About (continued)

John Calvin wrote, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” (Institutes I.1.1)

Eugene Peterson places the discovery of wisdom in the interconnectedness between heaven and earth:

“Wisdom” is the biblical term for on-earth-as-it-is-in-heaven everyday living. Wisdom is the art of living skillfully in whatever actual conditions we find ourselves. It has virtually nothing to do with information as such, with knowledge as such. A college degree is no certifi cation of wisdom – nor is it primarily concerned with keeping us out of moral mud puddles, although it does have a profound moral effect upon us. Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honouring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do. In matters of everyday practicality, nothing, absolutely nothing, takes precedence over God.”

Eugene Peterson, 1995. Proverbs, The Message.
Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress

John VanDyk states it this way:

“What is wisdom? According to the Bible, a wise person both understands and does the will of God (Eph 5:15-17). …wisdom is not merely collecting and amassing theoretical or factual knowledge; nor is it simply gaining technical skills. Wisdom is knowledge and understanding deepened into spiritual insight and expressed in loving service (James 3:13) Wisdom originates in the fear of the Lord and is enhanced by faith, hope, love, knowledge, spiritual insight, and active discipleship.”

John VanDyk, 1985. The Beginning of Wisdom: the nature
and task of the Christian school. Grand Rapids, CSI.

Doug Blomberg asserts that wisdom “…allows one to weigh the elements of a situation and to make discerning judgments. Wisdom is more than the making of distinctions. It consists in knowing the meaning and the relative value of these distinctions, depending on the nature of the project one has in mind.” (p. 101)

Wisdom … “is a matter of knowing when, of matching precept to context….It is just action, that is, action that is in accord with the order of creation in its many and varied expressions.” (p. 108) “Wisdom calls us to listen to the voices of our subjects – both students and content –and to hear in his creation the voice of God.” (p.111)

D. Blomberg, 1995. “Teachers as articulate artisans,” in Nurturing
reflective Christians to teach: a valiant role for the nation’s Christian colleges
and universities. D. C. Elliot, ed. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

“Wisdom is learnt experientially and expressed in ways of acting that are sensitive to the context. It is embedded in reciprocal relationships with the natural and social world which are characterized by care or love, for the world is ordered and coherent, turned not towards evil but fundamentally beneficent. It is communal as well as individual, recognizing the authority of an ongoing tradition but holding to this flexibly. It rests in trust, an optimistic view of life’s potential, which is intimately linked with commitment to a source of order and meaning. It thus favours radical belief, characterized by empathy, vulnerability, dialogue, listening to what the situation says. It recognizes an ethical (or more broadly normative) demand, such that there is a way one ought to act in a given situation and not to do so is disobedient. It revels in the dynamic nature of life, the challenge of the serendipitous and the contingent. It eschews logical control, knowing its own limitations, favouring humility and submission and a patient acceptance of the mystery at the heart of life. It accepts that there will often be puzzles, but does not surrender its optimism in the face of these, because of an undergirding faith in the interconnectedness and reliability of all things.” (p. 17)

Wisdom … “is not an individual possession. It grows only in dialogue between expert and novice as together they put questions to the world of their experience and listen to its response. It has as both condition and goal, a learning community.” (p. 25)

D. Blomberg, 1998. “The Practice of wisdom: knowing when.”
Journal of Education and Christian Belief 2:1 p. 7-26.

David Smith identifies some of the elements of wisdom that are important for educators:

“The contours of knowing-as-wisdom in the Hebrew tradition can be summarized briefly as follows:

• Wisdom is multidimensional – it goes beyond (but includes) the narrowly rational to embrace the experiential and its different ways of knowing;
• Wisdom is timed – it is embedded in tradition, it is formed, grasped and handed down in the midst of history and change, and is itself responsive to change, requiring fl exible discernment to know when to apply it in specific circumstances;
• Wisdom is relational – it is founded in a right relation to the known and a communal relation to other knowers, a relation with an ethical dimension grounded in love, humility, intimacy and trust;
• Wisdom is focused on connections – it is a response to a creation which is ordered, coherent, interconnected and intrinsically meaningful;
• Wisdom is open-ended and trustful – rejecting the ideal of detached mastery it never fully conquers the known, but remains open to mystery;
• Wisdom is playful – it suggest an explanatory, non-mechanistic, freely responsive kind of reflection, both ordered and spontaneous, disciplined and exuberantly joyful.”

D. Smith, 1998. “Knowing as wisdom” Journal of Education
and Christian Belief 2:1 (Spring) p.28