2.17.1 The philosopher’s response concerning the passage, “The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,” from the Proverbs of Solomon: “Since you do the truth such violence, what should we say about this clear passage: ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works’?” [Proverbs 8:22].

2.17.2 The holy fathers’ answer through Eusebius Pamphili, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine: “Why do you think you can easily escape from the depths by persuasion? Philosopher, stop piling up unmanly pretexts for yourself. Look out lest you fall headlong as you carelessly climb up dangerous cliffs.

2.17.3 Nevertheless, we will now address the phrase, ‘The Lord created me.’ Our predecessors had many different interpretations about this phrase, ‘The Lord created me,’ with regard to the divine plan [οἰκονομία] of our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearance in the flesh. As to what they decided, you are certainly acquainted with their comments.

2.17.4 We now want to provide an interpretation based on different observations, with the assistance of the Lord Jesus Christ. If it please you, philosopher, we will present the entire passage, including its beginning.

2.17.5 It begins, ‘If I announce to you the things which happen day by day, I will remember to enumerate things from eternity’ [LXX Proverbs 8:21a]. Then it says, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works. Before the present age he established me in the beginning, before the earth was made, before the springs of water came forth, before the mountains were settled, and before all the hills. He begets me’ [Proverbs 8:22-25].1 He thus clarifies the phrase, ‘The Lord created me.’ Then he adds, ‘The Lord made inhabited and uninhabited places’ [Proverbs 8:26].

2.17.6 Let us now discuss the Lord, who created him, who also made inhabited and uninhabited places. Solomon, spurred on by the words of him who spoke to Job, ‘Where were you when I founded the earth?’ [Job 38:4], says, ‘The Lord made inhabited and uninhabited places.’

2.17.7 The book of Baruch dictated by the prophet Jeremiah, as we demonstrated before, speaks about the one who made inhabited and uninhabited places: ‘The sons of Hagar, who seek understanding on the earth, the merchants, and the seekers of understanding did not know the way of wisdom nor remember its paths.’2

2.17.8 A little later it says, ‘But the omniscient knows it; he found it by his insight.’3 After mentioning the one who found wisdom by his insight, he speaks of his works: ‘He who established the earth for time everlasting filled it with four-footed animals. He sends the light out, and it goes.’

2.17.9 You must not ignore, philosopher, that this again clearly proves our present point. ‘He sends the light out, and it goes. He called it, and it obeyed him with trembling. The stars shone in their stations and rejoiced. He called them, and they said, “Here we are.” They shone with joy for him who made them. This is our God. No one can be compared to him. He uncovered every way of knowledge and presented it to his child Jacob, his beloved Israel. Then he appeared on the earth and lived with humans.’4

2.17.10 Now we have properly presented these two passages about ‘the one who made inhabited and uninhabited places,’ which Solomon and Baruch (or rather, Jeremiah) spoke. (After saying ‘The Lord created me,’ he speaks of his works: ‘The Lord made inhabited and uninhabited places.’) So, most excellent man, let us infer who the Lord ‘who made inhabited and uninhabited places’ is.

2.17.11 Let us keep in mind that it was certainly none other than ‘he who established the earth for time everlasting’ (for establishing the earth is no different from making inhabited and uninhabited places) who filled it ‘with four-footed animals,’ who called the light ‘and it obeyed him with trembling,’ and so on. About him it says, ‘He appeared on the earth and lived with humans.’

2.17.12 Therefore, one must understand that he is the Lord, who created rational wisdom as ‘the beginning of his ways.’ He who made ‘inhabited and uninhabited places’ and ‘established the earth for time everlasting’ prepared this wisdom for humans, who are ‘in his image.’

2.17.13 But let us look again at the beginning of the passage: ‘If I announce to you the things which happen day by day…’ He did not speak of the future. He says, ‘I will remember to enumerate things from eternity.’ He did not say, ‘things before eternity.’

2.17.14 We have recognized that the Son of God is the one who created rational wisdom, who ‘established the earth for time everlasting,’ who made ‘inhabited and uninhabited places,’ who said to Job, ‘When the stars came into being, all my angels praised me’ [Job 38:7]. Moses says about him who made the light: ‘God said, “Let there be light”’ [Genesis 1:3], and he adds, ‘God made the two great heavenly lights and the stars’ [Genesis 1:16], and so on.

2.17.15 Philosopher, I think the passages I have mentioned provide sufficient proof that the Son of God, not a tool, is the one who created the rational wisdom at work in Solomon and who created all creatures.

2.17.16 But to provide you with even clearer genuine proof of this and reach an understanding of the matter and its interpretation more quickly, we will quote Scripture.

2.17.17 When the prophet Moses was about to depart this life, as is written in the Assumption of Moses, he summoned Joshua son of Nun and told him: ‘God foresaw before the founding of the world that I would be the mediator of his covenant.’5 In the Secret Words of Moses,6 Moses himself prophesied about David and Solomon.

2.17.18 About Solomon he prophesied: ‘God will pour out on him wisdom, righteousness, and knowledge in full measure. He will build the house of God,’ and so on.

2.17.19 But to make my point even clearer, let us carefully consider this question: Do humans exist for the world, or the world for humans?”

The philosopher: “The world certainly exists for humans.”

2.17.20 Our holy bishops said through the same Bishop Eusebius Pamphili: “Since the world certainly exists for humans, seeing as God thought about humans first, God thought about the world after humans and rational wisdom. Therefore, humans and wisdom are prior to the world. So what is prior exists before the world and the beings of the world, namely, heaven and earth, day, night, clouds, winds, depths, springs, mountains, and hills.

2.17.21 God thought about wisdom and humans, for whose sake the world exists, before all these things. Therefore, humans and wisdom, which God thought about before the beings of the world, already existed before the world.

2.17.22 God nevertheless created and produced humans afterward during creation, and before humans he produced during creation that which he thought about after humans.

2.17.23 Moreover, wisdom, which the Son of God ‘found by his insight,’ which he gave to humans, who are ‘in his image,’ also existed before the world and its beings in the mind of God.

2.17.24 Therefore, because he had been taught by the wisdom given him by God, Solomon knew within himself that humans and wisdom existed before the world and its beings in the mind of God. Although the Lord had ‘before the founding of the world’ thoroughly considered that which existed before the world in the mind of God, which he ‘found by his insight,’ the same Lord nevertheless created it after the world and its beings.7

2.17.25 So Solomon has human wisdom, which existed before the world in the mind of God, say, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.’

2.17.26 As for what he had rational wisdom (which is in humans and was prepared for humans, who were made ‘in the image of God’) proclaim, namely, ‘The Lord created,’ Solomon attributed this phrase to what existed before the world in the mind of God. He said, ‘he begets me,’ on the other hand, because he understood it as referring to subsequent natural procreation. Understand, then, philosopher, that ‘he begets me’ relates to the same nature growing old and being renewed until the end.

2.17.27 Therefore, we must understand the passage, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,’ with regard to the rational wisdom given to humans and ‘he begets me’ according to God’s foreknowledge with regard to the rotation of nature itself, which, to speak figuratively, rolls of its own accord like a wheel, returning to the original goal—the first human, created in the image of God, in whom God placed the rational wisdom he created and in whom he engraved his pure love.

2.17.28 As the Savior himself was producing the new creation of humans, he spoke to the Father regarding the plan of salvation: ‘You loved me before the founding of the world’ [John 17:24]. Solomon recorded the phrase, ‘Before the present age he established me in the beginning,’ because the present age of this world consists of the cycle of day and night. Thus, to exist before day and night is to exist before this present age. Solomon harmoniously expressed this observation in terms of humans and wisdom.

2.17.29 For this reason he has wisdom proclaim, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works. Before the present age he established me in the beginning.’ He again reasoned within himself that God wanted to bring these mundane beings into existence before man and wisdom and that they had to be present first. But since the beings were already present, Solomon had to investigate the arrangement of beings which were present. He reasoned that man and wisdom were granted authority over the other works.

2.17.30 Therefore, the rational, discerning wisdom God gave to man, which poured out on Solomon, according to the great Moses,8 says through Solomon, ‘The Lord created me as the beginning of his ways for his works,’ and so on.

2.17.31 He has wisdom, which is prior to the world along with man, describe the works of God, who produced the beings of the world: ‘The Lord made inhabited and uninhabited places, the highest inhabited places of the earth. When he prepared heaven, I was present with him as he marked off his throne above the winds. When he set the clouds on high and firmly established the springs under heaven, when he laid down his command for the sea so that the waters would not go further than he would permit, when he strengthened the foundations of the earth, I was beside him as his suitable companion. It was I in whom he rejoiced’ [Proverbs 8:26-30].

2.17.32 That he had wisdom say this demonstrates with certainty that the one who existed before the world in the mind of God, for whose sake the world was prepared, clearly also existed before the beings of the world.

2.17.33 Therefore, knowing about the creation of beings, the one who existed before them—wisdom, which ‘he found by his insight,’ which he prepared for humans—enumerates their order.

2.17.34 Who, then, prepared this wisdom, which guided his works, and gave it to humans? It was certainly none other than he who ‘established the earth for time everlasting,’ who ‘filled it with four-footed animals,’ who called the light, ‘and it obeyed him with trembling,’ who ‘appeared on the earth and lived with humans.’

2.17.35 He was assigned to powerfully create the beings. As for the fact that it says, ‘The Lord created me,’ with respect to wisdom—not the Son of God, but rather rational wisdom, which the Lord himself prepared and gave to humans, for whose sake the world was made, we have clearly demonstrated in every way that it is with respect to rational wisdom.

2.17.36 The Lord confirms what we just said in the Gospel: ‘The Sabbath was made for humans, not humans for the Sabbath’ [Mark 2:27]. He thus substitutes the Sabbath for the world, as if to say, ‘The world was made for humans, not humans for the world.’

 

Next Chapter – 2.18 Another counter-argument of the philosopher

Previous Chapter – 2.16 The philosopher’s counter-argument

Click here to read Book 1 in its entirety.

 

Created by RR 7-16-21

  1. Whereas the MT has a perfect form verb, the LXX has a present verb, which apparently has a bearing on the argument later on (see 2.17.26, 27).
  2. Baruch 3:23, quoted loosely.
  3. Baruch 3:32.
  4. Baruch 3:33-38.
  5. Assumption of Moses 1:14.
  6. This may be another title for the same apocryphal book just cited; the idea mentioned here, however, is not present in the one incomplete (Latin) manuscript that has survived.
  7. Hansen resorts to emendation to make sense of this sentence, but this is unnecessary. By reading ὅτι in the sentence, not found in most witnesses, Hansen is forced to supply a new main verb (ἔγνω) in the critical apparatus, following Lietzmann.
  8. Cf. 2.17.18.

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