What I'm Reading #10: Boethius, Tolstoy, Spark, Murphy, and Hayek

Life, Death, Meaning, and Knowledge

I’ll skip the long preamble this month and get into the books (and one article). It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done one of these pieces so there are more than usual. Strangely enough, the readings this month had a sort of unity. Boethius examines what is meaningful. Tolstoy does the same, but doesn’t end in the same place. Both yearn to know where meaning is to be found in the face of death. Spark, likewise, is interested in matters of life and death, but more so spiritual life and death. She sees so many spiritually dead people around here. Hayek, in contradistinction, is concerned with the “real” world, and yet, also finds himself in an epistemologically humble place. He rightly recognizes human limitation.

The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

Boethius has had a bit of a renaissance lately, particularly in Christian circles. I was struck by his personification of wisdom as a woman and thought of Proverbs 8. Here too, wisdom is a woman. The first four verses of chapter 8 immediately came to mind.

“Does not wisdom call? Does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: “To you, O men, I call, and my cry is to the children of man. O simple ones, learn prudence; O fools, learn sense.” – Proverbs 8:1-4

Boethius writes what he found wisdom to be saying. He doesn’t exegete Scripture, he makes logical arguments meant to appeal to the wise, whether they were believers or not. Yet, his conclusions gesture in a Christian direction. In Consolation, He alludes to finding a treasure buried in a field, echoing Matthew 13:44. He tackles the problem of evil. He knocks down money, power, and fame as being worthy of pursuit because death ends them all. In this, he parallels Ecclesiastes. But regardless of the theological merits of the book, what he argues for above all is demonstrating the value of wisdom even in the face of death. This is made all the more powerful by the reality that he was awaiting his own execution while writing the work.

“Indeed, the condition of human nature is just this; man towers above the rest of creation so long as he recognizes his own nature, and when he forgets it, he sinks lower than the beasts.” – Boethius.

Pastoral Theology: The Pastor in the Various Duties of His Office by Thomas Murphy

This book spurred another piece I wrote, a reflection on how pastors should be restrained in their use of the pulpit. But the entire book raised similar, practical reflections about the pastorate. Murphy pastored for decades in Philadelphia from 1849–1895. That sort of longevity is rare and the wisdom he gained was invaluable. He pushes pastoral ministry in areas I hadn’t thought much about. He touches on Sunday school, pastoral visits, how to relate to other denominations, and of course, preaching.

“Church Strifes…they often spring from the merest trifles, which ought to have been ignored by Christian people. Such strifes are amongst the evils that can possibly come upon a church. It is one of the greatest inconsistencies ever witnessed to see those whose distinguishing badge ought to be brotherly love arrayed in bitter hostility against each other. If there is anything in the wide world against which the pastor should steadfastly set his face, it is this.” – Thomas Murphy

The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Confession by Leo Tolstoy

I fell far down a Tolstoy hole after reading Anna Karenina. The Death of Ivan Ilyich reaches a point in plot development that ends with this line: “This was how they lived. This was how things went, nothing changed, and everything was fine.” And if you know Tolstoy, you know this portends no good thing. The book shows well how everything not predicated upon permanence utterly falls away in the face of death. Tolstoy spent years and hundreds of pages dealing with what death means for those of us living. In Confession, he explores this theme even further. In one of the most vivid visual pictures I’ve ever read, he says this.

“There is an Eastern fable, told long ago, of a traveller overtaken on a plain by an enraged beast. Escaping from the beast he gets into a dry well, but sees at the bottom of the well a dragon that has opened its jaws to swallow him. And the unfortunate man, not daring to climb out lest he should be destroyed by the enraged beast, and not daring to leap to the bottom of the well lest he should be eaten by the dragon, seizes a twig growing in a crack in the well and clings to it. His hands are growing weaker and he feels he will soon have to resign himself to the destruction that awaits him above or below, but still he clings on. Then he sees that two mice, a black one and a white one, go regularly round and round the stem of the twig to which he is clinging and gnaw at it. And soon the twig itself will snap and he will fall into the dragon’s jaws. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while still hanging he looks around, sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the twig, reaches them with his tongue and licks them. So I too clung to the twig of life, knowing that the dragon of death was inevitably awaiting me” – Tolstoy

In Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy cannot help but give a short burst of hopeful light at the end. Confession, on the other hand, snatches that hope away as you realize Tolstoy rejected orthodox (and Orthodox) Christianity by the end of his life. I was surprised to find myself mourning the fact that someone who understood so much about God, Christianity, and the human condition, but seemed to reject core Christian doctrines like the divinity of Christ.

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark

This book is strange, fun, and a bit mean. Spark converted after a mental health crisis and she examines the shallowness of life in post–World War II Britain. She doesn’t do lots of interior thought life in her characters. We largely only have the character’s word and actions by which to judge them. But Spark also makes it clear that God is calling all of them. But most of them cannot hear because they would rather pursue sex, or the finer things in life, or even food. Consider Jane and Selina:

“Time, which was an immediate onward-rushing enemy to the onlookers in the street and the firemen on the roof, was only a small far-forgotten event to the girls; for they were stunned not only by the force of the explosion…Jane got up, ran to her room, and with animal instinct snatched and gobbled a block of chocolate which remained on her table.

When she landed on the roof-top she said, ‘Is it safe out here?’ and at the same time was inspecting the condition of her salvaged item. Poise is perfect balance. It was the Schiaparelli dress. The coat-hanger dangled from the dress like a headless neck and shoulders. ‘Is it safe out here?’ Said Selina. ‘Nowhere’s safe,’ said Nicholas”. – Muriel Spark

This kind of detail is cruelly funny, but it’s also revealing. The characters are numb spiritually. Even a great catastrophe is only able to awaken one of them to spiritual reality.

The Use of Knowledge in Society by F.A. Hayek

This is a Hayek classic, given the world I inhabit at work, it’s mildly surprising I had not read this piece before. It does all the Hayek things, but what struck me is how Hayek starts with epistemological humility. We can’t know all the things. He applies this central insight into economics. There is tacit knowledge, dispersed knowledge, coordination problems, but the price system works as shorthand to solve these things we don’t know ourselves. Yet, all these knowledge problems also demonstrate why central planning will forever be stymied. All the more pertinent in the age of AI.

“The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form, but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess.” –F.A. Hayek

*Thanks to AI for the book image and spelling and grammar edit.