  Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy (V, 6) also played a role in DDI's popularity. He held that being in time must involve at least two things which are defects.  For being temporal, as Boethius saw it, entailed having past and future parts of one's life. Temporal beings no longer live the past parts of their lives. They do not yet live the future parts of their lives. Both things are defects, according to Boethius. So if God is free of all defects, Boethius reasoned, then God has no past or future. What has no past or future does not change. For what changes goes from what it was to what it then was going to be, and so has a past and a future. Hence, to Boethius, perfection required changelessness. Necessary perfection — is better than contingent perfection, and so by perfect-being reasoning is God's.  If perfection requires changlessness, necessary perfection requires being immutable. Now Boethius' reasoning requires at least some cleaning up. For a life could be temporal but lack past or future parts, if it was instantaneous. And if one's past or future are bad, it is not obviously a bad thing not to be living them. But perhaps Boethius' argument has some merit. For it would not be a perfection of an individual to live for only a single temporal instant. Surely longer would be better, at least if there was a good chance that the longer existence would be overall good. And if God is truly perfect, His life, cannot contain parts it is overall bad to live.