While some Trinitarians and even Latter-day Saints believe that Old
Testament Wisdom and Jesus were one and the same person (or some similar
understanding), this is problematic, both theologically and exegetically. Simon
Gathercole, in his The
Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke
has a useful chapter dismantling such a Christology (Chapter 8: A Critique of
the Wisdom Christology Hypothesis).
One problem for those who hold to such a Christology is that the Hebrew
verb קנה and related
texts used in Prov 8 would denote that even in his premortality (not simply
when he took on humanity in the incarnation) was part of the created, not
uncreated realm. As Rolf Furuli wrote about this:
Athanasius agreed
with the Arians that the wisdom in proverbs referred to Jesus Christ, and what
is interesting here is that both “create” and “beget/be born” occur in parallel
verses. The Hebrew word qänä in verse
22 is, in most instances, used in the Bible with a resultative sense, as, a
stative with the meaning “to possess.” Thus, the Vulgate translates, “The Lord
possessed me in the beginning.” However, in the Hebrew text there is no
preposition with the meaning “in” before “beginning,” and “beginning” is
therefore logically an accusative object rather than adverbial. Therefore, the
Septuagint translates, “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways.” The
Aramaic Targums and the Syriac Peshitta have similar renditions. Using normal
procedures for interpretation this can only mean that the wisdom, whatever
he/she/it refers to, is not eternal but had a beginning. Athanasius solves the
problem of the word “created” with reference to wisdom, whom he identifies with
Jesus Christ, by saying that it refers to his incarnation.
But what about the words in verse 25 where
the wisdom says, “Before the mountains themselves had been settled down, ahead
of the hills, I was brought forth with labor pains”? The Hebrew verb hûl used in this verse can mean “to bear
a child with pains.” Is this verb the opposite of qänä (“to produce”)? Or, to use the Greek verbs of the
Septuagint gennaō (“to beget, into
existence, be created”)? Athanasius would have us believe just that. After
quoting Proverbs 8:25 he writes: “And in many passages of the divine oracles is
the Son said to have been generated [gegennesthai],
but nowhere to have come into being [gegonenai].”
As a further defense of the Nicene creed, he wrote:
He is then by nature
an Offspring, perfect from Perfect, begotten before all the hills [Prov 8:25],
that is before every rational and intelligent essence, as Paul also in another
place calls him “First-born of all creation” [Col 1:15]. He shews that he is
not a creature, but Offspring of the Father. For it would be inconsistent with
His deity for Him to be called a creature. For all things were created by the
Father through the Son, but the Son alone was eternally begotten from the
Father, whence God the Word is “first-born of all creation.” (NPNF 4, p. 85)
But it is quite clear that hûl in Proverbs 8:25 is a synonym of qänä rather than an
antonym.
When we look at the
way the Bible uses the words “create,” “beget,” “son,” “offspring,” and “creature,”
it becomes clear that Athanasius’ claims are special pleading. IN Psalm 90:2,
for example, hûl (to bear a child with pain”) and yäläd “(beget, bear”) are used
figuratively for the creation of the earth, thus making the words synonyms with
“create” instead of antonyms: “Before the mountains themselves were born [yäläd], Or you proceeded to bring forth
as with labor pains [hûl] the earth.”
In the rest of the Bible, when hûl and yäläd are used literally or figuratively, they almost always refer
to that which has been produced. One lexicon says this about hûl, “This idiom may be used to refer to
creation or origins on a cosmic scale (Prov 8:24-25) (Gleason Archer, Harris
Laird, and Bruce Waltke, eds., Theological
Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1 [Chicago: Moody Press, 1980], p.
271).
In the Bible the word “son” is used with a “biological”
or familiar meaning. It may be used figuratively (analogically), but in such
situations the literal meaning is always taken as a point of departure. There
is no example of the word “son” being used with the meaning “eternal being,”
ascribed to it by Athanasius. It is true that Jesus Christ as “son” is contrasted
with the angels who are creatures. But this does not contrast their natures,
giving “son” in the case of Jesus a sense different from the familiar one;
rather, the contrast relates to the quality
of Jesus’ sonship, which the Bible stresses in two ways: 1) Before Jesus
came to earth he is called the “only begotten/unique son” (Joh 3:16) or the “only
begotten god” (Joh 1:18); the epithet “only begotten” implies that there are
other sons of God, but this one is special. 2) By means of his resurrection he
obtained a special filial relationship with his Father. He “was declared God’s
Son . . . by means of a resurrection from the dead” (Rom 1:4), and “he has become better than the angels” (Heb
1:4). We may also note that in Hebrews 2:11 Jesus Christ is said to have
brothers, also implying that others are gods of God. (Rolf Furuli, The Role of Theology and Bias in Bible
Translation With a Special Look at the New World Translation of Jehovah’s
Witnesses [Huntington Beach, Calif.: Elihu Books, 1999], 133-36)
