START WITH SCRIPTURE:
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31
CLICK HERE TO READ SCRIPTURE ON BIBLEGATEWAY.COM
OBSERVE:
The book of Proverbs is one of five books in the Bible included in the “Wisdom” genre (Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes). Wisdom literature deals with many aspects of the human condition — the problem of suffering; the yearnings of the human soul for God; the multi-dimensional human experience of anger, hope, romance, philosophical despair; and often simply good, practical advice for living.
In this passage from Proverbs, the theme of Wisdom is introduced with the personification of Wisdom as a feminine character. Wisdom is searching everywhere for those who are seeking understanding:
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.
In verses 22-23, the tone becomes more speculative, even mystical. Wisdom describes herself as an entity present with the Lord even before he began the work of 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.
Wisdom describes herself as being in existence prior to the depths, or springs abounding with water, and before the mountains or hills were shaped. She watched as the Lord circumscribed a circle on the face of the deep, set boundaries for the oceans and for the skies, and marked out the foundations of the earth .
We note that Wisdom is an observer in all this. She is not described as the primary agent of creation. She repeatedly states that she was there at the beginning and watched it all take place. The initiative and the work are carried out by the Lord. She assists him, but the Lord is the creator.
Only in verses 30-31 does she state:
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.
Wisdom appears to have been created by the Lord to observe and to rejoice in his acts of Creation — perhaps so that she may later instruct the human race about the true source of creation.
APPLY:
The personification of Wisdom as a feminine character is somewhat mysterious.
It may simply be a poetic device, a way to describe the nature of Wisdom that accompanies the creative acts of God from the beginning. It may be a reminder to us that God’s creation follows certain logical, intelligible principles of cause and effect, as well as order and purpose. And it may serve to remind us that when we study nature as scientists we are in some sense studying theology because we assume that reason is at the heart of it all.
But some of the early church fathers interpreted this persona to be the same as the Word described in the Prologue to John’s Gospel. There, Jesus is described as the Word (Word is the translation of the Greek Logos which can also be interpreted as the Mind or the Wisdom of God):
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being (John 1:1-3).
This interpretation seems a little problematical, though.
First, Jesus is clearly described as being one with the Father — although he has a distinct personhood. The Word was not merely passively observing the creation of all things, but was an active agent along with God the Father.
Second, we are told that Wisdom in Proverbs was created at the beginning; but the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus was begotten of God, not created:
the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).
An alternate and more traditional translation is that Jesus is:
the only begotten of the Father.
This is significant for Christian theology because Jesus is uniquely the Son of God; he is, as the Nicene Creed says:
the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
Third, of course there is the obvious observation — Jesus is male, and the persona of Wisdom is female. But at least one early church father, Irenaeus, identifies Wisdom in Proverbs 8 with the Holy Spirit:
I have also largely demonstrated, that the Word, namely the Son, was always with the Father; and that Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was present with Him, anterior to all creation.
(Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.20.3 – Ante-Nicene Fathers 1.488.)
This is an intriguing possibility suggesting that the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, represents the feminine character of God. Obviously this thought may seem a bit audacious, but we are reminded that in the very first chapter of Genesis, God creates humanity.
What does he say?
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:26-27).
It is no stretch to suggest that we cannot completely understand the nature of God unless we begin to understand that both male and female together fully represent God’s image.
Although the imagery for the feminine aspects of God are somewhat rare compared to the masculine imagery, they are certainly present. God is described as a mother eagle in Deuteronomy 32:11-12; a mother in Hosea 11:3-4; a mother bear in Hosea 13:8; a comforting mother in Isaiah 66:13; a nursing mother in Isaiah 49:15; a woman in labor in Isaiah 42:14; a reassuring mother in Psalm 131:2; a woman in charge of her servants in Psalm 123:2-3. Deuteronomy describes God as giving birth to Israel in Deuteronomy 32:18. And Jesus describes himself as a mother hen longing to gather her brood under her wings in Matthew 23:37 and Luke 13:34.
We must be careful about constructing a theology around these thoughts, especially because they haven’t been confirmed by the authority of orthodox Christianity over the millennia. However, they do provide a source of provocative meditation about the nature of God and God’s wonders.
Perhaps we should simply remember that Wisdom is God’s creation, and it is by wisdom that we seek to understand the world around us and God himself.
RESPOND:
I am humbled when I reflect on the nature of the Triune God. Greater minds than my own have meditated on the inscrutable character of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
I must admit that I am intrigued by the notion that the Holy Spirit might represent the more “feminine” nature of God. If God has created us as male and female in his own image, then it does stand to reason that God’s nature possesses characteristics that we often identify as male and female.
As Hamlet said to his friend in Shakespeare’s play that dealt with supernatural elements:
“There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
I won’t go so far as to suggest that we refer to God as Father, Son and Mother — that is not the classical, orthodox reference for God. But these reflections do challenge me to realize that God is far bigger and more mysterious than I can possibly comprehend.
Lord, by Wisdom you have created the universe, and set its frame and its boundaries. And you have placed in our minds the sense of wonder and the capacity for intellect that leads us closer to you as we set our own minds to use wisdom. We are also reminded of some other words of Proverbs: “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Increase my faith, my love, and my fear of you. Amen.
PHOTOS:
“Wisdom…” by Art4TheGlryOfGod by Sharon is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license.
SOAR Lectionary Bible Study 