Patristic/Medieval
Boethius
c. 480–524 AD
“Fate is the disposition inherent in all things which move, through which providence joins all things in their proper order.”
Boethius served the Ostrogothic court in Italy as a Roman official steeped in Greek learning. Imprisoned and awaiting execution, he wrote , a dialogue in which Lady Philosophy leads him from complaint against Fortune to an account of providence, fate, and eternity. Providence is the divine plan as it exists in God's mind. Fate is that plan as it unfolds in time. Eternity is the simultaneous possession of life, not endless succession. Medieval readers took these distinctions as a framework for reconciling divine foreknowledge with free choice. Dante places him among the wise.
In the Conversation
1 of the Great Ideas