The Perpetuity of Plato in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy

The sixth century theologian and philosopher Boethius sought the perspective of Plato in his enlightenment of consolation. Boethius was a Platonist, a transmitter of ancient Greek thought into Latin, a Christian theologian in the trail of Augustine, and a civil servant in the Platonic ideal of the philosopher politician. He lived in the turbulent times of the demise of the Roman Empire and the social and intellectual fragmentation of Western Europe in the early Middle Ages. The details of his life, like the upheavals of his age, are murky. We know that he served as political consul for Theodoric, the ruler of the Ostrogoths, and that he fell from favor and was unjustly accused of treason, incarcerated, and violently executed. Boethius’s peril in prison produced his masterwork, The Consolation of Philosophy, which has proven to be beloved by readers from the Middle Ages to the present. 

The Need for Eternal Perspective

Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy fuses poetry, prose, and Plato in his quest to discover the source of perpetual problems in light of reason and the solace of the perpetual cosmos in light of God’s eternity and the perception of faith. In this journey of consolation, Boethius turns to Plato as his muse and guide. The Consolation of Philosophy begins with Boethius lamenting his unjust incarceration and his impending demise. Echoing the Book of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom appears to show Boethius the perspective of motion and his changing situation amidst the perfection of eternity. Lady Wisdom references Plato in two pivotal points of The Consolation of Philosophy: at the beginning and the end, in order to illumine the way from perpetual problems to perpetual perspective, and finding one’s place in the vicissitudes of time and the vastness of eternity. Here we consider the interplay of Plato and reason and God’s eternity and faith by overviewing the two points in which Plato appears in the areas of philosophy and theology in Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. We begin with Boethius and Plato on perpetual problems in life and the perpetual need for the clarity of reason (book one of The Consolation of Philosophy), followed by Boethius and Plato on perpetual perspective and the insight of faith (book five of The Consolation of Philosophy), and conclude with Boethius’s transmission of Plato in perpetuity for the ongoing Christian life of reflection.  

Boethius draws from Plato to ruminate on the plight of perpetual problems and the perpetual necessity of reason. In book one, chapter three of The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Wisdom, or as she is also called, Lady Philosophy (philosophy means the love of wisdom), visits Boethius in his plight and assures him that philosophy or the way of reason has not forsaken him. Lady Wisdom says: “Do you think that this is the first time that Wisdom has been attacked and endangered by a wicked society? Did I not often of old also, before my Plato’s time, have to battle in mighty struggle with arrogant stupidity?” According to Lady Wisdom, pride (arrogance and the will) and ignorance (stupidity and the intellect) are the source of perpetual problems from Socrates to Plato to Boethius. Plato looked to reason to see the way out of the mire of foolishness and ignorance. Plato’s teacher Socrates taught the Socratic method of unknowing and knowing, which leads to what the fifteenth-century theologian Nicholas of Cusa terms learned ignorance. One knows in order not to succumb to the folly of being dumb. One practices virtue in order not to accede to egotism. The more one knows, the more one knows that one does not know. Thus, one learns ignorance, or knowing that does not know, which then instils the desire to know more. The willpower to overcome arrogance or pride flows from the desire for wisdom and virtue. Arrogance is corrected by the perspective of virtue and the desire for the good, while ignorance is corrected by knowledge and the desire to know more. This desire or love to know and learn becomes the motivation of philosophy or the love of wisdom, which embraces both knowing and doing, or contemplation and action.  

Boethius begins to see that our problematic lives are lived providentially in God’s eternal presence. This path of perspective in reason begins for Boethius with Plato. Share on X

The Search for Eternal Perspective

Throughout The Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Wisdom instructs Boethius to know more by way of reason. This evidences the necessity of reason to make sense of life’s perpetual problems that arise from humanity’s pride and ignorance. Reason opens Boethius’s mind to the perspective of eternity. Lady Wisdom locates Boethius’s particular problems within the range of the universal, and relocates perspective from the particular to the universal, the effects to the cause, and from the singularity of life to the interrelatedness of God’s creation. As one tracks with Lady Wisdom in The Consolation of Philosophy, the more one reasons, the more one sees the perspective of the whole from the minuteness of the parts. Boethius begins to see that our problematic lives are lived providentially in God’s eternal presence. This path of perspective in reason begins for Boethius with Plato. For Boethius, Plato represents the foundational importance of reason in making sense of one’s place in the universe. Through the illumination of reason in The Consolation of Philosophy, perspectives of perpetual problems coincide with perspectives of perpetual Divine providence. Reason, as inspired by Plato, leads Boethius to consider God’s perpetual providence in relation to his perpetual problems. Reason begins to unpuzzle the particular problems of time and hints at the eternal perspective of God’s universal presence. While reason fails to free Boethius from physical prison, nonetheless, as with Socrates’s imprisonment, philosophy unshackles the mind and will from the confining perspective of ignorance and pride to the liberating perspective of providence and virtue. At the conclusion of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius’s reasonings and virtues are seen in light of God’s providence through presenting Lady Wisdom in the time of trial for the enduring perspective of eternity. 

Boethius refers to Plato on perpetual problems and the perspicuity of reason at the beginning of The Consolation of Philosophy. Then, he refers to Plato on perpetual perspective and the perceptiveness of faith at the end of The Consolation of Philosophy. In the sixth and final chapter of the fifth and final book of The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius writes, “Therefore those are not right who, when they hear that Plato thought this world neither had a beginning in time nor would have an end, think that in this way the created world is more co-eternal with the Creator. For it is one thing to be drawn out through a life without bounds, which is what Plato attributes to the world, but it is a different thing to have embraced at once the whole presence of boundless life, which it is clear is the property of the divine mind.” Plato, according to Boethius teaches that the created cosmos is drawn out through a life without bounds by the guidance of reason. Boethius continues, “following Plato we should say that God indeed is eternal, but that the world is perpetual.” The universe is perpetual in motion and distinct from God, who is at rest in eternity. Thus, created human reason exists and functions in motion and is measured by time. As Scripture, the testimony of faith, teaches, we now see or know in an enigma (1 Corinthians 13:12). The wisdom book of Ecclesiastes instructs that God has placed eternity in the human heart, and yet one cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The perpetual desire of reason to draw out a life without bounds is bound in this life by the perpetual movement of all created things in time. One sees beyond dimly and in passing moments what is without passing and eternally present. For Boethius, Plato provides perpetual perspective: we see and know perpetually in the flux and crux of time, and innately sense and desire the eternal and unchanging presence of God. For Boethius, Plato provides perpetual perspective: we see and know perpetually in the flux and crux of time, and innately sense and desire the eternal and unchanging presence of God. Share on X 

Finding Eternal Perspective

At the end of The Consolation of Philosophy, Plato assists Boethius to behold the insight of faith and the eternity of God. The world and all of our problems, according to Boethius, exist in perpetual time and motion, but God is eternal and ever present. As Boethius concludes: “Eternity, then, is the whole, simultaneous and perfect possession of boundless life, which becomes clearer by comparison with temporal things.” By comparing the perspectives of temporal problems with God in eternity, we begin to see the eternal perspective more clearly and the boundless and free life of God. At the start of The Consolation of Philosophy, Plato directs Boethius from his bound context of chains to see at the end of the treatise the boundless and eternal life of God in freedom. Boethius measures his finite life in relation to God’s infinite life. By knowing oneself in time, one begins to know God in eternity, albeit in an enigma or puzzle or the vexations of the here and now. By recognizing the problems of life in time, one begins to see the possession of the boundless life in eternity. Faith is the bridge from time to eternity. Faith is the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and reason, according to Plato and Boethius, aids in clarifying what can be seen in time from what can be seen in eternity.  Faith is the conviction of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1), and reason, according to Plato and Boethius, aids in clarifying what can be seen in time from what can be seen in eternity. Share on X 

The Consolation of Philosophy propels the meditations of Boethius and Plato on perspectives of reason and faith for perpetual or ongoing Christian reflection on the nature of time and eternity. One cannot love the eternal God without knowing the eternal God, and Christian contemplation is a vital component of the Christian life betwixt time and eternity. While Christian knowledge is often primarily taught in terms of salvation or the saving knowledge of God in Christ for the life of the world, Christians also possess natural knowledge of the perpetual movement of motion and time in comparison with God and eternity. Time is a measure between the perspective of our lives here in time (the perspective of reason), and the perspective of our lives with God in eternity (the perspective of faith). In Boethius, by means of Plato, we see and begin to know and make sense of our problems in the coinciding perspectives of time and eternity. Time may or may not be a healer, but time is an indicator of our place in perpetual movement from God and back to God. Motion, time, and all the joys and pains of life from birth to death are therein relative to God’s eternal presence. In an interconnected and wired age of accelerated time where the longing for presence persists in virtual, hybrid, or in-person modalities, Boethius and Plato provide the ever-needed perspective of eternity and the boundless life of God.

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