This movement though has always felt lazy to me. It feels like simple word association at its extreme. It sounds logical enough that, wisdom = wisdom. And I'm not just dumping on this link, and it could be absolutely correct, but I've rarely heard it explained more than what could be summarised as, "Here's another place in the Bible that mentions the word wisdom, and guess what, it's about Jesus." Hey, if you're going to go anywhere from the OT to the NT, then Jesus is a good place/person to end up at, but still it seems to me a fairly shallow kind of surface association.
Now here is where I explain what is a better passage you could go to which demonstrates the fulfillment in Christ and the best way to apply the words of God in the wisdom literature post Christ. Except I don't have the answer as yet. With Ecclesiastes, one of my favourite passages to go to is 1 Corinthians 15:58, which in light of the resurrection claims that our labour in the Lord is not in vain. This works well into the whole examination of Ecclesiastes of life under the sun and the way that death is the great leveller.
I'm currently preparing some talks on 1 Corinthians 1-3 and hopefully I'll be in a better position by the time I've finished to comment on the rightness or wrongness of seeing the wisdom language in Corinthians as alluding to Proverbs. My gut reaction is to say it isn't. Not that I will go into this in any of the talks, nor that it necessarily discounts this movement as right. But I hope to resolve my discomfort.
Summary:
- It feels lazy simply moving from wisdom literature to 1 Corinthians 1.
- I have no better alternative as yet.
- I am sensing I still don't understand Proverbs today.
It would be remiss of me to finish without saying how surprising the wisdom of God is as demonstrated in the crucifixion of the Christ. It is hardly surprising that the wisdom of the one true, all-knowing and powerful God surprises little old me, but nevertheless it is a wonderful wonderful thing. It is a beauty that can only be appreciated from the perspective of those for whom this shame (of the cross) and the shame it brings on us (working against our wisdom and as a result of our guilt), is truly the power of God; our righteousness, sanctification and redemption.
The church fathers, if they had a chance to speak into this blog post, would probably say you had an under-realised concept of Christ as the Wisdom of God. For them, being the Wisdom of God is virtually a title of Christ up there with being the Logos, so that 1 Cor is definitely the place to make a Christological connection between the OT wisdom literature and the Messiah.
ReplyDeleteInteresting...
ReplyDeleteThis sparks in me a number of questions:
1. So conceptually what's the connection between the title and the literature? Is it all the wisdom literature (i assume a more modern title for what was traditionally part of 'the writings') Though I guess Solomon is associated with wisdom and thus the wisdom literature, so that throws that out.
2. Is the Corinthians usage reflective of wanting to reject/reflect more of the Greek philosophy tradition than Old Testament wisdom?
3. The wisdom in 1 Corinthians is foolish wisdom, that is God using what was supposedly shameful means to glorify his Son. So it to me conceptually links to the general pattern of God's self-revelation through weak vessels, small nations, barren wombs etc. Can this also be related to the Wisdom literature.
1. Much is made of the personification of Wisdom within the OT wisdom literature, this is a way from the title to the literature. Sometimes, too much is made of it. (Proverbs 8 in particular).
ReplyDelete2. I take it that Paul's argument in Corinthians has much to do with rhetoric and greco-roman setting, not explicitly OT wisdom. That said, I'm not sure one can exclude OT wisdom as part of the content of what Paul's comments signify.
3. I agree with this line of thought, but I am not sure how I would relate it to the OT Wisdom literature directly. Possibly I have an answer and it's not coming to mind though.