Читать книгу The Craft of Innovative Theology. Argument and Process онлайн

63 страница из 123

There is no doubt that the “Wisdom tradition” of the Old Testament is a powerful inspiration for the developing Christology of the New Testament.¹⁷ As Celia Deane-Drummond points out:

Certainly a Wisdom Christology has the advantage of holding together very different biblical traditions, some of which highlight the very human story of Jesus in comparison with the prophets of wisdom, as in Matthew, while others point to a closer identification between Wisdom and the divine, as in the Logos Christology of John.¹⁸

As Deane-Drummond notes, this is especially true of the Gospel of John. The combination of Genesis one (“In the beginning God” finds an echo in “In the beginning was the Word”) with the Wisdom tradition (especially of Proverbs 8) becomes a powerful mechanism to capture the significance and impact of Jesus. For the author of John’s Gospel, Jesus embodies the Eternal Word – the Eternal Wisdom of God; it is in Jesus we can see what God is like.

The Old Testament source for this characterization of Wisdom is Proverbs 8. She is one of two female figures; the other being the “foreign woman.” Of Wisdom, Proverbs writes: