Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 8:22-31 (Wisdom's Eternality and Role in Creation) (Part 22)

Please turn with me in your Bibles this morning to Proverbs the eighth chapter. We take as our reading verses 22 to 31, and consider this morning the eternality and role in creation of Wisdom itself. Proverbs the eighth chapter, beginning at verse 20:22. Hear now. God's word, Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way. Before his works of old, I was set up from everlasting. From the beginning, before the earth was, when there were no depths I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water, before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the nor the beginning of the dust of the world, when he established the heavens, I was there when he set a circle upon the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when the fountains of the deep became strong, when he gave to the sea its bound, that the waters should not transgress his commandment, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was by him as a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him, rejoicing in his habitable earth, and my delight was with the sons of men and thus far the Reading of God's Word We've seen a large number of directives already given to us in the Book of Proverbs. As we've been going through this book in God's Word, we've been told that wisdom calls for a certain lifestyle, a certain kind of behavior in the world. Wisdom calls for certain attitudes and certain ideals to be followed. We've been counseled by wisdom in the Book of Proverbs to heed our parents, to have the right kind of role models, to not consent with sinners, to avoid loose sexual practices, to be good neighbors, to pay our bills, to tithe to the Lord, to show humility, to be industrious, to not sow discord, to not tell lies, and on and on and on. There's all sorts of counsel provided here in the Book of Proverbs to us. I want to pose the question this morning, though. Why take that advice? Why listen to what wisdom tells us in the Book of Proverbs? Why should we be that concerned that wisdom says you shouldn't sow discord or show disrespect to your parents? Why should it concern us that wisdom tells us to be sexually pure? Why should it concern us that wisdom shows us a way of life in this world? The reason why that question is a natural question. Is because my guess is you've been in situations in this world I have as well, where it doesn't seem the wisest and most successful thing to do, to listen to wisdom. Wisdom may tell us not to tell a lie, but I know you've been in situations where the easiest thing and the most convenient thing was to tell a lie. Wisdom may tell us that we should be faithful to our marriage partners, but you've been in situations, haven't you, where it seemed like infidelity was the thing to do. Wisdom may tell us to be good neighbors and not sow discord, but my guess is you thought it was perfectly legitimate to gossip from time to time and to be a troublemaker here, there and everywhere. I mean, there are just circumstances in life where what the book of Proverbs tells us is unrealistic. It doesn't fit in. It doesn't jive with the flow of life. I mean, it's not part of this world. And I'm sure you've run into the mentality. We see it on tv, we see it in the movies, you read it in modern novels. It's just. It's part of the alleged wisdom of our particular age to say that you can have your ideals, but these are theoretical. In the real world, a person has got to be practical. So that's why this morning I'm going to pose the question which might have seemed at the outset a bit irreverent of a pastor, to ask, why should we listen to what wisdom says here? After all, we've got to live in this world. This is nice, all things being equal, if there were no troubles and no qualifications to be made, no, than we probably ought to be wise people, as wisdom dictates here in this book. But everything's not equal in this world. Everything doesn't always work out nicely. Things are not pure and simple. And that's why we've sometimes got to lean upon our own understanding and find our own way through this world and just follow this as something of a rough guideline every now and then, pay attention to wisdom. But it isn't going to be. Every single moment of our lives. We can do what wisdom says. So why take this advice? Why should it seem indispensable or important to do what wisdom has dictated? And it turns out that this passage that we've read as our text this morning in Proverbs, the eighth chapter, provides us an inspired answer to that question. The answer is very simply this. You should listen to wisdom. Because wisdom is older than creation and it deserves to be followed by all men. Then the same wisdom which is directing our paths in moral successful living before God is that eternal wisdom by which God created the marvels of this world. Here we find the prime credential of wisdom to speak to us with authority. Wisdom says, I was possessed by Jehovah before there was a world. I was there when he laid the foundations of the deep and set the expanse of the earth. Wisdom says, listen to me, because I do have credentials that bring authority to my advice. The first thing we have to deal with, and as we looked at this passage, however, is to decide how we're to take the one that's called wisdom. In this passage, wisdom is personified. At least a poetic personification is found here in Proverbs 8 of Wisdom. The question we have to ask, though, is are we meant to take it as more than just a personification, more than just a convenient literary device? You know, we can take just about any attribute of God and personify it. We can take attributes of human beings and apply them to inanimate objects. We can make up whole stories. In fact, Pilgrim's Progress seems to have done a pretty good job of doing that, taking certain character traits and personifying them as people themselves. What we want to know is whether the Book of Proverbs is doing that and no more than that, or whether the Book of Proverbs is perhaps reflecting upon the very person of God himself. Should we take Wisdom as a substantial person, or should we take wisdom as merely an attribute of God here for literary purposes, personified? Unfortunately, the position that you. That people take on that interpretive question is often determined not by literary and exegetical considerations. I mean, that's the sad thing for both conservatives and liberals. By the way, the position that's taken is often dictated and determined by one's polemical position regarding debates over the person of Jesus Christ. If you get into an argument with a Jehovah's Witness, or often if you listen to those who answer Jehovah's Witnesses, I think you will find that the way they interpret Proverbs 8 is dictated by theological considerations. Totally apart from the literature that can be exegeted here. This particular portion of God's Word, both those who advocate and those who deny the full deity of the Lord Jesus Christ have made use of this passage to support their doctrinal position. Does that support you? I mean, does that surprise you that the support for the deity of Christ and the denial of the deity of Christ is found in the very same passage? Each side has seen the relevance of this passage to the pre existent character of Christ. Almost everybody would say there's something about this that gives us an insight to the pre existent nature of Jesus Christ. But the sides of the debate have not interpreted the key phrases in completely uniform ways. They've been contrary to one another as to what they find in the passage. What do I mean by the pre existence of Jesus Christ? Well, there was a day when I was born. I remember it well. No, there was a day when I was born. My parents told me about it and I've seen other children born, my own children born. So I have some idea of what it is for me to begin to exist. In fact, as you study a little bit about the birds and the bees and learn a little elementary biology, I found out that I existed even prior to the day that I was born. In fact, the Bible tells me from the day that I was conceived in my mother's womb, I was a person before the presence of God. So I came into being at a certain point and even before that God knew and planned in his own mind that I should come into this world. Wisdom, however, talks here in a way that is not conducive to the notion of beginning to exist at some particular point, as I did. Wisdom says before there was anything, before the creation of the world, I already existed. Now if that wisdom has anything to do with Jesus Christ, and we'll see that the authors of the New Testament presume that it does, then the suggestion is that Jesus Christ existed prior to his birth and and existed prior to his conception in his mother's womb. That Jesus Christ was a functioning spiritual being, active, real, personal, prior to his coming into this world. Now you see, both heretics and conservative Bible scholars see the relevance of this passage to the pre existence of Jesus Christ Christ. But some would say what this tells us is that Jesus was once created by God, or that Christ was once created by God. And others would say no, it teaches that he is eternal as God. All right, so you have this debate then over the person of Jesus Christ. I suppose most of you will know, but I'm going to remind those of you who have come a little rusty this morning that the position that says Jesus was once, or that Christ to be more exact, was once created by God is called Arianism. Following the early church heretic Arius, the most famous council of the Christian church in the early days, the Council of Nicaea, met to deal with the heresy that was being promoted by Arius. Arius and his followers called Arians Had a little phrase that has a sing songy sound in Greek when you pronounce it. But it was kind of the theme song, the slogan that they set forth in their view of Jesus Christ. There was a time when he was not. There was a time when Christ was not. It may have been long, long, long ago. And you need to remember the Arians thought of Jesus Christ very highly. They considered him the first creation of God. They considered him just the slightest step below Jehovah the Father. They considered him the creator of heaven and earth. After God made Christ, Christ made the rest of the world. They consider him the cosmic Lord and the Savior of men. Arians had a very high view of Jesus Christ. The Council of Nicaea said, not high enough. When you say there was a time when he was not, you deny his eternality. And in deny his eternality, you deny that he is full God. And so the debate goes on and on between Arians and those who follow the early Church. Father Athanasius. Athanasius was the key defender of the conservative and orthodox view at the Council of Nicaea. I think you'd be interested to know that in Discourse two of his book against the Arians, the vast majority of the book, something like sections 18 to 82, as I recall, the vast majority of the book, is given to an exegesis of Proverbs, the eighth chapter. That's just how crucial that was in the early days of the Church. Well, anyway, because some parties come to the debate wanting to settle a score on a Christological question, they'll interpret it one way or another as being relevant to the pre existence of Jesus Christ. But then, you see, there's another set of disputants here. There are some parties to this debate over the person of Christ who would not want the passage available to be used by their opponents. And they have argued that it is completely irrelevant to such questions, because wisdom is not really to be taken as a person in Proverbs 8, only a literary personification, much in the way that you might find in Matthew 11:19, Jesus saying wisdom is justified by her children. Which is another way of saying that you can tell the truth or falsity of a proposition by its fruits, by its outworking. If a man is truly wise, then you'll see by his associates and by the manner of his life, by his children, the product of his life will then reflect upon the character of his wisdom. Jesus says that, but he doesn't mean by any means there that wisdom is some real person you could go shake hands with and so there have been those who say Proverbs 8 is nothing more than that. What's my position on Proverbs 8? My position is that all the other parties are wrong in one way or another. I haven't got anything new to propose to you today, and if I did, you should be suspicious of it. After years and years of work on the exegesis of this passage and reams of things that have been written, I wouldn't dare stand in the pulpit and say, finally, the life as dawn and the Christian Church will see the truth here. But I do want to suggest that all three of the parties we referred to One, the party that says a real person is referred to, but it's not the eternal Creator. Two, the party that says a real person is referred to here, and it is the eternal Creator, Jesus Christ. And third, the party that says it's not talking about such things at all, that all three are in one way or another wrong. And that while we need to do is kind of approach the passage a little more sensitively, a little more exegetically, a little more in terms of the full theological context of God's Word. And so, one by one, let me pick off these three positions and make slight modifications in them. In the first place, it seems to me a rather precarious thing to take a passage which is as obviously figurative and poetic in character as this one, and try to establish any major theological dogma upon it. It's just not good hermeneutics. It is not a good way to interpret the word of God, to take poetic portions of God's Word and make them the fundament, the final defense of some major distinctive and disputed theological truth. That's not the way we proceed. The Protestant reformers argued that one must, when he approaches the Bible, argue from the clear to the unclear, not from the unclear to the clear. That is to say, we should start out with didactic portions of God's Word where the clear meaning and the theological expressions are used, and then, in terms of them, understand more poetic or figurative passages. And anyone who wants to argue both for or against the deity of Jesus Christ based on Proverbs 8, it seems to me, has overlooked that rule. This isn't the place such an argument should begin. It certainly isn't the place such an argument should end should be decided. And of course, I think it's especially precarious to try to prove something from this passage when the doctrine you're trying to prove is manifestly at odds with the clear and didactic portions of God's Word. There's no doubt in my mind that elsewhere we can prove the full deity and eternality of Jesus Christ. But Jehovah's Witness comes to my door and wants to disprove that by going to Proverbs 8. I'll be glad to debate the Hebrew with him. They don't know Hebrew Anyway, I'll be glad to debate the point from the passage, but the most important observation to be made there is that this is not the way to proceed. Let's deal with the clear doctrinal passages of God's Word and see what they have to say, and then take the poetry of God's Word, the figurative language of God's Word, and put it in that context. Moreover, most modern interpreters don't see the author's purpose in Proverbs 8 as offering a theological treatise on the metaphysics of the Godhead. Anyway, the point of this passage is not doctrinal so much as it is practical, not didactic. It's a way of saying that the value of wisdom is such that those who have faith in God will follow it. That is, it's a very personal and practical thrust that we find in this passage rather than a more abstract theological presentation of the nature of God. So that's the first observation to be made, I think all sides of the discussion. Well, those that have said I'll argue my point in favor of the deity of Christ, or I'll argue my point against the deity of Christ in light of Proverbs 8 have just missed the point that this is not that kind of passage. Secondly, the ancient Arians as well as modern day Jehovah's Witnesses, followers of the Way International and other cults that deny the deity of Jesus Christ. The ancient Arians and others who appeal to this text to prove that Christ is a created being and not the eternal Creator, saying there was a time when he was not, and this proves it, are just wrong. That isn't what the passage says. The Arians have to strain and they have to distort in order to make this passage serve their anti christological purposes. For you see, this passage doesn't teach us anything about the origin of wisdom or the second person of the Trinity. If you look at verse 22, we read Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way before his work of old. That word possessed in my translation has sometimes been translated created. Jehovah created me. In fact, that's what the Septuagint does with it. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses one of the Words for creation. The difficulty is that the vast majority of cases where this word appears in the old Testament appears 84 times in Hebrew. The vast majority of times does not allow for the sense of create. And maybe a half a dozen of those 84, Create is an allowable translation, but even there, and none of them is it a required translation. The vast majority of cases refer to getting something or possessing something. Whether you get something by purchase or get something by parenting. Have you ever noticed that we sometimes talk about having a baby? My wife is going to have a baby. Have means to possess. My wife is going to get a baby. Well, we have that kind of idiom in English too, it turns out. So did the Hebrews. Or you could get something by learning. The verb does not mean to bring something into existence out of nothing. It refers to possession of something. And what wisdom is saying is, I been possessed by Jehovah forever. And so the question of origins doesn't even come up. The third observation to be made about this passage is that I think it would be overstated to hold that it does not contribute anything at all to our understanding of Christology when that's put in the wider context of the rest of God's word. Those who say, I don't want my opponent to make hay out of this passage, and so all to say it doesn't have anything to do with Jesus Christ, I think are also making a mistake. For you see, this passage surely contains, yes, in an undeveloped and anticipatory Old Testament form, but it surely contains a reflection on the nature of God's wisdom which readily leads in the direction of affirming the deity of a pre existent person with the Father. And thus it leads in the direction of a trinitarian theology. We have here a person distinct from the Father, active and creative, all powerful one possessed by the Father and in whom men find their happiness. I mean, can we really miss that? That is in some vague way a foreshadowing of the Christology of the New Testament, of what we learn about Jesus Christ. Now there are those who wish to find nothing but poetic personification in this passage. That would argue against me saying, yeah, but in the very next chapter, Dr. Bonson, in chapter nine, we have Dame Folly personified. And you don't mean to say Dame Folly is a real person, do you? Always be careful when you start debating a reductio ad absurdum, Your opponent might say, I'll swallow the reductio. That is to say, I'll take the conclusion, yeah, as a matter of fact, in Proverbs 9 I think Dame False is a person. If you look at Proverbs 9, you'll see in verse 18 that Dame Folly's guests are in the depths of hell. And though it's a female personification for literary purposes, in Proverbs 9, I think Dame Folly is a person, the epitome of unwisdom in this world, and that Satan himself, whose guests are in the depths of hell. And so I wouldn't argue against Proverbs 8 referring to a real person by saying that Proverbs 9 certainly doesn't. Proverbs 9 might very well be a reference to Satan himself. So let's come back to Proverbs 8 then bring all this together. It seems to me that we have here a personification of one of God's attributes. And yet it's not difficult to recognize something going beyond a mere attribute of God that was certainly recognized in the later non canonical Jewish wisdom literature. And I really need to give you an hour's lecture to give you a background on Jewish literature after the closing of the canon, through the days of the New Testament and into the days of the Talmud and Apocrypha and so forth before you could really appreciate this. But just in brief reference to books like Ecclesiasticus or Sirach or Baruch, you need to know that wisdom is portrayed in these books as eternal, as active, as limited by nothing. In the Wisdom of Solomon, a post biblical book in the Wisdom of Solomon, wisdom has the supreme dignity of being the personal image of God's eternal light. Hebrews 1:3 says virtually the same thing of Jesus Christ. In the Talmud, wisdom is identified with the Torah, which was described as pre existent, the agent of creation, as life, light and truth. You can hardly miss the fact that in John's Gospel every one of those attributes is used of Jesus Christ. We find similar reflections in the Apocrypha where wisdom is called the light that lightens every man. The same reference made in John 1, verse 9. In the Qumran Manual of Discipline we read of wisdom as the divine thought which is the origin of everything. In the writings of the Jewish philosopher Philo Judeus, we read of wisdom as the Logos, the Word, which is the principle of all creation, exactly what John calls Jesus. In John 1:1 in the beginning was the Logos, the Word. Now all I'm suggesting here is not that the Apocrypha is inspired, not that Philo is a way, is a means of interpreting the Word of God God, but that others who are very familiar with the literature of the Old Testament have found in Proverbs 8 something going beyond an attribute of God, pointing to another way of looking at God, a separate person who is yet identical with God, co eternal with God. And of course, from a Christian perspective, in our trinitarian New Testament theology, we look back and we say, well, of course we know where that's going. It may not be doctrinally stating that right here, but all of the literary devices are used pointing toward a trinitarian theology. After all, this motif was very valuable to both John and Paul when they wrote in the New Testament about Jesus Christ, calling him the truth, the life, the light, the word, and the wisdom of God. We find that in John, the first chapter, in first Corinthians, the first chapter, in Colossians, the first chapter, in Hebrews, the first chapter. All of the major doctrinal statements of the deity of Jesus Christ in the New Testament have literary and theological allusions to Proverbs, the eighth chapter. And so I want to suggest that what we should find here is not a text to settle the christological question, but we should find something that is a literary backdrop for the christological development of the New Testament. And what we read in Proverbs 8 is that eternal wisdom was present at creation. Wisdom is here portrayed as co eternal with God. Before the world came into being, I was there. Before the streams flowed with water, I was there. I am older than this hills, I am stronger than the mountains. I am more reliable than anything you find on earth. When God set the boundaries of the earth, when he laid the foundations of creation, I was the workman, I was the pattern that he followed. I was the agent that brought everything into being. So wisdom says. Moreover, wisdom is set forth, is established in a reigning position. Verse 23. I was set up for everlasting. The Hebrew refers to being installed in an office. I was enthroned from the very beginning. I reigned over all from the beginning. And Wisdom is portrayed as delighting in God and in his work. Look at verse 22. Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way. Actually, the translation might be better as the outset of his way or as the first importance of of his way. The Lord owned me and possessed me as the very first point of his doing anything. Jesus Christ, as the wisdom of God, turns out to be the agent and the pattern by which he does everything in this world. Wisdom says in verses 23 and 24 that it was installed in office, having been born of God. A reference here to a royal birth, one that has royalty and Dignity installed as the reigning king over creation, and yet to be born of God. In verse 26, we read that not a speck of dust in verse 29, not a trace of order in this world came into existence except by means of wisdom. Wisdom means made this world. Wisdom ordered this world. Wisdom governs this world. Wisdom reigns over this world. Wisdom is older than the universe, and wisdom is fundamental to everything in the universe. And something else that's very Precious. In verse 30, we read that whenever the wisdom of the Creator is exercised in verse 31, wherever the wisdom of the Creator is exercised, joy breaks forth. When God's at work, it's joyous, it brings joy, it expresses joy. Wisdom says, you want happiness in this world? Then you'd better fit into the pattern of what I teach. Because true joy comes from being in harmony with your Creator. Because your Creator's wisdom made this world. There's no happiness in this world apart from his wisdom. God's perfect workmanship in wisely making the world the way it is and in governing the world and the way it moves is the source of man's happiness, the source of man's success in the world. In fact, the Hebrew for verse 30 is very interesting. It suggests I was happiness itself. I was joy, says Wisdom. And so God's wisdom turns out to be the foundation of our existence. God's wisdom turns out to be the foundation of our happiness. And that is why you'd better start listening to wisdom. That is why when wisdom says, don't lie, don't be unfaithful, don't be a bad neighbor, don't be lazy. When wisdom tells us how to live our lives, we should listen. Wisdom knows what it's talking about. Wisdom was here when creation came about. In fact, wisdom was the pattern of this created world. Wisdom is the source of happiness in this world. We should heed its counsel then, as it's found in God's holy word. The wisdom by which we should live in the world is precisely that wisdom by which the world was made. I want to close by making reference to two or three other religions in this world, strangely enough, that trans try to, as parasites, ideologically draw upon the same line of thought. The ancient Stoics taught that there was something called the Reason or the Logos, the reason that permeates all things. Reason is what makes the world behave the way that it does. Reason is what orders everything. And so the Stoics said, if you want to get a log in this world, go with the flow, get in tune with reason, fit in that's why we consider a person who is just going to exceed to the adversity of life as having a Stoic attitude. The stoic person does not fight against circumstances. He fits in. That's because the Stoics believed there was a logos, a reason that permeated everything and that which permeated the whole thing. Physical universe was to give a direction for life to men as well. Well, it's not just the ancient Stoics, you know, The Eastern Hindus have the same concept in karma. Karma not only makes the world as we see it what it is, but karma determines the way we should live our lives. One must be in tune with karma. When you don't do things properly in this world, you're building up bad karma that will have to be worked off one way or another. And it's not just the Hindus either. You have in the Far east, the Taoist religions teach the same thing. The Dao is the way. It is the ordering force of all creation. And to live one's life is to live in terms of the Dao, to fit into the way. All of these are impersonal perversions, heretical offshoots from the living and true presentation of God's word about his own wisdom. For you see, you have impersonal reason and impersonal karma, an impersonal Dao to follow. Because people know that the way they live their lives must be attuned to creation, must fit into the way things are. We don't want an unrealistic ethic that is otherworldly when we've got to get through the midst of this worldly problems. And they're all right in that. They're all exactly right in wanting to find and a way of life that fits into the way creation is found. They're all wrong in trying to find it apart from the Creator, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Christ is the one who made this world. It is his mind that orders all things. It is his power that upholds everything that exists. And that's why the book comes to us here, the book of Proverbs, and tells us you want to live a successful and happy life, then fit in. Don't fight against the way creation is. Don't go contrary to the order that you find in reality about you. Listen to wisdom for the personal creator, the wisdom God himself who made this world, is the one who is directing you in the paths of life. The next time you're tempted to think, I know the Bible says this, but. But this circumstance calls for an exception I've got to go. Contrary to what Proverbs has taught me. Just remember you're fighting against the whole nature of reality when you do that. Let's pray. Lord, we ask that you would make us realistic people today and help us to fit into this world as it's been made. And, Lord, get it through our thick skulls this morning that the happiest way, the most successful way to live in this world is not contrary to your word. Indeed, it would be a poor reflection upon you in all of your wisdom and your strength if it could turn out that sinners could really have the most successful happy lives in your world. Lord, we know better than this. Down deep in our hearts, we know that when we compromise and make excuses for ourselves, we aren't really fitting into the way things are. If we were to understand the wisdom of this world and the way that it operates, we would do everything your Word directs us to do. Forgive us for being unrealistic and living contrary to creation. Forgive us for living contrary to your word. Help us to find wisdom, true wisdom, redeeming wisdom in the person of your eternal Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Savior and our Lord and our only hope of happiness in this world. For we pray in his name. Amen.