Holy Joys Podcast
A discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church. A ministry of holyjoys.org.
Holy Joys Podcast
Philip Brown on Wisdom and Holiness, Part 1
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In this first episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold and Philip Brown discuss the relationship between wisdom and holiness.
Highlights from Philip Brown:
- Wisdom is a lot like light. It can be broken into many different colors. Knowledge, understanding, discretion, prudence, and insight are all colors of wisdom.
- Wisdom is the skill of perceiving and navigating life in harmony with Yahweh's design. Wisdom is the way Yahweh thinks. It originates with Yahweh and he is the source of all wisdom.
- In humans, wisdom is the skill of seeing life the way God does. Wisdom's sight penetrates beyond appearances to the real nature of things and its choices reflect such penetrating sight.
- The fear of the Lord is the compass for wisdom. It guides, directs, and orients all of its perceptions and choices. If you don't have your compass oriented correctly, no matter how carefully you make your decisions, they are going to be taking you the wrong way.
- At the root of wisdom is the word skill. Anything that is skillfully done can be called wise in its most basic sense. There are skillful sinners, there are skillful cheats. That is the wisdom which is from below. But Proverbs says that there is no knowledge or counsel against Yahweh. So no matter how skilfully a person contrives their sinful plans, Yahweh's reality and plan will always triumph ultimately and thus their so-called wisdom will turn out to be folly.
- Holiness, like wisdom, is complex and multifaceted. In Scripture, it may refer to a person's status, behavior, or in the case of God—and I think humans as well—it can refer to a person's nature. In one word, holiness is separateness or set-apart-ness. Separateness always entails both a from and a to.
- When Yahweh says he is holy, he means that he is so superior to all other beings that he is separated from them.
- Holiness is first a status. It is a position or a condition that is the consequence of being set apart to God.
- We are to be excellent in our likeness to God to the degree and extent that he empowers us to be.
- God's glory is the unique excellence of his character and being. It is very closely related to holiness because holiness is God's transcendent separateness due to the unique excellence of his character and being. Wisdom is certainly a dimension of God's unique excellence. There's no wisdom that transcends or even compares with his wisdom.
- When you are skilled in thinking the way Yahweh does, that's holiness of mind, but it's also beautiful.
- When we see how all that God is is ultimately good for us and glorifying to him, what other response is there but amazed and awe-struck worship as we see that beauty?
- So many people who label themselves as "holiness" and want to talk about holiness and make it the flag that they wave, their lives are not beautiful—in terms of their attitudes, the way in which they present themselves and their opinions on social media or in public, and in their interactions.
- The mainstream of Old Testament scholarship would be to identify five books as wisdom literature: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. But on the basis of Deuteronomy 4:6–8, where God describes the Torah, the instruction that he has given to Israel, as wisdom and making them a wise people, I'm not sure that the Old Testament recognizes a wisdom genre. I am inclined to argue that the Old Testament sees all genres as subsets of wisdom. You get narrative wisdom, legal wisdom, poetic wisdom, proverbial wisdom, prophetic wisdom, and so on.
- What is typically designated as the wisdom literature reflects the heart, not the periphery, of the Old Testament understanding of right relationship with Yahweh. If law provides framework and guidance, wisdom literature is the beating heart—the passions, the affections, that live within the framework of instruction.
We are to be excellent in our likeness to God to the degree and extent that He empowers us to be.
SPEAKER_00You're listening to the Holy Joys Podcast, a discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church.
SPEAKER_01It's privileged to speak with Philip Brown today on a topic of great interest to me, the relationship between holiness and wisdom. For some time I've been fascinated with the wisdom literature, especially Ecclesiastes, and I know that Phil Brown has done quite a bit of thinking and some writing on Proverbs, so I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can. Philip Brown is a professor and the graduate program director at God's Bible School and College, has a PhD in Old Testament interpretation from Bob Jones with a specialty in the Hebrew language and Old Testament theology. He edited the Reader's Hebrew Bible for Zondervin and has written several works and essays, and he occasionally blogs at Exegetical Thoughts in Biblical Theology and has posted some reflections on the Proverbs there. And I recently learned that his dissertation was on the book of Ezra. So I haven't talked to him about this yet, but I'm hoping to have him back on to talk about Ezra at some point. But today we're going to be thinking about wisdom and holiness. So thank you, Dr. Brown, for taking the time to chat.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Jonathan. It's a delight to be with you. Looking forward to our conversation.
SPEAKER_01Let's just start by clarifying some terms. We're going to be mentioning wisdom and holiness quite a bit. So let's just start with wisdom. How do you define wisdom and how does it relate to knowledge and understanding?
SPEAKER_02Good. So wisdom is, I think, a lot like light. It can be broken into many different colors. Knowledge, understanding, discretion, prudence, insider, all colors of wisdom. In one short sentence, I would say that wisdom is the skill of perceiving and navigating life in harmony with Yahweh's design. I say in harmony with Yahweh's design because wisdom is the way Yahweh thinks. It originates with Yahweh, and He is the source of all wisdom. So anything contrary to Yahweh's way is contrary to wisdom. In humans, wisdom is the skill of seeing life the way God does. And wisdom sight in particular penetrates beyond appearances to the real nature of things. And its choices reflect such a penetrating sight. So you have to have information to make choices and to perceive, that's knowledge. In particular, the kind of knowledge that's at the heart of wisdom is knowledge of God, and that's relational knowledge. So knowing God relationally. Understanding, then, is uh the the insight component of wisdom that moves beyond the surface, and it's uh a cousin to prudence that's able to see what's coming down the road. So once again, the skill of perceiving and navigating life in harmony with Yahweh's design.
SPEAKER_01So is that why in the Proverbs we read that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom? To have true wisdom, you have to know God, you have to love God, you can't see things in the way that God sees them without the knowledge of Him. Um is that that essentially why even somebody in the world who seems to appear wise by human standards seems to have uh maybe street knowledge um or knows how to uh work their way through the world and prosper, um, yet by biblical terms would would lack true wisdom.
SPEAKER_02Right. So uh uh several things that you said uh are right on track. The fear of the Lord is the what I would say it's the compass for wisdom. That is, it guides and directs, orients all of its perception and choices. If you don't have your compass oriented properly, no matter how carefully you make your decisions, they're going to be taking you the wrong way. And Proverbs is very clear that uh a person can be uh prudent, uh sorry, a person can be can have can have a version of wisdom, what you called street smarts, that makes them wealthy, that makes them powerful, and yet be a fool because they haven't oriented their uh thinking and acting around a right relationship with God.
SPEAKER_01So you're you're distinguishing between almost two different kinds of wisdom there. There's like a is that is that kind of like what we see in James, where James talks about a wisdom from above, but then there's also this earthly, you know, unspiritual kind of wisdom.
SPEAKER_02So in terms of linguistics, uh at the root of wisdom is the word skill. So anything that is skillfully done can be called wise in its most basic sense. And so there are skillful sinners, there are skillful cheats, uh, and that would be the wisdom that is from below. But the uh what Proverbs says is that there is no uh knowledge or counsel against Yahweh. So no matter how skillfully a person contrives their sinful plans, Yahweh's uh reality and plan will always triumph ultimately, and thus their so-called wisdom will turn out to be folly.
SPEAKER_01All right. So that gives us a good introduction to wisdom, understand what we're talking about. Uh, what about holiness? How do you define holiness? Uh I know the definition that I hear thrown around so often is that holiness is both separate, uh being separate from. Um, and I know in some of your writing you've emphasized that that's kind of like the most basic fundamental component of holiness. Um, but then also that there's this like devotion to or this positive purity. So, how do you define holiness, uh, especially in relationship to God?
SPEAKER_02Okay, so holiness, like wisdom, is complex and multifaceted. And in in scripture, it it may refer to a person's status, it can refer to a person's behavior, or in the case of God, and I think humans as well, it can refer to a person's nature. Uh, yes, I do affirm that in one word holiness is separateness or set apartness, and uh separateness always entails both a from and a to. When we say that Yahweh is holy, or when Yahweh says he is holy, he means that he's so superior to all other beings that he is separated from them. And uh so holiness in God is not primarily purity, it includes purity. Uh holiness includes righteousness. In fact, what I argue is that holiness is a consequence or a result of all that God is. And so that that means I would not regard holiness in this sense as an attribute of God. It is in fact the consequence of all his attributes. It is his uh wisdom, his righteousness, his love, and so on that transcendently set him apart from all other beings, it is his infinitude, his omniscience, all the omnis that set him apart from others.
SPEAKER_01So when we talk about uh holiness as something that's you know communicated to those who are made in God's image, uh or made holy and righteous, should we be thinking more about holiness not only in terms of something moral, a moral quality, but also in terms of excellence, excellence of character, excellence of the way uh that we behave in the world? Would that quality of excellence then then extend to the way that we think about holiness in in our lives?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a good question. I I would want to start by saying that scripture wants us to recognize that holiness is first a status. That is, it is a position or a condition that uh is the consequence of being set apart to God. So this is one of the ways in which holiness in humans is distinct from holiness in God. God is set apart to only Himself, there's no other being for Him to be set apart to, whereas with humans who are contingent and created, we are set apart to God, and we have a status then as holy that He calls us to live out in our behavior and to have our nature ultimately shaped like His. Now, is God excellent? Well, sure, He's excellent in all that He does. So is a passion for excellence a consequence of passion for holiness? Yes, it is. But uh excellence is also a function of capacity, and God sovereignly distributes that, and our tendency as humans is to say, well, my conception of the best that something can be becomes my measure for excellence, right? And thus I can never be excellent or I can never be holy, and I would say, No, uh, we are to be uh we are to be excellent in our likeness to God to the degree and extent that He empowers us to be, uh, and He may choose to empower a lesser degree of uh cognitive excellence, uh skill-related excellence in terms of production or creativity and so on. So I just want to make sure that that doesn't get mixed unnecessarily in.
SPEAKER_01It's important that we measure excellence in the way that God does. And uh just think of um even like a meek and quiet spirit, there's an attitude that God views as as morally excellent. And there's something beautiful about that. So we just need to make sure we're measuring things the way that that God does. And um and that one of the reasons I raise that connection is because it's it's one that I I hadn't uh intended to bring up or really thought about, but but already just in these definitions, there's so many ways in which we can see how wisdom and holiness are related. Um, and and especially turn uh defining wisdom in terms of of skillfulness, um, we can see how excellence could even play in there as well. But uh let's talk a little bit um before we move into especially the wisdom literature and the wisdom that God has given us in his word in Revelation. Um, just talk a little bit about how wisdom is woven into God's creation. I mentioned, you know, it's communicated, his holiness is communicated to us, his wisdom is also communicated to us. And um, and so God is this God of holy wisdom and wise holiness, um, and he in his works has has communicated these attributes, kind of woven these things into creation. Um, so how do we see God's nature, his wisdom, and his holiness in the works that he's created? And how does that then lay a foundation for for uh how God then reveals a wisdom to us and how we ought to live in the world?
SPEAKER_02The way I would talk about that is that Proverbs in particular, though also in Job and Psalms, highlights that creation itself is one of the prime displays of Yahweh's wisdom, that it not only displays wisdom in its result, but it is the it does so because it was fashioned in accordance with Yahweh's skill and uh the the complexity, the flexibility, uh, and the excellence of the created world, even in its fallen state as we see it today, is really astounding. So that the psalmist says that the heavens uh declare the glory of God, and you know, so let me just work in the relationship of glory to holiness. My understanding of glory is that at its uh essence, God's glory is the unique excellence of his character and being. So uh glory is very closely related to holiness because holiness is God's transcendent separateness due to the unique excellence of his character and being. And wisdom is certainly uh a dimension of God's unique excellence. There's no wisdom that transcends or even compares with his wisdom, and uh he has uh woven that into all aspects of uh creation. And uh, you know, think about Job 38 to 40 uh 42, 41, 42, where God just uh highlights all of the dimensions of creation that Job does not understand, that he understands and created in ways that are in harmony. Um I I really like the words complexity and flexibility uh and uh beauty, this is the amazing thing that in order for a thing to be effective when it's complex and flexible, doesn't in God's wisdom preclude beauty. Um and so I think that when we are rightly formed in terms of our mind, so wisdom is really uh thinking the way skill and thinking the way Yahweh does. And when you're skilled and thinking the way Yahweh does, that's holiness of mind. But it's also beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Right. One of the ways that beauty is uh sometimes described in in aesthetics is as fittingness or fittingness intensity. It's it's as it ought to be in a way that's um that evokes delight and pleasure in us. And so when you think about living a life that is um consistent with the wisdom that God has woven into creation, uh, you know, living as as we ought to live in God's good world, we're living in a fitting way. Uh, we're living in a way that's consistent with his works, and so that's going to be uh beautiful as well.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. So, you know, the psalmist desires to uh worship God in the beauty of holiness. Now I know that some commentators have understood that to be in holy garb. Uh that's not my understanding of the best way to read the Hebrew there. And when we see how all that God is is ultimately good for us and glorifying to Him, what other response is there but amazed and awestruck worship as we see that beauty?
SPEAKER_01Right. And so all uh all that we do as we walk in wisdom is is for the glory of God, it's to show his excellence and the beauty of holiness uh glorifies God. And I actually um uh recently was thinking about uh Dieter von Hildebrand and his testimony, how he came to faith through seeing the lives of the Christian saints and martyrs and studying their lives and seeing an incredible beauty in the way that they uh lived in the world. And when we see somebody, uh a person who's set apart to God, living a holy life, and they're navigating the world in a way that's discerning and wise and in tune to the way that their attitudes and behaviors reflect the way that they were made and the way that they were intended to glorify God. That brings incredible honor and glory to God. So I'm glad we we brought that up because it really positions the whole conversation. Living a life that's holy, that's Christ-like, requires wisdom because when you walk in wisdom and you you're living as you ought to live in God's world, a fitting life, that is beautiful and it brings glory to God, and that's really what it's all about.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, a big amen there. And then there's the practical lament, I think, that so many people who label themselves as holiness and uh want to talk about holiness and make it their flag the the flag that they wave, their lives are uh not beautiful in terms of their attitudes, in terms of uh the way in which they present themselves and their opinions in social media or in public, in terms of their uh interactions. And so uh, while that doesn't mean that they are do not have the status of holiness, it does mean that there's a good way uh between uh where they're at and where Jesus wants them to be and growth to be like him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's so good. And you know, honest moment the other day, I was talking to my wife, and I I said something probably shouldn't have said, and I was in that whole self-justification phase where I was trying to think about why this was okay that I said it this way. And and it it dawned on me that whatever else it was, it wasn't beautiful. It wasn't a word fitly spoken, it wasn't fitting as it ought to be, you know, and I and I repented of that. And I think that's something that's something that I'm just more and more keenly aware with wisdom. So much of the wisdom literature talks about the way that we we conduct ourselves and our our speech and and a having discernment when to speak and when not to speak. And if we define holiness strictly in terms of this list of like moral requirements, do this, don't do this, dress this way, don't dress that way, we've really only scratched the surface because so much of holiness is lived out in the gray areas, so to speak, the areas where we have to bring to bear the knowledge of what God has done in Christ, walk in that knowledge, live it out. And it's it's not always clear. And and uh knowing when to speak, when not to speak, having discernment, having wisdom is really where holiness is put on display in our world, our culture, in our society, and uh that's how people are gonna judge us. Um that's that's how people are gonna determine whether or not we are um truly a people who are for the glory of God and whether or not we reflect that that glory and beauty well.
SPEAKER_02You know, so I resonate with what you're saying. I I want to uh recognize the that there is growth in holiness and uh there's maturation, movement from uh immaturity and wisdom to great maturity and wisdom, and that one is holy even though immature. Uh and so I I don't want people hearing us uh lifting a standard of holiness that only uh the fathers in the faith can attain, but saying, well, we we start in union with Christ, and because of Christ, we are set apart to God, and then we grow out of that union with Christ, as Paul says in Ephesians 4 13, into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And we want to move from being infants who are blown about by every wind of doctrine to those who are mature in love and And as long as we're moving in that direction and staying in the the holiness race, the marathon of pursuing that likeness to Christ, uh, we're still in right relationship uh and moving in the right direction. And I'm sure you would affirm that.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah. And I think um, you know, what I'm what I'm really driving at is just this this idea that holiness is so much more. And for me, uh it is not a burden, but it's it's this idea that, wow, God wants us to pursue this increasingly beautiful way of life. And so it's growth in holiness becomes this very exciting positive thing, not this burden that we have to bear. So I think what you're what you're saying is a good um qualification there. But if we can help people to see holiness as primarily something that's that's attractive and something that we want to grow in, um uh then it will become more apparent why the wisdom literature is necessary. And as far as maturing goes, so many lessons in wisdom are hard-learned. Um, so many of the lessons that's why we have the book of Proverbs. We it it tells it tries to spare us from as many unnecessary falls as possible. Um, you know, a young man learns a lot of lessons the hard way. I've learned a lot of lessons the hard way. But the more we can pursue God's wisdom, the more we're going to be able to mature in holiness. And that in turn is gonna uh produce a more beautiful life that not only is is uh a source of blessing to us, our happiness in God, but then also our testimony of God's own glory and beauty.
SPEAKER_02Amen.
SPEAKER_01All right. Well, let's look a little bit at God's wisdom for us, and uh there are so many uh wisdom passages we could look at, but I want to focus especially on the wisdom literature and just go through the books. So just tell us quickly what is the wisdom literature? What books uh do you include here? What makes something wisdom literature uh and how would you define that?
SPEAKER_02Okay, so uh I'm going to step outside the mainstream of Old Testament scholarship here, and the way I talk about these genres, uh the standard stream would be to identify five books as uh reflecting wisdom literature, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. But on the basis of Deuteronomy 4, verses 6 and 8, where God describes the the Torah, the instruction that He's given to Israel as wisdom and uh making them a wise people I I'm not sure that the Old Testament recognizes a wisdom genre. I would am inclined to argue that the Old Testament sees all genres as subsets of wisdom, and so you get narrative wisdom, legal wisdom, poetic wisdom, proverbial wisdom, prophetic wisdom, and so on. Now uh I I think that's important for two different reasons. Reason number one, uh if we isolate wisdom literature from uh uh other genres, then we struggle to make uh connections and say, so how is law and wisdom related? Uh that they seem to be foreign entities. If we understand that both of them are expressions of wisdom, then there's already a central core common denominator. And secondly, uh not only because isolating them tends to disconnect them, but the Old Testament Guild has historically placed wisdom literature at the periphery of revelation, seeing it as uh oftentimes merely uh lightly gilded secular thinking dusted with a uh modicum of uh Yahwism or Old Testament religion. And I couldn't be more opposed to that understanding. I believe, in fact, that what's typically designated as the wisdom literature reflects the heart, not the periphery, the heart of the Old Testament understanding of right relationship with Yahweh. And that uh if if law provides uh framework and uh and uh guidance, wisdom literature is the beating heart, the passion, the affections, and the mind that lives within the framework of instruction. So uh that's my overall approach to what we uh to what old testament theologians have called wisdom literature.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's that's uh a lot to unpack there, a lot to think about. Um you referenced Deuteronomy 4, um, where you read that we're to keep the laws and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who when they hear all these statutes will say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. Um so that actually goes back to how um when we when we keep God's law, we're walking in wisdom, and then we glorify God and uh and his wisdom because we're his people. Um but this this helps me to make sense of a question that I was going to ask you later, and that is about Jesus' own teaching, especially the Sermon on the Mount, because Jesus uh delivers the Sermon on the Mount, and then he says that whoever hears these and keeps them, uh very much like what we read in Deuteronomy 4, um, that he is like a wise man who built his house uh on a rock. So the the in general terms, broadly speaking, Jesus' own um teachings, parables, uh, sermons are wisdom literature in in the broadest sense. Would you would you affirm that? And does that maybe help us to see how expanding this category um can help us to make better sense of wisdom?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so definitely I would affirm that, and I and I wouldn't just identify parables and uh, you know, uh axiomatic statements, proverbial statements. I I would say that all of revelation is necessarily wisdom because it is the the word of God reflecting the mind of God, and therefore what we see is that divine wisdom is polychromatic, multi multicolored, multi multiform, and uh so any place I land in the Bible, whether it's Leviticus or Lamentations or the Book of Revelation, I am in wisdom literature, and the question then is uh, do I know how to extract, properly read this literature so that I'm reading the mind of Christ, the mind of God, rightly.
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