Book Review: Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John

A wealth of research is packed into this volume with plenty of insights as you make your way through the book.

Dustin R. Smith has packed a wealth of research into this volume, titled Wisdom Christology in the Gospel of John.1 (For ease of reading, we will refer to this simply as Wisdom Christology.) This is a substantial academic book, but despite this, it isn’t inaccessible to the well-informed and motivated Bible student. There are plenty of insights as you make your way through the book.

What is Wisdom Christology All About?

First, let me give you an overview of the central thesis. Smith argues that John’s gospel is particularly indebted to Jewish Wisdom Literature in how it presents Jesus, which results in a well-developed “wisdom christology.” I hear you ask, “What is wisdom christology?” Exactly! It’s not a widely used phrase, especially in a church context, so it needs an explanation.

Smith explains in detail the Jewish traditions of describing wisdom as a person, beginning with the famous figure in Proverbs, Lady Wisdom (e.g., Proverbs 1:20-21). Beyond Proverbs, wisdom was regularly personified in literature (both within the Old Testament and also in books written between the Testaments—more on that later), such that it became a literary motif—an early meme (an image created from a literary reference) if you will.

Smith’s argument is that people knew the “personified Wisdom meme.” It became so widespread that you could reference “Lady Wisdom” by simply referring to some of the following things:

• Crying aloud in the streets to the simple (Proverbs 8:20-21).
• Being with God in creation (Proverbs 8:22-31).
• People searching for her and either finding her or failing, based on whether they are wise disciples or foolish opponents (Proverbs 1:28-29. 2:1-4, 8:17).

Wisdom christology, more specifically is when Jesus himself is inserted into the meme. When Jesus is portrayed with attributes of personified wisdom, it’s a way of explaining who Jesus is and what he revealed to humanity. The New Testament has many examples of wisdom christology, such as Matthew 11 and 1 Corinthians 1. Smith’s contribution is collating all observations made in John’s gospel, adding his own, and preparing a systematic presentation of wisdom christology in the gospel of John, as the title suggests. Jesus becomes the fulfillment and ultimate expression of everything that the literary character of personified Wisdom was.

Why is this important? Well, accurately identifying what the author of the gospel was trying to communicate has several benefits, not the least of which is that we will more effectively understand who Jesus is. I’ll touch on this at the end of this review.

Wisdom or Word?

Smith openly admits that the word “wisdom” never appears in John’s gospel, and you, therefore, might think he has a hard task ahead of him!

Even though the noun “wisdom” does not appear anywhere in the Gospel of John, the presentation of Jesus therein overwhelmingly indicates a christological portrayal in which the subject embodies the wise personification present within Jewish wisdom literature.

Is wisdom a theme that appears in John’s gospel? Well, what is the most distinguishing literary feature of John’s gospel? Have you ever read John 1:1? Indeed. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1). Smith makes a compelling argument that the Word (Greek logos) of John’s gospel is synonymous with wisdom. Here are just a few reasons why:

• The Word is “with God” in the beginning (John 1:1), in a way reminiscent of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-31.
• The Word brings life to those who receive it (John 1:4-5), just like Wisdom is a source of life (Proverbs 3:18, 8:35).

Chapter 3 (Wisdom in the Prologue) spends some time unraveling the connections between the idea of Wisdom and Word, concluding with a list of twenty separate parallels between the logos in John’s prologue and Jewish wisdom literature. Smith acknowledges that not all of these parallels will be accepted by every reader, but it is hard not to assume there are very strong reasons to connect John’s opening verses with personified Wisdom. As he points out:

The argument that the Johannine Prologue is dependent upon the portrayals of the wisdom of God in Jewish wisdom literature does not rest on accepting all twenty of these conclusion points. Discerning readers will likely find some of these points stronger and more well represented in the wisdom literature than others. I was careful to document the specific Jewish sources that could conceivably impact the various descriptions of the logos in the Prologue, while also citing scholars who have come to observe similar connections. The conclusion would still stand if only ten of the points were deemed as persuasively demonstrating the legitimacy of the wisdom parallels from Jewish literature. In other words, this argument rests on the weight of the entire argument taken generally, not by accepting all twenty of these connections.

But let’s back up first of all and consider the overall approach of Wisdom Christology.

Wisdom Christology—An Overview

The book’s opening chapters set the objectives (Chapter 1: Introduction) and then spend some very detailed and valuable time going through wisdom literature (Chapter 2: Wisdom’s Pilgrimage) to identify the features of personification of Wisdom. This part comprises a walk through Proverbs, Job (specifically Job 28), certain Psalms and other parts of the Old Testament literature. However, Smith broadens the horizon and spends a lot of time on many intertestamental books to trace the same pattern of thought from the Hebrew Scriptures into the first century AD, when the works of Jewish philosopher Philo and later Rabbinical works are also consulted.

This body of literature is much more unfamiliar to me, and I suspect this is the case for many. It can, therefore, be both more difficult and feel unusual to read this section, but it is an important addition to Smith’s argument. Bear with me a little longer, and I’ll have more to say about these extra-canonical books later.

In some ways, Wisdom Christology has already achieved its objective after Chapter 2. If you’re familiar with John’s gospel, you will see exactly where he is going by following Smith’s portrait of personified Wisdom using all these different texts. You will already be connecting to Jesus, who is hidden from his opponents; Jesus, who is the provider of life; Jesus, who is sent “from” heaven to perform a task. It was a revelation to me that several other texts talk about the personified Wisdom as becoming “incarnate” in people from the Bible, such as Sarah. The literary personification of Lady Wisdom is employed to describe real people, like Sarah, to show their worth and connection to God and his wise attributes. It is valuable background knowledge to understand how this language was used in and around the same era as John’s gospel. When we get to John 1:14, “and the Word was made flesh,” for example, we already have context to help us work out what that really means.

Thematic Steps Through the Gospel of John

The remaining chapters in the book are very well structured thematically, which makes it straightforward to follow each thread of thought. The approach is to look at a particular aspect of personified Wisdom and trace those themes through John’s gospel to see how much they relate to Jesus.

The chapters consider:

• How Jesus is sent by God, loved by God and obedient to God, just like personified Wisdom in the Jewish scriptures (Chapter 4 “Wisdom and God in the Narrative of John”).
• The roles Jesus performs that have been particularly emphasized in John’s gospel compared with personified Wisdom’s actions (Chapter 5, “Wisdom and the Mission of Jesus”).
• The statements about who Jesus is, including the famous “I am” sayings, in relation to the declarations of Wisdom (Chapter 6, “Wisdom and Christology”).
• The opposition Jesus received from the Pharisees and Jewish rulers (Chapter 7, “Wisdom and Her Opponents”).
• The disciples of Jesus and how they are portrayed in John in ways similar to the beloved family of Wisdom (Chapter 8 “Wisdom and her Disciples”).

Seeking and Finding

Here is one example of a wisdom theme in a bit more detail taken from Chapter 7.

In Proverbs, Lady Wisdom is portrayed as calling out to people to heed her instruction. Those who genuinely seek her will find her, but those who oppose her will never find her, even if they go looking. Humanity’s inability to locate wisdom is also a theme central to the wisdom poem of Job 28. This is how Smith describes it:

Proverbs 1 illustrates Lady Wisdom as a prophetess who urges the naïve, the simple, the scoffers, and the fools to repent at her words of reproof (1:20–23). However, instead of heeding her call, many reject her wise instructions. The nature of this rejection is detailed by the author: refusing Wisdom’s call and paying no attention to the counsel that she offers (1:24–25).

The rejection of God’s wisdom is, I think, reflected in the overwhelming rejection of God’s prophets who were sent to his people. Jesus accuses his opponents of being the “sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Matthew 23:31-35). This generation ended up crucifying the Son of God sent to him, like the son in the parable of the vineyard. In John, Jesus is regularly portrayed as being rejected by the rulers and the elite. Yet, they also aren’t able to find him whenever they go looking, just as the opponents of Lady Wisdom cannot find her. Here are some examples.

• But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly but in private. The Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, ‘Where is he?’ (John 7:10-11).
• Jesus then said, ‘I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.’ (John 7:33-34).
• These words he spoke in the treasury, as he taught in the temple; but no one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come. So he said to them again, ‘I am going away, and you will seek me, and you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.’ (John 8:20-21).

Smith summarizes as follows:

In addition to drawing on the imagery of God’s personified word from Isaiah 55:11 to illustrate the motifs of descending and ascending, the Gospel of John is also indebted to the Jewish wisdom literature and its frequent depiction of personified wisdom’s descent and ascent. Within the book of Proverbs, Lady Wisdom originated in heaven at God’s side (Proverbs 8:22, 27, 30). At some point, she descends from heaven to take upon the role of a prophet and teacher in the public arena (Proverbs 1:20–21; 8:1–3), only to uproot and leave when fools refuse her counsel (Proverbs 1:24–28). In fact, personified wisdom’s warning in which “they will seek me but they will not find me” (Proverbs 1:28) sounds remarkably like Jesus’ cautioning in John 7:34: “You will seek me and you will not find me.”

In contrast to the opponents who reject Wisdom in the person of Jesus, we have examples of genuine and faithful disciples who seek and actually do find Jesus. For example:

• Jesus asks Andrew, “What are you seeking?” and his response is to abide with him (John 1:37-39). Andrew then finds his brother, Simon, saying, “We have found the Messiah.” (John 1:41).
• Philip calls Nathaneal, saying, “We have found him.” (John 1:45).
• The Samaritan woman at the well exclaims, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:27).
• Mary Magdalene is asked, “Whom are you seeking?” in the garden of the tomb, which results in her recognizing her teacher alive again from the dead (John 20:15-18).

The seeking and finding motif are part of the well-understood “Lady Wisdom meme” being reworked and applied to Jesus of Nazareth. John claims this man, Jesus, is the final and climactic embodiment of God’s wisdom. Each chapter in Wisdom Christology systematically walks the reader through different aspects of Lady Wisdom in the same way. From the bread of life coming down from heaven to the great love shown between Father, Son and the family of disciples, you are left with the impression that John’s gospel is purposefully crafting the story of Jesus with personified Wisdom firmly in mind, wanting everyone to see the value and worth of grasping hold of Jesus as the giver of life.

Why So Much Intertestamental Literature?

I’ve promised to comment on Smith’s use of extra-canonical texts a few times. This material could be an unfamiliar feature of the book if you are not used to consulting the literature outside the Bible. This is a valuable addition to the arguments in Wisdom Christology because we get a more complete and compelling picture of what words, phrases and themes meant to people living in the times of Jesus and the author of John’s gospel. Reading and quoting from other texts is not a value judgment on their validity or otherwise. It doesn’t implicitly agree with them. Smith’s quotations from Enoch and The Wisdom of Solomon and Sirach are neither endorsements nor disapproval. This body of literature is simply being consulted to build up contextual background. In this quote, Smith points out that direct dependence on, for example, Philo’s writings is unlikely, but he explains why it is still useful to consult these texts.

While it is extremely unlikely that the Gospel of John contains demonstrable influence from the writings of Philo, it is apparent that the idea of interpreting the manna from heaven in terms of the wisdom of God was a viable reading in the first century CE. Both John and Philo regard heavenly wisdom as superior to perishable bread. Both authors draw upon the Israelite story from the book of Exodus in order to make their points. Both writers locate the wisdom of God in heaven prior to coming down to earth. This suggests that the Johannine Jesus’ claim to have “come down from heaven” is looking backward to the personified wisdom of God that became flesh, not to a preexisting person in heaven. For Jesus is Wisdom’s embodiment, and those who partake of Wisdom’s bread of life will certainly live forever.

We have a rich vein of wisdom ideas in Proverbs, Job, Psalms, and parts of Isaiah. John’s gospel deliberately echoes the pattern and presentation of Lady Wisdom, which is sufficient to identify wisdom christology. However, seeing these other books similarly adopt those themes and styles only strengthens the argument. In a Jewish contextual world where personified Wisdom was regularly talked about as coming down from heaven to achieve a specific task on behalf of God, as an empowered agent and representative of God, it’s easy to see how John’s big claims are that this man Jesus, from Nazareth, is indeed the one embodying God’s word and wisdom. Where other books have speculated and meditated on these themes emerging from Proverbs, John’s gospel wants the reader to believe that Jesus is the final embodiment of Lady Wisdom, “that Jesus is the Christ” (John 20:30-31) and that “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become the children of God.” (John 1:11-13). John’s claims about Jesus become all the more clarified and powerful when you understand the background and the context in which these claims are made.

Why is Identifying Wisdom Christology Important?

So, what’s the point of all this? Why does it matter?

This question is the content of the final chapter, where Smith leads the reader through some implications for this interpretation on pre-existence, the nature of God, and christology. After reading Wisdom Christology, I feel like I know the gospel of John in much more detail than I ever have before. I can’t wait to reread the whole gospel with this fresh understanding to help illuminate some of the more difficult passages.

Here are two reasons why this is a valuable topic from reading this very illuminating book.

Firstly, recognizing the themes of wisdom through John’s gospel helps us understand the phrases that suggest Jesus came down from heaven. These are unique to John and as a consequence, seem out of place. But they make sense when you know the wisdom meme. Jesus didn’t come down from heaven literally. His mission was described in terms that reminded Jewish readers of the mission of God’s word and wisdom in times past. As the word that came from heaven to perform God’s work (Isaiah 55:10-11), Jesus recognized that he was living as an embodiment of God’s wisdom that came before him and was always with God. Wisdom had now metaphorically descended from heaven to perform God’s work (John 3:13, 6:50-51).

Secondly, there’s a challenge for the reader to become a disciple of Wisdom and a true part of Wisdom’s family. Proverbs and Jewish wisdom literature call on us to seek wisdom, find understanding, and become part of the family with those who enter Wisdom’s house, with a bond of love between us. If Jesus is the perfect embodiment of Proverb’s personified Wisdom, we are invited and called to attain to the same level of wisdom, and consequently have that strength of relationship with him and his other followers.

Understanding Jesus as an embodiment of wisdom to which we are called, rather than a pre-existent person of the trinity, makes it all much more real and practical. John’s gospel is not about the metaphysics of a God who became human, as if it were a show for us to watch and wonder at. John’s gospel is about a human—God’s human son—displaying God’s wisdom perfectly as a pattern and example for us to follow to enter into the same unity of mind and love with all of wisdom’s disciples. It’s a call to participate with Jesus and live by the same wisdom that governed his life.

Reviewed by Dan Weatherall,
Bible Feed, UK