One of my favourite 20th Century philosophers
Wisdom. What is it? Jonny Raine has defined it. But Mr. Dr. Rev. Packer has too.
In Chapter 9 of Knowing God Packer teases out an understanding of wisdom that goes further than intellectual and encapsulates the moral and practical. It’s knowing the best thing to do (btw saintjonny’s definition is this very thing).
Real Wisdom then is only found in God. And what a Wisdom it is! While the wisdom of mankind is often misguided or even frustrated by circumstance.
Not so with God who is, “wise in heart and mighty in strength (Job9: 4).” Wisdom and strength? Do they go together in our modern thinking? “Wisdom and strength are His (Dan. 2:20).”
In God we have boundless Wisdom and endless Power united. This makes God utterly worthy of our fullest trust.
But we cannot recognise God’s Wisdom unless we know the end for which He is working. Here many go wrong. Misunderstanding what the Bible means when it says that God is love (1 John4:8-10), they think that God intends a trouble free life for all, irrespective of their moral and spiritual state, and hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one) indicates that God’s Wisdom or Power, or both, have broken down, or that God, after all, does not exist. But this idea of God’s intention is a complete mistake. God’s Wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable.
This has to be my favourite (extended) quote so far.
