Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/1547

 Targ. בּראני), partly by verbs of acquiring (Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Venet. ἐκτήσατο; Jerome, possedit); Wisdom appears also as created, certainly not without reference to this passage, Sir. 1:4, προτέρα πάντων ἕκτισται σοφία; 1:9, αὐτὸς ἕκτισεν αὐτήν; 24:8, ὁ κτίσας με. In the christological controversy this word gained a dogmatic signification, for they proceeded generally on the identity of σοφία ὑποστατική (sapientia substantialis) with the hypostasis of the Son of God. The Arians used the ἔκτισέ με as a proof of their doctrine of the filius non genitus, sed factus, i.e., of His existence before the world began indeed, but yet not from eternity, but originating in time; while, on the contrary, the orthodox preferred the translation ἐκτήσατο, and understood it of the co-eternal existence of the Son with the Father, and agreed with the ἔκτισε of the lxx by referring it not to the actual existence, but to the position, place of the Son (Athanasius: Deus me creavit regem or caput operum suorum; Cyrill.: non condidit secundum substantiam, sed constituit me totius universi principium et fundamentum). But (1) Wisdom is not God, but is God's; she has personal existence in the Logos of the N.T., but is not herself the Logos; she is the world-idea, which, once projected, is objective to God, not as a dead form, but as a living spiritual image; she is the archetype of the world, which, originating from God, stands before God, the world of the idea which forms the medium between the Godhead and the world of actual existence, the communicated spiritual power in the origination and the completion of the world as God designed it to be. This wisdom the poet here personifies; he does not speak of the person as Logos, but the further progress of the revelation points to her actual personification in the Logos. And (2) since to her the poet attributes an existence preceding the creation of the world, he thereby declares her to be eternal, for to be before the world is to be before time. For if he places her at the head of the creatures, as the first of them, so therewith he does not seek to make her a creature of this world having its commencement in time; he connects her origination with the origination of the creature only on this account, because that à priori refers and tends to the latter; the power which was before heaven and earth were, and which operated at the creation of the earth and of the heavens, cannot certainly fall under the category of the creatures around and above us. Therefore (3) the translation with ἔκτισεν has nothing against it, but it is different from the κτίσις of the