Seeing By Our True Sun

In this issue of Credo Magazine we give you a taste for the poetry of Boethius which is sprinkled throughout his masterpiece, The Consolation of Philosophy.

Our perspective is always limited. We struggle with what we do not know and what we cannot know. We desire to expand our knowledge to greater and greater heights. This is, in many respects, a noble pursuit. But we can err when we think God’s knowledge works the same as ours, just to a greater extent. We think our knowledge is like the difference between a candle and the sun. A candle might brighten a room, but the sun lightens the whole earth. But Boethius reminds us that even here, the sun has limits. It lightens the whole earth, yes, but only its surface. The brightest object in the heavens has limits, too. But God does not. He is the true sun because his rays of divine intelligence pierce everything, past, present, and future. As the Scriptures say, “nothing is hidden from his sight” (Hebrews 4:13). In one of his last poems of the Consolation, Boethius wrestles with God’s knowledge and ours. Yet though this might raise questions about God’s foreknowledge and our free will, the two are not in conflict, and we should take comfort in the fact that all is laid bare before God. He is our true Sun, the one who guides us perfectly in love. We must learn to praise God as Boethius does with the Psalmist: “For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light” (Psalm 36:9). 

Book V, Met. II, The Consolation of Philosophy

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.

Photo credit: nemodoteles