Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.25

“If such a trial of argument occurred, should not we, who have within us the force of reasoning as well as the powers of the senses and imagination, approve of the cause of reason rather than that of the others? 

 

“It is in like manner that human reason thinks that the divine intelligence cannot perceive the things of the future except as it conceives them itself. For you argue thus: ‘If there are events which do not appear to have sure or necessary results, their results cannot be known for certain beforehand: therefore there can be no foreknowledge of these events; for if we believe that there is any foreknowledge thereof, there can exist nothing but such as is brought forth of necessity.’

 

“If therefore we, who have our share in possession of reason, could go further and possess the judgment of the mind of God, we should then think it most just that human reason should yield itself to the mind of God, just as we have determined that the senses and imagination ought to yield to reason.”

 

—from Book 5, Prose 5

 

Like a blind man telling a sighted man that there are no colors, or a thief telling a decent man it is impossible to be just, so the senses might proudly proclaim that reason is nothing but a pipe dream. The mind, however, gazes down on the senses, discerning them with the benefit of its own broader power, and can only smile with patient comprehension. 

 

It will be much the same when reason, though capable of learning about identities and causes, attempts to consider a more complete form of knowing than itself. 

 

It recognizes that its own awareness is incomplete, proceeding only by stages of experience and demonstration, and so it knows that it is bound within certain constraints.

 

Now reason can then go one of two ways: it can deny that there is any thought greater than itself, or it can admit, from grasping its own imperfection, that there must be a higher mind that is the fullness of perfection. 

 

Precisely by being conscious of what it is not, human reason thereby points to a consciousness of all that Is. The absence in me indicates a presence beyond me.

 

One of the limitations of my awareness is that I will perceive everything in terms of the passage of time and subject to constant change, observing events as if they flow from the past, through the present, and into the future. 

 

I will therefore speak of a foreknowledge as if it imposes some necessity on what is going to happen, when I should be trying to grasp, however incompletely, that the Divine Mind is beyond all time or change. 

 

Yes, that will make my head hurt, and I can only approach it in terms of what I am not, but it will be necessary to follow this path if I wish to peek beyond my human limitations. 

 

So if I say that a certain prediction of future events would remove any contingency, or if I deny human freedom because God knows what I will do, I should recognize that I am working from a misleading assumption. I see it merely as what will be, though God sees it as if it were an immediate present. 

 

My perspective is tripping me up, like the difference between being trapped in a maze and looking down at a maze from above. The mouse may be running frantically back and forth, confused about which way to turn, while the scientist in the white lab coat sees the whole pattern, wondering why the poor mouse is taking so long to find its way out. 

 

As the senses do not perceive as reason perceives, so reason does not perceive as intelligence perceives.

Written in 1/2016

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