Wisdom in the New Testament: Part II

Wisdom in the New Testament

St. Louis de Montfort wrote his book, . . .

. . . Love of the Eternal Wisdom, for the purpose of drawing his readers toward a closer union with Christ our Lord. It is a devotional work, intended to stimulate piety, to stir up sentiments of love, veneration and gratitude to Christ our Redeemer. In it, he attempts to give the reader a better knowledge of Christ so that the reader may be attracted to a greater love for our Savior.

Union with Christ, and an ever closer and deeper union with Him, is what Montfort had in mind when he sat down to compose the book. His ideas are no more than an expansion of the words of St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live; it is Christ who lives in me.” This living of Christ within us is what Montfort calls the “possession of the Divine and Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus Christ.”

It is important to bear this in in mind while reading Montfort’s book: possessing the Eternal Wisdom is the equivalent of Christ living in our minds and hearts and souls. There is nothing particularly esoteric or pseudo-mystical about Montfort’s basic concept. It is simply a way of expressing our union with Christ.

Montfort Defines Living of Christ Within Us

As a young priest, Montfort was fascinated by the so-called “Wisdom Literature” of the Old Testament: such books as Job, Sirac, Proverbs. In a special way, he was enthralled by the book that had been known for centuries as The Wisdom of Solomon. (We know nowadays that the author was not King Solomon, but some unknown writer who lived in Alexandria about 100 years before the birth of Christ.).

Montfort noted, as had many of the ancient Fathers of the Church before him, that many passages from this Wisdom Literature could be applied to the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God-made-man. For example, the well-known quotation from the Book of Proverbs: “I (Wisdom) was with God ordering all things, with such perfect accuracy and such attractive variety that, as if at a game, I was playing to divert myself and to divert my father.”

Quotes like this, along with the many others in Montfort’s book, . . .

. . . were not intended by the original authors of the Wisdom Literature to refer to the Son of God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. When the Old Testament writers speak of the Wisdom of God, they are referring directly and exclusively to an attribute of God. Wisdom, to them, was the ease, the facility, the expertise with which God directs the course of human events.

The Old Testament’s Use of Wisdom of God

In literary terms, writers call this personification.  It is a device by which a writer visualizes an abstract concept as a person. (St. Paul, for instance, uses personification when he says: “O Grave, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting?”).  The Old Testament writers could not have intended any more than this, for as yet the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, the Three Persons in One God, had not been revealed.

But, as was mentioned above, the ancient Fathers of the Church and ecclesiastical writers since then, have often enough applied these passages to Christ, our Lord. We find them in today’s liturgy as well. Often enough, the readings at Mass are from this Wisdom Literature. This is the Church itself applying these excerpts to Christ, calling Him the Eternal Wisdom of God.

It has already been noted in a previous article (link) , . . .

. . . that the New Testament writers avoided this stress on Christ as Divine Wisdom, and to all appearances, they avoided it deliberately. The reason, as noted before, was undoubtedly to avoid the confusion that would come about in using an expression, “Wisdom of God,” that was so popular among different heretical sects. In the so-called “Gnostic Gospels,” so prevalent at the time of the New Testament writers, “Wisdom” was taken to mean some kind of demi-goddess with magical properties.

There is a Reason New Testament Writers Avoid Using the Term “Wisdom”

But if the New Testament writers did not use the term “Wisdom” to apply to Christ, they certainly found ways of finding an equivalent expression. This is especially true of St. John’s gospel, written at a time when the Gnostic heresies were still alive, but not quite as popular as they once had been. Note, for instance, the startling resemblance between the passage from Proverbs quoted above and the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John. St. John avoids the use of “Wisdom,” although he was obviously familiar with the literature of the Old Testament.

“In the beginning,” he writes, “was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was, at the beginning, with God. Through Him all things were made, and without Him was made nothing that was made. He was the life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not obscure it.”

St. John, for reasons of prudence, used “The Word” instead of “Wisdom.” It is merely a difference in terminology, for The Word of God is indeed the Wisdom of God.