The Reconciling Wisdom of God

Reframing the Doctrine of the Atonement

Adam J. Johnson, Michael F. Bird

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781577997269
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In The Reconciling Wisdom of God: Reframing the Doctrine of the Atonement, Adam Johnson, already a leading scholar of the atonement, considers God's redemptive work in Christ through the atonement as an act of God's infinite wisdom.In making this crucial turn, Johnson is able to speak to proponents of the various atonement theories and move the discussion forward in a new direction, grounded in the truth of God's infinite wisdom. Genuinely reframing the debate around the atonement, The Reconciling Wisdom of God is a must-read for students of the atonement.

CHAPTER 1

Atonement as a Work of Wisdom: Snapshots from Scripture

At first, telling the story of the work of Christ from the standpoint of divine wisdom might seem obscure and probably unhelpful, rather like telling the story of Abraham Lincoln from the perspective of his best friend’s gardener. After all, isn’t the atonement primarily a matter of our disobedience, God’s wrath, and his decision to turn toward us in grace and love? Isn’t Christ’s work that of a priestly sacrifice? And while the opposite of wisdom—folly—certainly isn’t good, does it do justice to the full horror and depravity of our sin? Surely wisdom plays a role in all this, since God is wise, but does it have the weight, the force, to play the starring role?

It turns out that wisdom has been starring in this role all along. This angle is far more central to the way Scripture thinks about the cross than we otherwise might presume. We often get stuck in ruts or patterns of thinking, missing out on large portions and themes of Scripture if we are not careful. But the Bible has a great deal to say about the work of Christ being a work of wisdom. As Karl Barth puts it:

There can be no doubt that in the New Testament Canon, as in that of the Old Testament, the wisdom teaching has become an integral part of the apostolic preaching. Paul would not be Paul without 1 Cor. 1–2, and the whole context of Colossians and Ephesians would disintegrate if for some reason it were desired to remove this stone from the edifice. Jesus Christ, our righteousness, sanctification and redemption, is also our wisdom, and faith in Him is our instruction by the wisdom of God.1

Taking Barth’s lead, we can look to 1 Corinthians to launch us into this theme, with its dichotomy of human and divine wisdom:

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:21–24).

What does this passage claim about how wisdom relates to Christ’s work? First, it is an event “in the wisdom of God.” God is wise, and this work occurred in his wisdom. Affronting the wise of the earth, the wisdom of God stands forth in this act, revealing itself in Christ. The work of the cross, far from being an arbitrary, unfortunate, or unplanned-for tragedy, has the full backing of the wisdom of God; it occurred in his wisdom.

Second, this work of wisdom concerns not merely the teaching of Jesus, but Christ crucified.2 While Christ was certainly a wisdom teacher, fulfilling the role of the teacher and sage (John 3:2) and bringing to life the Wisdom literature of the Old Testament, this is not the focus here.3 Paul is concerned with the crucifixion of Christ, which occurred in God’s wisdom. The cross was the wise act of the creator God.

Third, Christ himself is said to be “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Paul here weaves together the character of God, the work of Christ, and the person of Christ around the theme of divine wisdom. Within the larger context of 1 Corinthians 1, through the incorporation of the work of the Holy Spirit, Paul effectively makes a Trinitarian claim, weaving the person and work of Christ together with the work of the Father and the Spirit in such a way as to irrevocably establish the wisdom of this event. Wisdom thus brings together the work of the whole Trinity and the person and work of Christ, focusing on the cross and the empty tomb.

But what precisely establishes this as a work of wisdom? First Corinthians explores the choice, purpose, and power of God toward our salvation, employing wisdom as the aspect of God’s character that brings these together in his work. Three times Paul writes that it “pleased God,” and he writes that “God chose” (1 Cor 1:27–28) this path. Wisdom is a matter of the choice of God—of his good pleasure. Although, as Thomas Aquinas writes, God is pure act,4 he is a God who deliberates, who makes choices, considers, and sets himself upon courses of action.5 This means that God does not make decisions based on random choice or whim, because “with God are wisdom and might; he has counsel and understanding” (Job 12:13). The triune God is neither fickle nor capricious. This is a careful and purposive choice, deeply rooted in and harmonious with the divine character. It is ordered toward an end or goal that runs equally deep in the heart of God: “to save those who believe,” and also to “shame the wise” and “to bring to nothing things that are.” The wisdom of God is the choice of God; this choice is rooted in his being and character and is ordered toward a purpose that likewise stems from his being and character.

But God’s wisdom consists of yet more, because while this choice is purposive and intentional, and therefore consistent with the whole being and purpose of God, it is also combined with his power, and therefore it is meaningful and effective. As far removed from every sterile good intention as the night is from the day, as the east from the west, the wisdom of God stands between his will on the one hand and his power on the other. Wisdom is the integration of the two, and therefore the powerful enactment of his good pleasure to bring about his good purposes. Unlike the wisdom of the nations, this is no mere speculation. This wisdom is not limited to wise sayings, like the Calormenes and their many proverbs in C. S. Lewis’ The Horse and His Boy, or abstract concepts that are theoretically good but utterly unachievable. The wisdom of God, because it is the wisdom of the God who is both good and powerful, is an active and effective wisdom. It brings about our salvation (1 Cor 1:18) and shames the wise, because this is the “only wise God” who deserves “glory forevermore through Jesus Christ” (Rom 16:27).

In Ephesians Paul takes us further still, expanding the scope of his vision from a conflict between the foolish and the wise of this world to a cosmic vista of the battle in the spiritual realms. There Paul tells us of God’s “plan of the mystery hidden for ages”: that “through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph 3:9–11). But what is this manifold wisdom? And how is it related to the death and resurrection of Christ?

Once again we see that Christ’s death and resurrection are works of wisdom. This is a matter of God’s good choosing, of his purposing and reaching forward to a goal that is near to his heart, and in which he exercises his power so that his wisdom is effective. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:3)! God chose us. This is God’s wisdom—it is his choice. But this choice reaches forward “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Eph 1:6), and it is powerful, because he is the one “who works all things according to the counsel of his will,” a counsel that does not stand on its own but is bound up with his powerful working. In his power, “the LORD brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the people.” His counsel, on the other hand, “stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations” (Psa 33:11), for in his power and wisdom he brings them to creation.

But this is no mere repetition of what we found in 1 Corinthians. Here we find that God’s wisdom is a matter of mystery. While the wise of this world did not have access to the wisdom of God in 1 Corinthians, we now see that the wisdom of God is a hidden reality, a mystery unveiled only by the work of God as he makes known to us “the mystery of his will, according to his purpose” (Eph 1:9). This is a making-known that occurs only “by revelation” (Eph 3:3); as a choice of God, it is his good pleasure to share, to make known. The wisdom of God is not a necessity waiting to be grasped or a reality sitting on the surface of creation to be casually observed by every creature—it is a mystery made known only as a part of God’s intentional work to reveal it.

But to say that this is the hidden good pleasure of God, revealed only at his will, could sound as though this were a contingent reality—as if God has not woven his purposes into the fabric of his creation. Is this true? Are these purposes mere decoration, or are they architectural, making their way down into the very structure of creation itself? Ephesians 1:4 is one of those few passages in Scripture that takes us back to creation, and then further back still: God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world.” Later, Paul writes that it was given to him to preach:

… the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph 3:9–11, emphasis added).

The purposes of God are hidden in God, but they are also God’s eternal purposes; they are woven into the very structure of creation, and are no mere decoration. And the mystery, the goal and purpose, was that God, “in the fullness of time,” would “unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10)—a mystery that is essentially the telos and purpose of all creation. And how does he do this? Through Christ’s resurrection from the dead (Eph 1:20), a claim Paul establishes at length elsewhere (1 Cor 15).

Thus the wisdom of God, in addition to being the effective choice of God that brings about his purposes, is a cosmic reality woven into the fabric of the universe for bringing about his good purposes through the death (Eph 2:13) and resurrection (Eph 1:20) of Jesus Christ. The wisdom of God is a work of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, established before the foundation of the world to bring about the reconciliation and union of all things through Christ’s death and resurrection. This is the trajectory we see concluded in Romans 11, where Paul celebrates the consigning of all to disobedience that God might have mercy on all, uniting Jew and Gentile: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Rom 11:33).6 The wisdom of God, hidden but now revealed, was woven into the fabric of God’s covenantal history with Israel and, as Paul’s letter to the Ephesians shows, into the very fabric of creation. It is this wisdom of God that we celebrate in his bringing to completion and union all things in heaven and earth through the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.

There is one further thing to note in this brief tour of the wisdom of God as seen in Scripture. God’s purposes are cosmic in reach; the wisdom of God’s reconciliation decisively affects every aspect of the cosmos. The wisdom of God in this plan brings about the reconciliation of all things.7 The wisdom of God concerns all things in heaven and earth, since it was in and by wisdom that God created. The Lord possessed wisdom at the beginning of his work (Prov 11:22–31); it was in wisdom that he made his works, his creatures (Psa 104:24–26); and it was by his wisdom that he founded the world (Jer 10:12). And given the relation between Christ and wisdom established in 1 Corinthians 1:24 (where Christ is “the power of God and the wisdom of God”), this is precisely the logic we see unfolding in Colossians:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col 1:15–20).

The connection between Jesus and wisdom is not explicit in this passage, but is clearly present in the broader context of Colossians and Ephesians. Here we see all the same dynamics in play: the preexistence of wisdom, the participation of wisdom in creation, and, most importantly for our purposes, wisdom as the means by which the reconciliation of all things is brought about.8 For Paul, the wisdom of God is both the source of all things and the reconciliation ...