For the past year, I have been thinking in earnest* about the role of wisdom in pastoral leadership and theological education. What distinguishes a wise guide from an unwise one? How does wisdom help anyone who seeks to live faithfully to God in a world of uncertainty, complexity, and polarization? How does a person become wise? How can the pursuit of wisdom through seminary education and the study of the Bible benefit the communities that students inhabit and serve?
Some of my Bible colleagues at Fuller have also been pondering the role of wisdom in biblical study. In last month’s newsletter, Dr. Chris Blumhofer discusses the wise use of scholarly tools in our reading as a way to nurture our attention to God and to keep our preferences in check. In a recent sermon on Psalm 107, Dr. Collin Cornell points out the psalmist’s emphasis on wisdom in addition to thanksgiving: “Who is wise? Let him observe and heed these things; And [thoughtfully] consider the lovingkindness of the Lord” (v. 43, AMP). Observe and heed are attention words, speaking to the deliberate cultivation of our attention to the lovingkindness of God.
Wise people pay attention to God and the gospel as revealed in Scripture. They attend to what is happening in the world and their communities, and also to what is going on inside themselves. Wise people also pay attention to the objects of their attention—to what they desire. The book of Proverbs recognizes that desire is fundamental to the human condition. As a powerful, complex, paradoxical force, desire brings pleasure and pain, life and death, and compels people to pursue various ends. The teacher of Proverbs thus spends a significant portion of the book trying to shape the desires of his students because, as Anne W. Stewart explains in Poetic Ethics in Proverbs, he knows that desire will either thwart or serve his larger pedagogical aim of cultivating wisdom through discipline.
Becoming wise involves the ardent pursuit of wisdom: “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever else you get, get insight” (Prov. 4:7, NRSV). Here, the felt need for wisdom serves as the impetus for attaining it, and the key to finding wisdom is to desire it. This is why the teacher appeals to his students’ physical senses in order to direct them toward wisdom: “My child, eat honey, for it is good, and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom is such to your soul; if you find it, you will find a future, and your hope will not be cut off” (24:13-14). The teacher warns students to temper their cravings and be careful about what they put in their mouths, for the delicacies of the unscrupulous ruler lead astray (23:3) and the food of the stingy induces vomit (23:6–8).
Wisdom, which Proverbs personifies as a woman in several places, pursues those who need her and yet demands that those who seek her also heed her instruction (8:1–4; 32-33). She also wants to be pursued and loved: “I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me” (18:17, NRSV). She insists on being heeded and taken seriously (8:32-33). Those who love Wisdom and become intimately acquainted with her character and conduct grow in the ways of wisdom and experience ethical and moral transformation (8:12–21). Those who desire Wisdom know their need for her and show a willingness to be changed by her; they can become wise.
Wisdom, with its multifaceted dimensions, resists easy definition. I understand wisdom as a way of knowing and being that sustains healthy relationships, promotes the common good, commits to learning, embraces truth in its complexity and contextuality, and demonstrates character. Wisdom brings people into fuller communion with God and others. It resists domination, hegemony, and coercion, and rejects unjust, dishonest, and violent processes and practices of knowledge production. Wisdom is fully embodied in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh.
How can I teach the Bible in ways that entice and direct my students’ desires toward wisdom? Augustine expressed awe-filled, ecstatic pleasure when describing Scripture: “The wondrous depth of your utterances, whose surface may indeed be flattering to the childish, but the wondrous depth, my God, the wondrous depths! It gives one a shudder to peer into it—a shudder of awe, and a tremor of love.” (Augustine, Confessions, 12.14.17.) How might my Intro Course leave students shuddering with awe and trembling with love for God as they gain a basic knowledge of the literature, history, and theology of the New Testament? How can I introduce students to a diversity of critical methodologies and a multiplicity of conversation partners in ways that awaken wonder and deepen love and humility in them? How can learning various histories of interpretation promote justice and warn against the weaponization of the Bible? How can learning to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek evoke joy? How might students experience pleasure through the discoveries they make through the interpretive process? How might they also experience the transformative pain of having their presuppositions about what the Bible means challenged, their ideas nuanced and expanded?
The desire for wisdom is at its core a desire for God, and cultivating wise leaders who love God should be one of the aims of theological education. The seminary classroom, particularly the biblical studies classroom, has the potential to be a radical space of pleasure where our desire for God and delight in God converge in the pursuit of wisdom.
Janette Ok is associate professor of New Testament.