Divine Wisdom and the Word Made Flesh
(Has Christianity Forgotten the Feminine of Divine Wisdom?)
By Wade Bond
Wade Bond is a member of Saint Thomas Episcopal Church and is active in inter-faith dialogue efforts in Birmingham. Wade also enjoys organizing home repair mission teams which serve low income families. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama and lives with his wife in Hoover, Alabama, USA.

The opening line of the Gospel of John is one of the most profound, best known and most loved lines in the New Testament. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” A few verses later, John tells us, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” The Word was embodied in Jesus. This is all very familiar to most Christians, but what is often overlooked is the personification of the wisdom of God, which we find in the Old Testament. Is there a connection between the two? Is divine wisdom and the Word the same “person”? In this essay, I hope to shed some light on this “person” or “persons.” First, we will look at divine wisdom personified in Proverbs chapter eight and then we will examine the Word from the Gospel of John.

The portrait of divine wisdom in Proverbs chapter eight is one of the most beautiful, metaphorical portraits in the Bible. Wisdom is personified as a woman, the Feminine, calling out to us.

Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand:
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
“ To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.” (1)

Wisdom herself is calling out to us. She calls to us from those quiet, contemplative places on the heights and beside the way. She also calls to us from the busy crossroads and beside the gates of the town. Who would not stop to hear what wisdom herself has to say? Notice that she is not portrayed as calling out from a scroll or a temple. No doubt, wisdom can be found there as well. But here the author emphasizes that wisdom’s voice can be heard everywhere. Not only can she be heard in our churches, but she can also be heard in our quiet, private moments and during our hectic workdays.

Divine wisdom is the amazing Feminine. She is totally inclusive. Her message is intended for people of all races, nationalities, cultures and persuasions. She cries out to men, women, Jews, gentiles, liberals and conservatives. She is not standing in the way, but beside the way. In other words, she is not forcing us to listen to her but requesting our attention. She is not “in your face.” Instead, she asks us to stop and listen for her voice. She is intelligent, strong, insightful, bold, just, caring and loving. She is quite a catch! Divine wisdom is the woman every woman aspires to be and the woman every man wants to marry. In verses 35 and 36 she tells us, “For whoever finds me, finds life and obtains favor from the Lord; but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death.”

Portraying the wisdom of God as a woman is a very ancient Jewish tradition. In the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament), the abstract concept of divine wisdom was embodied into a “person.” Obviously, she was not a literal person. This “woman” is not historically factual. However, she was and is very real and profoundly true. The Feminine aspect of God’s self is a “person” in the spiritual sense.

The portrait of divine wisdom that we find in Proverbs 8 was written sometime around the year 1050 BC.(2) That means that a man or woman wrote Proverbs eight about 3050 years ago. I am amazed and humbled at the thought that something written so long ago by someone I never met in a land I have never visited could touch my soul so deeply and be so relevant to my life in this modern and scientific age. Scripture is indeed sharper than any two-edged sword. It cuts straight to our soul.

Was divine wisdom the subject of a more recent passage in scripture? Did she re-emerge 1130 years later (around the year 80 AD) in the Gospel of John? John’s author speaks of “the Word” who “became flesh and lived among us” in the body of Jesus. Is divine wisdom and the Word the same “person”? Let us now compare divine wisdom from Proverbs eight with the Word from the Gospel of John chapter one. In Proverbs eight, divine wisdom says:

“The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up,
at the first, before the beginning of the earth…
When he marked out the foundations of the earth,
then I was beside him, like a master worker;…
Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates,
waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life
and obtains favor from the LORD;
but those who miss me injure themselves;
all who hate me love death.” (3)

Then 1130 years later, the author of John wrote:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.” (4)

Note in the passages above that both are described as being with God from the beginning before the earth was created. Both played active roles in creation. Divine wisdom would not be “like a master worker” unless she was actively building creation with God. Of both wisdom and the Word it is written that whoever finds him or her finds life. Divine wisdom and the Word made flesh are both closely associated with and sometimes equated with truth, the door, the gate, the way, the straight way, goodness, insight, strength, righteousness, justice, love and life. Both tell us that his or her message is for everyone – not only for Jews but also for gentiles. John tells us that although the Word was in the world, “yet the world did not know him.”(5) Jewish tradition holds that divine wisdom is often ignored.(6)

The most obvious difference between divine wisdom and the Word is gender. Proverbs was written in Hebrew. When John was written, the author had two Greek words to choose from. One of the options was the word “Sophia”, which means “wisdom”. The other option was “logos”, which means “word” or “divine reason”.(7) Sophia was a feminine Greek word and required the use of feminine pronouns. Logos, on the other hand, was a masculine Greek word that called for masculine pronouns. The author chose logos probably because he or she was describing the logos being incarnated into the male body of Jesus. When the New Testament was translated into English, the Greek word “logos” was translated into “Word” and the masculine Greek pronouns were translated into masculine English pronouns.

There is, indeed, a great deal of evidence to support the interpretation that both divine wisdom and the Word refer to the same spiritual person. This interpretation is unfamiliar to many Christians, but it is not unfamiliar to biblical scholars, nor is it a new interpretation. Marcus Borg is a well-known biblical scholar and a Christian. In his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, Borg wrote, “Scholars have long noted the close relationship between what John says about the logos (the Word) and what is said about Sophia (divine wisdom) in the Jewish tradition. Sophia was present with God from the beginning, active in creation, and is present in the created world. This functional equivalency between logos and Sophia suggests that it is legitimate to substitute Sophia for logos, “Wisdom” for “Word” in the prologue to John’s gospel… Jesus is the incarnation of divine Sophia, Sophia become flesh.” Borg later quotes Saint Augustine who said, “She was sent in one way that she might be with human beings, and she has been sent another way that she herself might be a human being.”(8) Saint Augustine is, without a doubt, one of the most influential theologians in Christian history. Saint Augustine lived from 354 AD to 430 AD.

The Gospel of John is the most spiritual and least historically factual of the four gospels in the New Testament. To me, it makes perfect sense that John’s author would be the one to recognize that the spiritual person of divine wisdom was embodied in the flesh of Jesus. “The Word of God made flesh” is a central theme in John. Understanding the wisdom of God and her more recent name, the Word of God, helps us to understand what the early Christians meant when they wrote that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Discovering the roots of the Word was an “Ah hah!” moment for me.

Rediscovering divine wisdom has a special significance for many women today. Most of our churches talk about the divine in only masculine ways with only masculine pronouns. God is not male or female in a literal sense, but God does have aspects of both metaphorically. Language, which exclusively portrays the divine in masculine ways, can consciously or unconsciously make some women feel less than equal. Pointing out feminine images of the divine in the Bible may help them see that they were also created “in the image of God.” (Proverbs 8:1-4, New Revised Standard Version). Feminine images of the divine are not only found in Proverbs eight, but are also found in other places in the Bible. Both masculine and feminine images of the divine are biblical.

Has Christianity forgotten the feminine side of the Word? Have we forgotten the woman of divine wisdom? The answer is “yes” and “no”. Yes, she is rarely given her rightful place in sermons and Christian literature. But, no, she has not been completely forgotten. The memory of her has been passed down from generation to generation for 3050 years. We still have her beautiful portrait in Proverbs, chapter eight. We can also find literature about her in the non-canonical books of the Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach. She is as real today as she was in the year 1050 BC and if we listen carefully, we can still hear her voice. Wisdom is calling. She asks us to pause in our quiet, contemplative moments and to listen for her. She tells us to listen for her even during the busy, hectic times of our lives. Who among us will find her? Who will find new life?

1 The New Oxford Annotated Bible, pages 904 and 905 (Hebrew Bible). Also see The NIV Study Bible page 935.

2 Proverbs 8: 22, 23, 29, 30, 34, 35 and 36, New Revised Standard Version.

3 The Gospel of John 1:1-4, New Revised Standard Version.

4 The Gospel of John 1:10, New Revised Standard Version.

5 Borg, Marcus, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, pages 107-118.

6 The New Encyclopedia Britannica, 2002 edition.

7 Borg, pages 107-118.

8 Borg, pages 107-118.

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