By Fr. Felix (African Times Guest Writer)
This is perhaps the strongest statement in the
Bible that God does not judge as humans do.
This has been evident throughout the Old
Testament: God chooses a younger son (Abel,
Joseph, David) over his brothers;God enables
the unarmed David to slay the gigantic Goliath;
God enables a woman, Judith, to triumph over
Holofernes while the men skulk behind their
walls.
Paul now points out the further paradox that
Jesus’ ultimate moment of humiliation and
suffering is the moment which fulfils God’s
purpose of saving humanity.
Further than this Paul now points out that
Jesus actually is the power and the Wisdom of
God. In the Wisdom literature of the Old
Testament God’s Wisdom is the mediator of
creation, the agent by which God creates, the
master-craftsman, ever at play in his presence
(Proverbs 8.30), a reflection of the eternal light
(Wisdom 7.26). A person’s wisdom cannot be
separated from that person, and yet is not the
same as that person.
The scripture is struggling to convey the
relationship of two entities which are the same,
yet not the same. This is perhaps the first
attempt to define the Godness of Jesus. In the
gospels we see the power of God at work in
Jesus, and hear that the Father and the Son
have the same power and the same will.
Later, other attempts will be made to define
their relationship in terms of persons and
natures. Human language is being stretched to
express a unique situation for which human
language was not devised.
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