The Wisdom of God in the Way of Salvation
KYLE STROBEL AND ADAM J. JOHNSON
I. INTRODUCTION
The primary dogmatic location of the atonement is the doctrine of God; that is, the doctrines of the Trinity and of the divine attributes form the primary and determinative features of the doctrine of the atonement.1 They create the room or structure within which other doctrines have their respective dignity, playing their distinct and valuable roles.
In this sense, the atonement is the doctrinal elaboration of the movement and action of God incarnate for us through death into resurrection; it is doctrinal reflection on who God is and how he is for us in the descent and exaltation of Christ. In this sense, the doctrine of the atonement is not as narrow as often understood, dominated by theories addressing the cross in relation to various features of sin.2 Rather, the atonement names a specific movement of God with an explicit directionality — a telos that guides God’s economic activity to save what was created by him, through him, and for him — that he might reconcile all things to himself (Col 1:15 – 20) by sharing himself with all things. And because this reconciling work is an effective work in the midst of many conflicting forces and powers, a work saturated with purpose, intentionality, or telos, it is a work of God’s wisdom, or, better, a work by Wisdom, of wisdom, and for wisdom, the power of the omnipotent God unleashed for the salvation of the world (1 Cor 1:18).
This paper develops the dogmatic location of the atonement within the doctrine of God by expounding on the atonement from this particular vantage point: atonement as an act of divine wisdom, considering the nature and implications thereof. Considering God’s triune life in relation to redemption, therefore, wisdom is the category that addresses both the divine life in se as well as wisdom as it has taken on flesh and dwelt among us. Among the benefits of such an approach, we highlight the manner in which exploring the atonement as a work of divine wisdom (1) offers a rich line of inquiry regarding the ethical implications of Christ’s work, and (2) offers resources for exploring the scope or range of God’s creative purposes brought to completion by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
II. DIVINE WISDOM (ATONEMENT BY WISDOM)
To start, it is helpful to understand wisdom in its broadest terms as “expertise in the craft of life enabling us to excel.”3 The book of Proverbs and a host of other biblical, theological, and devotional material guide us along these lines, equipping us to navigate the many realities and forces of life in the hope of living well, partly through shared wisdom in the form of sayings, and partly by guiding us into an understanding of the principles of life.4 But wisdom is so much more than this, for its basis and power in our own lives derives from its role in the life of God.
Among God’s many attributes is the fact that in and of himself, he is wise (Rom 16:27; Dan 2:20; Job 12:13), and from him all wisdom derives its name (linking Eph 3:10 and 3:15), and he alone knows its place and the way to it (Job 28:12 – 28). God, as the living God, lives well, acting in keeping with and by means of his whole, unified character to bring about the full range of his purposes (Isa 46:11). In God there is no final dilemma, no course of action with unattainable ends in which God is forced to choose one thing and abandon the other, or where he can only retain one aspect of himself at the expense of another. As the God who lives eternally in the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (John 17:20 – 26), God lives and acts in the unity of the divine character, bringing his purposes to their fitting end (Eph 2:4 – 10) by means of that aspect of his character specified as divine wisdom — for that is his goal, to make known his manifold wisdom to the rulers and authorities (Eph 3:10). In and of himself in eternity, and in his manifold relationships with his creatures, God is and always will be the ever-wise God, living a life in which the origin, means, and end of the divine intention and act are equally rooted in the divine life, and therefore deep, meaningful, and effective (Rom 11:33 – 36).5 This is so much the case, so core to the divine character, that the second person of the Trinity is himself the divine Wisdom (cf. De Trin, 7.1.2).
The death and resurrection of Jesus is thus the work of Wisdom himself, Wisdom incarnate. For if it is the case that God in his being and act is wise, that he himself is wisdom and thereby the source of all that partakes of this name, then surely this central act within his creation will bear the stamp of an act which is by, of, and for wisdom. But we do well to stop at the first step, noting that this work is done by Wisdom. As such, it bears all the characteristics of a wise act, but is simultaneously revelatory of the nature of wisdom itself; binding together reconciliation and self-revelation as wisdom is simultaneously the source, means, and end of our salvation. We are made wise through our redemption from folly by means of an act which was itself the epitome of wisdom. Christian wisdom, therefore, as the wisdom of God, cannot remain an abstract notion, but must trade in the economy of redemption. The wisdom of Christ is the embodied reality of the divine life penetrating the brokenness of the world.
III. ATONING WISDOM (ACT OF WISDOM)
As a work done by Wisdom, Christ’s atonement is a work thoroughly characterized by that reality: a work of wisdom.6 The basic logic of the atonement is that in Christ, God took upon himself what was ours in order that we might partake of what is his, in this way bringing completion to God’s creative purposes.7 Filling out this insight by means of the categories of divine wisdom, we affirm that in Jesus the God who is in and of himself wise took upon himself the reality and consequences of human folly unto death, that through the resurrection he might restore us into a life of divine wisdom. That is, the work of Jesus was one of the wise God bringing to completion his plan to share with his creatures a life of wisdom in the face of human folly.
In the face of this folly, God did not rest content with any means of restoring his creatures to the lives of wisdom he originally intended for them: he made Wisdom itself the means of restoring his creatures to wisdom, making the end into the means, and vice-versa, by enacting the divine life and character on our behalf. His work was thus a wise act in that it was properly intended, ordered, and executed to bring about its end(s) or purpose(s).8 It was an act such as to bring about, in the best possible way, the full range of divine purposes for creation, including the overcoming of our folly and our establishment as creatures remade in the image of God, fit to walk in his ways in lives of wisdom. Jesus is Wisdom incarnate, acting on our behalf, and through him we receive the Spirit of wisdom (Isa 11:2; Acts 2:33), such that the wisdom we receive is the wisdom that is had only through participation in the divine life of Wisdom.
In order to bring about these purposes, God chose to overcome human folly, not by power alone, but by means of an act that would take up and transform our foolishness on its own terms, offering what it above all else perversely sought: wisdom (Gen 3:6). In opposition to our foolishness, God in Christ bore our folly and the death it brings, taking a course of action so unfathomable to sinner and Satan alike that we mistook his wisdom and our folly, labeling Christ as foolishness and a stumbling block (1 Cor 1:23). In opposition to our foolish longing for wisdom (Gen 3:6), Christ hung on the cross of folly, becoming the root of our knowledge of good and evil for those abiding in him.
This penetration of wisdom into our folly forms the reality of Christ’s self-giving. The cross is the wisdom of God that cannot be processed as anything other than foolishness, because it unveils the foundation of our sinful autonomy, of wisdom independent of the divine life, wisdom, and goodness. This is why James can compare the wisdom that comes from above, which is pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, merciful, impartial, and sincere, against the wisdom from below, which he labels earthly, unspiritual, and demonic (Jas 3:13 – 17). In Christ, God was revealing that the “foolishness of God is wiser than humankind, and the weakness of God is stronger than humankind” (1 Cor 1:25); and in Christ, God bore the full reality of foolish human “wisdom” and its consequences in himself on the cross.
This foolishness is no mere comedic relief in a Shakespearian drama. Sin, affronting the character and will of the wise God, takes the form of folly, tragically mis-taking and disordering in such a way as to unleash hell in the place where wisdom was to bring about beauty, order, and peace.9 Foolishness and its consequences are no less real, no less tragic, and no less an affront to the will and being of God than guilt, disobedience, murder, or any other aspect of sin.10 And Christ bears this reality and its consequences. He suffers the fate of human folly. He suffers the disorder and chaos it unleashes. He suffers the physical, relational, political, and ultimately, theological consequences of playing the fool. For like the fool, in the place of the fool, as the fool he is rejected by God and suffers the fate of every admonishing Proverb (vv. 3:35; 10:8; 18:7; 26:3 – 13).
But this was no act of folly; it was we who labeled it as such, able to see in it nothing more. Rather, this was the way of wisdom, as we see the triumph of God’s wisdom in the bodily resurrection of Jesus: a resurrection that reestablishes the way of wisdom in the community of Christ, opens our eyes to the role of wisdom throughout the Scriptures, and shares with us the lifeblood of wisdom, the Spirit of the risen Christ, the Spirit of wisdom (Isa 11:2). The resurrection is the triumph and ascension of Wisdom incarnate, by means of which we, in the Spirit of the risen Lord, are established in lives of wisdom through our participation in Wisdom.
IV. SAVED FOR WISDOM: THE ETHICS OF THE ATONEMENT
As the Son descends into the human condition, what the Scriptures portray is a peculiar kind of wisdom. The resurrection is the triumph of this wisdom, but it does not undo the death of Christ; we do not rid ourselves of a theology of the cross for a theology of glory.11 Jesus’ life is a particular kind of life — a life unto death for resurrection and ascension, but as such, a fully unified and indivisible life which constitutes a whole and is meaningful only as such. This is the act of wisdom, calling for the reconciliation of all things in Christ, but only as the crucified Lord of glory and the resurrected Lamb.
What the atonement names, therefore, is God’s telos in the incarnation, not into a generic human nature but into the depths of humanity in death. But the Wisdom of God does not die in death; the Wisdom of God defeats it from within, rising from the dead and ascending to God in our nature as our great high priest (Heb 8 – 10). This turning point in death to resurrection names the hinge point of Christ’s atoning work and establishes the contours of the Christian life. Any talk of the location of the atonement must take this last point seriously. Holy Scripture turns to the atonement for ethical imperatives, establishing the contours of the Christian life in specifically cruciform ways.12 While not at the center of the doctrine, aesthetics and ethics must not be ignored.13
While it is possible for the cross to become doctrinally overbearing, pitting the cross against other informing features of revelation, the opposite can quickly become a problem as well. It is easy to allow the cross to shrink to the point of uselessness when weight is shifted elsewhere (e.g., the incarnation). Paul will have none of it, for the cross is the wisdom of God itself, breaking forth into creation for recreation and reconciliation. In this sense, part of God’s wisdom in his work of atonement is to reveal the true wisdom engrained in his reign.14
As an act for wisdom, the atoning work of Christ unveils how God’s character and will — divine wisdom — engages evil.15 Namely, Wisdom confronts evil directly, but it does so by entering the reality of evil so as to deal with it effectively from within. Wisdom thus gives direction for the economy, holding together the divine attributes in unity, but it also holds together God’s self-revelation in Christ unto death with the kind of power Christ opens to his people. Christ’s is a power in weakness (2 Cor 12:9) — a bearing-one’s-cross kind of power — and as such, the atonement is wisdom breaking forth into reality that is put on display for the powers and principalities to witness (Eph 3:10),16 as Christ puts “them to open shame, by triumphing over them” (Col 2:15 ESV).
By locating the doctrine of the atonement in the doctrine of God, focused through the lens of wisdom, the place of ethics in relation to the atonement is given specific shape. Regenerate wisdom, therefore, is pushed into the mold of God’s self-giving in Christ unto death, such that Paul calls the cross the wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:18 – 25) and uses the movement of incarnation unto death as the broad contours of our imitation of Christ (Phil 2:5 – 11). As put by John Webster,
Regenerate life in Christ is not simply a received and completed condition, but a summons actively to reiterate the death of the old nature and to perform the new, to die and rise again not only once for all but also continually. Evangelical obedience — reverent enactment of the creaturely life which the Gospel manifests — entails mortification and vivification.17
Mortification and vivification are traditional categories for framing the Christian life within the self-giving of God in death and resurrection. As a work by, of, and for wisdom, the incarnation-unto-death-for-resurrection provides the broad features of regenerate existence.18 This is why bearing one’s cross can serve as a helpful overview of discipleship. Or, more broadly, it is why Paul narrates not only the cross but also Christ’s self-giving in the incarnation unto death in Philippians 2 as a depiction of the Christian life, as a depiction of the mind of Christ (Phil 2:5).
To reject this “pattern” is to walk as “enemies of the cross” (Phil 3:18), in a similar way as preaching in cleverness of speech makes the cross void (1 Cor 1:17). The cross is a “power” that undermines the system from below, just as it is the foolishness that undermines the wisdom of the world. This wisdom leads Paul to say, “Whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10 NRSV). It is the structural principle behind Jesus’ teachings that the first will be last and the last first (Matt 20:16) and that the one who tries to save his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for Jesus’ sake will find it (Matt 16:25).
This movement of God to us in Son and Spirit provides the context for ethics, and therefore, the atonement must be located such that it can speak directly and meaningfully into lived Christian existence. By focusing on models of the atonement that fail to embrace its breadth and depth, the atonement is too often abstracted away from its connection to the Christian life.19 If a doctrine of atonement fails to speak into the Christian life, helping to establish and form its contours, then this points to a deeper question concerning its doctrinal location. By grounding the atonement in God’s wisdom, as we have done here, the Christian life is developed as a wise life “from the cross out” rather than from general assumptions about the good life. Excelling in the kingdom of God is not the same, it would seem, as excelling in the world.
V. WISDOM AND THE SCOPE OF ATONEMENT
As a work by, of, and for wisdom, the atonement is a broad work with a vast scope. We often experience folly’s havoc in our lives, families, institutions, and nations, and for this reason alone, a gospel of wisdom is both welcome and needed. But unpacking wisdom is of greater value still. We have already seen the advantage of looking through the lens of wisdom for Christian ethics; therefore, here we explore the unparalleled perspective afforded by wisdom for grasping the scope of the atonement — the breadth of the character of God which is involved, the range of God’s purposes entailed in its reconciliation of the Old and New Testaments, and the manner in which it simultaneously reconciles to God and brings to creaturely fruition all things in heaven and earth. Developing the atonement from within the wisdom of God unveils the immense frame of reference for the scope of this reconciling work.
1. THE DIVINE ATTRIBUTES
The divine attributes do not act in opposition or isolation.20 Much has been made of the union (or conflict) between God’s mercy and wrath, for instance. But wisdom has a special and unique role to play in this discussion as it pertains to the atonement, for emphasizing wisdom naturally and necessarily leads to an ordered emphasis of the other divine attributes enacted in the work of Christ. One aspect of wisdom as a divine attribute is the way that it brings about the divine ends by divine means; or, put theologically, wisdom brings about the divine will in keeping with, or by means of, the enacted divine character. This interplay between ends and means, or will and character, is at the very heart of divine (and therefore human) wisdom, necessarily calling attention to the whole divine character and its role in the atonement. A focus on God’s redemptive movement in wisdom tightly connects the economic with the immanent, expanding from an emphasis on wisdom to the whole enacted character of God and, therefore, the inconceivable fullness of his united attributes. Wisdom is thus a gateway into the immanent life and character of God, enacted for us in the economic activity of Christ.
Wisdom necessarily brings to mind the interplay between the whole divine character and the end in question amid the impediments in its way, for this is what it means to be wise. And because the atonement is a divine act, an act made by the whole divine character incarnate in Christ, our appreciation of Christ’s work is only as full as our understanding of the role of the whole divine character, both unified and in its distinction. What we perceive, therefore, is what Edwards calls “the excellency of Christ.”21 It is the lion who comes as a lamb, the eternal Son born as a child, and the Creator of life hanging on the cross. Within this seeming paradox God is revealing the unity of his life and attributes, calling his people to see the beauty of his life and redemption.
2. THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS
But the divine character is enacted in the making and fulfilling of the divine covenants and promises, for in his wisdom, the course of God’s action focuses on the specific people of Israel, that they, through his self-revealing and saving work, might become wise. And the divine wisdom shines here as well, for it opens our eyes to the subtlety and art with which God took up the history of his interactions with humankind and simultaneously repeated and restored them in Christ. The New Testament is thus what Irenaeus calls the recapitulation of the Old, a work of art in which the history of God’s dealings with Israel is simultaneously repeated/fulfilled through Christ and his church, and in which the promises and covenants are fulfilled despite our sin. It is in this recapitulation that we find divine wisdom manifested on the cross, where the “form of God” (Phil 2:5 – 11), the preexistent divine wisdom, is made known in the descent of the incarnation unto death.22 This is not a new story but the reaping of what had already been sown throughout God’s revelation and work to draw a people to himself.
3. COSMIC SCOPE
The divine purposes for creation extend far beyond the role of Israel, though it is by means of Israel and its Messiah (rather than in addition to it or at its expense) that these purposes are fulfilled. “By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations” (Prov 3:19 NIV), and it is through the completed work of the Messiah that all things in creation are reconciled to God (Col 1:19 – 20; 2 Cor 5:18 – 19).
The angels are confirmed in glory and grow in worship through their deeper understanding of their God.23 Humankind, of course, is brought to its proper end as creatures made whole and wise through their participation in the Wisdom of the Father through his indwelling Spirit. The animals in creation are likewise brought to peace through the installation and revelation of the sons and daughters of God through their wise rule of creation (Isa 11:6), though the manifestation of this awaits the second coming of our Lord (Heb 2:8). The same holds true for the groanings of creation (Rom 8:22), which will give way to their proper song through the righteous rule of the wise creator and ruler of heaven and earth, Jesus Christ. Even the demons, through the wisdom of God, will be brought to participate in God’s purposes for them, inasmuch as is possible for a creature resolutely and finally turned against the will of God (Phil 2:10).
This whole range of ends is brought about by means of the work of Wisdom incarnate, who is simultaneously the origin, means, and end of creation, working to bring to completion his whole creation in a single, fitting act.24 There is no better vantage point from which to appreciate the cosmic scope of Christ’s work than the divine wisdom.
VI. CONCLUSION: UNCAGED WISDOM
Because the work of Christ is first and foremost the act of the living God, it is the doctrine of God that provides the primary dogmatic location for the doctrine of the atonement. Accordingly, exploring the interrelationships between various aspects of the doctrines of God and the atonement will provide particularly fruitful lines of inquiry, offering ways past doctrinal stalemates and venues for new lines of dogmatic exploration.
In this essay, we have explored the relationship between atonement and the immanent life of God by means of considering the role of divine wisdom (a wisdom intrinsic to the divine life) within the work of Christ (the enactment or effective imaging of that immanent reality within the economy). The result is a reflection of the atonement in which Wisdom incarnate bears in himself our folly and its consequences, that through the resurrection we might be restored in wisdom through creaturely participation in that divine reality.
The implications of such a theory are significant, for it opens our eyes to the way that the whole character of God brings about the fulfillment of God’s will as seen in the united vision of the Old and New Testaments, and in the way that this single act brings all created things to reconciliation with God and one another. At the same time, such a perspective opens us to the rich implications of Christ’s work for the Christian life as a life characterized by wisdom.25
1. For a fuller development of this thesis, see Adam J. Johnson, Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2015); God’s Being in Reconciliation: The Theological Basis of the Unity and Diversity of the Atonement in the Theology of Karl Barth (New York: T&T Clark, 2012).
2. Consider, for instance, the way that penal substitution emphasizes sin as guilt, and also consider Green and Baker’s work to suggest the alternative emphasis on shame in chapter 6 of Mark D. Baker and Joel B. Green, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003).
3. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), 156.
4. As Aristotle points out, the “wise person must not only know what is derived from the origins of a science, but also grasp the truth about the origins.” Ibid., 157.
5. Barth says God’s Word is “meaningful in itself, and it shows itself to be meaningful to us who hear it. The wisdom of God is that God not only wills but knows what He wills. And He knows not only what He wills, but why and wherefore He wills it,” which is to say that the will and action of God is laden with purpose, meaning, plan, and intention, and because his will is accompanied by his power, he can, in his wisdom, accomplish and bring to fruition this meaning, plan, and intention. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2: The Doctrine of God (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 423.
6. According to David Ford, “Christian wisdom is shaped by and in relation to Jesus Christ. . . . He was seen as both teaching and living out a prophetic wisdom, ‘greater than Solomon’, ‘greater than Jonah’, rooted in the reciprocal knowing of himself and his Father. His wisdom was both a discerning of cries and an embodying of them, with his final loud cry from the cross as the central reference point for Christian wisdom. The convergence of Luke and John on key dimensions of this wisdom was explored: it is God-centered, has the whole of creation as its context, is immersed in history and the contemporary world, interprets the Old and New Testaments in relation to each other, and is constantly sought afresh with others in a community whose basic trust is that the Spirit will lead them into further truth.” David F. Ford, Christian Wisdom: Desiring God and Learning in Love (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 153. Our analysis follows similar contours to the ones noted here by Ford.
7. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. John Behr (Yonkers: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011), 157.
8. Because this is true, divine wisdom is the foundation for the theological enterprise of “faith seeking understanding.”
9. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981), II-II.46.
10. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot portrays this powerfully.
11. Jonathan Edwards, using wisdom as the broad location of the atonement, grounds Christ’s work in Ephesians 3:10: “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.” This manifold wisdom of God is on display in Christ’s life and death, never for its own sake but for his resurrection and ascension. Resurrection is the great denoument in the history of redemption. But the resurrection does not, somehow, overcome the cross — as if the resurrection undoes the revelation inherent in Christ’s death.
12. See Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
13. Exemplarist theories of the atonement thrive when they describe the revelatory nature of the cross. When this inclination overtakes the doctrine, the doctrine itself is in danger of being reduced to simply a feature of Christ’s example to his people. This is well-documented. The opposite error is equally troubling: a development of the doctrine of atonement abstracted away from ethics. Rather, as Christ’s teachings show, the Christian life is a cruciform life.
14. Wisdom, as found in the Proverbs, is given new shape by Christ. Christ reveals what the blessed one who finds wisdom and understanding looks like (see Prov 3:13 – 18). Likewise, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov 9:10), and therefore, the beginning of regenerate wisdom is the cross. Fear is the reality of being confronted by God’s wisdom and being undone by that wisdom which leads to weakness.
15. “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph 5:15 – 16).
16. As the revelation of divine wisdom, Edwards turns to categories of aesthetics to talk about Christ’s atoning work and ethics. “The infinite grace of his divine nature — that infinite ocean of love that is in his heart — was never manifested in any other way, in any comparison as it hath been in his coming down from heaven and laying down his life for us.” Jonathan Edwards, “Thy Name is as Ointment Poured Forth,” in The Blessings of God: Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards edited by Michael D. McMullen, vol. 1 (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2003), 172.
17. John Webster, “Communion with Christ: Mortification and Vivification” in Sanctified By Grace: A Theology of the Christian Life edited by Kent Eilers and Kyle Strobel (London: T&T Clark, 2014), 122.
18. There is a purposeful connection made here concerning the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ. Our worry is that a single aspect of Christ’s life — his death, for instance — is abstracted away and analyzed as an artifact in itself. Rather, all aspects are united in the life of Christ in the incarnation-unto-death-for-resurrection. It is, unfortunately, a clunky phrase, but the purpose is to hold these elements together in one movement of God that must be united.
19. For example, penal substitution has been criticized for failing to ground the ethical life of the Christian adequately. One such critique denies that penal substitution allows for God’s forgiveness and, therefore, calls into question what it may mean for the believer to forgive as God forgives (Col 3:13). Another critique addresses the question of why Christians struggle to be missional — in the sense that Christians often seclude themselves from the world rather than engaging it directly. Using disgust psychology, Richard Beck suggests that penal substitution fails to address the larger scheme of Christ’s descent into uncleanness. By missing this feature, he suggests, Christians do not follow Christ’s lead but assume that unclean unbelievers will somehow infect them. See Richard Beck, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality and Mortality (Eugene: OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011). It could prove fruitful to explore how wisdom could reframe this notion of disgust by focusing on the defeat of folly in the descent of wisdom. Wisdom, in this sense, is not “tainted” by foolishness but “puts it to open shame” (Col 2:15). Christ puts the world’s foolish wisdom to open shame by ushering in an alternative wisdom, a wisdom that is hidden from the wise but revealed to infants (Luke 10:21). It is telling that Christ rejoices in this reality, triumphing over the wisdom of the age with his “hidden wisdom.”
20. Cf. Jonathan Edwards, “The Wisdom of God Displayed in the Way of Salvation,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, eds. Henry Rogers, Sereno Edwards Dwight, and Edward Hickman, (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1998), 144 – 45.
21. Jonathan Edwards, “The Excellency of Christ,” Sermons and Discourses, 1734– 1738, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 19, ed. M. X. Lesser (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 560 – 95.
22. Michael Gorman discusses this feature of the Philippian hymn. See his Inhabiting the Cruciform God: Kenosis, Justification, and Theosis in Paul’s Narrative Soteriology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 14 – 15, 27. Furthermore, Gorman notes “that Christ crucified is the counterintuitive reality of divine wisdom and power, that the cross is in fact theophanic– revelatory of God’s essential attributes, known in the reality and the narrative of the crucified Messiah” (ibid., 27). I don’t think you have to go as far as Gorman here, concerning the divine attributes, to make the same point.
23. Edwards, “The Wisdom of God,” Works of Edwards, 2 – 3.
24. For a fuller elaboration development of this section, see Johnson, Atonement: A Guide for the Perplexed, ch. 6.
25. Thank you to Ty Kieser, Rachael Smith, and Daniel St. Clair for editorial and research assistance on this chapter. Adam would like to acknowledge that his work on this chapter benefited from a research fellowship at Biola University’s Center for Christian Thought, made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.