Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.38

M. But as the cause of perturbations is now discovered, for all of them arise from the judgment or opinion, or volition, I shall put an end to this discourse. 
 
But we ought to be assured, since the boundaries of good and evil are now discovered, as far as they are discoverable by man, that nothing can be desired of philosophy greater or more useful than the discussions which we have held these four days. 
 
For besides instilling a contempt of death, and relieving pain so as to enable men to bear it, we have added the appeasing of grief, than which there is no greater evil to man. For though every perturbation of mind is grievous, and differs but little from madness, yet we are used to say of others when they are under any perturbation, as of fear, joy, or desire, that they are agitated and disturbed; but of those who give themselves up to grief, that they are miserable, afflicted, wretched, unhappy. 
 
So that it does not seem to be by accident, but with reason proposed by you, that I should discuss grief, and the other perturbations separately; for there lies the spring and head of all our miseries; but the cure of grief, and of other disorders, is one and the same in that they are all voluntary, and founded on opinion; we take them on ourselves because it seems right so to do. 
 
Philosophy undertakes to eradicate this error, as the root of all our evils: let us therefore surrender ourselves to be instructed by it, and suffer ourselves to be cured; for while these evils have possession of us, we not only cannot be happy, but cannot be right in our minds. 
 
We must either deny that reason can effect anything, while, on the other hand, nothing can be done right without reason, or else, since philosophy depends on the deductions of reason, we must seek from her, if we would be good or happy, every help and assistance for living well and happily. 

—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 4.38 
 
Though troubles within the emotions may take on many forms, and express themselves to different degrees, their root cause is always one and the same: the way I am inclined to feel will only be as good or as bad as the way I choose to think. I hardly believe this diminishes the significance of the passions, but rather offers the proper context for their deeper meaning. 
 
This is a blessed relief for me, because I need no longer suffer under the illusion that my pain is somehow beyond my power. Do I find myself drowning in gratification, or driven to lust, or laid low by grief, or consumed by fear? By attending to my own judgements about the true nature of benefit and harm, I can learn to find the strength inside of me, instead of relying on the circumstances outside of me. I am now free to stand on my own two feet, not to be tossed about by fortune. 
 
While grief may seem to be the most oppresive of these disorders, for it has such an immediate knack for stifling any possibility of joy, all four varieties are ultimately problems of estimation. Instead of crying out, “Why has this happened to me?”, I retain the option of stating clearly, “You will only harm me as much as I permit you to do so. My happiness is for me to determine!” 
 
This will not come to me magically, or just by wishing, or without my rigorous effort: it demands the formation of a conscience, which is, in turn, a fruit of philosophy, understood in its most vital sense. A book won’t be enough, and a fancy degree won’t cut it, and it certainly has nothing to do with putting on an intellectual charade, since philosophy is only of use when we join the theory and the practice, the ideal to the real, the thinking with the doing. 
 
When Cicero insists that a love of wisdom is the cure, I do not imagine a stern portrait of a whiskered man. I instead find inspiration by turning to one of my favorite paintings by Mattia Preti, in which Lady Philosophy offers comfort to the despondent Boethius, whose adversity illustrates the challenges each one of us must face. She presents him with hard reasons, not cheap excuses, and that is surely the greatest kindness. 

—Reflection written in 1/1999 

IMAGE: Mattia Preti, Boethius and Philosophy (c. 1680) 

The Liberal Arts 7

Philosophy Presenting the Seven Liberal Arts to Boethius (14th century)

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.34

“Thus, therefore, mortal men have their freedom of judgment intact. And since their wills are freed from all binding necessity, laws do not set rewards or punishments unjustly. 

 

“God is ever the constant foreknowing overseer, and the ever-present eternity of His sight moves in harmony with the future nature of our actions, as it dispenses rewards to the good, and punishments to the bad. 

 

“Hopes are not vainly put in God, nor prayers in vain offered: if these are right, they cannot but be answered. 

 

“Turn therefore from vice and ensue virtue; raise your soul to upright hopes; send up on high your prayers from this earth. 

 

“If you would be honest, great is the necessity enjoined upon your goodness, since all you do is done before the eyes of an all-seeing Judge.”

 

—from Book 5, Prose 6

 

Finding myself at the last lines of the Consolation is always bittersweet for me. How could one possibly end this journey? Exactly in this way, with only a few words, charged with a life-changing meaning. 

 

Boethius would go off to die soon after he wrote this passage, and it is said that he died in quite a brutal manner. 

 

Well, I too will go off to die soon, as we all will, whatever the degree of final suffering. What will matter for me is what I did with all the circumstances of my life, both the pleasant and the painful, and whether I chose to make use of those experiences for the better or for the worse. 

 

I am tempted to write pages upon pages of further reflections here, but Boethius has already written enough, and I have already scribbled down far too much. In brief, what have I learned? 

 

I know that the Universe is not ruled by randomness or chance, since nothing comes from nothing. I also know that wherever there is more or less of anything, there must be an Absolute Something. 

 

I then know that nothing is outside of the consciousness and power of the Divine, and that Providence orders all things rightly, even when I do not see it at the time. 

 

I then know that living by Nature will always distribute justice, while living by Fortune will always bring restlessness; I will understand this when I perceive where the true human good is to be found. 

 

I then know that it is eminently reasonable to trust in God, to be open to grace, and to reach out in prayer. This is not a matter of wishful thinking or blind superstition, but rather an expression of the unity of all things, the lesser informed by the greater. 

 

I then know that my own freedom is made to work within the whole, not against it. The difference between my own virtue and vice will be the difference between my own happiness and misery. 

 

In all of this, I do not need to fight with anyone, or be consumed by jealousy and resentment, or succumb to despair, or demand anything that Nature has not already provided for me. I can find peace in the exercise of my own character, safe in the awareness that this precisely why I was created. 

 

This is how one particular volume ends; it is now up to me to take what I have learned, and to put it into practice. 

 

Nothing noble is ever in vain. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.33

 

“’But," you will say, ‘if it is in my power to change a purpose of mine, I will disregard Providence, since I may change what Providence foresees.’

 

“To which I answer, ‘You can change your purpose, but since the truth of Providence knows in its present that you can do so, and whether you do so, and in what direction you may change it, therefore you cannot escape that Divine foreknowledge: just as you cannot avoid the glance of a present eye, though you may by your free will turn yourself to all kinds of different actions.’

 

 "’What?’ you will say, ‘can I by my own action change Divine knowledge, so that if I choose now one thing, now another, Providence too will seem to change its knowledge?’ 

 

“No; Divine insight precedes all future things, turning them back and recalling them to the present time of its own peculiar knowledge. It does not change, as you may think, between this and that alternation of foreknowledge. It is constant in preceding and embracing by one glance all your changes. 

 

“And God does not receive this ever-present grasp of all things and vision of the present at the occurrence of future events, but from His own peculiar directness. Whence also is that difficulty solved which you laid down a little while ago, that it was not worthy to say that our future events were the cause of God's knowledge. For this power of knowledge, ever in the present and embracing all things in its perception, does itself constrain all things, and owes nothing to following events from which it has received nothing.” 

 

—from Book 5, Prose 6

 

Now perhaps I might believe that I can still “trick” God, that I can outwit Him by changing my mind. He looks over, and sees me doing one thing, but then I turn to do something else, and so I have messed up the whole plan. 

 

If I am somehow still thinking this way, I haven’t really been following along with the argument. It may seem rather childish of me, and yet this remains a quite common form of adult behavior, the manipulation of impressions to cover up a reality. I shouldn’t be trying to do that in human affairs, as a matter of my own character, but it is quite impossible for me to do that when it comes to Providence. 

 

I can certainly change myself, since that power has been conditionally gifted to me within Divine omnipotence. I cannot, however, change Divine omniscience, since that power transcends to the level of what is Absolute. Only imperfect creatures undergo change, while a perfect Creator is completely unchanging. 

 

Remember, “it has been” or “it will be” are human modes of perception; Divine existence rests in an “it is”. There is no receiving there, no absence there, only Being.

 

When I am playing games with appearances, which is really only a reflection of my own lack of integrity, I am assuming that others must be limited in their awareness, and I try to take advantage of that fact for my own gain. 

 

In a sense, it is like I am pretending to be a little god, deciding who gets to know what. A wise friend once firmly told me: “You can lie to yourself, and you can lie to your neighbors, but there’s no lying to the Universe. It has you all figured out, and there is no hiding from it.”

 

This is excellent advice. It isn’t even like I will eventually be exposed, the fear of every deceiver; I am already exposed, and I am only pulling the wool over my own eyes for the moment. 

 

Like any good geek, I do enjoy the metaphysical speculation about the possibility of time travel, and yet all of it really hinges on a question of logical order, where we run into contradictions with an opposition between past, present, and future. 

 

To truly become time travelers would actually require us to no longer be subject to the sequence of time, in which case it wouldn’t really be traveling anymore, would it? It would be existing as an eternal presence, and that is nothing less than becoming Divine. 

 

I can stand at a crossroads, and I can look right or left, forwards or backwards, considering all the possible paths and outcomes. For me, it has not yet come to be, and I will still choose to go this way or that. 

 

For Providence, my own freedom is certainly there, but all of it is there, with no unfolding. Maybe this frightens me? It can just as easily comfort me, in knowing that as long as I wish to be, I will always be held safe and secure. I hardly need to escape from Providence, since it contains within itself the fullness of all that is true, good, and beautiful. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.32

“‘What then,’ you may ask, ‘is the difference in their not being bound by necessity, since they result under all circumstances as by necessity, on account of the condition of Divine knowledge?’
 
“This is the difference, as I just now put forward: take the sun rising and a man walking; while these operations are occurring, they cannot but occur: but the one was bound to occur before it did; the other was not so bound. What God has in His present, does exist without doubt; but of such things some follow by necessity, others by their authors' wills. 
 
“Wherefore I was justified in saying that if these things be regarded from the view of Divine knowledge, they are necessary, but if they are viewed by themselves, they are perfectly free from all ties of necessity: just as when you refer all, that is clear to the senses, to the reason, it becomes general truth, but it remains particular if regarded by itself.”
 
—from Book 5, Prose 6
 
Though it should hardly surprise me, considering how often I have re-read the book, certain images from the Consolation have become like reference points for me, and they will pop up in my thinking at the oddest of times, firmly but kindly reminding me of how to find peace within Nature. 
 
One of them is the picture, back in Book Two, of the man with empty pockets whistling his way past the robber. It returns to me whenever I am complaining about my circumstances, bemoaning that life is unfair, and seething with resentment toward both God and man. 
 
Now what was really the source of my dissatisfaction? Craving things I did not need in order to be happy, and defining myself by forces well beyond my power were my downfall. If I had not wanted vain and petty things, then vain and petty men would not be of any threat to me at all. 
 
Another is the picture presented here, of the sun rising and a man walking. I have my own version of it, foraged from a long-ago memory of getting up very early to go on a mission of love. It returns to me whenever I get confused and despondent about freedom and fate, not in a textbook sort of way, but in the very immediate sense of whether my choices ever make any difference. 
 
Whatever has happened, or is happening, or will happen must, quite simply, happen. That sounds like a silly tautology, and, in a sense, it is precisely that. If it takes place, then it takes place, regardless of when it occurs; for Providence, there will be no distinction of past, present, and future, even as there is one for me. 
 
And yet all of these events follow from their own particular causes, which are themselves permitted within Divine omnipotence and omniscience. 
 
The sun rises for its own reasons, and it is ordained to do so by certain determined laws of Nature. I rise for my own reasons, and I do so from my own self-determining judgment, also as a part of Nature. 
 
The former is a simple necessity, because the sun chooses nothing in the matter, while the latter is a conditional necessity, because I have been the one to decide.
 
God, however I may choose to understand Him, made all things in specific ways. Some were made with no freedom, and others were made with degrees of freedom. 
 
That the Divine has absolute power over all creatures does not exclude autonomy, since it is within the realm of power to both restrict and to permit. That the Divine has absolute knowledge of all creatures does not hinder free will, since it is within the realm of awareness to be conscious of what it did not itself directly determine. 
 
Recall, by analogy, that I could well have stopped my children from breaking that iPad, but I did not do so. Recall that I knew what would happen, but I did not make it so. 
 
The sun could not have refused to rise that morning, but I could certainly have followed my better judgment, and refused to let myself play the fool. I could have stayed at home, and read a good book, and left all those confused passions right where they were, allowing others to live their lives as they best saw fit. I did not need to have any further part in it, and yet I made the call. 
 

For better or for worse, it went as it did. That God knew this long “before” I was even born reflects the harmony, and not the conflict, of freedom and fate, 

Written in 2/2016

 

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.31

“Wherefore this foreknowledge is not opinion but knowledge resting upon truth, since He knows that a future event is, though He knows too that it will not occur of necessity. If you answer here that what God sees about to happen, cannot but happen, and that what cannot but happen is bound by necessity, you fasten me down to the word necessity. I will grant that we have a matter of most firm truth, but it is one to which scarce any man can approach unless he be a contemplator of the divine. 

 
“For I shall answer that such a thing will occur of necessity, when it is viewed from the point of divine knowledge; but when it is examined in its own nature, it seems perfectly free and unrestrained. 
 
“For there are two kinds of necessities; one is simple: for instance, a necessary fact, ‘all men are mortal’; the other is conditional; for instance, if you know that a man is walking, he must be walking: for what each man knows cannot be otherwise than it is known to be; but the conditional one is by no means followed by this simple and direct necessity; for there is no necessity to compel a voluntary walker to proceed, though it is necessary that, if he walks, he should be proceeding. 
 
“In the same way, if Providence sees an event in its present, that thing must be, though it has no necessity of its own nature. And God looks in His present upon those future things which come to pass through free will. 
 
“Therefore if these things be looked at from the point of view of God's insight, they come to pass of necessity under the condition of Divine knowledge; if, on the other hand, they are viewed by themselves, they do not lose the perfect freedom of their nature. 
 
“Without doubt, then, all things that God foreknows do come to pass, but some of them proceed from free will; and though they result by coming into existence, yet they do not lose their own nature, because before they came to pass they could also not have come to pass.
 
—from Book 5, Prose 6
 
That for God all places are a here, and that all times are a now, should help us to grasp that our own human limitations of space and time are causing our problems with foreknowledge. 
 
Providence does not somehow guess at what will happen, but from its absolute viewpoint knows, with complete certainty, what is happening. It also immediately perceives how the particular causes within Nature are bringing about what appears to us like a process or an unfolding. 
 
Our mistake has been to assume that the certainty of such knowledge must be causing the events, when a reflection back our own awareness of the present shows that this need not be the case. Even my narrow mind can know with certainty what is occurring, and that does not make my mind the agent of what occurs. 
 
Now the words can still trip me up, because when I see that God’s understanding is necessary, I will instinctively apply that backwards to the events. Lady Philosophy makes a subtle but important distinction about the range of what we can mean by the term “necessity”:
 
A simple necessity is one where the nature of something does not allow it to be otherwise, that it must be so without any other possibilities. 
 
That a square must have four sides, or that a cat is a mammal, or that a man has reason follow from the very definitions of the terms. As a wonderful student of mine used to say, “There is no wiggle room on that!”
 
A conditional necessity is one where the nature of something does indeed allow it to be otherwise, that it can possess any number of possibilities, but once it has followed one path it must be on that path. 
 
That a triangle could have different sides or angles, or that a cat could have various patterns of fur, or that a man could be sleeping or awake are all different options for those things, depending on the presence or absence of other factors. Still, it is then bound to the one or the other. “There’s some wiggle room, but not after you lock it down!”
 
When it comes to human judgment, which allows a person to make free choices, our actions can be spoken of as conditional. When choices have been made, they can be spoken of as necessary. For us, these are separated by a context of before and after, while for Providence there is no separation of before and after. 
 
A human example will never be entirely accurate, but I think of a memorable moment when my two children were arguing over who could use an old iPad we had asked them to learn to share. They bickered and grabbed, growing ever louder and angrier, and at that very moment I could see, with about as much certainty as is humanly possible, what was going to happen if I did not intervene. I knew their temperaments, and I knew how fragile that piece of electronics was. 
 
I made a call on the spot, hoping it might be an object lesson, and quietly watched them go at it. Needless to say, one of the pushes led to the device flying through the air, then crashing onto the kitchen floor. The screen was now cracked, and both of them stared with silent horror. 
 
“And now,” I said in as fatherly a tone as I could, “neither of you have it. You both made the choice.” 
 
I suppose I am pleased that they both recall this many years later, and that they will gladly tell the story of how it taught them that Dad is occasionally right. 
 
My paternal foresight is hardly Providence, but it has a few things in common. I knew where it was all going, and yet they were the ones that made it go. I could have stopped them, and yet I let them have their own way. They came from me, but now they were making themselves. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.30

“Since then, all judgment apprehends the subjects of its thought according to its own nature, and God has a condition of ever-present eternity, His knowledge, which passes over every change of time, embracing infinite lengths of past and future, views in its own direct comprehension everything as though it were taking place in the present. 

 

“If you would weigh the foreknowledge by which God distinguishes all things, you will more rightly hold it to be a knowledge of a never-failing constancy in the present, than a foreknowledge of the future. Whence Providence is more rightly to be understood as a looking forth than a looking forward, because it is set far from low matters and looks forth upon all things as from a lofty mountain-top above all. 

 

“Why then do you demand that all things occur by necessity, if Divine light rests upon them, while men do not render necessary such things as they can see? Because you can see things of the present, does your sight therefore put upon them any necessity? Surely not. If one may not unworthily compare this present time with the Divine, just as you can see things in this your temporal present, so God sees all things in His eternal present. 

 

“Wherefore this Divine foreknowledge does not change the nature or individual qualities of things: it sees things present in its understanding just as they will result some time in the future. It makes no confusion in its distinctions, and with one view of its mind it discerns all that shall come to pass whether of necessity or not. 

 

“For instance, when you see at the same time a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the heavens, you see each sight simultaneously, yet you distinguish between them, and decide that one is moving voluntarily, the other of necessity. In like manner the perception of God looks down upon all things without disturbing at all their nature, though they are present to Him, but future under the conditions of time.”

 

—from Book 5, Prose 6

 

Whenever I feel confused by a problem, whether in the form of a refined abstraction or an immediate experience, I have often found it helpful to do two things. 

 

First, I should understand that the source of my difficulty is most likely in my own limitations of perception, and not in the very structure of reality itself. The latter, of course, would become quite unbearable, but the former can be made quite bearable. 

 

How am I failing to think of the trouble as broadly as I can, instead of despairing that there can ever be a satisfying answer? 

 

Second, given that I most likely need to fix my own perspective, what familiar tools, close at hand and within the scope of my awareness, can I employ to make the situation clearer to me? 

 

If the terms I am using are too slippery to grab a hold of, then let me turn to examples that are easier to manage. I can start with what is nearer to me to rise up to what is further from me. 

 

The conundrum of foreknowledge and freedom has really arisen because Boethius, or most anyone who first approaches the question, gets tripped up by the context of time. The human mind, subject to change, sees things as moving through past, present, and future, while the Divine Mind, absolute and eternal in its being, sees all things as if they were present. 

 

And the use of “as if” is surely important, since we can only speak of such consciousness through the scale of our familiarity. It is useful to think of God’s awareness as constantly looking “forth” at a now, not as looking “forward” to what will be. 

 

As a child, one of my favorite trips involved climbing up a rocky hill in the middle of the town I’d been born in, and observing all the people going about their business on the streets below. Even at a young age, I innocently wondered if they could tell that someone was watching them, or if being looked down at from a height above could somehow change what they would choose to do. 

 

Years later, I would find it very soothing to do much the same from the top floors of the Hancock or Prudential towers in Boston. 

 

It is quite silly, of course, and more than a bit presumptuous, to suggest that my seeing of other people in any way makes them to act in a certain manner. Quite the contrary, what they are doing causes me to perceive them, not that my perceiving them causes them to do anything. Why should it be any different with Providence?

 

“Yes, but what if you could see what they were going to do ten minutes, or an hour, or a year ahead of time? Wouldn’t that force it all into place?”

 

I must once again remember, the distinction of “now” and “then” does not exist in the completeness of eternity. Just as I see some things currently, God sees all things currently. 

 

The image Lady Philosophy uses, one of watching the sun rising and a man walking, is extremely useful, since it so common and everyday. 

 

The motions of the heavenly bodies, including the Earth itself, follow from certain laws governing matter, and the choice of a fellow deciding to take a stroll proceeds from the movements of his own judgment. 

 

I may observe both happening right now, and yet I am completely aware that each comes to be in its own distinct way, to different degrees of necessity, and that they are in no way brought into being by my perception. 

 

It is, in the simplest of terms, not the knowledge that makes the event, but the event that makes the knowledge. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.29

“What we should rightly call eternal is that which grasps and possesses wholly and simultaneously the fullness of unending life, which lacks nothing of the future, and has lost nothing of the fleeting past; and such an existence must be ever present in itself to control and aid itself, and also must keep present with itself the infinity of changing time. 

 
“Therefore, people who hear that Plato thought that this Universe had no beginning of time and will have no end, are not right in thinking that in this way the created world is co-eternal with its Creator. For to pass through unending life, the attribute which Plato ascribes to the Universe is one thing; but it is another thing to grasp simultaneously the whole of unending life in the present; this is plainly a peculiar property of the mind of God. 
 
“And further, God should not be regarded as older than His creations by any period of time, but rather by the peculiar property of His own single Nature. For the infinite changing of temporal things tries to imitate the ever simultaneously present immutability of His life: it cannot succeed in imitating or equaling this, but sinks from immutability into change, and falls from the single directness of the present into an infinite space of future and past. 
 
“And since this temporal state cannot possess its life completely and simultaneously, but it does in the same manner exist for ever without ceasing, it therefore seems to try in some degree to rival that which it cannot fulfill or represent, for it binds itself to some sort of present time out of this small and fleeting moment; but inasmuch as this temporal present bears a certain appearance of that abiding present, it somehow makes those, to whom it comes, seem to be in truth what they imitate. 
 
“But since this imitation could not be abiding, the unending march of time has swept it away, and thus we find that it has bound together, as it passes, a chain of life, which it could not by abiding embrace in its fullness. And thus, if we would apply proper epithets to those subjects, we can say, following Plato, that God is eternal, but the Universe is continual.”
 
—from Book 5, Prose 6
 
When I first read this passage many years ago, I was immediately taken by the image of the creatures, existing in the limits of time, striving to grow in perfection, and trying to emulate the completeness of the Creator, existing beyond the limits of time. 
 
Yes, it is partly the hopeless romantic in me, I’m sure, but I would like to think that it is also a hazy reflection of what actually goes on, each and every day, as people rise and fall, succeed and fail, learn to love and learn to let go. 
 
There is a reason why we fight tooth and nail to become richer in being, even if we don’t always understand what we are doing, or why we are doing it. Even when we confuse right and wrong, better and worse, that irresistible urge gets to the heart of the matter. I can deny God all I want, and yet everything I do is to become more like Him. The concept of God is only a hindrance when I am thinking too small. 
 
I must be careful here not to conceive of a Divine transcendence at the expense of a Divine immanence, as if what is beyond time is somehow far distant from me. 
 
I remember what Lady Philosophy told me earlier, that while the lower cannot exist in the same way as the higher, the higher always includes within itself the lower. Providence is closer to me than I am to myself, though I do not see it at the time. 
 
Perhaps my choice of saying that God is “beyond” time is not quite right; perhaps it would be better to say that I don’t quite live up to the eternity, that I am mere becoming instead of being. What I am is only one tiny aspect of All that is. 
 
Following St. Augustine, I once again also remember: 
 
And I viewed the other things below You, and perceived that they neither altogether are, nor altogether are they not. They are, indeed, because they are from You. But they are not, because they are not what You are. For that truly is which remains immutably.
 
There is no part without the whole, nothing relative without the absolute, no change without the changeless. 
 
Time may go on forever and ever, but creatures have their bounds. Accordingly, they undergo a process, where the end of one thing transforms into the beginning of another. I have a lovely image of one of my other heroes, Marcus Aurelius, nodding his head in approval. 
 
Will I end, at least in the form I am now? Yes, and that is right and good. Will God end? It’s a nonsense question, since what is eternal has no beginning or end, and that is what is best. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.28

“Since then all that is known is apprehended, as we just now showed, not according to its nature but according to the nature of the knower, let us examine, so far as we lawfully may, the character of the Divine Nature, so that we may be able to learn what its knowledge is. 
 
“The common opinion, according to all men living, is that God is eternal. Let us therefore consider what is eternity. For eternity will, I think, make clear to us at the same time the Divine Nature and knowledge. 
 
“Eternity is the simultaneous and complete possession of infinite life. This will appear more clearly if we compare it with temporal things. 
 
“All that lives under the conditions of time moves through the present from the past to the future; there is nothing set in time which can at one moment grasp the whole space of its lifetime. It cannot yet comprehend tomorrow; yesterday it has already lost. 
 
“And in this life of today your life is no more than a changing, passing moment. 
 
“And as Aristotle said of the Universe, so it is of all that is subject to time; though it never began to be, nor will ever cease, and its life is co-extensive with the infinity of time, yet it is not such as can be held to be eternal. For though it apprehends and grasps a space of infinite lifetime, it does not embrace the whole simultaneously; it has not yet experienced the future.”
 
—from Book 5, Prose 6
 
The school of hard knocks has taught me to be very careful when someone promises an eternity, almost as much as when someone swears undying love. Combine the two terms together, and you may face the prospect of the gravest disappointment. 
 
This is not necessarily because we don’t mean well, but because we don’t always understand precisely what we are saying. Love isn’t just a current pleasure, and an eternity is something more than just the foreseeable future. 
 
If I am ever going to gain some insights on Divine knowledge, however indirectly and incompletely, I will have to grapple with what it means for such knowledge to be eternal.
 
Perhaps I am imagining eternity like some line with no beginning and with no ending, always continuing on and on in both directions. 
 
Perhaps it is like an infinite number, where something else can always still be added to it. 
 
Perhaps I am picturing the familiar symbols, that sideways eight, or a snake eating its own tail, where everything is always coming around again, right back to where it started. 
 
Lady Philosophy might say that I am then describing what goes on forever, or what is potentially infinite, but I am not quite describing what is eternal, or what is actually infinite. The distinction will be between what remains determined by time, and what is in and of itself timeless. 
 
My use of words like “continuing”, and “adding”, and “coming and going” are getting in my way. 
 
Both Aristotle and Einstein, working from very different perspectives and in very different circumstances, wondered if time had any absolute existence, or if it was relative. 
 
Both came to the conclusion that time is measured by motion and change, just as space is measure by extension, and that there is no such thing as “time” at all where there is no variation. 
 
Eternity is something far more profound than what is forever. While change might be infinite, as with the Universe Aristotle postulated, eternity is an infinity that is changeless. 
 
It is all as if it were like a constant now, the only analogy I can use to comprehend it. There is no past, because nothing has gone away. There is no future, because nothing will still come to be. 
 
My own life passes, while in the life of God nothing passes at all. It is, in all the beauty of its simplicity and perfection. Where there is only absolute Being, there is nothing lost or gained, because everything is completely present.. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.27

“In what different shapes 
do living beings move upon the earth! 
Some make flat their bodies, 
sweeping through the dust and using their strength 
to make therein a furrow without break; 
some flit here and there upon light wings which beat the breeze, 
and they float through vast tracks of air in their easy flight. 
It is others' wont to plant their footsteps on the ground, 
and pass with their paces over green fields or under trees. 
Though all these you see move in different shapes, 
yet all have their faces downward along the ground, 
and this draws downward and dulls their senses. 
Alone of all, the human race lifts up its head on high, 
and stands in easy balance with the body upright, 
and so looks down to spurn the earth. 
If you are not too earthly by an evil folly, 
this pose is as a lesson. 
Your glance is upward, and you carry high your head, 
and thus your search is heavenward:
then lead your soul too upward, 
lest while the body is higher raised, 
the mind sinks lower to the earth.” 
 
—from Book 5, Poem 5
 
The analogy is a beautiful one, though I hesitate to take it too literally or pridefully, as when I overheard one of my middle school students mocking that he was obviously the closest to God, since he was the tallest in the class. From that day forward I put a toy giraffe on my desk, as a shared reminder of humility. It has, over the years, become a wonderful conversation starter. 
 
A man can rise up, and survey what is around him and above him, not just because he can stand on two legs, but because he is granted the power of a mind. The distinctly human shape is characterized by the spirit as much as by the body; the spindly frame contains a vast sense of wonder. 
 
Even if it is housed within a material vessel, reason has the power to transcend its own particular nature by learning something about the whole of Nature. It admittedly does so in stops and starts, and only by beginning with the limited medium of the senses, and yet its capacity to compose and divide universal ideas is what can elevate a person beyond himself, striving to understand things from a higher perspective. 
 
He not only is presented with the what, but also reflects upon the why. 
 
I have often been told that this is all nice and well for a scientist, or a philosopher, or a theologian, even as it is totally unnecessary for everyone else. “The rest of us just have to go on living, and so we don’t need any of the fancy thinking!”
 
But don’t we see that even the most basic act of living already presumes conclusions about what is true or false, good or bad? A very statement about not needing to think is itself an act of thinking, not unlike certain philosophers who say they understand that man is incapable of understanding. Taking the reason out of a man is like taking the round out of a circle, or the finicky out of a cat.
 
It isn’t whether or not we’re thinking, but whether or not we’re thinking well. 
 
On some days I stare at my shoes, because I’m afraid to look anywhere else. Still, it is my own free judgment that has limited me to that view.
 
On other days I venture to look at some of the things closest to me, but no further, because I’m only stubbornly interested in the trees, not the fullness of the forest. Still, it is my own free judgment that has limited me to that view. 
 
Then, on the best of days, I look up, and I want to see what is around that corner, and over the horizon, and I know that it is only by rising up that I will gain the broader view. That is what my free judgment was made for. 

Written in 2/2016

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.26

“Let us therefore raise ourselves, if it so be that we can, to that height of the loftiest intelligence. 
 
“For there reason will see what it cannot of itself perceive, and that is to know how even such things as have uncertain results are perceived definitely and for certain by foreknowledge; and such foreknowledge will not be mere opinion, but rather the single and direct form of the highest knowledge unlimited by any finite bounds.”
 
—from Book 5, Prose 5
 
This has made me quite unpopular with my colleagues, but I maintain that most of modern philosophy, and its inevitable offshoot, post-modernism, have suffered from a crippling case of subjectivism. There is a deeply unhealthy form of turning inward, with nothing but doubt about the possibility of any greater meaning and purpose. It is the old error of Protagoras, come back around once again, where “man is the measure of all things.”
 
We could blame Descartes, or Hume, or Nietzsche, or Sartre, but behind it all is a deeper human weakness. It is to begin and to end only with the thoughts and feelings of the self, and thereby to reduce the true and the good only to the perspectives of the self. I immediately see red when people speak of “my truth” and “your truth”, as if the mind’s conformity to reality had nothing to do with it. 
 
Even when my beloved Stoics stressed self-reliance, they did so within the greater context of Nature, that a man was in the service of Providence. You will be hard pressed to find such a principle expounded in most contemporary textbooks or classrooms, or, for that matter, in the trends of everyday life. 
 
Once I look at the world through my own greatness, it will obviously be impossible to rise above myself to any higher standard of understanding or character. When Boethius here speaks of elevating our minds, of aiming for a broader perspective, he is not just engaged in an academic exercise. The success or failure of our lives, of our very happiness or misery, hinges upon working to apprehend the relationships within the whole, not the narrow scope of one part. 
 
Trying to see ourselves as others see us is a start, and then trying to see ourselves as God sees us is the ultimate standard. Throughout the entire text of the Consolation, placing our lives within a wider and richer framework has been the key to peace of mind. It is now no different when it comes to finding a harmony between the certainty of God’s knowledge and the freedom of human choice.  
 
If a man makes everything relative to himself, he is then closed off to ever transcending himself; he has built his own prison walls with his own two hands.

 
Written in 2/2016

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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