Does Proverbs 8:22 Prove the Son is Created?

An Analysis of Proverbs 8:22 and 8:25 with the Fathers

Proverbs 8:22 The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works.

From the time of the Arian controversy to today, some people in response to Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament use this verse as a gotcha to argue that the Old Testament is prophesying that the Messiah was created. Aside from the fact that this argument really only works for Jehovah’s Witnesses, this does seem like a difficult passage for Christians. After all, the plain reading says that the Son was made in the beginning.

St. Gregory the Theologian on his 30th Oration notes that there are people who argued that this in fact referred to a created wisdom, and not Divine Wisdom. But he is willing to bite the bullet and say that this does in fact refer to the Son. The “beginning of his ways for his works” for St. Gregory refers to the incarnation and the human nature of Christ, and so what is made, that is, created by God, is the human nature of Christ which is the beginning for His incarnation and salvific mission to save humanity. Shocking to the ears of Monophysites, what St. Gregory says next is quite crucial:

“Whatever we find joined with a cause we are to refer to the Manhood, but all that is absolute and unoriginate we are to reckon to the account of His Godhead.”

Thus, for St. Gregory the Theologian Proverbs 8:22 refers to His humanity. Now what is usually ignored in this discussion is Proverbs 8:25 which says:

before the mountains were settled, and before all hills, he begets me.

Using the principle outlined by St. Gregory the Theologian we can be certain that this is referring to the eternal generation of the Son, since God beget the Son “before the mountains were settled, and before all hills” that is, before creation as St. Hilary of Poitiers argues in on the Holy Trinity, Book 12. In reality, the bible quote that is supposed to be a slam dunk against Christians was in fact an even stronger prophecy of the incarnation, since Christ’s incarnation is the beginning of God’s salvific work to save mankind and that He was begotten before creation.