About Wisdom

For this week the Revised Common Lectionary suggests for the first reading of the day Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31.  That text reads:

Does not wisdom call,

   and does not understanding raise her voice?

On the heights, beside the way,

   at the crossroads she takes her stand;

beside the gates in front of the town,

   at the entrance of the portals she cries out:

‘To you, O people, I call,

   and my cry is to all that live.

Wisdom’s Part in Creation

The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,

   the first of his acts of long ago.

Ages ago I was set up,

   at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

   when there were no springs abounding with water.

Before the mountains had been shaped,

   before the hills, I was brought forth—

when he had not yet made earth and fields,

   or the world’s first bits of soil.

When he established the heavens, I was there,

   when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

when he made firm the skies above,

   when he established the fountains of the deep,

when he assigned to the sea its limit,

   so that the waters might not transgress his command,

when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

   then I was beside him, like a master worker;

and I was daily his delight,

   rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world

   and delighting in the human race.

The reading is interesting in that it anthropomorphizes Wisdom.  Proverbs 1:20 characterizes it as a female.  This lesson pictures Wisdom as being present with God at the time of Creation.  It has given some folks more than a little trouble as they have tried to figure out the imagery and reconcile it with their own Trinitarian theology.  There is a position that holds that Wisdom is the Old Testament designation for the One we know as the Holy Spirit.  This is difficult to support at best.  Other attempts at explanation have Wisdom as being an angel.

I would remind folks of the rich imagery that the biblical writers – and the Old Testament authors in particular – tend to employ.  That Wisdom is admirable and wondrous is something that the writers describe with a wide arsenal of description.

Some will remember the flash-in-the-pan controversy of a couple of decades ago surrounding “Sophia.”  Sophia is the Greek for wisdom.  There were folks in this time period who characterized Sophia as “the goddess,” and even elevated this being to the level of the Holy Trinity.  The movement was a tempest in a teapot, but it had a lot of traction in its limited run.

The Jewish rabbis imaged Wisdom as being from the beginning, but in no way on a par with God.  There came a time, according to their teaching, when Wisdom came to dwell in the tents of the Children of Abraham.  Wisdom became The Law and continues to abide with the Chosen People.

A word to the wise: scripture itself is not going to contradict orthodoxy.  There may be some question as to how many animals Noah took aboard the ark, or what might have been the sequence of created things.  But Holy Writ is not going to be unspecific about the nature of God.  That is the heart of wisdom.