Divine Wisdom

Knowledge and wisdom, we understand, are two different but inseparable concepts. Put simply, we can say that knowledge has to do with facts, while wisdom is the right use of those facts. Most of us have likely known people who knew a lot of facts or who were highly intelligent but who also tended to make very bad, life-altering decisions that just a little bit of common sense could have prevented. Thus, one can have much knowledge and lack wisdom, though wisdom requires at least some knowledge. One does not have to be professionally educated in order to be wise.

Significantly, Scripture’s teaching on divine knowledge makes it plain that God’s knowledge is not knowledge without wisdom. In fact, the Bible frequently speaks of the Lord as most wise. He is, as Romans 16:27 states, “the only wise God.” By way of analogy, we can say that as human wisdom is the right use of knowledge, divine wisdom consists in the Lord’s right use of His own knowledge. That is, God not only knows the various things that He can do to accomplish His goals but also knows the best path to take in order to fulfill His purposes.

At this point, it will be helpful for us to remember that since the Lord is subject to no law outside Himself, His own character defines the best ways to act and the most proper goals for Him to follow. Here we note that the Lord’s central purpose is not salvation or the preservation of creation or the welfare of His church. All these purposes, and others, are God’s purposes, but they are not His chief purpose. His chief purpose, as Reformed theology has rightly emphasized, is the revelation of His own glory. What does the Lord want most of all? “For the earth [to] be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14). All of the Lord’s other purposes serve the end of manifesting His glory.

Petrus van Mastricht writes that divine wisdom “is nothing but a certain peculiar power and perfection of the divine intellect and knowledge by which God knows what methods to use in the unfolding of his counsels and works to exalt his glory as greatly as possible.” Our most wise God knows the best way to accomplish His goals, and in the end, we will see that His working out of history was the best way to display His glory to us.