Abstract
Paul S. Fiddes, Seeing the World and Knowing God: Hebrew Wisdom and Christian Doctrine in a Late-Modern Context, Oxford University Press, Oxford: 2013; 448 pp.: 9780199644100, £75.00/$150.00 (hbk); 9780198709756, £25.00/$41.00 (pbk)
Wisdom is, according to this account by Paul Fiddes, a form of immersion in creation. It is rooted in patient observation of the world, and guided by a broad vision that situates that observation in relation to God. ‘Seeing the world’ and ‘knowing God’ belong together because the world resonates to the music of its creator’s triune life; observation of the world is therefore the beginning of wisdom. Growth in wisdom means participating more fully in the endless movement of God’s own delighted knowing of the world – a knowing that attends to the multiplicity of things and their manifold connections. It cannot lead to mastery, because it constantly lures us into engagement with a diversity and a complexity that are beyond us – and because it is animated by engagement with Christ, in whose body the music of God’s self-giving life rings out unimpeded. We are therefore, says Fiddes, called to an unfinished and unfinishable journey of self-giving engagement with the fabric of God’s world.
Fiddes’s vision is supported by an account of the biblical wisdom literature that teases out different voices – from a wisdom of observation not explicitly connected to any theological vision, through the acknowledgments of limitation that emerge in the midst of such wisdom, to the recasting of the journey of wisdom as a journey with God, and on to the humble recognition that ongoing participation without overview is our sufficient portion.
That pattern is echoed on a larger scale in the choreography of the book. Fiddes attends to voices from philosophy (and science) shaped by patient engagement with the world; he highlights those that explore the limits that emerge through such engagement (with an especially intense engagement with Derrida); and he shows how their discoveries can be critically recast within a theological vision. And this choreography itself shares the dynamics that Fiddes attributes to wisdom. His engagement with the world (or at least with some of its most compelling philosophers) sends him deeper into discovery of the dynamics of God’s ways with the world (a reading of the scriptural wisdom literature and a reinterpretation of Christian doctrine); his theological explorations in turn enable and impel his deeper engagement with the philosophers.
Readers may not follow Fiddes in all his doctrinal reinterpretations (divine simplicity, creatio ex nihilo and two-natures Christology all come off rather badly, for instance); they may not be convinced by all the details of his reading of the wisdom literature (especially where he relies on rather dated source-critical claims); they may also wonder whether the book might have better exemplified its own themes had its engagement with the materiality of our late modern world gone beyond an engagement with some of its philosophers. Nevertheless, the overall vision that Fiddes sets out, of a thoroughly participatory and embodied wisdom, is enticing – and it makes a valuable contribution to recent discussion.