Book IV Summary

Boethius thanks Philosophy for her arguments and says he is beginning to remember the wisdom he lost. However, he is still troubled by the question of how it is that God, who is all-powerful and supremely good, allows the good to suffer and the wicked to be rewarded. Philosophy admits that it is a difficult question but that, in reality, the good never suffer and the wicked are always punished. This claim, she says, follows from what has already been proven. To be powerful means that one can obtain what one wants. Now, it was already determined that all men want happiness and that happiness is participating in God's divinity through a good life. It follows, then, that the the wicked are truly powerless and the good are the most powerful, for only the good truly obtain what all men want...