In the “Introduction” to a standard English translation of Boethius’ Theological Tractates and the Consolation of Philosophy, it is stated that “Boethius was the last of the Roman philosophers, and the first of the scholastic theologians” (X). Philosophy is aimed at explaining the nature of the world (the natural). Theology’s aim is to understand and explain doctrines delivered by divine revelation (the supernatural). Boethius was the seminal figure in preparing the way for the synthesis of these two disciplines, with philosophy serving the task of theology (i.e., the handmaiden to the King of sciences).
Anicus Manlius Severinus Boethius was born around 480 AD in Rome to the famous Praenestine family of the Anicii. He followed in his father’s footsteps as a consul under Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 510, to then be charged by Theodoric with conspiracy and treasonous activity and was thrown into prison, where he died a brutal death in 524. While his life was short, his literary output was remarkable. He was astute and well-learned in the works of Plato and Aristotle. In prison he wrote his Consolation of Philosophy. He set the bar high for himself, with the hopes of translating all the works of Plato and Aristotle for his native countrymen. He produced major works of philosophy, along with arithmetic, music, and his five theological tractates that all stand on their own (x–xiv).
The texts under examination in our present study is Boethius’ treatises/letters, The Trinity in One God not Three Gods, and a shorter piece, a letter to John the Deacon, titled Whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit May be Substantially Predicated of the Divinity.
The Trinity in One God not Three Gods (De Trin.)
As the title indicates, this treatise is Boethius’ attempt at discerning the mystery of the Trinity, specifically an articulation of how God is triune yet one. Jumping ahead a bit, Boethius intimates that “the category of substance preserves the Unity, that of relation brings about the Trinity” (De Trin., VI.29). Defining substance and relation within this construct will reveal the cogency of the Trinity doctrine (though still profoundly mysterious). And that is nature of the inquiry ahead.
Boethius begins the treatise with the utmost humility as he embarks on his study. He understands the task ahead of him will press him (and all mankind for that matter) to the height of human wit, deep into the heavenly knowledge, far beyond what human reason can reach. But he is going to apply the “unaccustomed words” and “deep questionings of philosophy” to his endeavor. However, because of the difficulty of the task, he requests leniency, while asking that the reader (his father-in-law) hold his claims up to the light of Augustine, who planted the seeds in his mind, which he hopes will bear fruit in his inquiry to follow.
The universal article of belief in the Christian faith, “concerning the Unity of the Trinity is as follows: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Therefore Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, not three Gods” (De Trin., I.7). Boethius begins his approach, considering the nature of the discipline in which he is operating. He notes that the three main branches of speculative science are physics, mathematics, and theology. Physics deals with motion, how “the forms of bodies together with their constituent matter are in motion.” Math doesn’t deal with motion nor is it abstract; rather, “it investigates forms of bodies apart from matter.” And “theology does not deal with motion, is abstract and separable, for the Divine Substance is without either matter or form” (De Trin., II.9).
So, in seeing the diversity of these sciences, theology operates in a plane of its own, a sui generis, to that of physics and math because the “Divine Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own essence.” Physics is bound to scientific inquiry, math, systematical, and theology, intellectual concepts. And the prima intellectual concept is simply that Form which is pure form and no image, is very Being and the source of Being (De Trin., II.9). We can see Boethius’ starting point is that of the simple essence of God, notably God is very Being and the source of Being. All other things have being from the Source, whereas God is very Being and is the source of his own Being.
Utilizing substance metaphysics, he notes what is proper to all created being, that “everything that exists owes its being to Form.” And he provides an elementary illustration to explain this notion; a statue is not a statue because of its material, its matter; rather, its form as a statue is due “to the likeness of a living thing impressed upon it.” Matter doesn’t qualify what something is; rather, it is was it is because of the distinctive form given to it. However, “the Divine Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own essence” (De Trin., II.11). We can see Boethius is setting out the categories of simple and composite, which God is the former and created being the latter. He writes, “But other things are not simply their own essences, for each thing has its being from the things which it is composed, that is from its parts.” To use a phrase coined by Aquinas, Boethius is expressing: all that is in God is God. Creatures are what they are because of the parts of which they are composed. God as simple essence, being his own essence, cannot be made up of parts otherwise the parts would be greater than the whole because the whole would depend on the parts, thus something prior to God would have to give him the parts to make God who he is.
Creatures consist of “This and That, i.e., it is the totality of its parts in conjunction; it is not This or That taken apart.” But God, however, “does not consist of This and That, but is only This, is really its own essence, and is altogether beautiful and stable because it is not grounded in anything” (De Trin., II.11). Boethius makes an interesting move, in that he observes that the entailment of God as his own essence, is that he “is truly One in which is no number, in which nothing is present except its own existence.” As Pure Form, God cannot be the substrate of anything, like a creature, which is a substrate for accidents. A substrateis a substance considered as a subject supporting its accidents, and accidents are properties (parts) added to a thing, or received by the substance, but are not inherent in the thing.
For example, a man’s hair is not what makes him a man, or human. Hair is an accident (or crudely put, an appendage) that is added to him. If a man doesn’t have hair, it doesn’t take his humanity away (his pride, maybe). So, in God, as Pure Form, he cannot have accidents (appendages), otherwise God would have parts; he would receive something that does not properly exist from himself. Pure Form doesn’t receive a property; it is the giver of all properties. Therefore, his attributes are not accidents; otherwise, as noted above, something apart from God would make God who he is, thus the parts would then be greater than the whole. Boethius concludes, “In Him, then, is no difference, no plurality arising out of difference, no multiplicity arising out of accidents, and accordingly no number” (De Trin., II.13).
Next, Boethius moves into a discussion regarding oneness, explaining how God doesn’t differ from God in any respect, even the three unities withing the oneness of God. Therefore, when we speak of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, these three are not individuated divine essences. When it comes to oneness and pluralities, Boethius notes there are two manners of counting, abstract and concrete. Abstract counting does not produce a plurality of what we count; concrete counting is numbering that which is inherent in the thing counted (De Trin., III.13). “Oneness,” therefore, “is a thing—the thing counted. Unity is that by which oneness is denoted.” Boethius is setting up a distinction that allows us to recognize plurality of a thing within the oneness of that thing. So, when we speak of the unities of a thing, such as “one sword, one brand, and one blade,” the terms are merely repetitions denoting the one sword, “not a numbering of unities but simply repeating one thing” (De Trin., III.15). An abstract manner of counting produces plurality but concrete counting does not because things counted are each concrete unities of that which is being counted; therefore, counting the one thing concretely is to reiterate what it is, not enumerate several different things. The sun, for example, when we say sun three times we are merely mentioning it three times over, not three distinct suns.
Speaking of God, then, when we say Father, Son, and Spirit, “the threefold predication does not result in plural number.” And when we make this threefold predication, the things counted in the divine essence are not synonymous terms; rather, Boethius says they are reiterations of the one and the same thing (De Trin., III.15). In going back to the sword analogy, blade, brand, and sword are unique distinctions of the one thing, but each distinction speaks of the entirety of the whole thing itself. Therefore, in speaking of the Pure Form of God, concretely speaking, the Father is God completely, the Son is God completely, and the Spirit is God completely. However, the Father is not the same as the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor the Father the Spirit, nor the Spirit the Father, nor the Son the Spirit, nor the Spirit the Son.
Boethius is satisfied having established how the category of substance, as it pertains to the Pure Form (the divine essence), preserves its unity. But he needs to tease things out further. While there are categories that can be predicated of things universally[1] they cannot be predicated of God; rather, Boethius notes, when “applied to God they change their meaning entirely.” Reason being, substance in Him is not really substantial but “supersubstantial” (De Trin., IV.17). And as we will see, this is because God is simple. What is it to be supersubstantial? God’s essence as supersubstantial is called as such because his essence is beyond subjection to accidents. So, what quality or property we speak of in God, it is in him supersubstantially. Therefore, Boethius writes:
For God is not one thing because He is, and another thing because He is just; with Him to be just and to be God are One and the same. So, when we say, “He is great or the greatest,” we seem to predicate quantity, but it is a quantity similar to this substance which we have declared to be supersubstantial; for with Him to be great and to be God are all one. (De Trin. IV. 19)
As simple divine essence or Pure Form, he is one without plurality of the divine being. Boethius qualifies the difference between God and man. The distinction between God and man is that a man is not entirely man or all of humanity; therefore, a man is a man in virtue of receiving his being from that which is not man. A man cannot be called the substance of mankind, since humanity is a form, from which God brings into existence a man (composed of matter and form) as supposit, a substance that is complete in itself and is uncommunicated or unshared with another part or being. But, Boethius writes, “God is simply and entirely God, for He is nothing else than what He is, and therefore is, through simple existence, God” (De Trin., IV.19).
The distinction between God and man entails a different manner of understanding when predicating the attributes to each one. So, when we say man is just and God is just, to be just and to be man are different things, whereby just would be predicated of man in an accidental way; whereas, when we say God is just, God is justice itself. Likewise, to say a man is great is to say he has greatness, but when speaking of God, he is greatness itself.
Boethius continues, speaking of the other qualities or categories that pertain to a created thing in contrast to God. As to location, we can say a man is located somewhere, but we don’t predicate location of man according to his substance, as if we were to say a man is tall or short. Rather, when speaking of man’s location, we are predicating his substance in a particular setting in relation to other things. But, speaking of God, we cannot predicate location of the divine essence because it is a creaturely attribution. While we speak of the divine essence in such language, as in saying God is everywhere, because God is simple essence, Pure Form, no place can receive him, so, Boethius writes, “he cannot be anywhere in a place, since He is everywhere but in no place” (De Trin., IV.21).
As to time, man is here today, gone tomorrow; but “God is ever,” with ever denoting “a single Present, summing Up his continual presence in all the past, in all the present—however, that term be used—and in all the future” (De Trin., IV.21). The great distinction between creatures and God as it pertains to time, Boethius writes, is that “our present connotes changing time and sempiternity [i.e., never ending duration; everlasting]; God’s present, abiding, unmoved, and immoveable, connotes eternity” (De Trin., IV.21).
Boethius moves through other categories, noting distinctions of predication when speaking of God and man. His ultimate end is to demonstrate that while these “categories describe a thing in terms of its substance [i.e., created things], they are called substantial categories and when applied to things as subjects, they are called accidents.” However, since “God is not a subject at all, it is only possible to employ the category of substance” (De Trin., IV.25).
Being satisfied in demonstrating that the unity of God is preserved according to the category of substance, Boethius considers the category of relation to bring out the Trinity. The term relation doesn’t pertain to the essence of a thing; rather, it only describes the thing in relation to another, that is, in opposition to another (but not in a combative sense). For example, two men standing next to each other said to be in relation to one another. But that relation is not essential; rather, it depends on the subjects in opposition to each other. Relation is not a qualitative or substantial change in the essence or nature of the subjects (i.e., the two men). The category of relation allows us to make real distinctions between two subjects without requiring difference, change, or alteration of their nature in any way. With that understanding of relation in mind, Boethius writes,
Wherefore, if Father and Son are predicates of relation, and, as we have said, have no other difference but that of relation, and if relation is not asserted of its subject as though it were the subject itself and its substantial quality, it will effect no real difference in its subject, but, in a phrase which aims at interpreting what we can hardly understand, a difference of persons. (De Trin., V.27).
Beothius makes this claim because that which is incorporeal can only be distinct from another thing by differences not spatial location. Because God is pure essence, having no change or addition to his being, he wasn’t at one time God and then Father was added to his substance; rather, he is ever Father. And the Son, ever Son, thus the Father’s begetting of the Son belongs to his very substance. But, and this is key to retaining the unity of the Triunity, we predicate the Father as Father in relation to the Son. Because God is Pure Form, simple essence, thus incorporeal, the essence of God cannot be spatially different, thus Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit can only be distinct according to relation (De Trin., V.27).
In articulating the essence of God in this manner, we can say there are no differences (i.e., spatial distinctions or locations) in God, thus no plurality and because there is no plurality there is Unity. How is this so? God is God through Godself, and “in concrete enumerations the repetition of the units does not produce plurality. Thus, the Unity of the Three is suitably established” (De Trin., V.29).
The logic of the Trinity, whereby the Christian God is One not three gods, is that the relation (i.e., the distinctions between the Divine Persons) secures the Trinity because the category of relation brings about no substantial change or alteration of the one, simple divine essence, thus maintaining the unity of the Triune God. Succinctly put, “the category of substance preserves the Unity, that of relation brings about the Trinity” (De Trin., VI.29). And because the simple essence is One, and all three persons have the One essence, whatever we predicate of one of the Persons (i.e., goodness, justice, greatness, etc.) is the same in all the other persons. However, when we do predicate one of these truths, we do not say there are three truths; that would divide the divine essence; “the one substance of the Three, cannot be separated or divided, nor is it made up of various parts, combined into one: it is simply one” (De Trin., VI.33, 35).
Conclusion
In this short, yet substantial treatise, Boethius’ investigation into the nature of the One, Triune God, provides for us a cogent, faithful articulation of the Trinity. His final words in closing reveal what a proper approach in discerning the mystery of the pure essence of the One God should lead us to: “joyous praise.” True theology should be doxological because that is the endeavor of doing theology. Boethius writes,
If, God helping me, I have furnished some support in argument to an article which stands by itself on the firm foundation of Faith, I shall render joyous praise for the finished work to Him from whom the invitation comes. But if human nature has failed to reach beyond its limits, whatever is lost through my infirmity must be made good by my intention. (De Trin., VI.31).
[1] Boethius is referring to Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation, Place, Time, Condition, Situation, Activity, and Passivity. These ten categories only apply to contingent things; God is uncreated, therefore, none of these categories can be predicated properly of God.
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