Proverbs 8 is critical in the history of the Church, of sacra doctrina, and of the liturgy. In the Western Missal before Vatican II, and still used in orthodox Anglicanism, this passage, based on patristic and medieval tradition, is used as the lesson for the Feast of the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (December 8). Our Lady is seen as fulfilling the typology of Wisdom or Sophia contained in the passage. Of course, throughout the course of Church history, the passage, used as an image of Wisdom, has actually been used to teach the pre-existent reality of the Logos, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word of God. 'Hagia Sophia,' or Holy Wisdom, is based in this passage. The Fathers of the Church, beginning with such figures as Origen, see the Wisdom character as an Old Testament antecedent for Christ, preincarnate and pre-existing. The early Fathers, followed by the medievals, see this pericope as an Old Testament clue guiding the Church to a right belief in the Holy Trinity and in the eternal nature of the Son of God. Only later, particularly in the high Middle Ages, will the passage become connected to a specifically Marian interpretation.
Sacra Doctrina begins and ends with Holy Scripture. Saint Thomas actually refers to the type of literature herein contained in his commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate. Proverbs 8 is a segment of Old Testament Wisdom literature, which is itself positive and optimistic in tone. Proverbs offers the promise of knowledge, of illumination. It assures that knowledge will be brought to light, 'lady Wisdom' is a common motif in Old Testament Wisdom literature, and here finds its fullest expression. Proverbs 8 is not intended to be an all-encompassing meta-theology or a meditation on the nature-grace dichotomy. Rather, here in the Old Testament, Proverbs offers a life-view, a wisdom-teaching dealing with life and its various temptations, 'lady Wisdom' is the feminine answer to false women and false claims. There is a literally erotic, or eros, tradition in this passage. In the use of female imagery, Wisdom is personified as rebutting and responding to false claims and ideas. Wisdom is our guide. Wisdom, Sophia, the female image, leads us on the quest for truth and wisdom, in the movement of desire toward that which we should desire. Wisdom reaches out to us and seeks to develop us into a higher love, a higher state of being. The question of Wisdom towards us is 'why settle for less.' Here, Wisdom, personified as female Wisdom, tempts men in the right direction. Wisdom's teaching guides the human person who properly responds to it. Wisdom, in Proverbs 8, is envisioned as the forerunner of God, the precursor for God's revelation.
In the passage, Wisdom is identified with God Himself. Here, we have an Old Testament perspective or view on the Blessed Trinity, and on the Eternal Word or Son of God. Wisdom co-exists with God and lives with God from all eternity - hence, the passage offers us a prototype of the Scriptural understanding of the Godhead fully revealed in the New Testament. In Proverbs 8, God's Wisdom is His 'other,' a co-existent co-eternal principle of reality and being. The feminine language and image of Wisdom, in the patristic and medieval period, will be applied either to the Person of Jesus Christ as the Eternal Word, or, as noted above, to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, as the predestinated, foreknown and pre-ordained instrument of God's revelation in the Incarnation. Proverbs seems to betray a heavy Greek influence, as it looks to the hiddenness of revelation realised and fulfilled in the seeking of the knower, a kind of gnosis of understanding. Wisdom is personified as an eternal and knowable reality which is accessible to the mind, intellect, intelligence, and will of man. And this is Sacra Doctrina.
We can see how sacred doctrine will arise from the wisdom-thought or philosophy contained in this passage. The object gift of God's revelation of Himself by grace, here seen in the person of Sophia or Wisdom, is freely offered to human beings and requires human co-operation and response. Man must correspond with Wisdom in order to obtain her fruits and access her realities, gifts kept hidden from those who fail to seek or see. 'Does not wisdom call?'... 'Hear for I will speak... my mouth will utter truth.' God's Word and Wisdom incarnate, Jesus Christ, speaks the truth and His sheep hear His voice and follow Him: 'Whoever is of the truth hears my voice'(St John 19.37). 'My sheep hear my voice and know me and I know them' (S. John 10.4, 14). Wisdom represents the Word of God communicated to man, requiring and desiring the full human apprehension and correspondence to divine truth through faith, the hearing of the mind, of the intellect, and hope, and charity. 'Delighting in the sons of men,' Wisdom, God's Word and principle of truth, seeks to be incarnated in the lives of men, to be lived-out, personified, manifested, represented in the faith-life and faith-response of the intelligible and intelligent knower. Rooted and based in faith, sacra doctrina believes in order to understand.
Having received the divine gift of revelation by grace, men are prepared by divine assistance to receive the Word which is to be engrafted in their hearts and souls. There is clearly here a relationship between faith and reason, for faith begins the process and human reason must come in to fulfil its place in the process. The gift of God's revelation is objective in nature, but seeks and ultimately finds a personal, even subjective, reaction. God can only be known, we see from the passage, by His Wisdom, His truth-principle, or rational principle, which was with Him from the beginning. God is known only through, by and in His Word. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God'....'And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth' (St John 1).
Do we not hear the same reality, the same ontological state, reflected in the words of Proverbs 8? 'Ages ago was I set up, at the first, at the beginning of the earth... when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a master workman... and I was daily his delight.' Human mediation comes into play with this Word - and men hear, listen, and understand. And so we can see without difficulty why the ancient and medieval Church simply interpreted this passage as pertaining to Jesus Christ as the Logos of God, the Word by whom all things were made, and through whom all truth is ultimately communicated directly to mankind.
The feminine image of Wisdom also reflects the docility of Wisdom to God her maker, and the openness and docility the hearer of the Divine Word must have properly to appropriate the divine truth and to receive with due affection the fruits of the Spirit the Word engrafted. The Wisdom figure is indeed like the Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, who in the Annunciation received the message of the Angel with humility and joy, and through her obedience and faith gave birth to the Word in the flesh, as she bore Him first in her heart.
Our Lady may in fact be the key to unlock the passage, as she, the Theotokos, Mother of God and Birthgiver of God, bears the Word in her heart and soul, as well as in her body, by faith, and bears the fruit of our salvation by the truest and best response of faith, openness, submissiveness, meekness, humility, and docility - the 'fiat' -'be it unto me according to thy word.'
Catholic Tradition has always regarded the Wisdom image of Proverbs 8 to be an image of the Wisdom of God as Word, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, and as God's Mother, the perfectly responsive and faith-filled Spotless One, Mary. Sacra Doctrina is the human mediation by faith of the divine truth revealed by and through His wonderful grace. We see that paradigm worked out beautifully in the Proverbs tradition, and particularly in the eighth chapter. May we learn our lesson from the passage, and with irenic self-donation receive, reason-out, and live the Word so graciously offered to us.
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