Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.7

“Homer with his honeyed lips

sang of the bright sun's clear light;

yet the sun cannot burst with his feeble rays

the bowels of the earth or the depths of the sea.

Not so with the Creator of this great sphere.

No masses of earth can block His vision as He looks over all.

Night's cloudy darkness cannot resist Him.

With one glance of His intelligence

He sees all that has been,

that is,

 and that is to come.

He alone can see all things,

so truly He may be called the Sun.”

—from Book 5, Poem 2

All analogies are implicitly incomplete, and those concerning the Divine will be especially so, given that we try to describe an infinite and perfect Creator by means of finite and imperfect creatures. To say, for example, that God is like a mighty fortress is quite helpful in one sense, but can also be misleading in another.

Nevertheless, certain images are especially powerful when it comes to describing what is absolute and transcendent, and so mythology and philosophy from many different traditions will often speak of light as a symbol for wisdom and truth, and the Sun as a symbol for the very source of all wisdom and truth.

Light makes things clear and visible, provides warmth and comfort, and is one of the necessary conditions for us to live. I would be a fool to try to stare straight into the Sun, and yet I see everything by means of the Sun. Where there is light we think of a fulfilling presence, and where there is darkness we think of a disturbing absence.

Yet even the light of the Sun cannot reach all places or penetrate within all things. If I consider that all beings are only possible through the unity of Being, that every particular is but a ray of emanation for the Universal, then I will also understand that nothing is beyond the reach of that which is everything.

Wherever there is existence, there it is present, not coming from the outside in, but proceeding from the inside out. Wherever there is action, there is the Mind that guides all action. Past, present, and future, and every little aspect, are completely known to it.

I feel relieved to be aware that nothing is in vain, that nothing is beyond the totality and design of what is, but I may now be troubled by something else: how do I, as only a part, fit into the totality of the whole? What will become of me when God not only knows where I came from, and who I am now, but also exactly where I will be going?

Boethius will now struggle mightily with this problem, and he will challenge Lady Philosophy about how much he can possibly matter in the face of what is omnipotent and omniscient.

Written in 1/2016