Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 4.37

“But ‘hard is it for me to set forth all these matters as a god,’ nor is it right for a man to try to comprehend with his mind all the means of Divine working, or to explain them in words.

“Let it be enough that we have seen that God, the Creator of all Nature, directs and disposes all things for good. And while He urges all, that He has made manifest, to keep His own likeness, He drives out by the course of Fate all evil from the bounds of His state. Wherefore if you look to the disposition of Providence, you will reckon nothing as bad of all the evils which are held to abound upon earth.

“But I see that now you are weighed down by the burden of the question, and wearied by the length of our reasoning, and waiting for the gentleness of song. Take then your draught, be refreshed thereby and advance further the stronger.”

—from Book 4, Prose 6

Protagoras famously said that “Man is the measure of all things.” Some academics I know primarily attribute such thinking to modernity, though I would argue that it can be found in any time or place, precisely because it is an easy way to avoid coming to terms with anything ultimate beyond ourselves. It is both quite understandable and also quite dangerous.

I begin with my own awareness, and I recognize that my comprehension has it limits. Much passes before it, but not all of it is clear. I feel the effects, though I do not directly see the causes. I engage with the parts, but the whole seems to spread beyond my horizon.

Two ways are now open to me.

I may embrace humility by admitting that I am not everything, or I may embrace pride by insisting that I am everything.

I may accept that the world is only just starting where I stop, or I may believe that it all stops until I say start.

I may only allow it to be true if I fully know it, or I may allow that there are so many truths I do not yet know.

For better or for worse, I eventually committed my life to the former path, that a mystery, as the pithy saying has it, is not something about which we know nothing, but rather something about which we don’t know everything. All that is real is bigger than all that is me, or all that I can wrap my own hands around.

I learned quickly that I could not think as God thought, but this did not mean that God did not think, or that I could not know that my imperfect thinking wasn’t the same as His perfect thinking. I learned quickly that I had a role to play, but this did not mean that I wrote the play, as much as I knew there was an author.

I see through a glass darkly, and yet I still see.

My own reason tells me that all relative degrees of being are only possible through an Absolute, and that what is Absolute can admit of no weakness.

I can grow frustrated, and become angry, and point the finger of blame when I do not understand all the inner workings, and yet I can still understand that there is something bigger at work, something to which I can offer my complete awe, reverence, and trust.

Does it feel so evil to me at the moment? As mysterious as it may seem, I can still know that it is allowed to be there in the service of some more profound good.

Written in 12/2015