The Way of Wisdom

A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs (US title: God's Wisdom for Navigating Life)

Timothy Keller

• Publisher: Hodder Faith
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9781473647572
• eBook ISBN:
  9781473647589
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

New York pastor Timothy Keller is known for his ability to connect a deep understanding of the Bible with contemporary thought and the practical issues we all face. In this devotional - consisting of all-new material - Keller offers inspiration for every day of the year, based on the book of Proverbs. Working through the entire book, Keller brings this ancient wisdom to life and shows how to apply it to the realities of our daily lives. Just as My Rock; My Refuge taught readers how to pray, so this inspiring new devotional teaches us how to live lives that are rooted in wisdom.

NOTES

1. Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, “The Book of Proverbs,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 5 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1997), p. 27.

2. Derek Kidner, The Proverbs: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1972), p. 176.

3. Bruce Waltke, The Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), p. 117.

4. Ibid.

5. Bruce Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 15–31, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 532.

6. “There are details of character small enough to escape the mesh of the law … and [be] yet decisive in personal dealings.” Kidner, Proverbs, p. 13.

7. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, vol. 2, Within a Budding Grove. C. K. S. Moncreiff and T. Kilmartin, trans. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1922), p. 513. Quoted in Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass.: Basic Books, 2006), p. 152.

8. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 37.

9. Ibid., p. 310.

10. See Kidner’s study of “The Scoffer,” in Proverbs at pp. 41–42, and Waltke’s study of “The Mocker,” in Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 114.

11. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Collier Books, 1955), p. 81.

12. See Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 528.

13. Winifred Gallagher, “How We Become What We Are,” The Atlantic, September 1994, available at www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/09/how-we-become-what-we-are/303534/.

14. These could be summarized as the options of (a) retreat, (b) attack, or (c) win through diplomacy. Kagan’s argument is that each of us is born with a temperament that makes one of these instinctive and, therefore, we are prone to use it in situations where it is not practical and can even be destructive.

15. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 39.

16. J. D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: HarperCollins, 2016), pp. 6–7.

17. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 60.

18. Ibid.

19. Albert Camus, “The Wind at Djemila,” in Albert Camus, ed. Harold Bloom, Bloom’s BioCritiques (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2003), p. 59.

20. The first clause is Bruce Waltke’s translation. See Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 467.

21. W. McKane, quoted in ibid., p. 114.

22. Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 97.

23. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 38.

24. This is my own free translation of this verse.

25. John Newton, The Works of the Rev. John Newton, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1985), p. 585.

26. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 40.

27. Proverbs 3:10 observes that, in general, a generous spirit tends to lead to more prosperity. Some people see this as an absolute promise that the more you give away your money, the more money you will make. But that is to misunderstand the character of a proverb, which is an observation of how life generally goes in the world. Derek Kidner writes, “If it [verse 10] were more than a generalization (as Job’s comforters held), God would not be so much honored, but invested in, by our gifts.” But, as we will see tomorrow, adversity can bring “better prizes than prosperity.” Kidner, Proverbs, p. 64.

28. Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 50.

29. For an extended case for interpreting these verses in this way, see Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, pp. 266–67.

30. John T. McNeill, ed., Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 22 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), p. 696.

31. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 77.

32. Quoted in Waltke, Book of Proverbs: Chapters 1–15, p. 401.

33. Kidner, Proverbs, p. 77.

34. Ibid.

35. This is why it could be said that any thriving civil order (verse 16) or economy (verse 18) deploys at least some of the elements of wisdom. It is “indispensable … for civil or social order.” Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 91.

36. J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (1954; repr., New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), p. 468.

37. Thomas Cranmer, “Collect for the Fifth Sunday After Trinity” in Paul F. M. Zahl and C. Frederick Barbee, The Collects of Thomas Cranmer (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006), p. 78.

38. See Jonathan Edwards, “Beauty of the World” and “Images of Divine Things,” in A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed. John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 14–21. Edwards’s theory of beauty is that beauty consists mainly in seeing relationships between things. This, he believed, was based on creation being done not by a unipersonal divine being but by a triune God who consists of intimate relationships. It is because there was more than one divine person involved in creation—in relationship as creation occurred—that we long for and delight in relationships. See also Belden C. Lane, “Jonathan Edwards on Beauty, Desire, and the Sensory World,” Theological Studies 65 (2004): 44–72.

39. Oliver O’Donovan writes: “Wisdom is the intellectual apprehension of the order of things which discloses how each being stands in relation to each other. … ‘Delight’ is the affective attention to something simply for what it is and for the fact that it is.” Quoted in Van Leeuwen, “Book of Proverbs,” p. 99.

40. I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• About the Author
• Also by Timothy Keller
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Introduction
• January
• February
• March
• April
• May
• June
• July
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Select Bibliography