The Brightness of Eternal Light: Wisdom at the Creation and the Son
Old Testament: Wisdom 7:25-26
For she is a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God: and therefore no defiled thing cometh into her. For she is the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness.
Old Testament, also: Proverbs 8:22, 27, 30
The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his ways, before he made any thing from the beginning. ... When he prepared the heavens, I was present: when with a certain law and compass he enclosed the depths: ... I was with him forming all things: and was delighted every day, playing before him at all times;
New Testament: Hebrews 1:2-3; Colossians 1:15; 1 Corinthians 1:24
In these days hath spoken to us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance, and upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high. ... Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: ... But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.
The connection
Solomon describes Wisdom in words that no creature could bear: "a vapour of the power of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of the almighty God ... the brightness of eternal light, and the unspotted mirror of God's majesty, and the image of his goodness" (Wisdom 7:25-26). In Proverbs she speaks for herself, present before anything was made: "When he prepared the heavens, I was present ... I was with him forming all things" (Proverbs 8:27, 30). The Epistle to the Hebrews opens its portrait of the Son in the same words: "by whom also he made the world. Who being the brightness of his glory, and the figure of his substance" (Hebrews 1:2-3). The Greek word for brightness, apaugasma, stands nowhere else in the Greek Bible but here and at Wisdom 7:26. Wisdom is "the image of his goodness"; Christ is "the image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). And St Paul names outright whose portrait it was: "Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24), the power and the wisdom of which Wisdom 7:24-25 had spoken. Origen reads the two texts together: Hebrews calls the Son "the brightness of His glory", and "we find in the treatise called the Wisdom of Solomon the following description of the wisdom of God", concluding that Wisdom "has her existence nowhere else save in Him who is the beginning of all things". St Athanasius answers the Arians, who read Proverbs 8:22 in the Greek as "The Lord created me": it is said "on His becoming man", of the flesh He took, and not of the Godhead. The Catechism gathers these same titles, the image of the invisible God and the brightness of the glory of God, as the apostles' confession of the Son (CCC 241).
Moral sense
"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1:7), and "the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom" (Job 28:28). If Christ is the Wisdom of God, fear is where the road to Him begins, though not where it ends: "perfect charity casteth out fear" (1 John 4:18). St Augustine explains it with a needle: "the bristle first enters, but except it come out the thread does not come into its place: so fear first occupies the mind, but the fear does not remain there, because it enters only in order to introduce charity." Solomon "esteemed riches nothing in comparison of her" (Wisdom 7:8), and St Paul, knowing whose Wisdom she was, counts all things "but as dung, that I may gain Christ" (Philippians 3:8). She repays the choice: she "through nations conveyeth herself into holy souls, she maketh the friends of God and prophets" (Wisdom 7:27).
Anagogical sense
Wisdom is "the unspotted mirror of God's majesty". In this life we see God as in that mirror, in the Son and through faith: "We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12). At the end the dark glass of faith gives way to the face, and the brightness of eternal light is seen in the Light it comes from.
The Fathers
Origen, De Principiis I.2: "And when writing to the Hebrews, he says of Him that He is 'the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.' Now, we find in the treatise called the Wisdom of Solomon the following description of the wisdom of God: 'For she is the breath of the power of God, and the purest efflux of the glory of the Almighty.'" St Athanasius, Defence of the Nicene Definition: "For as it properly belongs to God's Son to be everlasting. and in the Father's bosom, so on His becoming man, the words befitted Him, 'The Lord created me.'" St Augustine, Homilies on the First Epistle of John: "As we see in sewing, the thread is introduced by means of the bristle; the bristle first enters, but except it come out the thread does not come into its place: so fear first occupies the mind, but the fear does not remain there, because it enters only in order to introduce charity." St Athanasius, Against the Arians II.47: "the Lord, knowing His own Essence to be the Only-begotten Wisdom and Offspring of the Father, and other than things originate and natural creatures, says in love to man, "The Lord created me a beginning of His ways," as if to say, 'My Father hath prepared for Me a body.'"
Warrant
Patristic because Origen (De Principiis I.2) and St Gregory of Nyssa (Against Eunomius) read Wisdom 7:25-26 together with Hebrews 1:3 of the Son, and St Athanasius reads Proverbs 8 of the Word, answering the Arian use of the Septuagint's "created me" by referring it to the Incarnation (Defence of the Nicene Definition). Hebrews does not name the book of Wisdom, so the tier is not scriptural, though the verbal evidence is as strong as an unnamed allusion can be. Checked in the Greek: apaugasma occurs once in the Septuagint, at Wisdom 7:26, and once in the New Testament, at Hebrews 1:3, where "the brightness of his glory" joins it to the doxa of Wisdom 7:25; eikon, image, stands at Wisdom 7:26 and Colossians 1:15; dynamis and sophia, power and wisdom, at Wisdom 7:24-25 and 1 Corinthians 1:24; and esoptron, mirror, at Wisdom 7:26 and 1 Corinthians 13:12. At Proverbs 8:22 the Hebrew qanani means possessed or acquired, the Septuagint has ektisen me, created me, and the Douay's "possessed" follows the Vulgate possedit. The Church's liturgy also reads Proverbs 8:22-35 on feasts of Our Lady, an accommodated sense that stands beside this one. Creation through the Word in John 1 belongs to the entry on the first word and the last voice.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 241.
The verses
Wisdom 7:25 · Wisdom 7:26 · Proverbs 8:22 · Proverbs 8:27 · Proverbs 8:30 · Hebrews 1:2 · Hebrews 1:3 · Colossians 1:15 · 1 Corinthians 1:24
