Wisdom in the New Testament

Wisdom in the New Testament

Some years ago, in a discussion . . .

. . . of St. Louis de Montfort’s Love of the Eternal Wisdom, one of the groups suggested that perhaps what Montfort was proposing in his book was strictly an Old Testament spirituality that would be difficult to adapt to a Christian mentality. There is no mention, he said, in the New Testament of Christ as the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom.

It is true, of course, that Christ is nowhere referred to in the New Testament specifically as “Divine and Incarnate Wisdom,” or as “Eternal Wisdom”.  There are, however, two instances in St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians where he does refer to Christ as “Wisdom.”

In 1 Cor., 1, 24, St. Paul writes: “Here are the Jews asking for signs and wonders, here are the Greeks intent on their philosophy; but what we preach is Christ crucified; to the Jews a discouragement, to the Gentiles mere folly; but to us who have been called, Jew and Gentile alike, Christ the power of God, Christ the wisdom of God”.  And in the same chapter, verse 30, he points out: “It is from him (God) that you take your origin, through Christ Jesus, whom God gave us to be all our wisdom . . . “.

St. Paul’s Refers to Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament

St. Paul, in these passages, is clearly referring to the Wisdom Literature of the Old Testament. And he is obviously taking the term, wisdom, used in the Old Testament to refer to one of the attributes of God, and making that attribute synonymous with Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity made man. He takes what is a figure of speech in the Old Testament and points to it as a reality in the New Testament.

It is interesting to conjecture why . . .

. . . the writers of the New Testament seem to carefully avoid speaking more often and more specifically of Christ as the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom of God the Father. It was only several hundred years later that Christian writers, the early Fathers of the Church, especially, came to speak of Christ as the Wisdom of God.

A Historical Background

A little historical background may help to explain why it took so long for the expression, “Christ the Incarnate and Eternal Wisdom,” to become popular in the early Christian writings.

There was a heresy that was extremely widespread in the early days of the Church, a heresy known as “Gnosticism.” The word “gnosis,” from which Gnosticism derives, is a Greek term that means “knowledge.” But among the adherents of this heresy, the word came to mean a kind of secret knowledge, an arcane and hidden learning, that was found only among a select and elite class of people who called themselves Christians. They propagated this secret learning in a series of writings that now go by the name of “Gnostic Gospels.”

Among these writings, all claiming to be inspired by God, were The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Philip, The Gospel to the Egyptians, The Secret Book of James, The Apocalypse of Paul, and many others, most of them claiming to have been written by the Apostles of Christ.

Most of these books of “secret learning” originated no later than 120 A.D. to 150 A.D. St. Irenaeus, the Bishop of Lyons in France, writing about the year 180 A.D. points out that these Gnostics “boast of possessing more gospels than there really are.”  He also states that in his time these books had wide circulation.  Gaul, Rome, Greece and Asia Minor knew these books.

The Gospel Writers Avoided . . .

But it takes time to write ideas into books.  This is especially true when we consider how difficult it was in those days for books to be written, then published, then circulated. This “secret learning” must have been rather widespread even before it got into print. In fact, it was probably contemporary with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and may even have anteceded the writing of the New Testament Scriptures.

Now, what has all this to do with referring to Christ as the “Wisdom of the Father?”

Simply this: there was a great stress, in these gnostic gospels, upon wisdom as the great Earth Mother of the ancient pagan myths. Wisdom, as they saw it, was the Christianization of the pagan mother-goddesses, the feminine principle that cooperated with God in engendering the human race. Wisdom was strictly spiritual, incapable of becoming incarnate itself—or “herself,” as the gnostics referred to wisdom. It was this wisdom who brought Christ into the world, not the Blessed Virgin Mary. And since this wisdom is strictly immaterial, it follows that Christ did not have a real human nature. He only looked and acted human, but in reality He was a pure spirit.

. . . the Word Wisdom

It is easy to see, then, why the New Testament writers made it a point to avoid specific references to Christ as the Wisdom of the Father, or to Christ as the Eternal and Incarnate Wisdom. It was certainly more prudent, at the time, to leave the development of this truth to a later date, when the Gnostic heresy had finally worn itself out.

But if the Gospel writers seemed to avoid the word “wisdom” when referring to Christ, we must remember that it was the word they were avoiding, not the idea of Christ as the Wisdom of the Father.

Development of this point appears in future articles; particularly with reference to the Gospel of St. John, where the evangelist speaks of Christ as “The Word of God.”