__________________________________________________________________

           Title: The Theological Tractates
      Creator(s): Boethius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus (480-524)
     Print Basis: London: W. Heinemann; New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1918
          Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All; Early Church; Theology
      LC Call no: PA6156.B7
     LC Subjects:

                  Roman literature

                  Translations
     __________________________________________________________________

   THE LOEB CLASSICAL LIBRARY

   EDITED BY

   E. CAPPS, PH.D., LL.D. T. E. PAGE, LITT.D. W. H. D. ROUSE, LITT.D.

   BOETHIUS




   BOETHIUS

   THE THEOLOGICAL TRACTATES

   WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY

   H. F. STEWART, D.D.

   FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

   AND

   E. K. RAND, PH.D.

   PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

   THE

   CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY

   WITH THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF "I. T." (1609)

   REVISED By H. F. STEWART

   LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

   NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

     __________________________________________________________________

  NOTE ON THE TEXT


   IN preparing the text of the Consolatio I have used the apparatus in
   Peiper's edition (Teubner, 1871), since his reports, as I know in the
   case of the Tegernseensis, are generally accurate and complete; I have
   depended also on my own collations or excerpts from various of the
   important manuscripts, nearly all of which I have at least examined,
   and I have also followed, not always but usually, the opinions of
   Engelbrecht in his admirable article, Die Consolatio Philosophiae des
   Boethius in the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy, cxliv. (1902)
   1-60. The present text, then, has been constructed from only part of
   the material with which an editor should reckon, though the reader may
   at least assume that every reading in the text has, unless otherwise
   stated, the authority of some manuscript of the ninth or tenth century;
   in certain orthographical details, evidence from the text of the
   Opuscula Sacra has been used without special mention of this fact. We
   look to August Engelbrecht for the first critical edition of the
   Consolatio at, we hope, no distant date.


   The text of the 0puscula Sacra is based on my own collations of all the
   important manuscripts of these works. An edition with complete
   apparatus criticus will be ready before long for the Vienna Corpus
   Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. The history of the text of the
   Opuscula Sacra, as I shall attempt to show elsewhere, is intimately
   connected with that of the Consolatio.


   E. K. R.

     __________________________________________________________________

  INTRODUCTION


   ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS BOETHIUS, of the famous Praenestine family of
   the Anicii, was born about 480 A.D. in Rome. His father was an
   ex-consul; he himself was consul under Theodoric the Ostrogoth in 510,
   and his two sons, children of a great granddaughter of the renowned Q.
   Aurelius Symmachus, were joint consuls in 522. His public career was
   splendid and honourable, as befitted a man of his race, attainments,
   and character. But he fell under the displeasure of Theodoric, and was
   charged with conspiring to deliver Rome from his rule, and with
   corresponding treasonably to this end with Justin, Emperor of the East.
   He was thrown into prison at Pavia, where he wrote the Consolation of
   Philosophy, and he was brutally put to death in 524. His brief and busy
   life was marked by great literary achievement. His learning was vast,
   his industry untiring, his object unattainable - nothing less than the
   transmission to his countrymen of all the works of Plato and Aristotle,
   and the  reconciliation of their apparently divergent views. To form
   the idea was a silent judgment on the learning of his day; to realize
   it was more than one man could accomplish; but Boethius accomplished
   much. He translated the Esagog of Porphyry, and the whole of
   Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the Esagog, and
   commentaries on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle,
   and on the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the
   categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical
   Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook
   on music, founded on various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford
   and Cambridge until modern times. His five theological Tractates are
   here, together with the Consolation of Philosophy, to speak for
   themselves.


   Boethius was the last of the Roman philosophers, and the first of the
   scholastic theologians. The present volume serves to prove the truth of
   both these assertions.


   The Consolation of Philosophy is indeed, as Gibbon called it, "a golden
   volume, not unworthy of the leisure of Plato or of Tully." To belittle
   its originality and sincerity, as is sometimes done, with a view to
   saving the Christianity of the writer, is to misunderstand his mind and
   his method. The Consolatio isnot, as has been maintained, a mere
   patchwork of translations from Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Rather
   it is the supreme essay of one who throughout his life had found his
   highest solace in the dry light of reason. His chief source of
   refreshment, in the dungeon to which his beloved library had not
   accompanied him, was a memory well stocked with the poetry and thought
   of former days. The development of the argument is anything but
   Neoplatonic; it is all his own.


   And if the Consolation of Philosophy admits Boethius to the company of
   Cicero or even of Plato, the theological Tractates mark him as the
   forerunner of St. Thomas. It was the habit of a former generation to
   regard Boethius as an eclectic, the transmitter of a distorted
   Aristotelianism, a pagan, or at best a luke-warm Christian, who at the
   end cast off the faith which he had worn in times of peace, and wrapped
   himself in the philosophic cloak which properly belonged to him. The
   authenticity of the Tractates was freely denied. We know better now.
   The discovery by Alfred Holder, and the illuminating discussion by
   Hermann Usener, [1] of a fragment of Cassiodorus are sufficient
   confirmation of the manuscript tradition, apart from the work of
   scholars who have sought to justify that tradition from internal
   evidence. In that fragment Cassiodorus definitely ascribes to his
   friend Boethius "a book on the Trinity, some dogmatic chapters, and a
   book against Nestorius." [2] Boethius was without doubt a Christian, a
   Doctor and perhaps a martyr. Nor is it necessary to think that, when in
   prison, he put away his faith. If it is asked why the Consolation of
   Philosophy contains no conscious or direct reference to the doctrines
   which are traced in the Tractates with so sure a hand, and is, at most,
   not out of harmony with Christianity, the answer is simple. In the
   Consolation he is writing philosophy; in the Tractates he is writing
   theology. He observes what Pascal calls the orders of things.
   Philosophy belongs to one order, theology to another. They have
   different objects. The object of philosophy is to understand and
   explain the nature of the world around us; the object of theology is to
   understand and explain doctrines delivered by divine revelation. The
   scholastics recognized the distinction, and the corresponding
   difference in the function of Faith and Reason. Their final aim was to
   co-ordinate the two, but this was not possible before the thirteenth
   century. Meanwhile Boethius helps to prepare the way. In the
   Consolation he gives Reason her range and suffers her, unaided, to
   vindicate the way of Providence. In the Tractates Reason is called in
   to give to the claims of Faith the support which it does not really
   lack. Reason, however, has still a right to be heard. The distinction
   between fides and ratio is proclaimed in the first two Tractates. In
   the second especially it is drawn with a clearness worthy of St. Thomas
   himself; and there is, of course the implication that the higher
   authority resides with fides. Butthe treatment is philosophical and
   extremely bold. Boethius comes back to the question of the
   substantiality of the divine Persons which he has discussed in Tr. I.
   from a fresh point of view. Once more he decides that the Persons are
   predicated relatively; even Trinity, he concludes, is not predicated
   substantially of deity. Does this square with catholic doctrine? It is
   possible to hear a note of challenge in his words to John the Deacon,
   fidem si poterit rationemque coniunge. Philosophy states the problem in
   unequivocal terms. Theology is required to say whether they commend
   themselves.


   One object of the scholastics, anterior to the final co-ordination of
   the two sciences, was to harmonize and codify all the answers to all
   the questions that philosophy raises. The ambition of Boethius was not
   so soaring, but it was sufficiently bold. He set out, first to
   translate, and then to reconcile, Plato and Aristotle; to go behind all
   the other systems, even the latest and the most in vogue, back to the
   two great masters, and to show that they have the truth, and are in
   substantial accord. So St. Thomas himself, if he cannot reconcile the
   teaching of Plato and Aristotle, at least desires to correct the one by
   the other, to discover what truth is common to both, and to show its
   correspondence with Christian doctrine. It is reasonable to conjecture
   that Boethius, if he had lived, might have attempted something of the
   kind. Were he alive to-day, he might feel more in tune with the best of
   the pagans than with most contemporary philosophic thought.


   In yet one more respect Boethius belongs to the company of the
   schoolmen. He not only put into circulation many precious philosophical
   notions, served as channel through which various works of Aristotle
   passed into the schools, and handed down to them a definite
   Aristotelian method for approaching the problem of faith; he also
   supplied material for that classification of the various sciences which
   is an essential accompaniment of every philosophical movement, and of
   which the Middle Ages felt the value. [3]   The uniform distribution
   into natural sciences, mathematics and theology which he recommends may
   be traced in the work of various teachers up to the thirteenth century,
   when it is finally accepted and defended by St Thomas in his commentary
   on the De Trinitate.


   A seventeenth-century translation of the Consolatio Philosophiae is
   here presented with such alterations as are demanded by a better text,
   and the require ments of modern scholarship. There was, indeed not much
   to do, for the rendering is most exact. This in a translation of that
   date is not a little remarkable. We look for fine English and poetry in
   an Elizabethan; but we do not often get from him such loyalty to the
   original as is here displayed


   Of the author "I. T." nothing is known. He may have been John Thorie, a
   Fleming born in London in 1568, and a B.A. of Christ Church, 1586.
   Thorie "was a person well skilled in certain tongues, and a noted poet
   of his times" (Wood, Athenae Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 624), but his known
   translations are apparently all from the Spanish.


   Our translator dedicates his " Five books of Philosophical Comfort" to
   the Dowager Countess of Dorset, widow of Thomas Sackville, who was part
   author of A Mirror for Magistrates and Gorbodu and who, we learn from
   I. T.s preface, meditated similar work. I. T. does not unduly flatter
   his patroness, and he tells her plainly that she will not understand
   the philosophy of the book, though the theological and practical parts
   may be within her scope.


   The Opuscula Sacra have never before, to our knowledge, been
   translated. In reading and rendering them we have been greatly helped
   by two mediaeval commentaries: one by John the Scot (edited by E. K.
   Rand in Traube's Quellen und Unterschungen, vol. i. pt. 2, Munich,
   1906); the other by Gilbert de la Porrée (printed in Migne, P.L. lxiv.
   We also desire to record our indebtedness in many points of scholarship
   and philosophy to Mr. E. J. Thomas of Emmanuel College.


   H.F.S.

   E.K.R.

     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Anecdoton Holderi, Leipzig, 1877.

   [2] Scripsit librum de sancta trinitate et capita quaedam dogmatica et
   librum contra Nestorium. On the question of the genuineness of Tr. IV.
   De fide catholica see note ad loc.

   [3] Cp. L. Baur, Gundissalinus: de divisione, Münster, 1905.
     __________________________________________________________________

   BOETHIUS

   THE THEOLOGICAL TRACTATES

     __________________________________________________________________


   THE TRINITY IS ONE GOD

   NOT THREE GODS

   A TREATISE BY

   ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS

   BOETHIUS

   MOST HONOURABLE, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS ORDER OF

   EX-CONSULS, PATRICIAN

   TO HIS FATHER-IN-LAW, QUINTUS AURELIUS

   MEMMIUS SYMMACHUS

   MOST HONOURABLE, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS ORDER OF

   EX-CONSULS, PATRICIAN


   I HAVE long pondered this problem with such mind as I have and all the
   light that God has lent me. Now, having set it forth in logical order
   and cast it into literary form, I venture to submit it to your
   judgment, for which I care as much as for the results of my own
   research. You will readily understand what I feel whenever I try to
   write down what I think if you consider the difficulty of the topic and
   the fact that I discuss it only with the few - I may say with no one
   but yourself. It is indeed no desire for fame or empty popular applause
   that prompts my pen;if there be any external reward, we may not look
   for more warmth in the verdict than the subject itself arouses. For,
   apart from yourself, wherever I turn my eyes, they fall on either the
   apathy of the dullard or the jealousy of the shrewd, and a man who
   casts his thoughts before the common herd - I will not say to consider
   but to trample under foot, would seem to bring discredit on the study
   of divinity. So I purposely use brevity and wrap up the ideas I draw
   from the deep questionings of philosophy in new and unaccustomed words
   which speak only to you and to myself, that is, if you deign to look at
   them. The rest of the world I simply disregard: they cannot understand,
   and therefore do not deserve to read. We should not of course press our
   inquiry further than man's wit and reason are allowed to climb the
   height of heavenly knowledge. [4] In all the liberal arts some limit is
   set beyond which reason may not reach. Medicine, for instance, does not
   always bring health to the sick, though the doctor will not be to blame
   if he has left nothing undone which he ought to do. So with the other
   arts. In the present case the very difficulty of the quest claims a
   lenient judgment. You must however examine whether the seeds sown in my
   mind by St. Augustine's writings [5] have borne fruit. And now let us
   begin our inquiry.


   I.


   There are many who claim as theirs the dignity of the Christian
   religion; but that form of faith is valid and only valid which, both on
   account of the universal character of the rules and doctrines affirming
   its authority, and because the worship in which they are expressed has
   spread throughout the world, is called catholic or universal. The
   belief of this religion 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. The
   cause of this union is absence of difference [6] : difference cannot be
   avoided by those who add to or take from the Unity, as for instance the
   Arians, who, by graduating the Trinity according to merit, break it up
   and convert it to Plurality. For the essence of plurality is otherness;
   apart from otherness plurality is unintelligible. In fact, the
   difference between three or more things lies in genus or species or
   number. Difference is the necessary correlative of sameness. Sameness
   is predicated in three ways: By genus; e.g. a man and a horse, because
   of their common genus, animal. By species; e.g. Cato and Cicero,
   because of their common species, man. By number; e.g. Tully and Cicero,
   because they are one and the same man. Similarly difference is
   expressed by genus, species, and number. Now numerical difference is
   caused by variety of accidents; three men differ neither by genus nor
   species but by their accidents, for if we mentally remove from them all
   other accidents, [7] still each one occupies a different place which
   cannot possibly be regarded as the same for each, since two bodies
   cannot occupy the same place, and place is an accident. Wherefore it is
   because men are plural by their accidents that they are plural in
   number.


   II.


   We will now begin a careful consideration of each several point, as far
   as they can be grasped and understood; for it has been wisely said, [8]
   in my opinion, that it is a scholar's duty to study the real nature of
   anything before he formulates his belief about it.


   Speculative Science may be divided into three kinds [9] : Physics,
   Mathematics, and Theology. Physics deals with motion and is not
   abstract or separable (i.e. anupexareto); for it is concerned with the
   forms of bodies together with their constituent matter, which forms
   cannot be separated in reality from their bodies. [10] As the bodies
   are in motion - the earth, for instance, tending downwards, and fire
   tending upwards, form takes on the movement of the particular thing to
   which it is annexed.


   Mathematics does not deal with motion and is not abstract, for it
   investigates forms of bodies apart from matter, and therefore apart
   from movement, which forms, however, being connected with matter cannot
   really separated from bodies.


   Theology does not deal with motion and is abstract and separable, for
   the Divine Substance is without either matter or motion. In Physics,
   then, we are bound to use scientific, in Mathematics, systematical, in
   Theology, intellectual concepts; and in Theology we will not let
   ourselves be diverted to play with imaginations but will simply
   apprehend that Form which is pure form and no image, which is very
   being and the source of Being. For everything owes its being to Form.
   Thus a statue is not a statue on account of the brass which is its
   matter, but on account of the form whereby the likeness of a living
   thing is impressed upon it: the brass itself is not brass because of
   the earth which is its matter, but because of its form. Likewise earth
   is not earth by reason of unqualified matter, [11] but by reason of
   dryness and weight, which are forms. So nothing is said to be because
   it has matter, but because it has a distinctive form. But the Divine
   Substance is Form without matter, and is therefore One, and is its own
   essence. But other things are not simply their own essences, for each
   thing has its being from the things of which it is composed, that is,
   from its parts. It is This and That, i.e. it is the totality of its
   parts in conjunction; it is not This or That taken apart. Earthly man,
   for instance, since he consists of soul and body, is soul and body, not
   soul or body, separately; therefore he is not his own essence. That on
   the other hand which does not consist of This and That, but only of
   This, is really its own essence, and is altogether beautiful and stable
   because it is not grounded in any alien element. Wherefore that is
   truly One in which is no number, in which nothing is present except its
   own essence. Nor can it become the substrate of anything, for it is
   pure Form, and pure Forms cannot be substrates. [12] For if humanity,
   like other forms, is a substrate for accidents, it does not receive
   accidents through the fact that it exists, but through the fact that
   matter is subjected to it. Humanity appears indeed to appropriate the
   accident which in reality belongs to the matter underlying the
   conception Humanity. But Form which, is without matter cannot be a
   substrate, and cannot have its essence in matter, else it would not be
   form but a reflexion. For from those forms which are outside matter
   come the forms which are in matter and produce bodies. We misname the
   entities that reside in bodies when we call them forms; they are mere
   images; they only resemble those forms which are not incorporate in
   matter. In Him, then, is no difference, no plurality arising out of
   difference, no multiplicity arising out of accidents, and accordingly
   no number.


   III.


   Now God differs from God in no respect, for there cannot be divine
   essences distinguished either by accidents or by substantial
   differences belonging to a substrate. But where there is no difference,
   there is no sort of plurality and accordingly no number; here,
   therefore, is unity alone. For whereas we say God thrice when we name
   the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, these three unities do not produce a
   plurality of number in their own essences, if we think of what we count
   instead of what we count with. For in the case of abstract number a
   repetition of single items does produce plurality; but in the case of
   concrete number the repetition and plural use of single items does not
   by any means produce numerical difference in the objects counted. There
   are as a fact two kinds of number. There is the number with which we
   count (abstract) and the number inherent in the things counted
   (concrete). "One" is a thing - the thing counted. Unity is that by
   which oneness is denoted. Again "two" belongs to the class of things as
   men or stones; but not so duality; duality is merely that whereby two
   men or two stones are denoted; and so on. Therefore a repetition of
   unities [13] produces plurality when it is a question of abstract, but
   not when it is a question of concrete things, as, for example, if I say
   of one and the same thing, "one sword, one brand, one blade." [14] It
   is easy to see that each of these names denotes a sword; I am not
   numbering unities but simply repeating one thing, and in saying "sword,
   brand, blade," I reiterate the one thing and do not enumerate several
   different things any more than I produce three suns instead of merely
   mentioning one thing thrice when I say " Sun, Sun, Sun."


   So then if God be predicated thrice of Father, Sun, and Holy Spirit,
   the threefold predication does not result in plural number. The risk of
   that, as has been said, attends only on those who distinguish Them
   according to merit. But Catholic Christians, allowing no difference of
   merit in God, assuming Him to be Pure Form and believing Him to be
   nothing else than His own essence, rightly regard the statement "the
   Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and this Trinity
   is one God," not as an enumeration of different things but as a
   reiteration of one and the same thing, like the statement, "blade and
   brand are one sword" or "sun, sun, and sun are one sun."


   Let this be enough for the present to establish my meaning and to show
   that not every repetition of units produces number and plurality. Still
   in saying "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," we are not using synonymous
   terms. "Brand and blade " are the same and identical, but "Father, Son,
   and Holy Spirit," though the same, are not identical. This point
   deserves a moment's consideration, When they ask, "Is the Father the
   same as the Son?" Catholics answer "No." "Is the One the same as the
   Other?" The answer is in the negative. There is not, therefore,
   complete indifference between Them; and so number does come in - number
   which we explained was the result of diversity of substrates. We will
   briefly debate this point when we have done examining how particular
   predicates can be applied to God.


   IV.


   There are in all ten categories which can be universally predicated of
   things, namely, Substance, Quality, Quantity, Relation, Place, Time,
   Condition, Situation, Activity, Passivity. Their meaning is determined
   by the contingent subject; for some of them denote real substantive
   attributes of created things, others belong to the class of accidental
   attributes. But when these categories are applied to God they change
   their meaning entirely. Relation, for instance, cannot be predicated at
   all of God; for substance in Him is not really substantial but
   supersubstantial. So with quality and the other possible tributes, of
   which we must add examples for the sake of clearness.


   When we say God, we seem to denote a substance; but it is a substance
   that is supersubstantial. When we say of Him, "He is just," we mention
   a quality, not an accidental quality - rather a substantial and, in
   fact, a supersubstantial quality. [15] 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. Again, concerning His
   Form, we have already shown that He is Form, and truly One without
   Plurality. The categories we have mentioned are such that they give to
   the thing to which they are applied the character which they express;
   in created things they express divided being, in God, conjoined and
   united being - in the following manner. When we name a substance, as
   man or God, it seems as though that of which the predication is made
   were itself substance, as man or God is substance. But there is a
   difference: since man is not simply and entirely man, and therefore is
   not substance after all. For what man is he owes to other things which
   are not man. But God is simply and entirely God, for He is nothing else
   than what He is, and therefore is, through simple existence, God. Again
   we apply just, a quality, as though it were that of which it is
   predicated; that is, if we say "a just man or just God," we assert that
   man or God is just. But there is a difference, for man is one thing,
   and a just man is another thing. But God is justice itself. So a man or
   God is said to be great, and it would appear that man is substantially
   great or that God is substantially great. But man is merely great; God
   is greatness.


   The remaining categories are not predicable of God nor yet of created
   things. [16] For place is predicated   of man or of God - a man is in
   the market-place; God is everywhere - but in neither case is the
   predicate identical with the object of predication. To say "A man is in
   the market " is quite a different thing from saying "he is white or
   long," or, so to speak, encompassed and determined by some property
   which enables him to be described in terms of his substance; this
   predicate of place simply declares how far his substance is given a
   particular setting amid other things.


   It is otherwise, of course, with God. "He is everywhere" 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 for Him to occupy, although He
   Himself can be received by no place, and therefore He cannot anywhere
   be in a place, since He is everywhere but in no place. It is the same
   with the category of time, as, "A man came yesterday; God is ever."
   Here again the predicate of "coming yesterday" denotes not something
   substantial, but something happening in terms of time. But the
   expression "God is ever" denotes 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. Philosophers say that "ever" may
   be applied to the life of the heavens and other immortal bodies. But as
   applied to God it has a different meaning. He is ever, because "ever"
   is with Him a term of present time, and there is this great difference
   between "now," which is our present, and the divine present. Our
   present connotes changing time and sempiternity; God's present,
   abiding, unmoved, and immoveable, connotes eternity. Add semper to
   eternity and you get the constant, incessant and thereby perpetual
   course of our present time, that is to say, sempiternity. [17]


   It is just the same with the categories of condition and activity. For
   example, we say "A man runs, clothed," "God rules, possessing all
   things." Here again nothing substantial is asserted of either subject;
   in fact all the categories we have hitherto named arise from what lies
   outside substance, and all of them, so to speak, refer to something
   other than substance. The difference between the categories is easily
   seen by an example. Thus, the terms "man" and "God" refer to the
   substance in virtue of which the subject is - man or God. The term
   "just" refers to the quality in virtue of which the subject is
   something, viz. just; the term "great" to the quantity in virtue of
   which He is something, viz. great. No other category save substance,
   quality, and quantity refer to the substance of the subject. If I say
   of one "he is in the market" or "everywhere," I am applying the
   category of place, which is not a category of the substance, like
   "just" in virtue of justice. So if I say, "he runs, He rules, he is
   now, He is ever," I make reference to activity or time - if indeed
   God's "ever" can be described as time - but not to a category of
   substance, like "great" in virtue of greatness.


   Finally, we must not look for the categories of situation and passivity
   in God, for they simply are not to be found in Him.


   Have I now made clear the difference between the categories? Some
   denote the reality of a thing; others its accidental circumstances; the
   former declare that a thing is something, the latter say nothing about
   its being anything, but simply attach to it, so to speak, something
   external. Those categories which describe a thing in terms of its
   substance may be called substantial categories; when they apply to
   things as subjects they are called accidents. In reference to God, who
   is not a subject at all it is only possible to employthe category of
   substance.


   V.


   Let us now consider the category of relation, to which all the
   foregoing remarks have been preliminary; for qualities which obviously
   arise from the association of another term do not appear to predicate
   anything concerning the substance of a subject. For instance, master
   and slave [18] are relative terms; let us see whether either of them
   are predicates of substance. If you supress the term slave, [19] you
   simultaneously suppress the term master. On the other hand, though you
   suppress the term whiteness, you do not suppress some white thing, [20]
   though, of course, if the particular whiteness inheres as an accident
   in the thing, the thing disappears as soon as you suppress the
   accidental quality whiteness. But in the case of master, if you
   suppress the term slave, the term disappears. But slave is not an
   accidental quality of master, as whiteness is of a white thing; it
   denotes the power which the master has over the slave. Now since the
   power goes when the slave is removed, it is plain that power is no
   accident to the substance of master, but is an adventitious
   augmentation arising from the possession of slaves.


   It cannot therefore be affirmed that a category of relation increases,
   decreases, or alters in any way the substance of the thing to which it
   is applied. The category of relation, then, has nothing to do with the
   substance of the subject; it simply denotes a condition of relativity,
   and that not necessarily to something else, but sometimes to the
   subject itself. For suppose a man standing. If I go up to him on my
   right and stand beside him, he will be left, in relation to me, not
   because he is left in himself, but because I have come up to him on my
   right. Again if I come up to him on my left, he becomes right in
   relation to me, not because he is right in himself, as he may be white
   or long, but because he is right in virtue of my approach. What he is
   depends entirely on me, and not in the least on the essence of his
   being.


   Accordingly those predicates which do not denote the essential property
   of a thing cannot alter, change, or disturb its nature in any way.
   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. For it is a canon of absolute
   truth that distinctions in incorporeal things are established by
   differences and not by spatial separation. It cannot be said that God
   became Father by the addition to His substance of some accident; for he
   never began to be Father since the begetting of the Son belongs to His
   very substance; however, the predicate father, as such, is relative.
   And if we bear in mind all the propositions made concerning God in the
   previous discussion, we shall admit that God the Son proceeded from God
   the Father, and the Holy Ghost from both, and that They cannot possibly
   be spatially different, since They are incorporeal. But since the
   Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and since
   there are in God no points of difference distinguishing Him from God,
   He differs from none of the Others. But where there are no differences
   there is no plurality; where is no plurality there is Unity. Again,
   nothing but God can be begotten of God, and lastly, in concrete
   enumerations the repetition of units does not produce plurality. Thus
   the Unity of the Three is suitably established.


   VI.


   But since no relation can be affirmed of one subject alone, inasmuch as
   a predicate wanting relation is a predicate of substance, the
   manifoldness of the Trinity is secured through the category of
   relation, and the Unity is maintained through the fact that there is no
   difference of substance, or operation, or generally of any substantial
   predicate. So then, the divine Substance preserves the Unity, the
   divine relations bring about the Trinity. Hence only terms belonging to
   relation may be applied singly to Each. For the Father is not the same
   as the Son, nor is either of Them the same as the Holy Spirit. Yet
   Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each the same God, the same in
   justice, in goodness, in greatness, and in everything that can be
   predicated of substance. One must not forget that predicates of
   relativity do not always involve relation to something other than the
   subject, as slave involves master, where the two terms are different.
   For equals are equal, like are like, identicals are identical, each
   with other, and the relation of Father to Son, and of both to Holy
   Spirit is a relation of identicals. A relation of this kind is not to
   be found in created things, but that is because of the difference which
   we know attaches to transient objects. We must not in speaking of God
   let imagination lead us astray; we must let the Faculty of pure
   Knowledge lift us up and teach us to know all things as far as they may
   be known. [21]


   I have now finished the investigation which I proposed. The exactness
   of my reasoning awaits the standard of your judgment; your authority
   will pronounce whether I have seen a straight path to the goal. 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [4] Cf. the discussion of human ratio and divine intellegentia in Cons.
   v. pr. 4 and 5.

   [5] e.g. Aug. De Trin.

   [6] The terms differentia, numerus, species, are used expertly, as
   would be expected of the author of the In Isag. Porph. Commenta. See S.
   Brandt's edition of that work (in the Vienna Corpus, 1906), s.v.
   differentia, etc.

   [7] This method of mental abstraction is employed more elaborately in
   Tr. iii. (vide infra, p. 44) and in Cons. v. pr. 4, where the notion of
   divine foreknowledge is abstracted in imagination.

   [8] By Cicero (Tusc. v. 7. 19).

   [9] Cf. the similar division of philosophy in Isag. Porph. ed. Brandt,
   pp. 7ff.

   [10] Sb. though they may be separated in thought.

   [11] Apoio =t , t eids of Arisotle. Cf. o...gar (he, t ) ... (Alexander
   Aphrod. De Anima, 17. 17); ei, apo...d, hapoion n e (id. De anima libri
   mantiss...124. 7).

   [12] This is Realism. Cf. 11 "Sed si rerum ueritatem atque integritatem
   perpendas, non est dubium quin uere si...  Nam cum res onmes quae uere
   sunt sine his quinque (i.e. genus species differentia propria
   accidentia) esse n... possint, has ipsas quinque res uere intellectas
   esse n... dubites" Isag. in Porph. ed. pr. i. (M. P.L. 1xiv. col.
   ...Brandt, pp. 26 ff.). The two passages show that Boethius is
   definitely committed to the Realistic position, although in his
   Comment. in. Porphyr. a se translatum he holds the scales between Plato
   and Aristotle, "quorum diiudicare sententias ...ptum esse non duxi"
   (ep. Hauréau, Hist. de la philosophie scolastique, i. 120).As a fact in
   the Comment. in Porph. he merely postpones the question, which in the
   De Trin. he settles. Boethius was ridiculed in the Middle Ages for his
   caution.

   [13] e.g. if I say "one, one, one," I enounce three unities.

   [14] The same words are used to illustrate the same matter in the
   Comment. in Arist. per rm, 2^nd ed. (Meise... 56. 12.

   [15] Gilbert de la Porrée in his commentary on the De Trin. makes
   Boethius's meaning clear. "Quod igitur in illo substantiam nominamus,
   non est subiectionis ratione quod dicitur, sed ultra omnem quae
   accidentibus est subiecta substantiam est essentia, absque omnibus quae
   possunt accidere solitaria omnino" (Migne, P.L. lxiv. 1283). Cf. Aug.
   De Trin. vii. 10.

   [16] i.e. according to their substances.

   [17] The doctrine is Augustine's, cf. De Ciu. Dei, xi. 6, xii. 16; but
   Boethius's use of sempiternitas, as well as his word?building, seem to
   be peculiar to himself. Claudianus Mamertus, speaking of applying the
   categories to God, uses sempiternitas as Boethius uses aeternitas. Cf.
   De Stat... Animae i. 19. Apuleius seems to use both terms
   interchangeably, e.g. Asclep. 29?31. On Boethius's distinction between
   time and eternity see Cons. v. pr. 6, and Rand, Der dem B. zugeschr.
   Trakt. de. fide, pp. 425 ff, and Brandt in Theol. Littzg., 1902, p.
   147.

   [18] Dominus and seruus are similarly used as illustration, In Cat.
   (Migne, P.L. lxiv. 217).

   [19] i.e. which is external to the master.

   [20] i.e. which is external to the whitened thing.

   [21] Cf. Cons. v. pr. 4 and 5, especially in pr. 5 the passage "quare
   in illius summae intelligentiae acumen si possumus erigamur."
     __________________________________________________________________


   ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS

   BOETHIUS

   MOST HONOURABLE, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS ORDER OF

   EX-CONSULS, PATRICIAN

   TO JOHN THE DEACON

   WHETHER FATHER, SON, AND HOLY SPIRIT MAY BE SUBSTANTIALLY PREDICATED OF
   THE DIVINITY


   THE question before us is whether Father, Son, and Holy Spirit may be
   predicated of the Divinity substantially or otherwise. And I think that
   the method of our inquiry must be borrowed from what is admittedly the
   surest source of all truth, namely, the fundamental doctrines of the
   catholic faith. If, then, I ask whether He who is called Father is a
   substance, the answer will be yes. If I ask whether the Son is a
   substance, the reply will be the same. So, too, no one will hesitate to
   affirm that the Holy Spirit is also a substance. But when, on the other
   I hand, I take together all three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the
   result is not three substances but one substance. The one substance of
   the Three, then, cannot be separated or divided, nor is it made up of
   various parts combined into one: it is simply one. Everything,
   therefore, that is affirmed of the divine substance must be common to
   the Three, and we can recognize what predicates may be affirmed of the
   substance of the godhead by this sign, that all those which are
   affirmed of it may also be affirmed severally of each of the Three
   combined into one. For instance if we say "the Father is God, the Son
   is God, and the Holy Spirit is God," then Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
   are one God. If then their one godhead is one substance, the name of
   God may with right be predicated substantially of the Divinity.


   Similarly the Father is truth, the Son is truth, and the Holy Spirit is
   truth; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not three truths, but one
   truth. If, then, they are one substance and one truth, truth must of
   necessity be a substantial predicate. So Goodness, Immutability,
   Justice, Omnipotence and all the other predicates which we apply to the
   Persons singly and collectively are plainly substantial predicates.
   Hence it appears that what may be predicated of each single One but not
   of all Three is not a substantial predicate, but of another kind - of
   what kind I will examine presently. For He who is Father does not
   transmit this name to the Son nor to the Holy Spirit. Hence it follows
   that this name is not attached to Him as something substantial; for if
   it were a substantial predicate, as God, truth, justice, or substance
   itself, it would be affirmed of the other Persons.


   Similarly the Son alone receives this name - nor does He associate it
   with the other Persons, as in the case of the titles God, truth, and
   the other predicates which I have already mentioned. The Spirit too is
   not the same as the Father and the Son. Hence we gather that Father,
   Son, and Holy Spirit are not predicated of the Divinity in a
   substantial manner, but otherwise. [22] For if each term were
   predicated substantially it would be affirmed of the three Persons both
   separately and collectively. It is evident that these terms are
   relative, for the Father is some one's Father, the Son is some one's
   Son, the Spirit is some one's Spirit. Hence not even Trinity may be
   substantially [23] predicated of God; for the Father is not Trinity -
   since He who is Father is not Son and Holy Spirit - nor yet, by parity
   of reasoning, is the Son Trinity nor the Holy Spirit Trinity, but the
   Trinity consists in diversity of Persons, the Unity in simplicity of
   substance.


   Now if the Persons are separate, while the Substance is undivided, it
   must needs be that that term which is derived from Persons does not
   belong to Substance. But the Trinity is effected by diversity of
   Persons, wherefore Trinity does not belong to Substance. Hence neither
   Father, nor Son, nor Holy Spirit, nor Trinity can be substantially
   predicated of God, but only relatively, as we have said. But God,
   Truth, Justice, Goodness, Omnipotence, Substance, Immutability, Virtue,
   Wisdom and all other conceivable predicates of the kind are applicable
   substantially to divinity.


   If I am right and speak in accordance with the Faith, I pray you
   confirm me. But if you are in any point of another opinion, examine
   carefully what I have said, and if possible, reconcile faith and
   reason. [24]
     __________________________________________________________________

   [22] i.e. personaliter (Ioh. Scotus ad loc.).

   [23] i.e. sed personaliter (Ioh. Scotus ad loc.).

   [24] Vide supra, Introduction, p. xii.
     __________________________________________________________________


   TO THE SAME

   HOW SUBSTANCES CAN BE GOOD IN

   VIRTUE     OF  THEIR   EXISTENCE

WITHOUT BEING ABSOLUTE GOODS


   You ask me to state and explain somewhat more clearly that obscure
   question in my Hebdomads [25] concerning the manner in which substances
   can be good in virtue of existence without being absolute goods. [26]
   You urge that this demonstration is necessary because the method of
   this kind of treatise is not clear to all. I can bear witness with what
   eagerness you have already attacked the subject. But I confess I like
   to expound my Hebdomads to myself, and would rather bury my
   speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert
   and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is
   made amusing. Wherefore do not you take objection to the obscurity that
   waits on brevity; for obscurity is the sure treasure-house of secret
   doctrine and has the further advantage that it speaks a language
   understood only of those who deserve to understand. I have therefore
   followed the example of the mathematical [27] and cognate sciences and
   laid down bounds and rules according to which I shall develop all that
   follows.


   I. A common conception is a statement generally accepted as soon as it
   is made. Of these there are two kinds. One is universally intelligible;
   as, for instance, "if equals be taken from equals the remainders are
   equal." Nobody who grasps that proposition will deny it. The other kind
   is intelligible only to the learned, but it is derived from the same
   class of common conceptions; as " Incorporeals cannot occupy space,"
   and the like. This is obvious to the learned but not to the common
   herd.


   II. Being and the thing that is [28] are different. Simple Being awaits
   manifestation, but a thing is and exists [29] as soon as it has
   received the form which gives it Being.


   III. A thing that exists can participate in something else; but
   absolute Being can in no wise participate in anything. For
   participation is effected when a thing already is; but it is something
   after it has acquired Being.


   IV. That which exists can possess, something besides itself. But
   absolute Being has no admixture of aught besides Itself.


   V. Merely to be something and to be something absolutely are different;
   the former implies accidents, the latter connotes a substance.


   VI. Everything that is participates in absolute Being [30] through the
   fact that it exists. In order to be something it participates in
   something else. Hence that which exists participates in absolute Being
   through the fact that it exists, but it exists in order to participate
   in something else.


   VII. Every simple thing possesses as a unity its absolute and its
   particular Being.


   VIII. In every composite thing absolute and individual Being are not
   one and the same.


   IX. Diversity repels; likeness attracts. That which seeks something
   outside itself is demonstrably of the same nature as that which it
   seeks.


   These preliminaries are enough then for our purpose. The intelligent
   interpreter of the discussion will supply the arguments appropriate to
   each point.


   Now the problem is this. Things which are, are good. For all the
   learned are agreed that every existing thing tends to good and
   everything tends to its like. Therefore things which tend to good are
   good. We must, however, inquire how they are good - by participation or
   by substance. If by participation, they are in no wise good in
   themselves; for a thing which is white by participation in whiteness is
   not white in itself by virtue of absolute Being. So with all other
   qualities. If then they are good by participation, they are not good in
   themselves; therefore they do not tend to good. But we have agreed that
   they do. Therefore they are good not by participation but by substance.
   But those things whose substance is good are substantially good. But
   they owe their actual Being to absolute Being. Their absolute Being
   therefore is good; therefore the absolute Being of all things is good.
   But if their Being is good, things which exist are good through the
   fact that they exist and their absolute Being is the same as that of
   the Good. Therefore they are substantial goods, since they do not
   merely participate in goodness. But if their absolute Being is good,
   there is no doubt but that, since they are substantial goods, they are
   like the First Good and therefore they will have to be that Good. For
   nothing is like It save Itself Hence all things that are, are God - an
   impious assertion. Wherefore things are not substantial goods, and so
   the essence of the Good does not reside in them. Therefore they are not
   good through the fact that they exist. But neither do they receive good
   by participation, for they would in no wise tend to good. Therefore
   they are in no wise good. [31]


   This problem admits of the following solution. [32] There are many
   things which can be separated by a mental process, though they cannot
   be separated in fact. No one, for instance, can actually separate a
   triangle or other mathematical figure from the underlying matter; but
   mentally one can consider a triangle and its properties apart from
   matter. Let us, therefore, abstract mentally for a moment the presence
   of the Prime Good, whose Being is admitted by the universal consensus
   of learned and unlearned opinion and can be deduced from the religious
   beliefs of savage races. The Prime Good having been thus for a moment
   abstracted, let us postulate as good all things that are, and let us
   consider how they could possibly be good if they did not derive from
   the Prime Good. This process leads me to perceive that their Goodness
   and their existence are two different things. For let me suppose that
   one and the same substance is good, white, heavy, and round. Then it
   must be admitted that its substance, roundness, colour, and goodness
   are all different things. For if each of these qualities were the same
   as its substance, weight would be the same thing as colour or goodness,
   and goodness would be the same as colour; which is contrary to nature.
   Their Being then in that case would be one thing, their quality
   another, and they would be good, but they would not have their absolute
   Being good. Therefore if they really existed at all, they would not be
   from good nor good, they would not be the same as good, but Being and
   Goodness would be for them two different things. But if they were
   nothing else but good substances, and were neither heavy, nor coloured,
   and possessed neither spatial dimension nor quality, beyond that of
   goodness, they (or rather it) would seem to be not things but the
   principle of things. For there is one thing alone that is by nature
   good to the exclusion of every other quality. But since they are not
   simple, they could not even exist at all unless that which is the one
   sole Good willed them to be. They are called good simply because their
   Being is derived front the Will of the Good. For the Prime Good is
   essentially good in virtue of Being; the secondary good is in its turn
   good because it derives from the good whose absolute Being is good. But
   the absolute Being of all things derives from the Prime Good which is
   such that of It Being and Goodness are rightly predicated as identical.
   Their absolute Being therefore is good; for thereby it resides in Him.


   Thereby the problem is solved. For though things be good through the
   fact that they exist they are not like the Prime Good, for the simple
   reason that their absolute Being is not good under all circumstances,
   but that things can have no absolute Being unless it derive from the
   Prime Being, that is, the Prime Good; their substance, therefore, is
   good, and yet it is not like that from which it comes. For the Prime
   Good is good through the fact that it exists, irrespective of all
   conditions, for it is nothing else than good; but the second good if it
   derived from any other source might be good, but could not be good
   through the fact that it exists. For in that case it might possibly
   participate in good, but their substantial Being, not deriving from the
   Prime Good, could not have the element of good. Therefore when we have
   mentally abstracted the Prime Good, these things, though they might be
   good, would not be good through the fact that they exist, and since
   they could not actually exist unless the true good had produced them,
   therefore their Being is good, and yet that which springs from the
   substantial Good is not like its source which produces it. And unless
   they had derived from it, though they were good yet they could not be
   good through the fact that they exist because they were apart from good
   and not derived from good, since that very good is the Prime Good and
   is substantial Being and substantial Good and essential Goodness. But
   we need not say that white things are white through the fact that they
   exist; for they drew their existence from the will of God but not their
   whiteness. For to be is one thing; to be white is another; and that
   because He who gave them Being is good, but not white. It is therefore
   in accord ance with the will of the Good that they should be good
   through the fact that they exist; but it is not in accordance with the
   will of one who is not white that a thing have a certain property
   making it white in virtue of its Being; for it was not the will of One
   who is white that gave them Being. And so they are white simply because
   One who was not white willed them to be white; but they are good
   through the fact that they exist because One who was good willed them
   to be good. Ought, then, by parity of reason, all things to be just
   because He is just who willed them to be? That is not so either. For to
   be good involves Being, to be just involves an act. For Him being and
   action are identical; to be good and to be just are one and the same
   for Him. But being and action are not identical for us, for we are not
   simple. For us, then, goodness is not the same thing as justice, but we
   all have the same sort of Being in virtue of our existence. Therefore
   all things are good, but all things are not just. Finally, good is a
   general, but just is a species, and this species does not apply to all.
   Wherefore some things are just, others are something else, but all
   things are good.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [25] Similarly Porphyry divided the works of Plotinus into six Enneades
   or groups of nine.

   [26] Cf. discussion of the nature of good in Cons. iii. m. 10 and pr.
   11 (infra pp. 274 ff.).

   [27] On this mathematical method of exposition cf. Cons. iii. pr. 10
   (infra p. 270).

   [28] Esse = Aristotle's t enai; id quod est = t t.

   [29] Consistere = hupostnai.

   [30] Id quod est esse = tde ti.

   [31] Cf. the similar reductio ad absurdum in Tr. 5 (infra, p. 98) and
   in Cons. v. pr. 3 (infra, p. 374).

   [32] Vide supra, p. 6, n. b.
     __________________________________________________________________

  ON THE CATHOLIC FAITH [33]


   THE Christian Faith is proclaimed by the authority of the New Testament
   and of the Old; but although the Old scripture [34] contains within its
   pages the name of Christ and constantly gives token that He will come
   who we believe has already come by the birth of the Virgin, yet the
   diffusion of that faith throughout the world dates from the actual
   miraculous coming of our Saviour.


   Now this our religion which is called Christian and Catholic is founded
   chiefly on the following assertions. From all eternity, that is, before
   the world was established, and so before all that is meant by time
   began, there has existed one divine substance of Father, Son, and Holy
   Spirit in such wise that we confess the Father God, the Son God, and
   the Holy Spirit God, and yet not three Gods but one God. Thus the
   Father hath the Son, begotten of His substance and coeternal with
   Himself after a manner that He alone knoweth, Him we confess to be Son
   in the sense that He is not the same as the Father. Nor has the Father
   ever been Son, for the human mind must not imagine a divine lineage
   stretching back into infinity; nor can the Son, being of the same
   nature in virtue of which He is coeternal with the Father, ever become
   Father, for the divine lineage must not stretch forward into infinity.
   But the Holy Spirit is neither Father nor Son, and therefore, albeit of
   the same divine nature, neither begotten, nor begetting, but proceeding
   as well from the Father as the Son. [35] Yet what the manner of that
   Procession is we are no more able to state clearly than is the human
   mind able to understand the generation of the Son from the substance of
   the Father. But these articles are laid down for our belief by Old and
   New Testament. Concerning which fortress and citadel [36] of our
   religion many men have spoken otherwise and have even impugned it,
   being moved by human, nay rather by carnal feeling. Arius, for
   instance, who, while calling the Son God, declares Him to be vastly
   inferior to the Father and of another substance. The Sabellians also
   have dared to affirm that there are not three separate Persons but only
   One, saying that the Father is the same as the Son and the Son the same
   as the Father and the Holy Spirit the same as the Father and the Son;
   and so declaring that there is but one divine Person expressed by
   different names.


   The Manichaeans, too, who allow two coeternal and contrary principles,
   do not believe in the Only begotten Son of God. For they consider it a
   thought unworthy of God that He should have a Son, since they entertain
   the very carnal reflection that inasmuch as [37] human generation
   arises from the mingling of two bodies, it is unworthy to hold a notion
   of this sort in respect of the divine nature; whereas such a view finds
   no sanction in the Old Testament and absolutely [38] none in the New.
   Yea, their error which refuses this notion also refuses the Virgin
   birth of the Son, because they would not have the God's nature defiled
   by the man's body. But enough of this for the present; the points will
   be presented in the proper place as the proper arrangement demands.


   The divine nature then, abiding from all eternity and unto all eternity
   without any change, by the exercise of a will known only to Himself,
   determined of Himself to form the world, and brought it into being when
   it was absolutely naught, nor did He produce it from His own substance,
   lest it should be thought divine by nature, nor did He form it after
   any model, lest it should be thought that anything had already come
   into being which helped His will by the existence of an independent
   nature, and that there should exist something that had not been made by
   Him and yet existed; but by His Word He brought forth the heavens, and
   created the earth [39] that so He might make natures worthy of a place
   in heaven, and also fit earthly things to earth. But although in heaven
   all things are beautiful and arranged in due order, yet one part of the
   heavenly creation which is universally termed angelic, [40] seeking
   more than nature and the Author of Nature had granted them, was cast
   forth from its heavenly habitation; and because the Creator did not
   wish the roll of the angels, that is of the heavenly city whose
   citizens the angels are, to be diminished, He formed man out of the
   earth and breathed into him the breath of life; He endowed him with
   reason, He adorned him with freedom of choice and established him in
   the joys of Paradise, making covenant aforehand that if he would remain
   without sin He would add him and his offspring to the angelic hosts; so
   that as the higher nature had fallen low through the curse of pride,
   the lower substance might ascend on high through the blessing of
   humility. But the father of envy, loath that man should climb to the
   place where he himself deserved not to remain, put temptation before
   him and the consort whom the Creator had brought forth out of his side
   for the continuance of the race, and laid them open to punishment for
   disobedience, promising man also the gift of Godhead, the arrogant
   attempt to seize which had caused his own fall. All this was revealed
   by God to His servant Moses, whom He vouchsafed to teach the creation
   and origin of man, as the books written by him declare. For the divine
   authority is always conveyed in one of the following ways - the
   historical, which simply announces facts; the allegorical, whence
   historical matter is excluded; or else the two combined, history and
   allegory conspiring to establish it. All this is abundantly evident to
   pious hearers and steadfast believers.


   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. [41] 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 [42] 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 first 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.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [33] The conclusions adverse to the genuineness of this tractate,
   reached in the dissertation Der dem Boethius zugeschriebene Traktat de
   Fide Catholica (Jahrbücher fur 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
   Boethiuis'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.

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

   [35] 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.P. 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.

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

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

   [38] In integro = prorsus; cf. Brandt, op. cit. Index, s.v. integer.

   [39] The doctrine is orthodox, but note that Boethius does not say ex
   nihilo creauit. Vide infra, p. 366 II. 24ff.

   [40] Vide infra, Cons. iv. pr. 6, p. 342 I. 54.

   [41] e.g. Ishamel also kat trka gegnnetai, Gal. iv. 23.

   [42] Cf. "populus dei mirabiliter crescens...quia...erant
   suspecta...laboribus premebatur. Aug. De Ciu. Dei, 18. 7. For other
   coincidences see Rand, op. cit. pp. 423ff.
     __________________________________________________________________


   A TREATISE AGAINST

   EUTYCHES AND NESTORIUS

   By

   ANICIUS MANLIUS SEVERINUS

   BOETHIUS

   MOST HONOURABLE, OF THE ILLUSTRIOUS ORDER OF

   EX-CONSULS, PATRICIAN

   TO HIS SAINTLY MASTER AND REVEREND FATHER

   JOHN THE DEACON HIS SON BOETHIUS


   I HAVE been long and anxiously waiting for you to discuss with me the
   problem which was raised at the meeting. But since your duties have
   prevented your coming and I shall be for some time involved in my
   business engagements, I am setting down in writing what I had been
   keeping to say by word of mouth.


   YOU no doubt remember how, when the letter [43] was read in the
   assembly, it was asserted that the Eutychians confess that Christ is
   formed from two natures but does not consist of them - whereas
   Catholics admit both propositions, for among followers of the true
   Faith He is equally believed to be of two natures and in two natures.
   Struck by the novelty of this assertion I began to inquire what
   difference there can be between unions formed from two natures and
   unions which consist in two natures, for the point which the bishop who
   wrote the letter refused to pass over because of its gravity, seemed to
   me of importance and not one to be idly and carelessly slurred over. On
   that occasion all loudly protested that the difference was evident,
   that there was no obscurity, confusion or perplexity, and in the
   general storm and tumult there was no one who really touched the edge
   of the problem, much less anyone who solved it.


   I was sitting a long way from the man whom I especially wished to
   watch, [44] and if you recall the arrangement of the seats, I was
   turned away from him, with so many between us, that however much I
   desired it I could not see his face and expression and glean therefrom
   any sign of his opinion. Personally, indeed, I had nothing more to
   contribute than the rest, in fact rather less than more. I, no more
   than the others, had any view about the question at issue, while my
   possible contribution was less by one thing, namely, the false
   assumption of a knowledge that I had not got. I was, I admit, much put
   out, and being overwhelmed by the mob of ignorant speakers, I held my
   peace, fearing lest I should be rightly set down as insane if I held
   out for being sane among those madmen. [45] So I continued to ponder
   all the questions in my mind, not swallowing what I had heard, but
   rather chewing the cud of constant meditation. At last the door opened
   to my insistent, knocking, and the truth which I found cleared out of
   my way all the clouds of the Eutychian error. And with this discovery a
   great wonder came upon me at the vast temerity of unlearned men who use
   the cloak of impudent presumption to cover up the vice of ignorance,
   for not only do they often fail to grasp the point at issue, but in a
   debate of this kind they do not even understand their own statements,
   forgetting that the case of ignorance is all the worse if it is not
   honestly admitted. [46]


   I turn from them to you, and to you I submit this little essay for your
   first judgment and consideration. If you pronounce it to be sound I beg
   you to place it among the other writings of mine which you possess; but
   if there is anything to be struck out or added or changed in any way, I
   would ask you to let me have your suggestions, in order that I may
   enter them in my copies just as they leave your hands. When this
   revision has been duly accomplished, then I will send the work on to be
   judged by the man to whom I always submit everything. [47] But since
   the pen is now to take the place of the living voice, let me first
   clear away the extreme and self-contradictory errors of Nestorius and
   Eutyches; after that, by God's help, I will temperately set forth the
   middle way of the Christian Faith. But since in this whole question of
   self-contradictory heresies the matter of debate is Persons and
   Natures, these terms most first be defined and distinguished by their
   proper differences.


   I.


   Nature, then, may be affirmed either of bodies alone or of substances
   alone, that is, of corporeals or incorporeals, or of everything that is
   in any way capable of affirmation. Since, then, nature can be affirmed
   in three ways, it must obviously be defined in three ways. For if you
   choose to affirm nature of the totality of things, the definition will
   be of such kind as to include all things that are. It will accordingly
   be something of this kind: "Nature belongs to those things which, since
   they exist, can in some measure be apprehended by the mind." This
   definition, then, includes both accidents and substances, for they all
   can be apprehended by the mind. But I add "in some measure" because God
   and matter cannot be apprehended by mind, be it never so whole and
   perfect, but still they are apprehended in a measure through the
   removal of accidents. The reason for adding the words, "since they
   exist," is that the mere word "nothing" denotes something, though it
   does not denote nature. For it denotes, indeed, not that anything is,
   but rather non-existence; but every nature exists. And if we choose to
   affirm "nature" of the totality of things, the definition will be as we
   have given it above.


   But if "nature" is affirmed of substances alone, we shall, since all
   substances are either corporeal or incorporeal, give to nature denoting
   substances a definition of the following kind: "Nature is either that
   which can act or that which can be acted upon." Now the power to act
   and to suffer belongs to all corporeals and the soul of corporeals; for
   it both acts in the body and suffers by the body. But only to act
   belongs to God and other divine substances.


   Here, then, you have a further definition of what nature is as applied
   to substances alone. This definition comprises also the definition of
   substance. For if the word nature signifies substance, when once we
   have defined nature we have also settled the definition of substance.
   But if we neglect incorporeal substances and confine the name nature to
   corporeal substances so that they alone appear to possess the nature of
   substance - which is the view of Aristotle and the adherents both of
   his and various other schools - we shall define nature as those do who
   have only allowed the word to be applied to bodies. Now, in accordance
   with this view, the definition is as follows: "Nature is the principle
   of movement properly inherent in and not accidentally attached to
   bodies. I say "principle of movement" because every body has its proper
   movement, fire moving upwards, the earth moving downwards. And what I
   mean by "movement properly inherent and not accidentally attached" is
   seen by the example of a wooden bed which is necessarily borne downward
   and is not carried downward by accident. For it is drawn downward by
   weight and heaviness because it is of wood, i.e. an earthly material.
   For it falls down not because it is a bed, but because it is earth,
   that is, because it is an accident of earth that it is a bed; hence we
   call it wood in virtue of its nature, but bed in virtue of the art that
   shaped it.


   Nature has, further, another meaning according to which we speak of the
   different nature of gold and silver, wishing thereby to point the
   special property of things; this meaning of nature will be defined as
   follows: "Nature is the specific difference that gives form to
   anything." Thus, although nature is described or defined in all these
   different ways, both Catholics and Nestorians firmly hold that there
   are in Christ two natures of the kind laid down in our last definition,
   for the same specific differences cannot apply to God and man.


   II.


   But the proper definition of Person is a matter of very great
   perplexity. For if every nature has person, the difference between
   nature and person is a hard knot to unravel; or if person is not taken
   as the equivalent of nature but is a term of less scope and range, it
   is difficult to say to what natures it may be extended, that is, to
   what natures the term person may be applied and what natures are
   dissociate from it. For one thing is clear, namely that nature is a
   substrate of Person, and that Person cannot be predicated apart from
   nature.


   We must, therefore, conduct our inquiry into these points as follows.


   Since Person cannot exist apart from nature and since natures are
   either substances or accidents and we see that a person cannot come
   into being among accidents (for who can say there is any person of
   white or black or size?), it therefore remains that Person is properly
   applied to substances. But of substances, some are corporeal and others
   incorporeal. And of corporeals, some are living and others the reverse;
   of living substances, some are sensitive and others insensitive; of
   sensitive substances, some are rational and others irrational. [48]
   Similarly of incorporeal substances, some are rational, others the
   reverse (for instance the animating spirits of beasts); but of rational
   substances there is one which is immutable and impassible by nature,
   namely God, another which in virtue of its creation is mutable and
   passible except in that case where the Grace of the impassible
   substance has transformed it to the unshaken impassibility which
   belongs to angels and to the soul.


   Now from all the definitions we have given it is clear that Person
   cannot be affirmed of bodies which have no life (for no one ever said
   that a stone had a person), nor yet of living things which lack sense
   (for neither is there any person of a tree), nor finally of that which
   is bereft of mind and reason (for there is no person of a horse or ox
   or any other of the animals which dumb and unreasoning live a life of
   sense alone), but we say there is a person of a man, of God, of all
   angel. Again, some substances are universal, others are particular.
   Universal terms are those which are predicated of individuals, as man,
   animal, stone, stock and other things of this kind which are either
   genera or species; for the term man is applied to individual men just
   as animal is to animals, and stone and stock to individual stones and
   stocks. But particulars are terms which are never predicated of other
   things, as Cicero, Plato, this stone from which this statue of Achilles
   was hewn, this piece of wood out of which this table was made. But in
   all these things person cannot in any case be applied to universals,
   but only to particulars and individuals; for there is no person of a
   man if animal or general, only the single persons of Cicero, Plato, or
   other single individuals are termed persons.


   III.


   Wherefore if Person belongs to substances alone, and these rational,
   and if every nature is a substance, existing not in universals but in
   individuals, we have found the definition of Person, viz.: "The
   individual substance of a rational creature." [49] Now by this
   definition we Latins have described what the Greeks call hupstois. For
   the word person seems to be borrowed from a different source, namely
   from the masks which in comedies and tragedies used to signify the
   different subjects of representation. Now persona "mask" is derived
   from personare, with a circumflex on the penultimate. But if the accent
   is put on the antepenultimate [50] the word will clearly be seen to
   come from sonus "sound," and for this reason, that the hollow mask
   necessarily produces a larger sound. The Greeks, too, call these masks
   prsopa from the fact that they are placed over the face and conceal the
   countenance from the spectator: par to prs tos pas tthetthai. But
   since, as we have said, it was by the masks they put on that actors
   played the different characters represented in a tragedy or comedy -
   Hecuba or Medea or Simon or Chremes, so also all other men who could be
   recognized by their several characteristics were designated by the
   Latins with the term persona and by the Greeks with prsopa. But the
   Greeks far more clearly gave to the individual subsistence of a
   rational nature the name hupstasis, while we through want of
   appropriate words have kept a borrowed term, calling that persona which
   they call hupstass, but Greece with its richer vocabulary gives the
   name hupstasis to the individual subsistence. And, if I may use Greek
   in dealing with matters which were first mooted by Greeks before they
   came to be interpreted in Latin: a osai n mn tos kuthlou enai dnantai n
   d tos tmois ka kat mros mnois phstantai, that is: essences indeed can
   have a general existence in universals, but they have particular
   substantial existence in particulars alone. For it is from particulars
   that all our comprehension of universals is taken. Wherefore since
   subsistences are present in universals but acquire substance in
   particulars they rightly gave the name hupstasis to subsistences which
   acquired substance through the medium of particulars. For to no one
   using his eyes with any care or penetration will subsistence and
   substance appear identical.


   For our equivalents of the Greek terms ososis osisthai are respectively
   subsistentia and subsistere, while their hupstasis phstasthai are
   represented by our substantia and substare. For a thing has subsistence
   when it does not require accidents in order to be, but that thing has
   substance which supplies to other things, accidents to wit, a substrate
   enabling them to be; for it "substands" those things so long as it is
   subjected to accidents. Thus genera and species have only subsistence,
   for accidents do not attach to genera and species. But particulars have
   not only subsistence but substance, for they, no more than generals,
   depend on accidents for their Being; for they are already provided with
   their proper and specific differences and they enable accidents to be
   by supplying them with a substrate. Wherefore esse and subsistere
   represent enai and osisthai, while, substare represents huphstasthai.
   For Greece is not, as Marcus Tullius [51] playfully says, short of
   words, but provides exact equivalents for essentia, subsistentia,
   substantia and persona - osa for essentia, ososis for subsistentia,
   hupstasis for substantia, prsopon for persona. But the Greeks called
   individual substances hupostseis because they underlie the rest and
   offer support and substrate to what are called accidents; and we in our
   term call them substances as being substrate - hupostseis, and since
   they also term the same substances prsop, we too may call them persons.
   So osa is identical with essence, ososis with subsistence, hupstasis
   with substance, prsopon with person. But the reason why the Greek does
   not use prsopon of irrational animals while we apply the term substance
   to them is this: This term was applied to things of higher value, in
   order that what is more excellent might be distinguished, if not by a
   definition of nature answering to the literal meaning of huphstasthai =
   substare, at any rate by the words hupstasis = substantia.


   To begin with, then, man is essence, i.e. osa, subsistence, i.e.
   ososis, hupstasis, i.e. substance, prsopon, i.e. person: osa or
   essentia because he is, ososis or subsistence because he is not
   accidental to any subject, hupstasis or substance because he is subject
   to all the things which are not subsistences or ososeis, while he is
   prsopon or person because he is a rational individual. Next, God is osa
   or essence, for He is and is especially that from which proceeds the
   Being of all things. To Him belong ososis, i.e. subsistence, for He
   subsists in absolute independence, and huphstasthai, for He is
   substantial Being. Whence we go on to say that there is one osa or
   ososis, i.e. one essence or subsistence of the Godhead, but three
   hupostseis or substances. And indeed, following this use, men have
   spoken of One essence, three substances and three persons of the
   Godhead. For did not the language of the Church forbid us to say three
   substances in speaking of God, [52] substance might seem a right term
   to apply to Him, not because He underlies all other things like a
   substrate, but because, just as He excells above all things, so He is
   the foundation and support of things, supplying them all with osisthai
   or subsistence.


   IV.


   You must consider that all I have said so far has been for the purpose
   of marking the difference between Nature and Person, that is, osa and
   hupstasis. The exact terms which should be applied in each case must be
   left to the decision of ecclesiastical usage. For the time being let
   that distinction between Nature and Person hold which I have affirmed,
   viz. that Nature is the specific property of any substance, and Person
   the individual substance of a rational nature. Nestorius affirmed that
   in Christ Person was twofold, being led astray by the false notion that
   Person may be applied to every nature. For on this assumption,
   understanding that there were in Christ two natures, he declared that
   there were likewise two persons. And although the definition which we
   have already given is enough to prove Nestorius wrong, his error shall
   be further declared by the following argument. If the Person of Christ
   is not single, and if it is clear that there are in Him two natures, to
   wit, divine and human (and no one will be so foolish as to fail to
   include either in the definition), it follows that there must
   apparently be two persons; for Person, as has been said, is the
   individual substance of a rational nature.


   What kind of union, then, between God and man has been effected? Is it
   as when two bodies are laid the one against the other, so that they are
   only joined locally, and no touch of the quality of the one reaches the
   other - the kind of union which the Greeks term kat parthesin "by
   juxtaposition"? But if humanity has been united to divinity in this way
   no one thing has been formed out of the two, and hence Christ is
   nothing. The very name of Christ, indeed, denotes by its singular
   number a unity. But if the two persons continued and such a union of
   natures as we have above described took place, there could be no unity
   formed from two things, for nothing could ever possibly be formed out
   of two persons. Therefore Christ is, according to Nestorius, in no
   respect one, and therefore He is absolutely nothing. For what is not
   one cannot exist either; because Being and unity are convertible terms,
   and whatever is one is. Even things which are made up of many items,
   such as a heap or chorus, are nevertheless a unity. Now we openly and
   honestly confess that Christ is; therefore we say that Christ is a
   Unity. And if this is so, then without controversy the Person of Christ
   is one also. For if He had two Persons He could not be one; but to say
   that there are two Christs is nothing else than the madness of a
   distraught brain. Could Nestorius, I ask, dare to call the one man and
   the one God in Christ two Christs? Or why does he call Him Christ who
   is God, if he is also going to call Him Christ who is man, when his
   combination gives the two no common factor, no coherence? Why does be
   wrongly use the same name for two utterly different natures, when, if
   he is compelled to define Christ, he cannot, as he himself admits,
   apply the substance of one definition to both his Christs? For if the
   substance of God is different front that of man, and the one name of
   Christ applies to both, and the combination of different substances is
   not believed to have formed one Person, the name of Christ is equivocal
   [53] and cannot be comprised in any definition. But in what Scriptures
   is the name of Christ ever made double? Or what new thing has been
   wrought by the coming of the Saviour? For the truth of the faith and
   the unwontedness of the miracle alike remain, for Catholics, unshaken.
   For how great and unprecedented a thing it is - unique and incapable of
   repetition in any other age - that the nature of Him who is God alone
   should come together with human nature which was entirely different
   from God to form from different natures by conjunction a single Person!
   But now, if we follow Nestorius, what happens that is new? "Humanity
   and divinity," quoth he, "keep their proper Persons." Well, when had
   not divinity and humanity each its proper Person? And when, we answer,
   will this not be so? Or wherein is the birth of Jesus more significant
   than that of any other child, if, the two Persons remaining distinct
   the natures also were distinct? For while the Persons remained so there
   could no more be a union of natures in Christ than there could be in
   any other man with whose substance, be it never so perfect, no divinity
   was ever united because of the subsistence of his proper person. But
   for the sake of argument let him call Jesus, i.e. the human person,
   Christ, because through that person God wrought certain wonders.
   Agreed. But why should he call God Himself by the name of Christ? Why
   should he not go on to call the very elements by that name? For through
   them in their daily movements God works certain wonders. Is it because
   irrational substances cannot possess a Person enabling them to receive
   the name of Christ? Is not the operation of God seen plainly in men of
   holy life and notable piety? There will surely be no reason not to call
   the saints also by that name, if Christ taking humanity on Him is not
   one Person through conjunction. But perhaps he will say, "I allow that
   such men are called Christs, but it is because they are in the image of
   the true Christ." But if no one Person has been formed of the union of
   God and man, we shall consider all of them just as true Christs as Him
   who, we believe, was born of a Virgin. For no Person has been made one
   by the union of God and man either in Him or in them who by the Spirit
   of God foretold the coming Christ, for which cause they too were called
   Christs. So now it follows that so long as the Persons remain, we
   cannot in any wise believe that humanity has been assumed by divinity.
   For things which differ alike in persons and natures are certainly
   separate, nay absolutely separate; man and oxen are not further
   separate than are divinity and humanity in Christ, if the Persons have
   remained. Men indeed and oxen are united in one animal nature, for by
   genus they have a common substance and the same nature in the
   collection which forms the universal. [54] But God and man will be at
   all points fundamentally different if we are to believe that
   distinction of Persons continues under difference of nature. Then the
   human race has not been saved, the birth of Christ has brought us no
   salvation, the writings of all the prophets have but beguiled the
   people that believed in them, contempt is poured upon the authority of
   the whole Old Testament which promised to the world salvation by the
   birth of Christ. It is plain that salvation has not been brought us, if
   there is the same difference in Person that there is in Nature. No
   doubt He saved that humanity which we believe He assumed; but no
   assumption can be conceived, if the separation abides alike of Nature
   and of Person. Hence that human nature which could not be assumed as
   long as the Person continued, will certainly and rightly appear
   incapable of salvation by the birth of Christ. Wherefore man's nature
   has not been saved by the birth of Christ - an impious conclusion. [55]


   But although there are many weapons strong enough to wound and demolish
   the Nestorian view, let us for the moment be content with this small
   selection from the store of arguments available.


   V.


   I must now pass to Eutyches who, wandering from the path of primitive
   doctrine, has rushed into the opposite error [56] and asserts that so
   far from our having to believe in a twofold Person in Christ, we must
   not even confess a double Nature; humanity, he maintains, was so
   assumed that the union with Godhead involved the disappearance of the
   human nature. His error springs from the same source as that of
   Nestorius. For just as Nestorius deems there could not be a double
   Nature unless the Person were doubled, and therefore, confessing the
   double Nature in Christ, has perforce believed the Person to be double,
   so also Eutyches denied that the Nature was not double unless the
   Person was double and since he did not confess a double Person, he
   thought it a necessary consequence that the Nature should be regarded
   as single. Thus Nestorius, rightly holding Christ's Nature to be
   double, sacrilegiously professes the Persons to be two; whereas
   Eutyches, rightly believing the Person to be single, impiously believes
   that the Nature also is single. And being confuted by the plain
   evidence of facts, since it is clear that the Nature of God is
   different from that of man, he declares his belief to be: two Natures
   in Christ before the union and only one after the union. Now this
   statement does not express clearly what he means. However, let us
   scrutinize his extravagance. It is plain that this union took place
   either at the moment of conception or at the moment of resurrection.
   But if it happened at the moment of conception Eutyches seems to think
   that even before conception He had human flesh, not taken from  Mary
   but prepared insome other way, while the Virgin Mary was brought in to
   give birth to flesh that was not taken from her; that this flesh, which
   already existed, was apart and separate from the substance of divinity,
   but that when He was born of the Virgin it was united to God, so that
   the Nature seemed to be    made one. Or if this be not his opinion,
   since he says that there were two Natures before the union and one
   after, supposing the union to be established by conception, an
   alternative view may be that Christ indeed took a body from Mary but
   that before He took it the Natures of Godhead and manhood were
   different: but the Nature assumed became one with that of Godhead into
   which it passed. But if he thinks that this union was effected not by
   conception but by resurrection, we shall have to assume that this too
   happened in one of two ways; either Christ was conceived and did not
   assume a body from Mary or He did assume flesh from her, and there were
   (until indeed He rose) two Natures which became one after the
   Resurrection. From these alternatives a dilemma arises which we will
   examine as follows: Christ who was born of Mary either did or did not
   take human flesh from her. If Eutyches does not admit that He took it
   from her, then let him say what manhood He put on to come among us -
   that which had fallen through sinful disobedience or another? If it was
   the manhood of that man from whom all men descend, what manhood did
   divinity invest? For if that flesh in which He was born came not of the
   seed of Abraham and of David and finally of Mary, let Eutyches show
   from what man's flesh he descended, since, after the first man, all
   human flesh is derived from human flesh. But if he shall name any child
   of man beside Mary the Virgin as the cause of the conception of the
   Saviour, he will both be confounded by his own error, and, himself a
   dupe, will stand accused of stamping with falsehood the very Godhead
   for thus transferring to others the promise of the sacred oracles made
   to Abraham and David [57] that of their seed salvation should arise for
   all the world, especially since if human flesh was taken it could not
   be taken from any other but Him of whom it was begotten. If, therefore,
   His human body was not taken from Mary but from any other, yet that was
   engendered through Mary which had been corrupted by disobedience,
   Eutyches is confuted by the argument already stated. But if Christ did
   not put on that manhood which had endured death in punishment for sin,
   it will result that of no man's seed could ever one have been born who
   should be, like Him, without punishment for original sin. Therefore
   flesh like His was taken from no man, whence it would appear to have
   been new-formed for the purpose. But did this flesh then either so
   appear to human eyes that the body was deemed human which was not
   really human, because it was not subject to any primal penalty, or was
   some new true human flesh formed as a makeshift, not subject to the
   penalty for original sin? If it was not a truly human body, the Godhead
   is plainly convicted of falsehood for displaying to men a body which
   was not real and thus deceived those who thought it real. But if flesh
   had been formed new and real and not taken from man, to what purpose
   was the tremendous tragedy of the conception? Where the value of His
   long Passion? I cannot but consider foolish even a human action that is
   useless. And to what useful end shall we say this great humiliation of
   Divinity was wrought if ruined man has not been saved by the conception
   and the Passion of Christ - for they denied that he was taken into
   Godhead? Once more then, just as the error of Eutyches took its rise
   from the same source as that of Nestorius, so it hastens to the same
   goal inasmuch as according to Eutyches also the human race has not been
   saved, [58] since man who was sick and needed health and salvation was
   not taken into Godhead. Yet this is the conclusion he seems to have
   drawn, if he erred so deeply as to believe that Christ's body was not
   taken really from man but from a source outside him and prepared for
   the purpose in heaven, for He is believed to have ascended with it up
   into heaven. Which is the meaning of the text: none hath ascended into
   heaven save Him who came down from heaven.


   VI.


   I think enough has been said on the supposition that we should believe
   that the body which Christ received was not taken from Mary. But if it
   was taken from Mary and the human and divine natures did not continue,
   each in its perfection, this may have happened in one of three ways.
   Either Godhead was translated into manhood, or manhood into Godhead, or
   both were so modified and mingled that neither substance kept its
   proper form. But if Godhead was translated into manhood, that has
   happened which piety forbids us to believe, viz. while the manhood
   continued in unchangeable substance Godhead was changed, and that which
   was by nature passible and mutable remained immutable, while that which
   we believe to be by nature immutable and impassible was changed into a
   mutable thing. This cannot happen on any show of reasoning. But
   perchance the human nature may seem to be changed into Godhead. Yet how
   can this be if Godhead in the conception of Christ received both human
   soul and body? Things cannot be promiscuously changed and interchanged.
   For since some substances are corporeal and others incorporeal, neither
   can a corporeal substance be changed into all incorporeal, nor call an
   incorporeal be changed into that which is body, nor yet incorporeals
   interchange their proper forms; for only those things can be
   interchanged and transformed which possess the common substrate of the
   same matter, nor can all of these so behave, but only those which can
   act upon and be acted on by each other. Now this is proved as follows:
   bronze can no more be converted into stone than it can be into grass,
   and generally no body call be transformed into any other body unless
   the things which pass into each other have a common matter and can act
   upon and be acted on by each other, as when wine and water are mingled
   both are of such a nature as to allow reciprocal action and influence.
   For the quality of water can be influenced in some degree by that of
   wine, similarly the quality of wine can be influenced by that of water.
   And therefore if there be a great deal of water but very little wine,
   they are not said to be mingled, but the one is ruined by the quality
   of the other. For if you pour wine into the sea the wine is not mingled
   with the sea but is lost in the sea, simply because the quality of the
   water owing to its bulk has been in no way affected by the quality of
   the wine, but rather by its own bulk has changed the quality of the
   wine into water. But if the natures which are capable of reciprocal
   action and influence are in moderate proportion and equal or only
   slightly unequal, they are really mingled and tempered by the qualities
   which are in moderate relation to each other. This indeed takes place
   in bodies but not in all bodies, but only in those, as has been said,
   which are capable of reciprocal action and influence and have the same
   matter subject to their qualities. For all bodies which subsist in
   conditions of birth and decay seem to possess a common matter, but all
   bodies are not capable of reciprocal action and influence. But
   corporeals cannot in any way be changed into incorporeals because they
   do not share in any common underlying matter which can be changed into
   this or that thing by taking on its qualities. For the nature of no
   incorporeal substance rests upon a material basis; but there is no body
   that has not matter as a substrate. Since this is so, and since not
   even those things which naturally have a common matter can pass over
   into each other unless they have the power of acting on each other and
   being acted upon by each other, far more will those things not suffer
   interchange which not only have no common matter but are different in
   substance, since one of them, being body, rests on a basis of matter,
   while the other, being incorporeal, cannot possibly stand in need of a
   material substrate.


   It is therefore impossible for a body to be changed into an incorporeal
   species, nor will it ever be possible for incorporeals to be changed
   into each other by any process of mingling. For things which have no
   common matter cannot be changed and converted one into another. But
   incorporeal things have no matter; they can never, therefore, be
   changed about among themselves. But the soul and God are rightly
   believed to be incorporeal substances; therefore the human soul has not
   been converted into the Godhead by which it was assumed. But if neither
   body nor soul can be turned into Godhead, it could not possibly happen
   that manhood should be transformed into God. But it is much less
   credible that the two should be confounded together since neither can
   incorporality pass over to body, nor again, contrariwise, can body pass
   over into incorporality when these have no common matter underlying
   them which can be converted by the qualities of one of two substances.


   But the Eutychians say that Christ consists indeed of two natures, but
   not in two natures, meaning, no doubt, thereby, that a thing which
   consists of two elements can so far become one, that the elements of
   which it is said to be made up disappear; just as, for example, when
   honey is mixed with water neither remains, but the one thing being
   spoilt by conjunction with the other produces a certain third thing, so
   that third thing which is produced by the combination of honey and
   water is said to consist of both, but not in both. For it can never
   consist in both so long as the nature of both does not continue. For it
   can consist of both even though each element of which it is compounded
   has been spoiled by the quality of the other; but it can never consist
   in both natures of this kind since the elements which have been
   transmuted into each other do not continue, and both the elements in
   which it seems to consist cease to be, since it consists of two things
   translated into each other by change of qualities.


   But Catholics in accordance with reason confess both, for they say that
   Christ consists both of and in two natures. How this can be affirmed I
   will explain a little later. One thing is now clear; the opinion of
   Eutyches has been confuted on the ground that, although there are three
   ways by which the one nature can subsist of the two, viz. either the
   translation of divinity into humanity or of humanity into divinity or
   the compounding of both together, the foregoing train of reasoning
   proves that no one of the three ways is a possibility.


   VII.


   It remains for us to show how in accordance with the affirmation of
   Catholic belief Christ consists at once in and of both natures.


   The statement that a thing consists of two natures bears two meanings;
   one, when we say that anything is a union of two natures, as e.g. honey
   and water, where the union is such that in the combination however the
   elements be confounded, whether by one nature changing into the other,
   or by both mingling with each other, the two entirely disappear. This
   is the way in which according to Eutyches Christ consists of two
   natures.


   The other way in which a thing can consist of two natures is when it is
   so combined of two that the elements of which it is said to be combined
   continue without changing into each other, as when we say that a crown
   is composed of gold and gems. Here neither is the gold converted into
   gems nor is the gem turned into gold, but both continue without
   surrendering their proper form.


   Things then like this, composed of various elements, we say consist
   also in the elements of which they are composed. For in this case we
   can say that a crown is composed of gems and gold, for gems and gold
   are that in which the crown consists. For in the former mode of
   composition honey and water is not that in which the resulting union of
   both consists.


   Since then the Catholic Faith confesses that both natures continue in
   Christ and that they both remain perfect, neither being transformed
   into the other, it says with right that Christ consists both in and of
   the two natures; in the two because both continue, of the two because
   the One Person of Christ is formed by the union of the two continuing
   natures.


   But the Catholic Faith does not hold the union of Christ out of two
   natures according to that sense which Eutyches puts upon it. For the
   interpretation of the conjunction out of two natures which he adopts
   forbids him to confess consistence in two or the continuance of the two
   either; but the Catholic adopts an interpretation of the consistence
   out of two which comes near to that of Eutyches, yet keeps the
   interpretation which confesses consistence in two.


   "To consist of two natures" is therefore an equivocal or rather a
   doubtful term of double meaning denoting different things; according to
   one of its interpretations the substances out of which the union is
   said to have been composed do not continue, according to another the
   union effected of the two is such that both natures continue.


   When once this knot of doubt or ambiguity has been untied, nothing
   further can be advanced to shake the true and solid content of the
   Catholic Faith, which is that the same Christ is perfect man and God,
   and that He who is perfect man and God is One God and Son of Man, that,
   however, quaternity is not added to the Trinity by the addition of
   human nature to perfect Godhead, but that one and the same Person
   completes the number of the Trinity, so that, although it was the
   manhood which suffered, yet God can be said to have suffered, not by
   manhood becoming Godhead but by manhood being assumed by Godhead.
   Further, He who is man is called Son of God not in virtue of divine but
   of human substance, which latter none the less was conjoined to Godhead
   in a unity of natures. And although thought is able to distinguish and
   combine the manhood and the Godhead, yet one and the same is perfect
   man and God, God because He was begotten of the substance of the
   Father, but man because He was engendered of the Virgin Mary. And
   further He who is man is God in that manhood was assumed by God, and He
   who is God is man in that God was clothed with manhood. And although in
   the same Person the Godhead which took manhood is different from the
   manhood which It took, yet the same is God and man. For if you think of
   man, the same is man and God, being man by nature, God by assumption.
   But if you think of God, the same is God and man, being God by nature,
   man by assumption. And in Him nature becomes double and substance
   double because he is God-man, and One Person since the same is man and
   God. This is the middle way between two heresies, just as virtues also
   hold a middle place. [59] For every virtue has a place of honour midway
   between extremes. For if it stands beyond or below where it should it
   ceases to be virtue. And so virtue holds a middle place.


   Wherefore if the following four assertions can be said to be neither
   beyond or below reason, viz. that in Christ are either two Natures and
   two Persons as Nestorius says, or one Person and one Nature as Eutyches
   says, or two Natures but one Person as the Catholic Faith believes, or
   one Nature and two Persons, and inasmuch as we have refuted the
   doctrine of two Natures and two Persons in our argument against
   Nestorius and incidentally have shown that the one Person and one
   Nature suggested by Eutyches is impossible - since there has never been
   anyone so mad as to believe that His Nature was single but His Person
   double - it remains that the article of belief must be true which the
   Catholic Faith affirms, viz. that the Nature is double, but the Person
   one. But as I have just now remarked that Eutyches confesses two
   Natures in Christ before the union, but only one after the union, and
   since I proved that under this error lurked two opposite opinions, one,
   that the union was brought about by conception although the human body
   was certainly not taken from Mary; the other that the body taken from
   Mary formed part of the union by means of the Resurrection, I have, it
   seems to me, argued the twofold aspect of the case as completely as it
   deserves. What we have now to inquire is how it came to pass that two
   Natures were combined into one Substance.


   VII.


   Nevertheless there remains yet another question which can be advanced
   by those who do not believe that the human body was taken from Mary,
   but that the body was in some other way set apart and prepared, which
   in the moment of union appeared to be conceived and born of Mary's
   womb. For they say: if the body was taken from man while every man was,
   from the time of the first disobedience, not only enslaved by sin and
   death but also involved in sinful desires, and if his punishment for
   sin was that, although he was held in chains of death, yet at the same
   time he should be guilty because of the will to sin, why was there in
   Christ neither sin nor any will to sin? And certainly such a question
   is attended by a difficulty which deserves attention. For if the body
   of Christ was assumed from human flesh, it is open to doubt of what
   kind we must consider that flesh to be which was assumed.


   In truth, the manhood which He assumed He likewise saved; but if He
   assumed such manhood as Adam had before sin, He appears to have assumed
   a human nature complete indeed, but one which was in no need of
   healing. But how can it be that He assumed such manhood as Adam had
   when there could be in Adam both the will and the desire to sin, whence
   it came to pass that even after the divine commands had been broken, he
   was still held captive to sins of disobedience? But we believe that in
   Christ there was never any will to sin, because especially if He
   assumed such a human body as Adam had before his sin, He could not be
   mortal, since Adam, had he not sinned, would in no wise have suffered
   death. Since, then, Christ never sinned, it must be asked why, He
   suffered death if He assumed the body of Adam before sin. But if He
   accepted human conditions such as Adam's were after sin, it seems that
   Christ could not avoid being subject to sin, perplexed by passions,
   and, since the canons of judgment were obscured, prevented from
   distinguishing with unclouded reason between good and evil, since Adam
   by his disobedience incurred all these penalties of crime.


   To whom we must reply [60] that there are three states of man to
   envisage: one, that of Adam before his sin, in which, though free from
   death and still unstained by any sin, he could yet have within him the
   will to sin; the second, that in which he might have suffered change
   had he chosen to abide steadfastly in the commands of God, for then it
   could have been further granted him not only not to sin or wish to sin,
   but to be incapable of sinning or of the will to transgress. The third
   state is the state after sin, into which man needs must be pursued by
   death and sin and the sinful will. Now the points of extreme divergence
   between these states are the following: one state would have been for
   Adam a reward if he had chosen to abide in God's laws; the other was
   his punishment because he would not abide in them; for in the former
   state there would have been no death nor sin nor sinful will, in the
   latter there was both death and sin and every desire to transgress, and
   a general tendency to ruin and a condition helpless to render possible
   a rise after the Fall. But that middle state from which actual death or
   sin was absent, but the power for both remained, is situate between the
   other two.


   Each one, then, of these three states somehow supplied to Christ a
   cause for his corporeal nature; thus His assumption of a mortal body in
   order to drive death far from the human race belongs properly to that
   state which was laid on man by way of punishment after Adam's sin,
   whereas the fact that there was in Christ no sinful will is borrowed
   from that state which might have been if Adam had not surrendered his
   will to the frauds of the tempter. There remains, then, the third or
   middle state, to wit, that which was before death had come and while
   the will to sin might yet be present. In this state, therefore, Adam
   was able to eat and drink, digest the food be took, fall asleep, and
   perform all the other functions which always belonged to him as man,
   though they were allowed and brought with them no pain of death.


   There is no doubt that Christ was in all points thus conditioned; for
   He ate and drank and discharged the bodily function of the human body.
   For we must not think that Adam was at the first subject to such need
   that unless he ate he could not have lived, but rather that, if he had
   taken food from every tree, he could have lived for ever, and by that
   food have escaped death; and so by the fruits of the Garden he
   satisfied a need. [61] And all know that in Christ the same need dwelt,
   but lying in His own power and not laid upon Him. And this need was in
   Him before the Resurrection, but after the Resurrection He became such
   that His human body was changed as Adam's might have been but for the
   bands of disobedience. Which state, moreover, our Lord Jesus Christ
   Himself taught us to desire in our prayers, asking that His Will be
   done as in heaven so on earth, and that His Kingdom come, and that He
   may deliver us from evil. For all these things are sought in prayer by
   those members of the human family who rightly believe and who are
   destined to undergo that most blessed change of all. [62]


   So much have I written to you concerning what I believe should be
   believed. In which matter if I have said aught amiss, I am not so well
   pleased with myself as to try to press my effusions in the face of
   wiser judgment. For if there is no good thing in us there is nothing we
   should fancy in our opinions. But if all things are good as coming from
   Him who alone is good, that rather must be thought good which the
   Unchangeable Good and Cause of all Good indites.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [43] Evidently the letter addressed to Pope Symmachus by the Oriental
   bishops (vide Mansi, Concil. viii. 221ff.), in which they inquire
   concerning the safe middle way between the heresies of Eutyches and
   Nestorius. The date of the bishops' letter, and consequently, in all
   probability, of Boethius's tractate was 512.

   [44] Obviously his father-in-law Symmachus. Vide p. 76, eius cuius
   soleo iudicio, etc.

   [45] Cf. Hor. Serm. i. 3. 82; ii. 3. 40.

   [46] Cf. infra, de Cons. i. pr. 4 (p. 142) oportet uulnus delegas.

   [47] Vide supra, p. 75, and De Trin. p. 3.

   [48] For a similar example of the method of diuisio cf. Cic. De Off.
   ii. 3. 11. Cf. also Isag. Porph. edit. prima, i. 10. (ed. Brandt, p.
   29).

   [49] Boethius's definition of persona was adopted by St. Thomas (S. ia
   iae. 29. 1), was regarded as classical by the Schoolmen, and has the
   approval of modern theologians. Cf. Dorner, Doctrine of Christ, iii. p.
   311.

   [50] Implying a short penultimate.

   [51] Tusc. ii. 15. 35.

   [52] For a similar submission of his own opinion to the usage of the
   Church cf. the end of Tr. i. and of Tr. ii.

   [53] Cf. the discussion of aequiuoca=omnumos in Isag. Porph. Vide
   Brandt's Index.

   [54] Vniuersalitas=to ka.

   [55] For a similar reductio ad absurdum ending in quod nefas est see
   Tr. iii. (supra, p. 44) and Cons. v. 3 (infra, p. 374).

   [56] The ecclesiastical via media, with the relegation of opposing
   theories to the extremes, which meet in a common fount of falsity, owes
   something to Aristotle and to our author. Vide infra, p. 118.

   [57] The use of this kind of argument by Boethius allays any suspicion
   as to the genuineness of Tr. iv. which might be caused by the use of
   allegorical interpretation therein. Note also that in the Consolatio
   the framework is allegory, which is also freely applied in the details.

   [58] Another reductio ad absurdum or ad impistotem, cf. supra, p. 98,
   note b.

   [59] Vide supra, p. 100 note.

   [60] This respondendum has the true Thomist ring.

   [61] Adam did not need to eat in order to live, but if he had not eaten
   he would have suffered hunger, etc.

   [62] The whole of this passage might be set in Tr. iv. without altering
   the tone.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

     * Esagog: [1]1 [2]2
     * a osai n mn tos kuthlou enai dnantai n d tos tmois ka kat mros
       mnois phstantai: [3]1
     * enai: [4]1
     * ei, apo...d, hapoion n e : [5]1
     * kat parthesin: [6]1
     * kat trka gegnnetai: [7]1
     * oon pe: [8]1
     * osa: [9]1 [10]2 [11]3 [12]4 [13]5 [14]6 [15]7
     * osisthai: [16]1 [17]2
     * ososeis: [18]1
     * ososis: [19]1 [20]2 [21]3 [22]4 [23]5
     * ososis : [24]1
     * ososis osisthai: [25]1
     * o...gar (he, t ) ...: [26]1
     * par to prs tos pas tthetthai: [27]1
     * per rm: [28]1
     * prsop: [29]1
     * prsopa: [30]1 [31]2
     * prsopon: [32]1 [33]2 [34]3 [35]4 [36]5
     * t enai: [37]1
     * t t: [38]1
     * tde ti: [39]1
     * to ka: [40]1
     * anupexareto: [41]1
     * hupostnai: [42]1
     * hupostseis: [43]1 [44]2 [45]3
     * hupstasis: [46]1 [47]2 [48]3 [49]4 [50]5 [51]6 [52]7 [53]8 [54]9
     * hupstasis phstasthai: [55]1
     * hupstass: [56]1
     * hupstois: [57]1
     * huphstasthai: [58]1 [59]2 [60]3
     * omnumos: [61]1
     * Apoio =t , t eids : [62]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [63]i  [64]iii  [65]vii  [66]viii  [67]ix  [68]x  [69]xi  [70]xii
   [71]xiii  [72]xiv  [73]1  [74]3  [75]5  [76]7  [77]9  [78]11  [79]13
   [80]15  [81]17  [82]19  [83]21  [84]23  [85]25  [86]27  [87]29  [88]31
   [89]33  [90]35  [91]37  [92]39  [93]41  [94]43  [95]45  [96]47  [97]49
   [98]51  [99]53  [100]55  [101]57  [102]59  [103]61  [104]63  [105]65
   [106]67  [107]69  [108]71  [109]73  [110]75  [111]77  [112]79  [113]81
   [114]83  [115]85  [116]87  [117]89  [118]91  [119]93  [120]95  [121]97
   [122]99  [123]101  [124]103  [125]105  [126]107  [127]109  [128]111
   [129]113  [130]115  [131]117  [132]119  [133]121  [134]123  [135]125
   [136]127
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

References

   1. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-p2.1
   2. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-p2.2
   3. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.7
   4. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p52.4
   5. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-p36.3
   6. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p62.2
   7. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-p21.1
   8. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-p11.1
   9. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.1
  10. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.8
  11. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.2
  12. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.6
  13. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.11
  14. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.14
  15. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p60.2
  16. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p52.5
  17. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p56.1
  18. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.9
  19. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.9
  20. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.3
  21. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.7
  22. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.12
  23. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.15
  24. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.2
  25. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p52.2
  26. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-p36.2
  27. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.2
  28. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-p43.1
  29. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.7
  30. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.1
  31. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.3
  32. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.4
  33. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.11
  34. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.12
  35. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.5
  36. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.10
  37. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-p14.1
  38. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-p14.2
  39. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-p24.1
  40. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p64.1
  41. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-p30.1
  42. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-p15.1
  43. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.5
  44. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.6
  45. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.16
  46. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.4
  47. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.6
  48. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.8
  49. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.3
  50. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.10
  51. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.14
  52. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.4
  53. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.8
  54. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p60.3
  55. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p52.3
  56. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p50.5
  57. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p49.1
  58. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p52.6
  59. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p53.13
  60. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p55.13
  61. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-p63.1
  62. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-p36.1
  63. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#i-Page_i
  64. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#i-Page_iii
  65. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#ii-Page_vii
  66. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#ii-Page_viii
  67. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-Page_ix
  68. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-Page_x
  69. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-Page_xi
  70. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-Page_xii
  71. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-Page_xiii
  72. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iii-Page_xiv
  73. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv-Page_1
  74. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv-Page_3
  75. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_5
  76. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_7
  77. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_9
  78. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_11
  79. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_13
  80. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_15
  81. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_17
  82. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_19
  83. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_21
  84. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_23
  85. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_25
  86. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_27
  87. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_29
  88. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_31
  89. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.i-Page_33
  90. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.ii-Page_35
  91. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.ii-Page_37
  92. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.ii-Page_39
  93. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_41
  94. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_43
  95. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_45
  96. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_47
  97. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_49
  98. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_51
  99. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iii-Page_53
 100. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_55
 101. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_57
 102. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_59
 103. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_61
 104. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_63
 105. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_65
 106. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_67
 107. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_69
 108. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.iv-Page_71
 109. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_73
 110. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_75
 111. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_77
 112. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_79
 113. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_81
 114. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_83
 115. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_85
 116. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_87
 117. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_89
 118. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_91
 119. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_93
 120. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_95
 121. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_97
 122. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_99
 123. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_101
 124. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_103
 125. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_105
 126. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_107
 127. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_109
 128. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_111
 129. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_113
 130. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_115
 131. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_117
 132. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_119
 133. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_121
 134. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_123
 135. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_125
 136. file:///ccel/b/boethius/tracts/cache/tracts.html3#iv.v-Page_127