Truth Unites - The Most Neglected Theologian From All Church History?

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Gavin Ortlund suggests Boethius may be the most neglected theologian in the church today, and considers his thoughts about divine foreknowledge and human free will. Read Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy: https://www.amazon.com/Consolation-Philosophy-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140447806/ Read Priests of History: https://www.amazon.com/Priests-History-Softcover-Sarah-Irving-Stonebraker/dp/0310161134/     Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Who is the most neglected theologian in all church history? This is a different question from saying who's the best theologian. Good case could be made for maybe someone like Thomas Aquinas for that, or from the question of who's the most influential theologian in all church history. A good case could be made for someone like Augustine of Hippo on that. But who's the most neglected? When I mentioned this, people had all kinds of good guesses like Maximus the Confessor. I can't talk today. Maximus the Confessor. Or Philip Melanchthon, these two great theologians, who have to be theologians, who are not going to be theologians, don't get, maybe it may get overshadowed. The person I want to suggest is Boethius, and I'll put up a

picture of him, Roman philosopher in the early 6th century. This video is to do two things. First, the first half will just introduce him, explain who he was, why he's important, encourage people to read him. Second half will explain how Boetheus can help us address and live more peaceably, I'm going to say, amidst differences related to Calvinism, Arminianism, Malinism, provisionism, As you know, my interest in those topics is more just to help peaceable relationship and understanding, and I think Boetheus can help us. So who is Boetheus? Well, if you've never heard of him, that somewhat sort of proves the point.

That's probably a lot of us today, or we've heard the name, but don't really know anything about him. But throughout, that would sort of prove the point of neglect, because throughout the medieval era and into the early modern era, everybody knows of Boetheus. His influence is right up there with Augustine and Gregory the Great, and his book, The consolation of philosophy, which we'll talk about, was arguably the most translated and commented on and influential text of any kind outside the Bible. You can make the case that during the medieval era, and maybe a little beyond, Boethius is second to none in popularity other than

the scripture. Here's how C.S. Lewis puts it in one of his academic books, until about 200 years ago, it would, I think, have been hard to find any educated or an educated man in any European country who did not love it. That quote really sums up how what he used to be, you know, and it's kind of amazing just how this is grinded to a halt and he's sort of forgotten today. That's why I want to sort of try to rehabilitate interest in him. It's a fascinating and important person. And the influence, I mean, you can see just in the English language, for example, King Alfred in the 9th century translated the consolation of philosophy into old English, Jeffrey Chaucer in the 14th century into Middle English, and then Queen Elizabeth I first,

translated it into early modern English in the 16th century, and it's had readers in every age, tons of commentaries on it, tons of additions, incredible influence, yet a lot of people today haven't heard of him. My interest has been more academic in him, and so even in academic contexts, he tends to be treated as just an unoriginal thinker who's significant mainly or only for sort of transmitting the world of antiquity to the medieval world. So he translated and commented on many of Aristotle's works from Greek to Latin that had a huge influence. Much of the medieval church wouldn't have known of Aristotle apart from Boethius' translations.

So that is a huge impact that he made. and he wrote on other subjects like music and math. So he's often viewed as valuable in this sense of that he transmitted a lot of that world of the classical world into the medieval world. And then when his own thought is engaged, it's usually just the consolation of philosophy, and he's usually regarded as just a philosopher rather than as a theologian in his own right. And some people, and this really annoys me, only think, they actually advanced the idea that he left his Christian faith at the end of his life, because the concept.

of philosophy, which is written, this is main work that's so influential, we'll talk about it, it's written during imprisonment while he's awaiting execution at the end of his life, and there's very little that is explicitly Christian. There's no mention of Jesus, for example. Instead, it's a dialogue with a person he calls Lady Philosophy. And so people have argued that, well, he must have abandoned his Christian faith. One example of this, one scholar says, many people turn to Christianity for consolation, Boethius turned to paganism, his Christianity collapsed, it collapsed so thoroughly that perhaps he did not even notice its disappearance. And I think, but most scholars don't agree with that, and rightly so.

This is actually an area where we have something to learn from, Boethius. For Boethius, philosophy and God were not separated. And in my work on this, what I've argued is that he saw Lady Philosophy as a handmaiden of his faith, not an alternative to it. And there's several times in the book when Lady Philosophy acknowledges her limitations and directs Boetheus to God. I think what's happening in this book is that Boethius has such a high view of God that he's like he's too transcendent.

I can't go to him directly. So I'm dialoguing with philosophy. I think that's the way it's working. Again, here's how C.S. Lewis put it. If we had asked Boetheus why his book contained philosophical rather than religious consolations, I do not doubt that he would have answered, but did you not read my title? If you want to learn more, the basic point here, I know this is a little bit of a nerdy video, but I know a lot of people who watch my channel are interested in church history.

I think Boethius is one of the single most helpful figures to read if you want to get into medieval church history. Because he's just an entry point into that whole world. You'll see his influence everywhere. His influence is sort of taken for granted. It's like studying your family history or something like that. And you say, oh, that's why things are the way they are. For example, the Wheel of Fortune is not just a game show. It's something that comes to us from the ancient world through Boetheus.

Here's how C.S. Lewis puts it, to acquire a taste for it, that's the consolation of philosophy, his book is almost to become naturalized in the Middle Ages. And Boethias didn't just write that one book. My work has been in his theological works, but that's another thing. So hopefully that gives you a flavor here of why he's so important. He's also just a great theologian to read for understanding the doctrine of God, and specifically where we're going to go right now, the doctrine of divine eternity. How does God as eternal relate to time? And he's also someone where you're going to get a lot of great philosophy, because his expertise is in the realm of Plato, and Aristotle. He's trying to reconcile these great philosophers with Christianity. You read Boethius.

You can't help but get into a lot of great philosophical education. He's also a great writer. The Consolation of Philosophy alternates back and forth between poetry and prose. It's a literary masterpiece. It's a great thing to read. It has a lot to say about human happiness. It's a very human book, very relatable book. I'm going to put a link to it in the video description in case this video inspires anybody to read it, which I hope it does. Also wanted to mention just because I'm always on the look out for helpful books. I know a lot of viewers of my channel are always asking me, what should I read first to get into church history? How do I enter? Well, I like to encourage them to read classic texts like Boethius, but also contemporary books as well, and this is a great one that I reviewed for

the Gospel Coalition by Sarah Irving Stonebreaker called Priests of History. I hope I'm pronouncing her name right. Subtitle is Stewarding the Past and an A Historic Age. Really cool book. It talks a lot about the value of church history, but also just how to do it and specific entry points. And my takeaway personally from reading this book was, wow, I have these two great passions in my life that I want to give myself to with Truth Unites. Church history and apologetics. And I've often seen them as parallel, but reading this book reminded me those two things are connected right now, because we live, as she describes it, in an ah historic age. And so engaging the past is actually a helpful way to commend Christianity to other people. So I'll put a link to this book in the video description as well.

For people who want to get into church history, it's a great entry point. Now, all right, so let me conclude the video, second half of the video now by talking about one specific area where I think Boethius can make a contribution, and that's this whole challenge of divine foreknowledge and human free will. Of course, this is a major area of tension that people wrestle with. and I think he approaches that from a fresh angle by looking at it from the angle of the creator creation distinction, which I think, I think what Boethius can help us with is having a little more patience for each other in the conversation. I think this is my great interest. What I would love is to help, whether you're a Calvinist or a Molinist or whatever you land, to help us look at

each other and say, okay, the people over there, I think they're wrong, but I don't think they're just crazy or evil. I can understand how somebody could maybe look at this issue differently. That's kind of where my interest is in these conversations. Boethias can help for that, help in that way. Let me explain why. In his later years, Boetheus became very politically active. He had a lot of success, but then he fell out of favor with the powers that be. He ended up awaiting execution in prison. He's eventually tortured and killed. They squeezed a rope around his head so tight that his eyes bulged out and then his skull cracked. Not a good way to go. One of the things you learn about in studying history is just the horrific violence that exists. It's while he's awaiting

that fate that he writes this book, The Consolation of Philosophy, his great work that was translated so much and so forth. So this book has, this is what you'll get when you read it too. It's not like academic and remote. It has this urgency and this honesty. It's not a work of speculation. You know, It's very relevant to his life. You know, he's basically, his whole life has just gone up in smoke. He was this wealthy person with a lot of, his future was bright, and all of a sudden just poof, there goes his entire life. And he's wrestling with that.

He's coming to terms with that. You feel his anguish as he's writing, and he's, you know, he's dialoguing back and forth with Lady Philosophy, and he's talking about themes of fortune and misfortune, human happiness and human suffering, God's justice in his government of the world. eventually he arrives toward the end of the book in book five, he gets to the understanding that God's providence and sovereignty over human affairs and his knowledge of the future is the key to having happiness in any situation you find yourself in. But that leads to the question of how do we reconcile God's foreknowledge with human free will? And I've written more on this

elsewhere, but briefly, by the way, if you want to get more on this, it's in my book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals, one of the chapters there. Briefly, a bobo. Boethius's way to approach this is from the standpoint of God's eternity. And for him, God's eternity is his kind of fullness of life. He defines it as God's whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of unending life. So a lot of philosophers today will define God's eternity as sort of in antithesis with time. God is eternal, meaning he's outside of time or something like this. It's defined negatively rather than positively. For Boetheus, atheist, God's eternity is this sort of unbounded and simple life that he has. And this actually has

a huge difference in terms of how this plays out for understanding human free will and foreknowledge and things like this. Think of it like this. It's not like time is over here, but God is eternal, so God's over here different from time, and therefore there's some kind of cutoff between God and time. Rather, think of it as time is completely vulnerable before God so that every moment, past, present, and future are all equally present to the fullness of God's life. Boethius writes, it is one thing to be led through unending life, and another thing for the whole of unending life to be equally embraced in the present, which is apparent to be a property of the divine mind, for God should not be seen as older than created things in quantity

of time, but in the property of his simple nature. So God isn't just old, it's not like, okay, there's time, but God existed before it and after it. No, God is simple. God's knowledge of simple, is simple. And so God takes all of time in all at once. God has this eternal present. And therefore, every moment is equally available to God and his eternal present. So in other words, don't think of it as like, you know, here's reality and God's proceeding along it and he just happens to proceed forever. Think of it as though if time, this is a simple metaphor, I learned this as a kid, I actually think it's helpful. If time is like a line across a sheet of paper, it's not like God is just at every point along the line. Rather, God is the sheet of paper on which the line is drawn.

God is the Lord of time. Time exists within God. All times are equally available to God. By the way, in his Apuscula Sacra, or Sacred Works, Boethias has a similar way of describing God's omnipresence. It's this active quality, not a passive one. He says, when God is everywhere as said, does not mean that he is in every place, for he cannot be in any place at all, but that every place is present to him, to be seized by him. This is what you get when you get classic theology. It's not dry and dusty. It's very interesting. And so in other words, don't think of God as like, okay, there's some nucleus in God, and then he just extends outward from that point to fill every other place. Rather, think of God as equally present in every place and fully present in every place.

Better way to say it, every place is fully present to God. Again, God is the Lord and the master in the relationship that he has to any place. And so Boethius takes that understanding of God's eternity, God's omnipresence, and he applies that to this issue of human free will. And he draws attention to this principle from neoplatonic philosophy that everything that is known is comprehended not according to its own power but rather according to the ability of the one knowing. In other words, this is a big issue that will come up in modern epistemology classes about knowing, like in Kierkegaard and so forth. What put it more simply is what affects knowledge is not just the object that is known, but the subject doing the knowing. And God's knowledge is simple.

all times are equally present to him. So there is no problem of divine for knowledge. Because it's not for knowledge, it's just knowledge. God sees all things in his eternal perspective. Now my favorite metaphor to understand this, because of course our minds can only go so far in understanding God, is the metaphor of an author and a story. So think of Tolkien writing the Lord of the Rings, and he's at his desk in Oxford. And all the places in Middle Earth are, are equally available to him. All the times are equally available to him. He can skip ahead and backward in the book and so forth.

The past and the future events of that world are equally available to him. If he's finished the book, he's just holding the book. He can skip ahead, he can skip back, and so forth. So Tolkien doesn't really have a foreknowledge of what Sauron is going to do or another character. The characters in the story might experience it like that. They might wonder what's going to,

if you're in the middle of the two towers, You might wonder, Gandalf and Frodo might wonder what's going to happen in the future to the ring, and how can we be free if God all, if Tolkien already knows that? But it's not foreknowledge for him, because he has a qualitatively different relationship to the time of Middle Earth. Eh, it's just a metaphor. It kind of helps you maybe get rid of the idea of four in the word of foreknowledge. So then the question comes about the problem of evil. And here's where I think this way of looking at it from the creator-creating,

relationship can help us a little bit here. So you might say, why would Tolkien create Sauron? And the questions of God's sovereignty over evil in the world come up here. And here we can extend some of these same Boethian principles to bring clarity to that challenge. Even if we can't solve the challenge, we can maybe bring some clarity to it. So think of it like this. If you remember that Neoplatonic principle, everything that is known is known according to the nature of the knower, not just what is known. Think of this. Everything that is willed is willed,

according to the nature of the one doing the willing, not just what it is that is willed. Or to put it in terms of the metaphor here, an author's writing evil in a story is different from one of the characters in the story, willing or creating evil. Maybe Tolkien can create Sauron to do evil things. in ways that have different moral responsibility than what it would be if Gandalf created Sauron.

If you're not a Lord of the Rings person watching this video, you're probably wondering what are all these characters? The way to say it is, maybe an author can create bad guys and evil characters in the story and that has differing moral implications than if someone in the story were to do that. At the very least, we have to recognize we're dealing with very tricky subject matter that requires a tremendous amount of humility because of the Creator creation distinction. God has this qualitatively different relationship to the world and to time and to the events of the world. Now, if, for triaging all of this, because that's my main interest, I have a video on theological triage, meaning ranking, where does Calvinism versus Armenianism versus Mullenism and the other options that are now more

in vogue. So that might be of interest if you're, I always always, by the way, sorry to those who listen, because I'm always assuming people are watching and I'll reference things coming on the screen here. If you listen to this as a podcast, by the way, just so you know, there's a lot that comes on the screen, and sorry that you're missing out on that, but I totally understand that works better for some people if you're driving or something like that. But just know if there's something that comes up, you can always go back on YouTube and look it up. I just try to make this as available to anybody. I view Truth Unites as a service. I really hope it serves people and meets needs. Now, just to circumvent one thing in the comments,

I don't want to have debates on Calvinism all the time people are asking me, why to, you know, debate this person about Calvinism and that kind of thing. I'm not interested in that. My interest is to try to serve peaceable understanding on those issues. I just, that's fine. It's not bad to do that. I just feel called to other things. I'd rather focus on general apologetics and then some of the larger scale differences within Christianity, even there, trying to be peaceable in how we go about it. All right, hope that's of interest. Hope it makes somebody read Boethias or think about these things a little more, if nothing else, just be aware of him. And for some of you, if you were to read the consolation of philosophy, that would be awesome. It's a great book. It's totally worth reading. It's a lot of fun to

read. It has a lot of, to say about human happiness, for example. A couple final notes. Truth Unites has an Instagram. I'm doing Q&A's there most weekends right now. I don't think I'll do that every single weekend going forward. Right now, this current weekend, so the day that this video comes out, I'll have the answers coming out in a video on baptism, doing a baptism Q&A. Then the following weekend, so five days from when this video comes out, I'll do a Q&A receiving questions. The questions come in on Fridays, then I put out the answers on Mondays, and that second one will be on the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist, do some Q&A on those topics. Basically, I'll only field questions from the Instagram picture that goes up on Friday that is asking for questions, and then I'll answer them

in a video that goes out, just choosing the top three to five questions. It's kind of fun. Instagram is kind of fun, kind of a different venue, a little more peaceable than some of the other forms of social media. Next couple of videos coming out are going to be very pastoral. I'm going to have a video called when you should leave a church. I'm also going to have a video about third wayism. What does that mean? Also going to have an update about Truth Unites. Basically, it'll be called like how I'm doing and I'll share pretty vulnerably about how I'm doing with Truth Unites. Mostly good stuff. I'm encouraged in the ministry overall, but I just want to give some updates and so forth. So be on the lookout for those and I hope this video is of interest to you. Thanks for watching

Truth Unites, those of you who share. I know this, a lot of my videos, I realize they're not going to blow up. They're kind of these nerdy topics, but the goal is always to serve and to meet needs. So anytime you feel inclined to share, help the word get out there, I do appreciate that. All right, thanks, everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. If you've read Boethius, let me know what you think of him in the comments.