Wisdom in the Bible
A précis of the Catholic Encyclopaedia article on Wisdom ; courtesy of John Marchant
The attempt by humans to describe and define wisdom is present in all cultures – Egyptian, Babylonian, Indian, Chinese and Greek – all of which influenced Israeli culture. Its literature embraces distinctly rational, practical good sense and morality, and fed by experience and observation. In Greece the concept of Sophia became more speculative under the influence of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, moving from the right order of personal conduct towards contemplation of the beautiful, and a disinterested way of thought. Philosophy and metaphysics came to be given the right to be called wisdom.
Another wisdom appeared in Hebrew culture: born of faith, wisdom is a gift of God, sought in prayer and granted by God’s grace. It is the mysterious wisdom of divine origin, and personifies an attribute of God (an undeveloped concept for me)
Throughout the Wisdom literature of the O.T., even in the more sublime poetry, there is a distinctly moral and practical strain. It is rarely speculative.
N.T. Wisdom – radically Christocentric
Paul presents it thus: “to the Jews indeed a stumbling-block and to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” (ICor 1:23-24). Paul preached Christ crucified, that our faith should rest not in the wisdom of men but in the wisdom of God.
N.T. Wisdom is the divine Logos, Christ, and second, man’s taking on the “mind of Christ” – our union with Christ gives us the very thought of Christ. So, wisdom is salvation.
Sage-like sapiential colourings can be seen in Matthew (11:28-29) “Come unto me all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me” – this is Jesus as a wisdom teacher, as Bultmann proposed, and it is accepted by most scholars.
John’s discourses are reminiscent of O.T. wisdom themes; viz. John 6 – the Bread of Life.
Augustine combined the Platonic ascent to contemplation and Paul’s insistence on accepting the folly of the Cross. To him, wisdom embraces all the Christian values, and implies a state of perfection, peace and joy in God.
He makes a distinction between science and wisdom: - science is of human things; wisdom of divine.
Thomas Aquinas re-introduced the Greek dimension of speculation, bringing out the distinctions separating metaphysics from theology, and both from the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Later, at the height of humanism’s ascendancy in the Renaissance, thinkers such as Petrarch felt that wisdom is realised only in secular, intellectual scepticism.
Doctrinal Analysis – the philosophy of and knowledge of God
Wisdom as a perfection in man appears as a special kind of knowing, open to religious meaning, and therefore of ultimate value to the person who possesses it.
The progression towards a religious focus is interesting: for Aristotle it is the grasp of highest causes; for O.T. writers it involves knowing God in the Law; for Paul and John it is knowing God in Christ. Basil and Augustine see wisdom in all human knowing crowned by love of God in purity of heart. God is the first truth and the highest good – wisdom therefore becomes truly contemplative.
Metaphysics also becomes contemplative. The study of BEING leads the metaphysician ultimately to affirm God. The philosophically wise person sees by reason the necessity of an unlimited ground of that being; and this ground of being is not merely the source, but the end and goal of all existence – the infinitely desirable Person of God.
In metaphysical wisdom, God is attained not in himself but as reflected in creation, and he therefore remains unknown from within. It creates a longing for a more adequate knowledge of God – another and more perfect wisdom.
Theology is a facet of wisdom formed from the encounter of faith and wonder. First, the believing Christian must discover what is revealed – faith seeking documentation. Second, (s)he seeks to grasp the intelligibility of God’s revelation, essentially and existentially – faith seeking understanding (or, faith seeking relevance) Theology is on both levels ultimately concerned with God, and all else as related to God. Theology must examine the moral principles of Christian living together with the doctrines of Christian belief. This concern eminently qualifies it as wisdom.
In the opaque world of belief where vision is impossible, the wise person always desires to be freed from his conceptual bonds to enjoy a more immediate knowledge of God, a more perfect contemplation, a higher wisdom.
Its origin can probably be found in the Israelite court; there was a similar movement in Egypt, which boasted 2,500 years of wisdom literature. Many of these bear close resemblance to the teaching of the O.T. sages. Solomon became the patron, or had the “authorship” of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Wisdom attributed to him.
Yet, all the O.T. sapiential literature was written in the post-exilic period, with the exception of parts of Proverbs and a few wisdom Psalms. During this time the sage was a more markedly religious figure, a teacher with a school (Qoheleth, Eccl 12:9-11; Sirach; Sir 51:23) and “fear of the Lord” was the sapiential commonplace. The author of Proverbs 1-9 exemplifies this mentality: there is a more clear-cut orientation of the traditional ‘practical’ wisdom to religious ends.
It would not be possible to categorise the topics in O.T. wisdom literature. The emphasis is on the practical: how to act, or not to act, in various situations. Savoir faire, savoir vivre. The proverb is an attempt to master reality (and this includes the mysterious ways of God), to grasp the laws operating in nature and human society and in man himself.
Retribution is a continuing theme: God rewards the good and punishes the evil. In the face of the prosperity of the wicked, the sages counselled against envy, pointed out the pitfalls awaiting the wicked, (all of them in this life, since after death Sheol awaited both the good and evil).
“Whom the Lord loves, he reproves” – “the discipline of the Lord” was a brave way of interpreting the suffering of the virtuous person, and it was not to be disdained. Suffering was the punishment for sin; prosperity was reward for virtue. The author of Job wrote his work to demolish this rigid position. Ecclesiastes denied that there exist any clear signs of divine approval or disapproval in the government of the world! (8:5-15). The author of Psalm 72 resolved this; after almost losing his faith in view of the prosperity of the wicked, he concluded that the virtuous will always be with God. Is this sentimental twaddle? - crying in our beer?
No matter - the Book of Wisdom finally spells it out (1:15) – “Righteousness is immortal”
For some indefinable reason, wisdom belongs to the human sphere. Although Yhwh “makes wise” and “gives wisdom”, both of these values belong on the human level. But eventually it becomes his prerogative. Once this occurs, the pendulum swings to the opposite and wisdom becomes divine. Ecclesiastes admits that man cannot discover wisdom; Job that wisdom is hid from the eyes of any man. God’s exclusive knowledge of wisdom is affirmed also in Baruch and Sirach. Wisdom’s inaccessibility is due to the fact that she is with God.
Wisdom is personified in the feminine, who is born of God before Creation, in which she herself took part (Prv 8:30) Hokma is, after all, a feminine noun. She remains a personification, not a person. It should be noted that wisdom is eventually identified by Sirach as the Torah, the Law (Sir 24:8, Bar 4:1). Israel was to give evidence of its wisdom to the nations, who would be compelled to say “this great nation is a truly wise and intelligent people” (Dt 4:6).
The supreme communication between humanity and the divine is Christ, whom Paul calls “the wisdom of God” (1Cor 1:24) – “behold, a greater than Solomon is here.”
It was written when Judaism faced a serious crisis in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE because of its failure to enter the mainstream of Greek wisdom. Defence of the Jewish way of life is the objective of the book. It was written in Greek for Greek-speaking Jews. The large colony in Alexandria was probably the immediate audience. The author writes in the name of King Solomon: it is an exhortation in meditative form.
It has been called a bridge between the Old and New Testaments. John and Paul found no better source to express the new revelation of God’s Son than the pages of this book. The Word made flesh, the highest communication of divine wisdom to the world, was presented in terms of the poem in 7:22 – 8:1. The popularity of this book among Christians played its part in the Jewish refusal to admit it into the canon.