1. The attempt to enumerate the attributes of God recalls the story
related in the Talmud(392) of a disciple who stepped up to the reader’s
desk to offer prayer, and began to address the Deity with an endless list
of attributes. When his vocabulary was almost exhausted, Rabbi Haninah
interrupted him with the question, “Hast thou now really finished telling
the praise of God?” Mortal man can never know what God really is. As the
poet-philosopher says: “Could I ever know Him, I would be He.”(393) But we
want to ascertain what God is _to us_, and for this very reason we cannot
rest with the negative attitude of Maimonides, who relies on the
Psalmist’s verse, “Silence is praise to Thee.”(394) We must obtain as
clear a conception of the Deity as we possibly can with our limited
powers.
To the divine attributes already mentioned we must add another which in a
sense is the focus of them all. This is the knowledge and wisdom of God,
the omniscience which renders Him all-knowing and all-wise. Through this
all the others come into self-consciousness. We ascribe wisdom to the man
who sets right aims for his actions and knows the means by which to attain
them, that is, who can control his power and knowledge by his will and
bend them to his purpose. In the same manner we think of wisdom in view of
the marvelous order, design, and unity which we see in the natural and the
moral world. But this wisdom must be all-encompassing, comprising time and
eternity, directing all the forces and beings of the world toward the goal
of ideal perfection.(395) It makes no difference where we find this
lesson. The Book of Proverbs singles out the tiny ant as an example of
wondrous forethought;(396) the author of Job dwells on the working
together of the powers of earth and heaven to maintain the cosmic
life;(397) modern science, with its deeper insight into nature, enables us
to follow the interaction of the primal chemical and organic forces, and
to follow the course of evolution from star-dust and cell to the structure
of the human eye or the thought-centers of the brain. But in all these
alike our conclusion must be that of the Psalmist: “O Lord, how manifold
are Thy works, in wisdom hast Thou made them all.”(398)
2. Accordingly, if we are to speak in human terms, we may consider God’s
wisdom the element which determines His various
motive-powers,—omniscience, omnipotence, and goodness,—to tend toward the
realization of His cosmic plan. Or we may call it the active intellect
with which God works as Creator, Ordainer, and Ruler of the universe. The
Biblical account of creation presupposes this wisdom, as it portrays a
logical process, working after a definite plan, proceeding from simpler to
more complex forms and culminating in man. Biblical history likewise is
based upon the principle of a divinely prearranged plan, which is
especially striking in such stories as that of Joseph.(399)
3. At first the divine wisdom was supposed to rest in part on specially
gifted persons, such as Joseph, Solomon, and Bezalel. As Scripture has it,
“The Lord giveth wisdom, out of His mouth cometh knowledge and
understanding.”(400) Later the obscure destiny of the nation appears as
the design of an all-wise Ruler to the great prophets and especially to
Isaiah, the high-soaring eagle among the seers of Israel.(401) With the
progressive expansion of the world before them, the seers and sages saw a
sublime purpose in the history of the nations, and felt more and more the
supreme place of the divine wisdom as a manifestation of His greatness.
Thus the great seer of the Exile never tires of illumining the world-wide
plan of the divine wisdom.(402)
4. A new development ensued under Babylonian and Persian influence at the
time when the monotheism of Israel became definitely universal. The divine
wisdom, creative and world-sustaining, became the highest of the divine
attributes and was partially hypostatized as an independent cosmic power.
In the twenty-eighth chapter of the Book of Job wisdom is depicted as a
magic being, far remote from all living beings of earth, beyond the reach
of the creatures of the lowest abyss, who aided the Creator with counsel
and knowledge in measuring and weighing the foundations of the world. The
description seems to be based upon an ancient Babylonian conception—which
has parallels elsewhere—of a divine Sybil dwelling beneath the ocean in
“the house of wisdom.”(403) Here, however, the mythological conception is
transformed into a symbolic figure. In the eighth chapter of Proverbs the
description of divine wisdom is more in accordance with Jewish monotheism;
wisdom is “the first of God’s creatures,” “a master-workman” who assisted
Him in founding heaven and earth, a helpmate and playmate of God, and at
the same time the instructor of men and counselor of princes, inviting all
to share her precious gifts. This conception is found also in the
apocryphal literature,—in Ben Sira, the book of Enoch, the Apocalypse of
Baruch, and the Hellenistic Book of Wisdom.(404)
From this period two different currents of thought appeared. The one
represented wisdom as an independent being distinct from God, and this
finally became merged, under Platonic influence, into the views of
neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, and the Christian dogma. The other identified
the divine wisdom with the Torah, and therefore it is the Torah which
served God as counselor and mediator at the Creation and continues as
counselor in the management of the world. This view led back to strict
monotheism, so that the cosmology of the rabbis spoke alternately of the
divine wisdom and the Torah as the instruments of God at Creation.(405)
5. The Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages, such as Saadia, Gabirol,
and Jehuda ha Levi, followed the Mohammedan theologians in enumerating
God’s wisdom among the attributes constituting His essence, together with
His omnipotence, His will, and His creative energy. But they would not
take wisdom or any other attribute as a separate being, with an existence
outside of God, which would either condition Him or admit a division of
His nature.(406) “God himself is wisdom,” says Jehuda ha Levi, referring
to the words of Job: “He is wise in heart.”(407) And Ibn Gabirol sings in
his “Crown of Royalty”:
“Thou art wise, and the wisdom of Thy fount of life floweth from
Thee;
And compared with Thy wisdom man is void of understanding;
Thou art wise, before anything began its existence;
And wisdom has from times of yore been Thy fostered child;
Thou art wise, and out of Thy wisdom didst Thou create the world,
Life the artificer that fashioneth whatsoever delighteth
him.”(408)