The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy

by Boethius

But to return to the order of our discourse; the first man, before sin came, dwelt with his consort in the Garden. But when he hearkened to the voice of his wife and failed to keep the commandment of his Creator, he was banished, bidden to till the ground, and being shut out from the sheltering garden he carried abroad into unknown regions the children of his loins; by begetting whom he transmitted to those that came after, the punishment which he, the first man, had incurred by the sin of disobedience. Hence it came to pass that corruption both of body and soul ensued, and death; and this he was to taste first in his own son Abel, in order that he might learn through his child the greatness of the punishment that was laid upon him. For if he had died first he would in some sense not have known, and if one may so say not have felt, his punishment; but he tasted it in another in order that he might perceive the due reward of his contempt, and, doomed to death himself, might be the more sensibly touched by the apprehension of it. But this curse that came of transgression which the first man had by natural propagation transmitted to posterity, was denied by one Pelagius who so set up the heresy which goes by his name and which the Catholic faith, as is known, at once banished from its bosom. So the human race that sprang from the first man and mightily increased and multiplied, broke into strife, stirred up wars, and became the heir of earthly misery, because it had lost the joys of Paradise in its first parent. Yet were there not a few of mankind whom the Giver of Grace set apart for Himself and who were obedient to His will; and though by desert of nature they were condemned, yet God by making them partakers in the hidden mystery, long afterwards to be revealed, vouchsafed to recover fallen nature. So the earth was filled by the human race and man who by his own wanton wilfulness had despised his Creator began to walk in his own ways. Hence God willing rather to recover mankind through one just man than that it should remain for ever contumacious, suffered all the guilty multitude to perish by the wide waters of a flood, save only Noah, the just one, with his children and all that he had brought with him into the ark. The reason why He wished to save the just by an ark of wood is known to all hearts learned in the Holy Scriptures. Thus what we may call the first age of the world was ended by the avenging flood.

Thus the human race was restored, and yet it hastened to make its own the vice of nature with which the first author of transgression had infected it. And the wickedness increased which had once been punished by the waters of the flood, and man who had been suffered to live for a long series of years was reduced to the brief span of ordinary human life. Yet would not God again visit the race by a flood, but rather, letting it continue, He chose from it men of whose line a generation should arise out of which He might in the last days grant us His own Son to come to us, clothed in human form. Of these men Abraham is the first, and although he was stricken in years and his wife past bearing, they had in their old age the reward of a son in fulfilment of promise unconditional. This son was named Isaac and he begat Jacob, who in his turn begat the twelve Patriarchs, God not reckoning in their number those whom nature in its ordinary course produced.[51] This Jacob, then, together with his sons and his household determined to dwell in Egypt for the purpose of trafficking; and the multitude of them increasing there in the course of many years began to be a cause of suspicion to the Egyptian rulers, and Pharaoh ordered them to be oppressed by exceeding heavy tasks[52] and afflicted them with grievous burdens. At length God, minded to set at naught the tyranny of the king of Egypt, divided the Red Sea—a marvel such as nature had never known before—and brought forth His host by the hands of Moses and Aaron. Thereafter on account of their departure Egypt was vexed with sore plagues, because they would not let the people go. So, after crossing the Red Sea, as I have told, they passed through the desert of the wilderness and came to the mount which is called Sinai, where God the Creator of all, wishing to prepare the nations for the knowledge of the sacrament to come, laid down by a law given through Moses how both the rites of sacrifices and the national customs should be ordered. And after fighting down many tribes in many years amidst their journeyings they came at last to the river called Jordan, with Joshua the son of Nun now as their captain, and, for their crossing, the streams of Jordan were dried up as the waters of the Red Sea had been; so they finished their course to that city which is now called Jerusalem. And while the people of God abode there we read that there were set up first judges and prophets and then kings, of whom we read that after Saul, David of the tribe of Judah ascended the throne. So from him the royal race descended from father to son and lasted till the days of Herod who, we read, was the first taken out of the peoples called Gentile to bear sway. In whose days rose up the blessed Virgin Mary, sprung from the stock of David, she who bore the Maker of the human race. But it was just because the whole world lay dead, stained with its many sins, that God chose out one race in which His commands might shine clear; sending it prophets and other holy men, to the end that by their warnings that people at least might be cured of their swollen pride. But they slew these holy men and chose rather to abide in their wanton wickedness.

And now at the last days of time, in place of prophets and other men well-pleasing to Him, God willed that His only-begotten Son should be born of a Virgin that so the salvation of mankind which had been lost through the disobedience of the first man might be recovered by the God- man, and that inasmuch as it was a woman who had first persuaded man to that which wrought death there should be this second woman who should bring forth from a human womb Him who gives Life. Nor let it be deemed a thing unworthy that the Son of God was born of a Virgin, for it was out of the course of nature that He was conceived and brought to birth. Virgin then she conceived, by the Holy Spirit, the Son of God made flesh, Virgin she bore Him, Virgin she continued after His birth; and He became the Son of Man and likewise the Son of God that in Him the glory of the divine nature might shine forth and at the same time the human weakness be declared which He took upon Him. Yet against this article of Faith so wholesome and altogether true there rose up many who babbled other doctrine, and especially Nestorius and Eutyches, inventors of heresy, of whom the one thought fit to say that He was man alone, the other that He was God alone and that the human body put on by Christ had not come by participation in human substance. But enough on this point.

So Christ grew after the flesh, and was baptized in order that He who was to give the form of baptism to others should first Himself receive what He taught. But after His baptism He chose twelve disciples, one of whom betrayed Him. And because the people of the Jews would not bear sound doctrine they laid hands upon Him and slew and crucified Him. Christ, then, was slain; He lay three days and three nights in the tomb; He rose again from the dead as He had predetermined with His Father before the foundation of the world; He ascended into heaven whence we know that He was never absent, because He is Son of God, in order that as Son of God He might raise together with Him to the heavenly habitation man whose flesh He had assumed, whom the devil had hindered from ascending to the places on high. Therefore He bestowed on His disciples the form of baptizing, the saving truth of the teaching, and the mighty power of miracles, and bade them go throughout the whole world to give it life, in order that the message of salvation might be preached no longer in one nation only but among all the dwellers upon earth. And because the human race was wounded by the weapon of eternal punishment by reason of the nature which they had inherited from the first transgressor and could not win a full meed of salvation because they had lost it in its first parent, God instituted certain health- giving sacraments to teach the difference between what grace bestowed and human nature deserved, nature simply subjecting to punishment, but grace, which is won by no merit, since it would not be grace if it were due to merit, conferring all that belongs to salvation.

Therefore is that heavenly instruction spread throughout the world, the peoples are knit together, churches are founded, and, filling the broad earth, one body formed, whose head, even Christ, ascended into heaven in order that the members might of necessity follow where the Head was gone. Thus this teaching both inspires this present life unto good works, and promises that in the end of the age our bodies shall rise incorruptible to the kingdom of heaven, to the end that he who has lived well on earth by God's gift should be altogether blessed in that resurrection, but he who has lived amiss should, with the gift of resurrection, enter upon misery. And this is a firm principle of our religion, to believe not only that men's souls do not perish, but that their very bodies, which the coming of death had destroyed, recover their first state by the bliss that is to be. This Catholic church, then, spread throughout the world, is known by three particular marks: whatever is believed and taught in it has the authority of the Scriptures, or of universal tradition, or at least of its own and proper usage. And this authority is binding on the whole Church as is also the universal tradition of the Fathers, while each separate church exists and is governed by its private constitution and its proper rites according to difference of locality and the good judgment of each. All, therefore, that the faithful now expect is that the end of the world will come, that all corruptible things shall pass away, that men shall rise for future judgement, that each shall receive reward according to his deserts and abide in the lot assigned to him for ever and for aye; and the sole reward of bliss will be the contemplation of the Almighty, so far, that is, as the creature may look on the Creator, to the end that the number of the angels may be made up from these and the heavenly city filled where the Virgin's Son is King and where will be everlasting joy, delight, food, labour, and unending praise of the Creator.

[43] The conclusions adverse to the genuineness of this tractate, reached in the dissertation Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de Fide Catholica (Jahrbücher für kl. Phil. xxvi. (1901) Supplementband) by one of the editors, now seem to both unsound. The writer of that dissertation intends to return to the subject elsewhere. This fourth tractate, though lacking, in the best MSS., either an ascription to Boethius or a title, is firmly imbedded in two distinct recensions of Boethius's theological works. There is no reason to disturb it. Indeed the capita dogmatica mentioned by Cassiodorus can hardly refer to any of the tractates except the fourth.

[44] For instrumentum=Holy Scripture cf. Tertull. Apol. 18, 19, adv. Hermog. 19, etc.; for instrumentum=any historical writing cf. Tert. De Spect. 5.

[45] Boethius is no heretic. By the sixth century uel had lost its strong separative force. Cp. "Noe cum sua uel trium natorum coniugibus," Greg. Tur. H.F. i. 20. Other examples in Bonnet, La Latinité de Grég. de Tours, p. 313, and in Brandt's edition of the Isag. Index, s.v. uel.

[46] Vide Cons. i. pr. 3 (infra, p. 140), and cf. Dante, De Mon. iii. 16, 117.

[47] Ut quia. A very rare use. Cf. Baehrens, Beiträge zur lat. Syntaxis (Philologus, Supplementband xii. 1912). It perhaps=Aristotle's [Greek: oion epei]. Cf. McKinlay, Harvard Studies in Cl. Philol. xviii. 153.