The Second Principle Wisdom

The second principle that should inform the politics of a Christian is wisdom. The first principle was patriarchy or the fatherhood of God as the basis of all reality. That is the essence of the catholic faith. The apostles creed begins I believe in God the Father Almighty. The nicene Creed begins I believe in God the Father Almighty.

Many Protestants read this as I believe in God (long pause) then the rest of the creed as if the first reference to God is not characterized by the Father. Or they may read it as I believe in God-the-father, because in most contemporary statements of faith we see this kind of weird God the son, God the spirit, God the father. The catholic faith teaches that the father is the fountain head of deity. Jesus is divine because he is God’s son, the spirit is divine because he proceeds from the Father, but the Father is divine because He IS. He is Father because he has a son. And as one of the church fathers said when did the spirit begin to proceed? Whenever the son was begotten. When was that? Never. That beginning never took place because eternity can’t begin or end, it simply is. None of this ever began, it has always been. God has always been Father because Jesus has always been his Son, and these three we worship have always been in their perfect divine relations to each other.

Now, onto wisdom. Wisdom is a person for Christians. His name is Jesus. Proverbs 8, not some passage of the gospels, was essentially the scripture that was debated most importantly at the council of Nicea. What is proverbs 8 about? Wisdom. I’m no expert on the ins and outs but I take it the issue was something like this: wisdom personified in Proverbs 8 seems to indicate a real distinction between God and Wisdom. To make it more concrete Arius probably thought something like this: the logos was ontologically distinct from God, or God had a “wisdom” that was distinct from himself. The orthodox thought that was absurd. God can’t be apart from Wisdom. When could the good God who saved us not have had his wisdom, his logos, his very son?

Jesus through the incarnation makes manifest before us in a comprehensible way the divine wisdom. He is the light and the logos manifest amongst us. Wisdom is not knowledge, it is much more complicated and simple than that. Wisdom is the apprehension of the grain of the universe. When Jesus preached about hell this is what he meant. He was not a turn or burn televangelist preaching moralistic salvation, he was giving us metaphysics. He was telling us this is how the world actually is, revealing to us the deep magic written on the bark of Yggdrasil when the world was made. A path to life and a path to death.

The wisdom of God is not cleverness or logic, it is the key to navigating eternity. If you want to see this wisdom made most clear read the Sermon on the Mount. If our politics bears no semblance to the explicit teaching of Jesus than it is not wise.

Here is a test case. Are your politics primarily focused on economic concerns? Well what did Jesus say about money? Anything good? Jesus had nothing good to say about money. That doesn’t necessarily mean money is inherently evil but it does mean it isn’t neutral, and it must be brought to a lower place on your ladder of needs. The politics of Christians has to be more about neighbor love than money, and both the socialist and capitalist are almost equally condemned by that.

The wisdom of God is revealed in his Son, and we can’t ignore it if we are we have healthy political order. But this is not an ideology, rather God’s wisdom is alive and active made manifest amongst his people because we are the very body of Christ. Sadly we have not always listened well or been faithful, but in the church you will find more peace, harmony and prosperity than you do anywhere else when it’s taken in its totality. The church has to be active and present in the real world around us if we love our neighbors.

Again these principles are not prescriptions they are active foundations of life. I can’t tell the church what its politics is supposed to look like in every instance, but Jesus can.