Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Thus, inasmuch as the oldest christological statements are formulated in terms of the end, eschatologically, they said who Jesus truly is. But their thinking was entirely and utterly Jewish. The Greeks did not think eschatologically at all, but rather in the system of an eternal cycle: at the beginning the golden age, then the silver, bronze, and iron—and then everything starts over from the beginning.

In Terms of the Beginning

It is important to note that in Judaism the true nature of a thing or a person could be expressed not only eschatologically but protologically. The latter means thinking not from the end but from the beginning. For Christology that means it could be formulated not only in terms of the end of time but also in terms of a “time before time.” In that case it does not say that at the end, thus conclusively, God shows who Jesus is, but that from the very beginning, before all creation, Jesus was the whole truth of God and the absolute measure of the world.

Protological thinking developed in Israel in the so-called Wisdom literature and was personified in the figure of “Wisdom.” In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom speaks of herself and tells of her cooperation in creation:

The LORD created me at the beginning of his work,

    the first of his acts of long ago.

Ages ago I was set up,

    at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

    when there were no springs abounding with water.

Before the mountains had been shaped,

    before the hills, I was brought forth—

    when he had not yet made earth and fields,

        or the world’s first bits of soil.

When he established the heavens, I was there,

    when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,

    when he made firm the skies above,

        when he established the fountains of the deep,

    when he assigned to the sea its limit,

        so that the waters might not transgress his command,

    when he marked out the foundations of the earth,

        then I was beside him, like a master worker;

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    and I was daily his delight,

        rejoicing before him always,

    rejoicing in his inhabited world

        and delighting in the human race. (Prov 8:22-31)

Thus Wisdom is God’s creature, but she precedes the creation of the world. Thus she can be present at all the work of creation; she plays about God and creation. In this very way it is made clear that all creation was formed in wisdom. Because the figure of Wisdom was always prior to creation, it is filled with meaning, with order, with beauty—and reflects the wisdom of God.

While the book of Proverbs only echoes at its end the truth that it is Wisdom’s whole joy to be with the human race, the motif is broadly developed in Sirach 24:1-22:

“I came forth from the mouth of the Most High,

    and covered the earth like a mist.

I dwelt in the highest heavens,

    and my throne was in a pillar of cloud.

Alone I compassed the vault of heaven

    and traversed the depths of the abyss.

Over waves of the sea, over all the earth,

    and over every people and nation I have held sway.

Among all these I sought a resting place;

    in whose territory should I abide?

“Then the Creator of all things gave me a command,

    and my Creator chose the place for my tent.

He said, ‘Make your dwelling in Jacob,

    and in Israel receive your inheritance.’” (Sir 24:3-8)

Thus in the book of Sirach itself, but even more in the continuing process of Jewish thinking, this Wisdom whom God had created before all creation was equated with the Torah. Thus, for example, in the great Jewish commentary on Genesis, Bereshit Rabbah, we read of Genesis 1:1:

[T]he Torah speaks, “I was the work-plan of the Holy One, blessed be he.” In the accepted practice of the world, when a mortal king builds a palace, he does not build it out of his own head, but he follows a work-plan. And [the one who supplies] the work-plan does not build out of his own head, but he has designs and diagrams, so as to know how to situate the rooms and the doorways. Thus the Holy One, blessed be he, [first] consulted the Torah [and then] created the world.

This commentary alludes to the text quoted above from Proverbs (8:30: “then I was beside him, like a master worker”). Creative Wisdom playing before God is thus identified with the Torah. Torah existed even before the creation of the world. It is thought of as preexistent, prior to the cosmos. God creates the universe according to the building plan of the Torah.

What did Israel express in this discourse on Wisdom, i.e., Torah? It is intended to say that inasmuch as Torah was present before anything was created it is the absolute measure of all created reality, its internal order, its meaning. Thus the thought scheme of protology clearly presents the priority of Torah over all creation. From this starting point it was possible and even unavoidable to speak of Jesus, too, protologically, that is, “in terms of the beginning.”

A Song of the Logos