Part 6, Sections 27-30 Summary and Analysis

Book 2: Re-Creating the World focuses on how man, like God, could make something from nothing. Part 6: Otherworldly Elements open with a quote by Abbesuger in the twelfth century about how poor spirits can raise themselves from temporal to eternal things only though symbols of beauty. Section 27: The Consoling Past explains how Boethius, when he became the intimate counselor of King Theodoric of the Ostrogoths, built an encyclopedic library and announced his lifelong project to "instruct the manners of our State with the arts of Greek wisdom" (p. 235). When he fell out of royal favor and was imprisoned, he produced "The Consolation of Philosophy", which explains how philosophy distinguishes God's way of knowing from man's.

Section 28: The Music of the Word describes how Saint Ambrose created the Christian hymn since early Christians worried about admitting the wrong kind...