Article:

Sapience: The Many Dimensions of Traditional Wisdom

At its heart Christianity is the expression of traditional wisdom as it comes to us through the visionary seeing and apocalyptic ministry of Jesus. All that was expressed through him was rooted in a wisdom tradition ancient in origin and rich with the sacred experiences of the peoples of the Middle East. Jesus brought that wisdom to full flower in a fresh, living way, and this becomes the basis of our common life today as his followers and students.

The Latin word sapience stands, then, for the inner tradition of sacred life on earth as a form of seeing into the depths of Reality. Sapiential knowledge is the goal and aim of authentic religion. Each religious tradition is a particular and unique perspective on the realm of the sacred which is the source for its symbolic expression. The system of symbols particular to each religious tradition have the ability (if used correctly) to take us beyond the surface of the world to its interior depths. This inner tradition, this form of knowing we call wisdom. It is this that Jesus saw and used as a quintessential wisdom teacher.

Wisdom, therefore, is a way of seeing from the inside out as well as along the vertical axis whose coordinates are immanence and transcendence. Wisdom goes to the heart (the interior) and sees the world from that perspective and not simply from its surface structures. Wisdom sees the immanent relationship of the divine Presence to the being and consciousness of the world. But it also sees the transcendent Source of the world, beyond being and consciousness and rooted in the Ultimate Reality of God. Like a pole, therefore, wisdom becomes a magnetic force that gives the human world around it grounding and stability.

Ranging along the vertical axis of wisdom, and grounding us in Ultimate Reality, are four orders of wisdom which inform us in the human world. The first is personal wisdom, that is the unique experience of each human being as he or she has passed through the world absorbing its lessons as wisdom teaching. The second is practical wisdom, a treasury from the centuries of living that the inhabitants of the world have absorbed from life (along the horizontal axis) and have passed on to later generations about life itself as a practical matter (getting through life with integrity and authenticity). This treasury is often transmitted through aphorism, story and parable. The third level is something that must be called spiritual wisdom because its bounty expresses the inner dimensions of human life as we are reoriented to the vertical axis. Principles of spiritual life and practice, aspects of the struggle to grow and mature in spirit, insights into the journey of return, and knowledge of the inner secrets of metamorphosis are all encoded into this sacred body of wisdom through figuration and instruction. Finally, sapiential knowledge is expressed in a fourth dimension as divine wisdom meaning that it is directly transmitted to us from the contemplative seeing as a form of revelation. Such knowledge gives human beings direct access to the metaphysical dimensions of the sources of the cosmos, to sacred anthropology, the outcome and destiny of temporal experience, and to the nature of the divine Reality itself.

These many dimensions of wisdom are the great treasure which, as Jesus said, lie hidden in the field of human existence. We are meant to search for and find the treasure. To that end we have been divine assistance in this temporal school.

Lynn C. Bauman