Wisdom, Attend!

IC XC
✙
NI KA

O Wisdom,
coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
reaching from one end to the other,
mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
Come and teach us the way of prudence.

O Antiphon for 17 December

AS IN YEARS PAST, I begin an Advent series on the Great O Antiphons. Today begins the Advent Fast for Byzantine Catholics and for Eastern Orthodox who are using the Gregorian Calendar for dates (other than Pascha). There are 40 days until Christmas, so there’s time to work through each of the “Great O’s“. Today we’ll begin with the “O Sapientia” or “O Wisdom”. The next post will be on the 20th.

Recently I’ve been reading The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate by John H. Walton. The writer makes the interesting claim that creation was more a functional act in the ancient cosmology than a physical action. Here’s a line from a review that summarizes it much better than I can: “According to Walton, Genesis 1 says nothing about the origins of the matter in the Universe. Other scriptures do, and claim God as the author of all that is. Genesis 1 speaks to the origins of the way the Universe functions in relationship to humans and establishes God as the supremely divine authority in place in His temple. He uses the phrase “functional cosmic temple” (itself a rather mind-blowing phrase) to summarize this view.”

Walton’s main idea is that Genesis is concerned with not how the world came to be but rather with what the world is. He says that this is consistent with the other cosmologies of the Ancient Near East – and we need that cultural map to understand what the Bible means. To read it as if it’s about “making physical things” is to miss the point entirely. The Universe is supposed to be here for a reason.

By a liturgical coincidence, today for the Dominican Order, is the feast of St Albert the Great, Bishop and Doctor of the Church. The readings at Mass for his feast begin with a reading from one of the Wisdom Books, Sirach:

“If you are willing to listen, you can learn; if you pay attention, you can be instructed. Reflect on the law of the Most High, and let his commandments be your constant study. Then he will enlighten your mind, and make you wise as you desire.” Sirach 6:33, 37

Albert and another great philosopher, Maximus the Confessor, were both concerned with connecting what they knew about the world with what they knew about God. Interestingly, they started at opposite ends and worked in reverse. Let me explain: Both writers used the Neoplatonic pattern of “exitus-reditus” to explain creation arising in an act of God’s will (God as First Cause) and returning to God (God as final cause). Albert began with knowledge of the physical world, and worked with (and critiqued) the texts of non-Christian philosophers – Aristotle, Avicenna, and Averroes. Albert taught that truth was truth, no matter who was saying it and that all truth was God’s truth since Jesus says, “I am the Truth”. Albert used what we would call, today, the scientific method of observation, thesis, and experiment to break down different categories of thinking in the physical world and used this same method in the Theological science. Maximus started with the divine experience and came to understand that contemplation of the natural world could lead us to God.

Both writers – one western and one eastern – insisted that the world was comprehensible because God made everything in his wisdom. And so the universe is something which can point us towards God. Albert said it was by virtue of the Truth, Maximus said it was by virtue of the Logos (God the Son), the Creator of All, present in image in the logoi of everything he had Created.

In wisdom, ordering all things mightily.

And so we live in a universe that can be comprehended because we follow a God of infinite wisdom who wants to share himself with us. Although we can never fully comprehend God, even in the World to Come, we can always participate in his wisdom. We can come to know what the Universe means by knowing the very source of its meaning – the Divine Logos – the word by which the Father brought all into being.