Where Is Wisdom to Be Found?

Wisdom is absent from Reformed theology. We don’t talk about it. I wonder why.

Two Sundays ago we worshipped at the Holy Cross Monastery, where we often go. The Superior gave the sermon. His sermon was calm, quiet, and reflective, not to mention gently challenging. It was wise. It struck me that this monastery has become for me a place of wisdom.

As I drove home. I wondered if it had to do with Benedictine spirituality, with their practices of silence, patient prayer, humility, and hospitality. I suspect their disciplines generate a collective wisdom. Their incredible tradition gives them experience, knowledge, and a calm and hospitable confidence.

In Dostoyevsky’s Brother Karamazov it is the monk Father Zosima who is the wise man. His wisdom comes from his spirituality. But in George Eliot’s Middlemarch the wise man is Caleb Garth, not one of the clergy. His wisdom comes from being rooted and grounded.

I drove home through the very hip village of Rosendale, where the old brick Dutch Reformed building is for sale again. I fantasized about buying it and planting a church called Saint Wisdom’s. Would Wisdom attract this jaded population? And that’s when I noticed the absence of Wisdom from Reformed theology. I can’t think of it coming up in our Doctrinal Standards, or even in the Creeds.

“Where is wisdom to be found?” It’s not what we look for in church planters. Winning personalities, yes, but we train them for leadership, energy, and entrepreneurship. I checked for Wisdom in the mission statements of our seminaries. Nope. How about the mission statements of our colleges? Nope. Or of any of the churches that I have served, whose mission statements I have written? Nope. The cultivation of wisdom is not part of our mission.

I have been reading Eliza Griswold’s new book Circle of Hope, about the self-destruction of a remarkable church in Philadelphia. A tragically hip church, Christ-centered, passionate, creative, and dedicated to justice, peace, and anti-racism. But I noticed the lack of wisdom in the story. Not that I showed any more wisdom in the conventional churches that I have led. What wisdom we had was in those older saints for whom I was always grateful.

I have read one book on the Wisdom Literature of the Bible, and that’s only because I was culling my shelves before retirement. I’d been looking at the spine of Wisdom in Israel by Gerhard von Rad for decades and I finally pulled it down. Von Rad was the great Pentateuch scholar, and no one had expected him to write his last book on a second-rate part of the Bible. Not even von Rad could make that literature feel first-class to me. Sometimes the Wisdom books seem, well, so dumb.

I mentioned my musings to Melody (wisdom being her job in our marriage). She pointed out that Wisdom does come up in feminist theology. Good point. And then she mentioned “Lady Wisdom” from Proverbs. Some writers argue that Lady Wisdom was an early foundation of Christology. I am not convinced by the evidence, and I think it’s better to follow the tradition and assign the personification of wisdom to the Holy Spirit—she is Lady Wisdom.

So maybe the relative weakness of Pneumatology in Reformed theology is partly why Wisdom is absent. And when we do pay attention to the Holy Spirit we tend to look for signs and manifestations that are the opposite of Wisdom—power, baby, power. Against which St. Paul warns us in First Corinthians.

That’s the same epistle in which he sings of love. There must be a connection between wisdom and love. Which reminds me of another absence in Reformed theology—the absence of Love from our Church Orders. They do not say, for example, that the first job of a synod is to love its classes, or that the first job of pastors is to love their churches. Nor do they say that the second job of synods is wisdom.

This past Sunday at Holy Cross the Assistant Superior preached. Another wise sermon, on the text, the Great Commandment to love, and nothing about the election. How many elections have the Benedictines lived through, how many dictators, how many wars and emperors and revolutions? St. Benedict wrote his Rule the same year as the “fall” of Rome, which nobody noticed when it fell. Doubtless the great age of the Benedictine movement contributes to the wisdom that I feel from them on Sunday mornings.

My wondering about the absence of wisdom is sincere, and not just rhetorical. My intention is not judgmental. But now three days after the election, this miserable USA is desperate for wisdom, and should this not be part of the mission of the church? If so, we’d better start working on it ourselves.