that something was lacking, that there was some opening in your armor, some way by which this distracting disease has crept into your soul?

“But tell me, do you remember what is the aim and end of all things? What is the object to which all nature tends?”

“I have heard indeed, but grief has blunted my memory.”

“But do you not somehow know from where all things have their source?”

“Yes,” I said; “that source is God.”

“Is it possible that you, who know the beginning of all things, should not know their end?” . . .  

—from Book 1, Prose 6

Even at a time where the pendulum of fashion has swung so far away of from a sense of piety, many people will still appeal to the Divine as a measure. We swear by the name of God, we appeal to Him when we want to be right, we cry out to Him when we think someone else is wrong.

There is, I suppose, something comforting in having a fixed reference point, even when we don’t need to turn to it all that often. When I lived in Boston, for example, I would always pride myself on knowing where all the stops on the subway were, and how to get from any one point in town to any other. That was, of course, until I somehow got a bit lost on the Blue Line one day, and I was quite grateful for one of those big maps of the whole system they have posted in the stations.  It’s good to know it’s there if I need it.

A danger, however, can be in always assuming the map is there for reference, but then not being able to read it when I turn to it. The London Underground map would often do that to me, because I couldn’t quite relate that tangled web of colored lines on a white background to an actual geographical map of the city. I was simply not familiar enough with all the names and landmarks to make proper sense of it at first.

Boethius finds himself in a similar situation, not in getting from one end of town to the other, but in getting from one end of his life to the other. He has forgotten who he is, not just where he is. It’s time to get some reference points on the map of life.

Now Lady Philosophy asks him if he thinks the world follows some sort of order, or if it is just chaotic, and Boethius is very quick to answer how he is absolutely certain that God rules everything with purpose and design. I almost sense that he is bit offended to have that belief questioned.

But Boethius needs to have that belief questioned, as we all do, so that we may understand why it is that we happen to believe something. It is certainly odd that a man, who had just cried out how fortune and chance had ruined his life, would now suddenly insist that the Universe is all quite reasonable.

I have done much the same myself, whenever I accept something to be true in broad theory, but have absolutely no sense of how it works in immediate practice. I say I know the principles by which a combustion engine works, but I’m likely to be scratching my head when I break down on the drive to work.

It is fair enough to say that God rules everything, but it would be of great help to have some sense of how He goes about ruling it. How do the pieces fit together, and act upon one another, within the function of the whole? Lady Philosophy sees that Boethius thinks there are rules, and she now asks him what those rules might be. He is confounded, and seems not to know what she means by the question.

A way to express this is that Boethius knows that God made him and everything else, where it all came from, but he is uncertain about what God made him and everything else for, where it is all going to. This could be something like recognizing the station on the subway you started at, but being clueless about the actual destination.

Trusting in a Divine order will be of little use to me if I don’t understand my place in that order. If God made me, why did he make me? For what sort of end?

Some of us may give a word-for-word textbook answer we memorized in a religion class years ago, and some of us will have no answer at all, but most of us are unable to think our way through this with any clarity. It’s like a big confusing spot on the map, right on the bit we know we need to pass through. “Here dwell dragons” isn’t the answer we need.

Lady Philosophy is certainly beginning to diagnose the problem. 

Written in 7/2015

"Um, a little help, please?"