What is the defintion of wisdom and prudence?

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What is the definition of wisdom and prudence? I went to an evangelical club yesterday and they said it was about mainly following God’s designs. Idk I cannot remember too well. I mainly think it is about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid, and prudence would be sorta putting that into action. While wisdom would be a non active approach.
 
Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.

(from the CCC)

Wisdom is a bit more complicated and can can have more than one definition.

Just one definition, mainly philosophical, is that wisdom is a knowledge of first or highest causes.

I will let others delineate the other definitions for wisdom. I would say there perhaps at least two more primary ways for defining it.
 
This is slightly off topic, but had to share :D:

“Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.”

― Miles Kington
 
SS: “Let me introduce you to St. Thomas Aquinas. Tom, This is ILoveJesus1234.”

TA: “Hello there.”

SS: “Tom, what is the difference between Wisdom and Prudence?”

TA: "Well, as I have written in my little book Summa Theologica, I believe that “Wisdom,” “knowledge” and “understanding” are about necessary things, whereas “prudence” is about contingent things, being concerned with “things done,” that is, with things that have their being in the doer himself.

“Wisdom considers the absolutely highest cause: so that the consideration of the highest cause in any particular genus belongs to wisdom in that genus. Now in the genus of human acts the highest cause is the common end of all human life, and it is this end that prudence intends.”

SS: “Gee, thanks, Tom!”
 
One definition of Wisdom came to me:

Wisdom is to love what God loves; it is also a cherishing of the things of God.

Is can also be thought of as "a spiritual gift which enables one to know the purpose and plan of God; one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

(quotation from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, glossary)
 
***Wisdom is the perfection of faith.

As Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., notes in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, “Where faith is a simple knowledge of the articles of Christian belief, wisdom goes on to a certain divine penetration of the truths themselves.”

The better we understand those truths, the more we value them properly.

Thus wisdom, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes, “by detaching us from the world, makes us relish and love only the things of heaven.”

Through wisdom, we judge the things of the world in light of the highest end of man—the contemplation of God.***

courtesy of Scott Richert @ about religion
catholicism.about.com/od/beliefsteachings/p/Understanding.htm
 
So in short what is the definition of wisdom and prudence, I thought that all this time it meant a non-active(wisdom) way and active(prudence) way we can know about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.
 
That is a pretty good definition for both in a nutshell. 🙂

The Baltimore Catechism might have a short and sweet definition too for you, but I have never owned one, so can’t help you there.

Don’t forget to try to look at things on a deeper level though, and you’ll be the better for it!
 
One more definition that came to me more or less from memory:

*Wisdom is seeing the things, persons, events, and situations of this life as God sees them.
*
 
Maybe it is this definition, but also expands on other cases included in the bible. So maybe that is an expansion to it, I don’t know.
 
Ilovejesus1234 said:
So in short what is the definition of wisdom and prudence, I thought that all this time it meant a non-active(wisdom) way and active(prudence) way we can know about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.
Click to expand...
I think you pretty much have it…

Example: I am wise to know God exists. I am prudent to follow his commands. But the act of following his commands in not prudence, prudence is only the act of knowledge that leads to the action.
 
So what is the conclusion on this, is it correspond to the definition on it being about " knowing the good to achieve and the evil to avoid"
 
If you really want to have a good cry, go ask a random philosophy professor.

:bigyikes:
 
You seem to never be satisfied with answers given to you ILJ, like on the thread about sex outside of marriage.

Just saying.
 
I think you’re definition is correct.

Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do.

Prudence is using that wisdom to do something, also called “practical wisdom”.

As an example, one could say “It is a good idea to save money for the future.” That is Wisdom.

Someone who says “I am going to open a savings account,” is prudent, because he uses the idea of saving money, but then takes it a step further by putting the theory into practice.
 
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