Orthodox Wisdom

Orthodox Wisdom Julio Cesar Assis M.A. History of Ideas University of San Paulo, Brazil [email protected]

Russian icon of Holy Wisdom, 18121

Is Holy Wisdom an eternal divine being or a creature? This question has an answer given by Orthodox Christian tradition. Writing probably in the V century, Dionysius Areopagite considers Wisdom as one of the Divine Names and dedicates to her the chapter VII of his homonymous book. “Divine name” is what would be called later the uncreated energies.2 “For Orthodox thought, the energies signify an exterior manifestation of the Trinity which cannot be interiorized, introduced, as it were, within the divine being, as its natural determination. This was the basis of the theological

development of Fr. Bulgakov, and also his fundamental error; for he sought to see in the energy of Wisdom (Sophia) which he identified with the essence, the very principle of the Godhead. In fact, God is not determined by any of His attributes; all determinations are inferior to Him, logically posterior to His being in itself, in its essence. When we say that God is Wisdom, Life, Truth, Love – we understand the [eternal] energies, which are [logically not temporally] subsequent to the essence and are its natural manifestations, but are external to the very being of the Trinity.”3 Since the world was created by God through his eternal uncreated energies, Wisdom chants: “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills I was brought forth; while He had not yet made the earth and the fields, nor the first dust of the world. When He established the heavens, I was there, when He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep, when He made firm the skies above, when the springs of the deep became fixed, when He set for the sea its boundary, So that the water should not transgress His command, when He marked out the foundations of the earth; then I was beside Him, as a master workwoman; and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him, rejoicing in the world, His earth, and having my delight in the sons of men.”4

Wisdom is neither a creature nor a divine being, since the only divine being is the Trinity with its common essence, but as an uncreated energy of the Trinity she is eternal.

1 2

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/Ikona_SofiyaPremBozhiyaGRM.jpg.

Lossky, Vladimir. Orthodox Theology, Crestwood, NY, 1978, p. 48. 3 Lossky, V. The mystical Theology of the eastern Church, Crestwood, NY, 1976, p. 80-81. 4 Proverbs 8:22-31.