Boethius, The Consolation 3.30

. . . “But,” she said, “I beg you, be sure that you accept with a sure conscience and determination this fact, that we have said that the highest Deity is filled with the highest good.”

”How should I think of it?” I asked.

“You must not think of God, the Father of all, whom we hold to be filled with the highest good, as having received this good into Himself from without, nor that He has it by nature in such a manner that you might consider Him, its possessor, and the happiness possessed, as having different essential existences.

“For if you think that good has been received from without, that which gave it must be more excellent than that which received it; but we have most rightly stated that He is the most excellent of all things.

“And if you think that it is in Him by His nature, but different in kind, then, while we speak of God as the fountainhead of all things, who could imagine by whom these different kinds can have been united?

“Lastly, that that is different from anything cannot be the thing from which it differs. So anything that is by its nature different from the highest good, cannot be the highest good.

"And this we must not think of God, than whom there is nothing more excellent, as we have agreed. Nothing in this world can have a nature which is better than its origin, wherefore I would conclude that that which is the origin of all things, according to the truest reasoning, is by its essence the highest good.”

“Most truly,” I said.

“You agree that the highest good is happiness?”

“Yes.”

“Then you must allow that God is absolute happiness?”

“I cannot deny what you put forward before, and I see that this follows necessarily from those propositions.” . . .

—from Book 3, Prose 10

So I begin to consider why the very idea of God, or of the Divine, or of the Transcendent, or of Providence, or of any other profound expression, seems to trouble me so much. Part of it is only a matter of the names we use; but names are just labels, signs we employ to point to something else.

Names may have certain associations for me, good or bad, and so I will often assume a meaning in things, when it is really only in me. Let me look beyond the signs, to the deeper reality behind them.

To avoid any subjective entrapments, let me simply speak, as Lady Philosophy often does, of the highest good, or of the perfect good. Perhaps I can find that neutral enough?

More fundamentally, however, I am still thinking in terms of finite creatures, that undergo change, that are divided and separated from one another, and that receive their goodness from something else, or whose goodness can somehow be considered separately from what they are.  

What Lady Philosophy suggests here is not “easy” philosophy, and this is especially frustrating for us in a time when the true and the false, the right and the wrong, are expected to be easy, presented to us in quick sound bites.

Still, I have managed my way through thousands of pages on such matters from Plato, Aristotle, or St. Thomas Aquinas, and Lady Philosophy’s rather brief version here gets straight to the point.

In this regard, the Consolation can be much like a handbook, or a quick reference guide, for so much of human wisdom. That is precisely what it was, for so many, throughout the Middle Ages.

Perhaps I err on the side of too much simplicity here, but I can at least begin with this. I will never wrap my mind around the highest good if I assume it acquires its good, or that it even possesses the good as other things may posses it. The highest good is good, with no parts, no attributes, and no supplements.

First, only incomplete and imperfect things are able to receive anything at all. A vessel cannot be filled any further if it is already full.

Second, there are many things I can perceive where their existence and their goodness are not the same thing at all, but with the highest good they must be one and the same.

I can’t add anything better to the best; I can’t remove the good from what is itself, by its very definition, the best.

Again, this is quite difficult if I only refer myself to what is relative. But Lady Philosophy’s argument is that there can never be anything relative without what is absolute. There can be no effects without causes. There can be nothing measured without a measure.

Indeed, this requires a major shift of thinking. I can’t demand it of anyone, but I one day saw it for myself, as completely clear as the hand in front of my face.

Further, if the perfect good is, it cannot be many, but it can only be one. If it were many, it would be broken apart, and not perfect at all.

I notice that when I call it the “highest good”, I am not quite as hesitant. Of course, because I have heard so many people, in so many ways, at so many times, tell me that life is all about division, opposition, and conflict, I become quite cynical. My happiness is not your happiness, they insist. Have you ever considered that they are actually the same?

But maybe most of us, even of those seeking a deeper purpose, are getting it all wrong? If the good we desire to be happy is the highest good, it is surely meant for all of us, and not just for some of us.

To be happy is to somehow share in the highest good. If God is, by definition, the highest good, however much my preferences or politics get in the way, am I not seeking to share in God? 

Written in 9/2015