This blog post will explore the how the meanings of Wisdom and Word, two titles ascribed to Jesus, evolved from Old Testament Scripture into New Testament / early Christian interpretations of Christ as Logos.
Beginning with Wisdom, its roots in the Old Testament show a range of interrelated meanings. These meanings are found primarily in Proverbs, Baruch, Sirach, and the book of Wisdom — whether they explain wisdom as divine attribute and instrumental agent in creation (Prov. 8:22-31); or they reveal God as the entity who created wisdom (Bar. 3:29-37); or they personify wisdom as a female figure who not only manifests its function in a spiritual sense, but also manifests herself to the Israelites as a street preacher and prophet (Prov. 8, Sir.24, Wis. 7:). Known as Sophia, her mission is to lead people to life through the Mosaic covenant with God and, in effect, represent the Torah: God’s revelation to the Israelites (O’Collins 26; Johnson 264, 265).
Sophia’s presence throughout the above-mentioned books makes a powerful statement about God’s nature and revelation is communicated to humankind: Sophia herself is considered an agent and mediator of creation; she is all-knowing; she champions and protects humankind; her words and guidance are meant to help usher in salvation; and she choose servants to proclaim God’s word (Johnson 273).
However, given that wisdom’s meaning in Scripture is not exclusive to Sofia, other passages, mostly within the New Testament, reveal wisdom pervading Jesus’ ministry and the Gospel message overall. In fact, as O’Collins points out, the NT makes it clear that “divine wisdom = Christ” (37). Jesus’s human nature was filled with wisdom (Luke 2:40), his followers are amazed by his wisdom (Mark 6:2), and his parables and other actions teach the meaning of wisdom and his command over it (Matt 25: 1-12, 12:42). In addition, the Apostle Paul and the Church Fathers pay homage to Christ’s wisdom, including that it is one and the same with his nature: Paul calls Jesus the “the wisdom of God” (1. Cor 1:24), and many of the early Church Fathers referred to Christ’s title as ‘wisdom’ (O’Collins 37, 38).
Yet the term specifically used in the NT to identify Christ is ‘Word.’ John’s Gospel provides the flagship identifier; namely, the first few lines in Chapter 1 are among the most quoted to explain Christ’s relationship to God and including that he is ‘God.’ And though John’s use of Word is similar to how wisdom is explained in Proverbs 8:22-31 and Sirach 24:1-12, it does not correlate well with, say, Baruch announcing that “she has appeared on Earth.” That said, John’s use of the Greek word Logos provides a base means to describe Jesus and for both Jews and Gentiles to have a common understanding of what it means to call Jesus the Son of God, the revealer and communicator of God’s word (O’Collins 38).
Still, like wisdom, ‘Word’ also has roots in the Old Testament. In the context of Word being with God from the beginning, several OT passages, such Genesis 1:1-2, Isaiah 55:10-11, and Psalm 33, establish ‘word’ as being central to God’s revelation. Therefore, when the Word was sent down as Jesus himself, the means he is the total embodiment of God’s word. Further, Logos was also understood among Philo, Platonic and Stoic philosophies, and the Church Fathers (Justin Martyr and Origen, for example) to be an ontological view about God / the divine as the Word. Keeping this in mind, ‘Word’ is not just Christ as its being, but also Christ is ‘with’ the Word and as the Word made flesh (John 1:1-3). Therefore, Jesus is both one with God yet also distinct (O’Collins 39, 40).
However, knowing that Jesus is defined as Word instead of as Wisdom does not answer ‘why.’ The reasons vary from John using the word to make a masculine match to Jesus’ human form as man (instead of the female association with ‘wisdom’), to the fact that because Sofia is described as wisdom in the OT, and that her revelation as word represents the Torah, O’Collins summarizes the distinction as follows: “To announce then that ‘Wisdom was God was made flesh’ could have been felt to suggest that ‘the Torah was God and was made flesh” (39).
To conclude, the transition from ‘Wisdom’ to ‘Word’ to describe Jesus allowed Christians and non-Christians to build a common Christology. Moreover, when both ‘Wisdom and ‘Word’ are combined, their meaning goes well beyond God’s incarnation as Jesus: they also mean that Jesus is the divine agent in creation, that he has eternally existed as and with God. “Thus, creation, right from the beginning, carried a Christological face” (O’Collins 41).
Works Cited
Johnson, Elizabeth A. “Jesus, the Wisdom of God: A Biblical Basis for Non-Androcentric Christology.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, vol. 61, no. 4, Dec. 1985, pp. 261–94.
O’Collins, Gerald. Christology: A Biblical, Historical and Systematic Study of Jesus. 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.