The Hierarchy of Wisdom

¹ Let us seek the dignity of knowledge in the archetype or first platform, as the attributes and acts of God.

We call this wisdom or sapience instead of learning because all learning is knowledge acquired, yet all knowledge in God is original.

² In creation, we see a double emanation of virtue from God:

1. One refers more properly to power

This subsists as matter

2. The other refers to wisdom

This disposes the beauty of the form.*

Creation was made from the confused mass and matter of heaven and earth in a moment. The order and disposition of that chaos or mass was the work of 6 days.

This difference was between the works of power and the works of wisdom.

“Let there be heaven and earth” has a style of law, decree, or counsel.

God making heaven and earth has the style of a manufacture.

³ Next to God in order are the spirits.

1. The first place is given to the angels of love called seraphim
2. The second is given to the angels of light called cherubim
3. The third are angels of power and ministry

The angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination.

⁴ After the spirits and intellectual forms come the sensible and material forms.

The first form created was light. This creates a relation* and correspondence between nature and corporal things to knowledge in spirits and incorporal things.

⁵ So in the distribution of days we see the day wherein God rested and contemplated His own works.

⁶ After the creation was finished, man was placed in the garden to work as contemplation of his creation.

The goal of work is for exercise and experiment, not for necessity.

Back then, creatures were obedient.

Man’s employment must have been a matter of delight in the experiment, and not matter of labour for the use.

The tasks performed in Paradise were 2 summary parts of knowledge:

1. The view of creatures
2. The imposition of names

The knowledge which induced the fall was the moral knowledge of good and evil.

God’s commandments or prohibitions were not the originals of good and evil. Instead, good and evil had other beginnings.

Man aspired to know these, leading to the total defection from God and total dependence on himself.

⁷ The fall of man led to 2 states:

1. The contemplative state
2. The active state

This was seen in Abel and Cain, and in the two most primitive trades of life:

• the shepherd
  • This is the contemplative life
• the husbandman
  • God’s favour went to the shepherd, not to the tiller of the ground.

⁸ In the age after the flood, the first great judgment of God on the ambition of man was the confusion of tongues. This stopped the open trade and intercourse of learning and knowledge.