The Graduate Scrawl

This is the latest installment in the Scrawl’s ongoing series looking at each of TEDS’s academic departments and applying their academic work to the life of the church.

While I try to devote most of my evenings to my studies, I usually make time to watch the 10:00 news.  I do this not only to keep myself abreast of world events, but also because it provides me with a chance to come up for air.  But it seems that every night my study break backfires: my relaxation is replaced by grief as I inevitably hear story after tragic story from the lips of the news anchors.  Soldiers killed in Afghanistan.  Another governing official arrested.  Children gunned down on the South Side.  How, I always ask myself, could this world be so broken?

It may seem like an understatement to assert that much of what we see on the news amounts to an absence of wisdom, but I don’t believe that it is.  As a PhD student, my research interests focus on the place of wisdom in Old Testament theology.  Over the course of my research thus far, I’ve concluded that the Old Testament itself traces the world’s brokenness to man’s pursuing wisdom apart from God.   The forbidden tree that plays a pivotal role in Genesis 3 bears the moniker “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.”  This name for the tree has great significance for understanding what transpires in the garden, especially since Genesis 1 has gone to such lengths to tell its reader that everything in heaven and earth that God made was “good” (1:31).  In light of Genesis 1, Adam and Eve’s sin in eating from the tree was tantamount to their thumbing their noses at God; with their disobedience, they insisted that they would decide for themselves what was good, rather than submit to the wishes of the one who made everything they knew to be good in the first place.

Especially significant to the narrative is the serpent’s claim in Genesis 3:5 that eating from the tree would give Eve knowledge like God, that is, knowledge of good and evil.  Also significant is the commentary in 3:6, where, taking her cue from the serpent, Eve concludes that eating from the tree would make her “wise.”  Therefore, fundamental to the first couple’s initial sin was their pursuit of an independent sort of wisdom whereby they could decide, apart from God’s instruction, what was right and wrong.

Only adding to this tragedy is the fact that Adam and Eve actually attain what they pursue.  God himself states that “they have become like one of us, knowing good and evil” (3:22).  Notice the imagery of 3:7, where Adam and Eve’s eyes—the organs of perception—are opened.  It’s hardly the case that God is claiming that the couple now knows everything he knows; rather, he’s addressing the fact that the basis for the couple’s understanding of rightness is now their own perception and judgment, instead of his instruction.  In a sense, the couple has become like God—they believe they may decide for themselves what is right and wrong, a prerogative that was and always will be God’s alone.

To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that it was the mere pursuit of wisdom that gave rise to the first sin.  What I am suggesting is that it was the pursuit of wisdom apart from God.  The pursuit of knowledge and understanding is actually commanded by Scripture (Prov 2:1-5), but this pursuit should always be undertaken with a submissive disposition toward God (Prov 1:7).  Central to any pursuit of knowledge should be one’s relationship with the Creator.

The book of Judges, in concluding its accounts of some horrific stories that transpired in nascent Israel, comments that every Israelite “did what was right in his own eyes” (21:25).  I’ve often wondered if this statement isn’t meant as an allusion to Genesis 3:7, implying that at the root of Israel’s early troubles lays the initial sin of the first humans.

The good news is that the Old Testament does not simply leave us with the picture of humankind chasing after its own understanding of what is good, but rather it shows God using his own infinite wisdom to overcome humankind’s flawed version.  We learn of God’s choosing Abraham and his seed as those through whom redemption would come to all the nations of the earth (Gen 12:1-3).  The Pentateuch also shows repeatedly that God uses his wisdom to sustain this people, in whom God has placed the redemptive hope of the world.

First, the key to Joseph’s ascent to leadership in Egypt was the wisdom he received from God, which allowed him to decipher Pharaoh’s dreams (Gen 41:1-45).  Genesis tells us that Joseph’s arrival in Egypt was God’s way of preserving his vessel of redemption, the Israelites (45:7-8; 50:20).

Second, the Israelites construct the tabernacle and Aaron’s priestly garments by means of God’s wisdom.  We don’t tend to think of craftsmanship as an expression of wisdom, but craftsmanship was thought of in this light in the Ancient Near East.  It’s important to note that, time and again, Exodus connects the construction of the tabernacle and the priestly garments with wisdom from God (Exod 28:3; 31:3, 6; 35:26, 31, 35; 36:1-2).  And many commentators have noted the similarities between the description of the tabernacle and the Garden in Eden in Genesis.  The theological point here is not merely that God gives people wisdom in the form of a craft, but that the tabernacle, the sacred space designated for the special encounter between God and his people, has its origins in God’s wisdom.

Third, God directs the Israelites’ way of life by means of his wisdom.  He leads them through people such as Moses and Joshua whom he filled with the Spirit of wisdom (Deut 34:9).  But he also gives them the Law, which embodies his wisdom (Deut 4:6; 29:9; Josh 1:7).  The wise teaching of the Law, if followed, would shape Israel into a nation of justice and righteousness that would exemplify God’s goodness to the surrounding nations (Deut 4:7-8).  So, part of the purpose of the Law was to mold Israel into a nation that thrived on justice and righteousness.

I could move beyond the Pentateuch and discuss the vision of Zion in Isaiah 2, which portrays the eschatological destiny of the nations as life under the wise rule of God.  I could also elaborate on the teaching of the New Testament that Jesus himself is the incarnation of God’s wisdom (Mark 1:21-22; 6:2l; Col 1:15-17).  But there’s not enough room here for that.

Nonetheless, God’s people today should find comfort in the fact that the earliest books of the Old Testament not only show how the world went wrong, but how God, from ancient times, has been working out a wise plan of redemption for people and all creation.  We must trust his wisdom, for it will save us from our own.

Lance Higginbotham is a PhD candidate in Old Testament Studies at TEDS.