by Sam Waldron | Oct 26, 2011 | Systematic Theology
It is well-known that the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-31 played a significant role in the development of the early church’s Christology. In fact, this use of Proverbs 8:22 became problematic because of the mistranslation the Hebrew verb in that verse. The LXX translated the verse: The Lord created me as a beginning of His way for His works. So common was the use of this passage to teach Christology that the Arians often quoted Proverbs 8:22 against the orthodox.
I will not argue in this blog post that the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-31 is a direct reference to Christ or the Son of God. I will argue that its language is so frequently and pervasively applied to Christ in the New Testament that its statements about the origin of wisdom are significant in the biblical argument for eternal generation.
The first step in this argument is the plain fact that the New Testament repeatedly describes the Son of God as the Wisdom of God.
There is a Lucan theology of the wisdom of God which comes to its highest expression in Luke 11:49-51:49 “For this reason also the wisdom of God said, ‘I will send to them prophets and apostles, and some of them they will kill and some they will persecute, so that the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the house of God; yes, I tell you, it shall be charged against this generation.” Here the words of Jesus are said to be uttered by the wisdom of God.
There is a theology of the wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians in which Jesus is several times identified as the wisdom of God. For example 1:24 affirms: “but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Don’t overlook as well 1 Corinthians 2:7-8: “but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory…”
Paul’s letter to the Colossians is widely thought to utilize concepts from Proverbs 8 in its high Christology. It is not surprising, then, that it also contains the following sentiments:
Colossians 1:28 – 2:3 “We proclaim Him, admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ…attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
Such passages suffice to show that there is clearly a wisdom Christology in the New Testament. It is not surprising, therefore, that there is a remarkable series of similarities between the statements of Proverbs 8:22-31 about wisdom and statements the NT makes about eternal Son of God.
(1) Both wisdom and the Son of God exist in the beginning—from eternity—before God brought about creation. Cf. Proverbs 8:22-26 with John 1:1-2.
(2) Both wisdom and the Son of God are active with God in the creation of the world. Cf. Proverbs 27-30 with John 1:3; Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2.
(3) Both wisdom and the Son of God exist in a warm personal relationship with God the Father. Cf. Proverbs 8:30-31 with John 1:1: “and the Word was with (toward; has friendly personal relations with) (the) God.”
(4) Both wisdom and the Son of God also have a special interest and delight in the world. Proverbs 8:31 states of wisdom that he rejoices “in the world, His earth, And having my delight in the sons of men.” The New Testament teaches that just as all things were created through the Son of God, so all things were created for Him—as His inheritance (Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2).
It seems high-handed insensitivity to the Scriptures to dismiss as coincidence (1) the obvious identification of Christ as God’s Wisdom in the NT and (2) the obvious parallels between the Wisdom of God in Proverbs 8:22-31 and the NT. But if this is the case, then we must not fail to notice a further parallel and one emphasized in Proverbs 8:22-31. The simple fact is that Proverbs 8 teaches that the Wisdom of God is eternally generated! And it does this using a great richness of language. Three verbs are used to describe the origin of wisdom.
In Proverbs 8:24-25 the verb meaning to bring forth by means of childbirth is used. Literally, the verb means to writhe in the agony of child birth: “When there were no depths I was brought forth, When there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills I was brought forth.”
Proverbs 8:23 uses a word that simply means to set up or establish. Wisdom eternally established by God: “From everlasting I was established, From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.”
Proverbs 8:22 contains the troublesome verb that was translated created by the LXX. This verb means literally to acquire, get, or purchase. Its first use in the OT is with reference to childbirth in Genesis 4:1 where Eve says that she has “gotten” or “produced” a man for the Lord. This is likely how it should be translated in Proverbs 8:22: “The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old.”
There are here then three clear references to what we can only call the eternal generation of wisdom. It is difficult to resist the feeling that behind, for instance, the phrase the only begotten from the Father in John 1:14 is the concept of the eternally generated wisdom of Proverbs 8.
Dr. Sam Waldron is the Academic Dean of CBTS and professor of Systematic Theology. He is also one of the pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Owensboro, KY. Dr. Waldron received a B.A. from Cornerstone University, an M.Div. from Trinity Ministerial Academy, a Th.M. from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1977 to 2001 he was a pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, MI. Dr. Waldron is the author of numerous books including A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The End Times Made Simple, Baptist Roots in America, To Be Continued?, and MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response.
by Sam Waldron | Oct 19, 2011 | Systematic Theology
In my last blog post I had occasion to mention the great Trinitarian benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.” No less a Reformed stalwart than B. B. Warfield notes that in this text the order of the persons is Son, Father, Spirit and argues from this fact that the order in which the persons are mentioned is not uniform and not suggestive of an ad intra order in the Trinity. Millard Erickson mentions the little known fact that Warfield approaches Egalitarian views of the Trinity in his book, Who’s Tampering with the Trinity?
Though Warfield is a great theologian, he is simply wrong at this point. I will hazard a guess at why in coming posts. Against Warfield and others who argue that this variation in the order of mention in 2 Corinthians 13:14 implies that there is no certain order between the persons of the Trinity, a number of cogent counter-arguments may be brought.
First, there is a normal order in the mention of the persons followed in Scripture. Cf. in Paul who is the prime source of Warfield’s thesis these references: Rom. 1:7, 1 Cor. 1:3, 8:6, Eph. 1:2, 6:23,Phil. 1:2, 2:11, 1 Thess. 1:1, 2 Thess. 1:1, 1 Tim. 1:2, 1:1, 2 Tim. 1:2, Tit. 1:4, Philemon 3, Col. 1:3, Eph. 1:3, 2 Cor. 1:3. Warfield notwithstanding, we cannot think that the order of Matt. 28:18; John 1:1, 14; or John 3:16 might be changed. Occasional texts which vary this order ought not to be used to contradict this normal order if another explanation is available.
Second, there may be many reasons why the order of mention may sometimes vary. If the Father in some cases is mentioned after the Son, it may be that the structure is climactic.
Third, when the theological and exegetical background of 2 Corinthians 13:14 is examined, its unusual order is seen to be consistent with the traditional Trinitarian order. Here are several reasons why. (1) In 2 Corinthians 13:14 the Father is named “the God.” Literally, the Greek may be rendered “the love of the God.” Certainly, this name indicates the primacy of the Father. (2) The mention of “the love” of the Father leads us to a number of texts which affirm that the source of our salvation is the electing love of the Father. Christ is sent by the Father is consequence of this electing love.
Ephesians 1:4-6 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Romans 8:37-39 37 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:29-30 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
(3) Since the fountain of salvation is the electing love of the Father, what we ought to discern in 2 Corinthians 13:14 is not the disruption of any order in the Trinity. Rather we ought to discern an order which actually confirms the traditional order of mention. In 2 Corinthians 13:14 Paul traces the grace of the Son (a reference to His willingness to come and die for us—2 Corinthians 8:9)—up to the fountain of the Father’s love. The Spirit is then sent down to apply to us the subjective and inward benefits that stem ultimately from the Father’s love.
Dr. Sam Waldron is the Academic Dean of CBTS and professor of Systematic Theology. He is also one of the pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Owensboro, KY. Dr. Waldron received a B.A. from Cornerstone University, an M.Div. from Trinity Ministerial Academy, a Th.M. from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1977 to 2001 he was a pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, MI. Dr. Waldron is the author of numerous books including A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The End Times Made Simple, Baptist Roots in America, To Be Continued?, and MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response.
by Sam Waldron | Oct 12, 2011 | Systematic Theology
Another telling rebuttal of the notion that the peculiar roles of the Trinity in redemption are not eternal is that the New Testament makes clear that redemption itself arises from the electing love of the Father. Notice three passages as specimens of this teaching.
Ephesians 1:4-6 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.
Romans 8:37-39 But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:29-30 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.
In each of these passages election is the work of the Father. It is the Father who in love predestined us to the adoption as sons. This makes it very likely that the great Trinitarian benediction of 2 Corinthians 13:14 in mentioning the love of “the God,” a standard description of the Father in the New Testament is referring to the love by which He elected us: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all.”
The peculiar roles of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit did not begin with history. They are present in eternity past—embedded in the eternal Trinity itself.
Some theologians attempt to evade this biblical teaching by reference to an eternal covenant in which there was an agreement among the persons of the Trinity to assume certain roles in redemption. They say: The modes of operation in the economic Trinity are determined not by the eternal roles fulfilled by the various persons in the Trinity, but by a pre-mundane covenant of redemption.
This argument assumes that a covenant is a pactum or contract with the connotation of bilateral discussion between equal parties. It is now commonly recognized that this is not the biblical meaning of (especially divine) covenants. Berith and diatheke rather speak of a unilateral arrangement like a last will and testament (Heb. 9:15-17) or an imposition of a treaty on a conquered people by a conquering king. This is the teaching of John Murray, The Covenant of Grace (N. P.: Tyndale Press, 1977) 5f; Meredith G. Kline, the Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963) 27. Indeed, the Greek word for a contract is suntheke, but the New Testament (and Septuagint) word for covenant is diatheke, a word with a clearly more unilateral flavor. This climate of thought is not hospitable to the use being made of covenant by those who deny eternal generation in favor of explaining the economy of redemption by the covenant of redemption.
Also telling against this use of the covenant of redemption are the two major biblical descriptions of it. Titus 1:2 speaks of this covenant as follows: “in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.” (This is the ESV translation and is much more literal than that of the NASB.) Again the article precedes God in the Greek. Thus, the verse speaks of the Father making a promise to the Son before the world began. 2 Timothy 1:9 also speaks of this covenant: “who has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” In no biblical description of the covenant of redemption is there any mention of the persons of the Trinity arbitrarily choosing roles for themselves in redemption. There is only the mention of the promise of the Father to the Son and the purpose of the Father in the Son. There is, of course, agreement of a kind, but it is the joyful agreement of a submissive Son to a Father’s glorious plans.
Dr. Sam Waldron is the Academic Dean of CBTS and professor of Systematic Theology. He is also one of the pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Owensboro, KY. Dr. Waldron received a B.A. from Cornerstone University, an M.Div. from Trinity Ministerial Academy, a Th.M. from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1977 to 2001 he was a pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, MI. Dr. Waldron is the author of numerous books including A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The End Times Made Simple, Baptist Roots in America, To Be Continued?, and MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response.
by Sam Waldron | Oct 6, 2011 | Systematic Theology
Those who oppose the Eternal Sonship of Christ have invented some very clever evasions of the biblical evidence. They have argued that the use of the term, Son, is proleptic and merely anticipates the sonship which he would take up in His incarnation. Others (admitting how unnatural such a reading is of the key passages) have opined that the term, Son, while used of the pre-existent and eternal state, only conveys His equality with the Father and nothing further.
What both of these evasions fail to account for, it seems to me, is that the very passages in question not only teach the eternal sonship of Christ, but the eternal fatherhood of the Father. Look at them again.
John 3:16-17 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.
John 10:36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God ‘?
Galatians 4:4 But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law
1 John 4:9-14 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins….We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Hebrews 1:2 in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world.
The order of the Trinity for which these blogs have been arguing is taught by several things in these passages. First, the primacy of the Father is taught by the way in which “the God” (The article is present in each of the above passages mention of God) and “Father” are interchanged in these passages. Second, the order of the Trinity is made clear by the explicit statement that the Father sent the Son.
Will the evasions invented by the opponents of eternal sonship also work for the eternal fatherhood of the first person of the Trinity? Does the term, Father, merely indicate His equality of nature with the Son? Since when? Is the term, Father, merely applied to the person of the Trinity who sends His Son proleptically? Was He no Father until the birth of Jesus? Then why not say that He was not “the God” until then? If Father is proleptic, why not say that identifying the Father as “the God” is also proleptic (as He is identified in John 3:16, 17; Gal. 4:4; Heb. 1:1; and 1 John 4:10). Surely the Nicene Creed with its doctrines of the monarchy of the Father, the eternal generation of the Son, the eternal procession of the Spirit is greatly to be preferred as the correct solution for reading these texts!
Dr. Sam Waldron is the Academic Dean of CBTS and professor of Systematic Theology. He is also one of the pastors of Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Owensboro, KY. Dr. Waldron received a B.A. from Cornerstone University, an M.Div. from Trinity Ministerial Academy, a Th.M. from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. From 1977 to 2001 he was a pastor of the Reformed Baptist Church of Grand Rapids, MI. Dr. Waldron is the author of numerous books including A Modern Exposition of the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, The End Times Made Simple, Baptist Roots in America, To Be Continued?, and MacArthur’s Millennial Manifesto: A Friendly Response.
