Rūta Zukienė: Divine Attributes in the Old English Boethius: Augustine’s Influence Considered

The paper addresses the rendering of divine attributes in the Anglo-Saxon translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. In the Latin original, God’s nature is described from a variety of perspectives and by a range of attributes that follow the philosophical tradition of Greek Neoplatonism; for example, from the viewpoint of human perception, God is described simultaneously as being unintelligible, intelligible and semi-intelligible (Gersh 1986). In the Old English rendering of the book, the complexity of Boethius’s arguments is further augmented by the ancillary material freely used by the Anglo-Saxon translator. The present paper focuses on a specific example of this kind: in the vernacular rendering, the finishing lines of Boethius are expanded into a glowing encomium on the divine nature. Although no exact sources for the fragment have yet been identified (Godden and Irvine 2009), I argue that the use of the aphairetic method (Gk aphairesis ‘removal, denial’) of negative theologians to speak about God’s memory, simplicity and aseity suggests the underlying influence of Neoplatonic philosophy. In the passage, however, the method of via remotionis is counteracted by affirmation, which further indicates that the Neoplatonic legacy that underpins the fragment had by then been incorporated into the Judeo-Christian frame of thought. In the paper, I attempt to establish the philosophical context of the selected passage and demonstrate its close relationship to Augustine’s philosophy by highlighting a number of distinct parallels between the Old English text and Augustine’s thoughts on the divine nature.