A Work of Wisdom

What is wisdom? In biblical perspective, wisdom is not reducible to the accumulation of data, information gathering, or knowledge acquisition, even though all three have their place. Wisdom knows what to do with data, information, and knowledge for both thought and life. Moreover, wisdom is predicated on an attitude:

The fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
     fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Prov. 1:7)

This reverent attitude recognizes that God is God and that we are not God. The contrast is striking between the wise person characterized by one attitude and the fool by another. Additionally, wisdom involves an activity of both acute and astute observation. The wise person knows how to pay attention to reality and take instruction from what is seen. Proverbs 6:6–11 provides a good example:

Go to the ant,
      O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief,
      officer, or ruler,
she prepares her bread in summer
      and gathers her food in harvest.

The lesson is then drawn:

How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
     When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
     a little folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a robber,
     and want like an armed man.

The wise person prospers, the fool does not. The wise person can make a connection between what is observed in nature (the ant’s behavior in summer with winter coming) and human life.

In theology, wisdom is reasoning employed as the servant of Scripture and not as the master of Scripture. I have chosen “reasoning” quite deliberately. Reason must not be reified as though it were a thing separate from us. Reason does not function on its own, in a spiritual vacuum. Persons reason. Persons mount arguments, question or demolish them, and marshal or dismiss evidence. And persons do that either in submission to God or in conflict with him.

So where does human reasoning fit in the story of wisdom? It was the philosopher William James (1842–1910) who defined philosophy as “the unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.”1 No less a stubborn attempt is necessary for doing theology or reasoning in general. Yet reason can only ever be norma normata (a ruled norm), as we’ve seen. To place reason above Scripture was the error of the Sadducees. Jesus chided them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:29). Their formal mistake lay in their ignorance of relevant Scripture. Their material mistake was their not seeing how Exodus 3:6 affected the resurrection question.

Importantly, there is a moral dimension to knowing. Early in the twentieth century, the Scottish theologian P. T. Forsyth captured that dimension in writing: “Logic is rooted in Ethic, for the truth we see depends upon the men we are.”2 Forsyth must not be misunderstood. He did not argue that the truth depends upon the kind of moral agents we are. But our ability to recognize the truth, see the truth, has a moral component. Virtue epistemology has its place.3 Jesus taught that it is the pure in heart who see God (Matt. 5:8). It is those who do the will of God who know (John 7:17). In fact, the wise person is the virtuous one.

Some may think that the fall has so damaged the human mind that without the aid of the Spirit there can be no true thought about anything. Some confuse this notion with the noetic effects of sin.4 However, Jesus thought that the crowds were able to interpret natural phenomena like weather patterns (e.g., Luke 12:54–56). Moreover, he expected Nicodemus as a teacher of Israel to have understood his teaching about the new birth, even though Nicodemus needed the new birth himself (John 3:1–10). Nicodemus asked, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9). Jesus’s reply had a certain sharpness to it: “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?” (John 3:10). Even Pilate understood on some level what Jesus was claiming, though he did not believe it: “Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’” (John 19:19). The chief priests also understood what Jesus was claiming but wanted the inscription nuanced: “Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, ‘Do not write, “The King of the Jews,” but rather, “This man said, I am King of the Jews”’” (John 19:20–21).

Sin causes not a cognitive disability but an affective disinclination to trust in God, honor him, or give thanks to him (Rom. 1:21). As both John Calvin and Jonathan Edwards taught, the Spirit in the new birth changes our affections so that we embrace the things of God.5 In particular, this change in our affections shows itself in our hospitable reception to the word of God (see Acts 17:17; 1 Thess. 2:13; and in contrast, 1 Cor. 2:13–14).6 There is, therefore, a crucial spiritual dimension to knowing God through his word.

The Appeal to Reason in Scripture

In so many of the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, God is arguing his case against his people, who have trodden under foot their covenant with him. Even so, God comes with an invitation:

Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
     they shall be as white as snow,
though they are red like crimson,
     they shall become like wool. (Isa. 1:1)

The sins in view are delineated in the earlier part of Isaiah 1: rebellion, iniquity, corruption, vain offerings, and blood on guilty hands. The prospect of a change of fortune is offered:

If you are willing and obedient,
     you shall eat the good of the land. (Isa. 1:19)

Then logic of the alternative is spelled out:

But if you refuse and rebel,
     you shall be eaten by the sword;
     for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isa. 1:20)

In Isaiah 41, God challenges the gods of the nations:

Set forth your case, says the Lord;
     bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. (Isa. 41:21)

Among other things, the God of Israel can declare what is to come (Isa. 41:22–23). The gods are impotent on that point (Isa. 41:24). As in a courtroom, the living God knows how to argue and mount a case.

Sin causes not a cognitive disability but an affective disinclination to trust in God, honor him, or give thanks to him.

In the New Testament we see Jesus in debate with opponents and using well-known forms of logical argument. Indeed, philosopher Dallas Willard describes Jesus as “the Logician” because of “his use of logic and his obvious powers of logical thinking as manifested in the Gospels of the New Testament.”7 Mark 3 presents an interesting example. Jesus’s ministry in Galilee has attracted scribes from Jerusalem to come down and take a look. They cannot deny the miraculous. Instead, they offer an alternative explanation: Jesus’s exorcisms are the work of the devil, not God. Jesus counters:

And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end.” (Isa. 1:23–26)

This example is a classic reductio ad absurdum (reduction to absurdity) argument. If the scribes were right, then think it through: Satan would be in the process of self-destruction by destroying his own minions. Jesus offers a much more plausible explanation with his own self-reference implied: “But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house” (Isa. 1:27).

Jesus also uses argument in a positive way to instruct disciples. So, to encourage prayer, for example, he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7:11). This is an a fortiori (for the stronger) argument. If the lesser is so, how much more the greater.8

The apostle Paul also knew how to appeal to reason. He offers the Corinthians a cumulative case for believing in Christ’s resurrection. The Old Testament Scriptures predicted resurrection. The risen Christ was seen by the apostles, his brother James, by Paul himself, and some five hundred others, most of whom were still alive at the time of Paul’s writing (1 Cor. 15:1–11). But Paul does not leave it at that. He also explores the logic of the alternative in a series of hypothetical syllogisms (1 Cor. 15:12–19). If Christ were not risen, then what would follow step after step? The logical form of this part of his case is called a sorites.

Peter in his first letter makes the point more generally when he calls for “always being prepared to make a defense [apologia, “apology”] to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope [the gospel] that is in you.” Christians are to share not only what they believe but also why they believe it when challenged to do so. Defending the faith is Christian apology, and such a defense requires a reason (logos, “word,” “reason”).

In the light of the cumulative testimony of both the Old Testament and the New, the appeal to reasoning has its place in the life of God’s people. Biblical religion is a religion of the heart, but in biblical thought the heart includes the mind.9

Notes:

  1. Quoted in Gary E. Kessler, Voices of Wisdom: A Multicultural Philosophy Reader (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1992), 9. Wisdom is especially needed when we appeal to Scripture to address issues not mentioned in Scripture (e.g., abortion). It is important to make a distinction between philosophy as an activity of careful thought and philosophy as the doctrines taught by this philosopher or that, which may be thoroughly anti-Christian (see, e.g., Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon). The theologian can greatly profit from knowing and using the tools generated by the activity of philosophy (e.g., conceptual analysis). Christians who are philosophers and theologians who can philosophize have their place in the theological enterprise.
  2. P. T. Forsyth, The Principle of Authority in Relation to Certainty, Sanctity and Society: An Essay in the Philosophy of Experimental Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Independent Press, 1952), 9.
  3. Indeed, the wise person is characterized by virtue, and the foolish one is characterized by vice. It is also important to recognize that the possession of knowledge does not guarantee either virtue or wisdom. Paul wrote to the Corinthians how knowledge can puff one up (1 Cor. 8:1).
  4. Nous is the Greek word for “mind.”
  5. I have on my bookshelf a New Testament study Bible annotated by Jewish scholars. I was struck, in reading the notes on, e.g., Eph. 2:8–10, that I could have written them myself. The writer understands what Paul is asserting about salvation by faith and not works. But believing it is another thing. See Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., The Jewish Annotated New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 347.
  6. Was a change in affection also the experience of Old Testament saints? This question raises the issue of whether Old Testament believers were born again, and with it the matter of the continuity or discontinuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. On this question see Graham A. Cole, He Who Gives Life: The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2007), 143–45. I argue that indeed Old Testament believers were regenerated.
  7. Dallas Willard, “Jesus the Logician,” Dallas Willard (website), http://www.dwillard .org/articles/artview.asp?artID=39, accessed November 29, 2017. Also see Juan Valdes, “Jesus: The Master of Critical Thinking,” Reasons for Hope (website), https://www.rforh .com/resources/know-it/diving-deeper/jesus-the-master-of-critical-thinking, accessed November 29, 2017.
  8. The book of Hebrews offers an a fortiori argument in Heb. 9:13–14: “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more [a fortiori] will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”
  9. For an excellent discussion of reason in the service of God, see John Webster, Holiness (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 10–30. I am grateful to Oren Martin for reminding me of this fine work.

This article is adapted from Theological Method: An Introduction by Graham A. Cole.

Graham A. Cole (ThD, Australian College of Theology) is emeritus dean and emeritus professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. An ordained Anglican minister, he has served in two parishes and was formerly the principal of Ridley College. Graham lives in Australia with his wife, Jules.

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