Jesus

  My post on Genesis 1:1 mentioned that God has given us some “windows” in the Old Testament (starting in its opening verses) into what it was like for God to be God “in the beginning” before He created the heavens and the earth. One of the biggest of such windows is Proverbs 8:22-31:

[The speaker is Wisdom personified]
“The LORD possessed me at the beginning of His way,
Before His works of old.
“From everlasting I was established,
From the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth.
“When there were no depths I was brought forth,
When there were no springs abounding with water.
“Before the mountains were settled,
Before the hills I was brought forth;
While He had not yet made the earth and the fields,
Nor the first dust of the world.
“When He established the heavens, I was there,
When He inscribed a circle on the face of the deep,
When He made firm the skies above,
When the springs of the deep became fixed,
When He set for the sea its boundary
So that the water would not transgress His command,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth;
Then I was beside Him, as a master workman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in the world, His earth,
And having my delight in the sons of men.

  “The clear personification of these verses led most of the early Church Fathers to find here a prophecy of Christ” (Wycliffe Bible Commentary). However, this passage also became a source of controversy since vs. 22 in the Septuagint reads, “The Lord created me.” In order to avoid the (Arian) heresy of a created Christ, and for other reasons, many later commentators have said that Wisdom in this passage is not the same as the Logos of John 1.

  However I am persuaded, with the early church fathers, that this passage IS indeed about the preincarnate Christ, the Logos of God. Perhaps the first reasons is because in principle I believe that Christ is at the forefront of all the Scriptures when rightly and fully understood, which claim this site intends to prove more and more over time. Some other reasons for accepting the “traditional” view of this passage will become clear as we proceed.

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