KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 24 September
admin | 24 September 2020Wisdom taught me
Our Chapel reflections on Genesis 1 continue beyond that opening chapter in all its monumental grandeur to later considerations such as in the Book of Job and the Wisdom of Solomon. Genesis 1 has reminded us of the critical point that how we think about the created order ultimately shapes our thinking and acting towards one another especially in the light of our being made in the image of God. God as the ordering principle in creation counters and corrects our misuse of nature and one another as well as our mistaken views of ourselves. Education is about the mediation of ideas to us that are incorporated in us and shape our being and our understanding.
Far from being a one-off concern, the idea of creation is an underlying theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and shapes the later Jewish, Christian, and Islamic imaginary. Creation as the unfolding of the intellectual principle, God, means that how we think about ourselves and our world inevitably and necessarily centers on God. It is in that understanding that we truly begin to learn about ourselves. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God says to Job in that great classic of human suffering and grace. The grace lies precisely in God’s speaking to Job, questioning him and calling him to account through his wisdom in creation. It is the counter to our attempts to make God accountable to us. Job will be at once humbled and exalted. God’s questions, rhetorical and arresting, remind us that wisdom belongs to God, first and foremost. That God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind emphasizes his power and nature as beyond nature and his wisdom as more than human reason. His questions recall both Job and us to God in whose image we are made.
Yet creation is revelation and so it speaks to the dignity of our humanity in terms of our relation to wisdom and truth. The Wisdom of Solomon reminds us that “both we and our words are in his hand, as are all understanding and skill.” We are taught by Wisdom, the Wisdom of God, and by that wisdom as manifest in creation. “She is a breath of the power of God, a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty … she renews all things; in every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends with God.” In a famous phrase, “she reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and she orders all things well,” suaviter et fortiter, sweetly and strongly. Creation is not static; God sustains its being in the wisdom through which all things are made.
These remarkable reflections look back to the foundational creation story in Genesis 1, at once so familiar and yet so strange, and they connect that story to the intellectual traditions of ancient Greece about wisdom and understanding. Their legacy is rich and strong.
Know then, thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man …
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
Alexander Pope’s poem, An Essay on Man (1733-34), draws upon these traditions of intellectual reflection alluding to both the Greek maxim, “know thyself” and its relation to who we are in the order of creation. Sophocles in Antigone articulates the great truth about our humanity which Job and Wisdom also show. “Many are the wonderful things,” the Chorus says, “but the most wonderful of all is man.” That seems like a great encomium to our humanity, akin to the idea that we are made in the image of God. But the Greek word for ‘wonderful’ can also mean ‘terrible’, a word which has in English as well a double meaning. The wonder of our humanity is also its terror. Something which we know only too well, I fear.
The Genesis accounts of creation are like the bass line of the great Bach fugues, reverberating and moving underneath everything else, sweetly and strongly. The wisdom that moves in everything, the wisdom that teaches us how to think about ourselves and one another, is the wisdom of God speaking to us through the majesty of the created order but also in the intimacy of “the still, small voice” that Elijah hears (1 Kgs. 19.12) The wisdom of God is made known to human consciousness not only through creation but also through self-reflection.
Sometimes like Job we need to hear the thundering voice of God awakening us to his truth and majesty even in the storms and tempests of nature. At other times we need to be still and contemplate the wisdom of God as in the Wisdom of Solomon, reflecting on the wisdom of God in creation. And it means listening for the still small voice that speaks to human conscience. We are never more conscious of ourselves than when we are conscious of God and his wisdom. His wisdom teaches us and awakens us to the deeper meaning, truth and purpose of our humanity. It is found in God in whom “both we and our words are in his hands.”
The School Prayer, drawing upon a prayer in the Book of Common Prayer for ‘Universities, Colleges, and Schools’ (BCP, p. 45), begins with the invocation of Almighty God “of whose only gift cometh wisdom and understanding.” Wonderful. The wisdom of God teaches us through the pageant of creation and through our reflection upon it. There is no wisdom apart from God. Wisdom belongs to God.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy