Proverbs 9:1-18
The way of wisdom and the way of folly are put up against one another today. Similarly to Psalm 1, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel… (and so on) but the wicked is not so, he’s like chaff (and so on), this proverb compares not only wicked deeds with virtuous ones. Not just wicked ways with virtuous ones. But as we’ve been seeing the Sunday Lectionary cycle (RCL) over the last few weeks on Verbum Dei, God is always pitting against one another those who act wickedly and those who have faith. Of course, good works and love and virtue are mentioned, but as a consequence of their faith and worship. Here in this proverb, we get a little glimpse into why that is. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. The church likes to give lip service to the civil righteousness and goodness of the pagan. But God does not. God doesn’t care to split civil (fake) righteousness with divine and true righteousness for the sake of practicality or common nicety. There is Scriptural care given to defend the concept of a righteousness other than that which God has laid down as true, just and right, especially not one that’s arbitrarily decided on by sinners who call evil good and good evil. The church gives lip service to the civil wisdom of philosophers and social commentators of the “slight-right,” i.e. Jordan Peterson, i.e. Donald Trump, i.e. anyone else that claims wisdom and virtue but hasn’t even begun to walk that path through the fear of the Lord and the knowledge of the Holy One. In conceding these falsehoods, the church has rendered herself completely at odds with the Scripture to the point that we’re no longer able to honestly sing the words of Psalm 119:99. We have forgotten that wisdom and understanding come from fearing, loving, and trusting in God. But truth be told, the church has always been on a path to forgetting this due to its love affair with natural law and natural theology. “Oh look at all these pagan philosophers who rightly (or wrongly) believed that chairs all had something in common, truly they are wise and learned and have understanding.” It was this very way of thinking that led so many early and medieval church fathers to claim that pagan philosophers were to be counted not only as wise but as believers, denying the necessity of faith in exchange for a broad movement of will vaguely “in the right direction.”
And while civil righteousness is all fine and good, the bible doesn’t seem to know that it exists. While the idea of virtuous pagans is admittedly quaint, its not Biblical. In our O.T. text today wisdom is laying out a feast for the simple-minded that they may come to know wisdom. Bread and wine. The Holy Sacrament. The way by which God is known through the reception of His benefits in His gifts of grace. On the other hand, however, lady folly is calling all of the simple-minded into have a sumptuous feast of sin. It may be difficult for some to catch the Euphamisms in proverbs 9 in regard to lady folly, so let me put Solomon’s words to you in plain English. She is calling you in to commit adultery and fornication and all such sins. To feast on death itself. And Solomon wastes no time making that clear, as He proclaims to us, Stolen water is sweet and bread eaten in secret is delicious, to the one who enters into dine with lady folly, but little do they know, that the dead are there, and that all who eat with her do so in the depths of hell. Lady folly calls the ungodly to have a walk through hell with her. That is what sin is. That is what not knowing God is. And indeed, that is what the thing we parade around as civil righteous, or natural law and theology is. For the fear of the Lord, not cleaning your room, is the beginning of wisdom, and knowing the Holy One, not platonic forms or Aristoleian categories, is understanding.
1 John 2:1-6
And so we move into our New Testament, called by the God who has known us into knowing Him through Baptism, through Word, and through this feast of wisdom and life on the body and blood of Christ in with and under the bread and wine that has been laid out for us by wisdom herself. It’s in this feast, where the benefits of Christ are known that Christ Himself, the Holy One, the Righteous One as John says, is known. As Philip Melanchton said, Christ is known by His benefits. And so it is. By feasting on His grace and His flesh and His life, He enters into us and we in Him. And so, having died with Him through Baptism, and being raised in Him by grace through faith, we are now to walk in the way of wisdom and the way of life. It is the moving away from death and hell, the things on which folly would have us feast, and moving toward the creation, sustenance, and protection of life and all things good, the keeping of His commands by which we know that we have come to know Him. It is through the final and full work of God in us by the means of God to create both the will and the works which please Him that His gifts of faith and love are made complete in us.
St. John writes this to us so that we don’t sin.
But, I write this to you so that you do not call foolishness, death, and hell wisdom or understanding.
VDMA
