Texts in Conversation
The Christian theologian Origen uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for theology and teaching, repeating its description that even a perfect person is nothing without the wisdom that comes from God.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 9:6
Deuterocanon
4 give me wisdom, her who sits by you on your thrones. Don’t reject me from among your servants, 5 because I am your servant and the son of your handmaid, a weak and short-lived man, with little power to understand judgment and laws. 6 For even if a man is perfect among the sons of men, if the wisdom that comes from you is not with him, he will count for nothing. 7 You chose me to be king of your people, and a judge for your sons and daughters. 8 You gave a command to build a sanctuary on your holy mountain, and an altar in the city where you live, a copy of the holy tent which you prepared from the beginning.
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Origen, Contra Celsum 6.13
Against Celsus
Early Christian
According to the foregoing, then, the one kind of wisdom is human, and the other divine. Now the human wisdom is that which is termed by us the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness with God; whereas the divine— being different from the human, because it is divine— comes, through the grace of God who bestows it, to those who have evinced their capacity for receiving it, and especially to those who, from knowing the difference between either kind of wisdom, say, in their prayers to God, Even if one among the sons of men be perfect, while the wisdom is wanting that comes from You, he shall be accounted as nothing. We maintain, indeed, that human wisdom is an exercise for the soul, but that divine wisdom is the end, being also termed the strong meat of the soul by him who has said that strong meat belongs to them that are perfect, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. This opinion, moreover, is truly an ancient one, its antiquity not being referred back, as Celsus thinks, merely to Heraclitus and Plato. For before these individuals lived, the prophets distinguished between the two kinds of wisdom. It is sufficient for the present to quote from the words of David what he says regarding the man who is wise, according to divine wisdom, that he will not see corruption when he beholds wise men dying. Divine wisdom, accordingly, being different from faith, is the first of the so-called charismata of God; and the second after it — in the estimation of those who know how to distinguish such things accurately — is what is called knowledge; and the third— seeing that even the more simple class of men who adhere to the service of God, so far as they can, must be saved — is faith. And therefore Paul says: To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit. And therefore it is no ordinary individuals whom you will find to have participated in the divine wisdom, but the more excellent and distinguished among those who have given in their adherence to Christianity; for it is not to the most ignorant, or servile, or most uninstructed of mankind, that one would discourse upon the topics relating to the divine wisdom.
Date: 248 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Patristic writers cited the work frequently, especially in formulating Christological and trinitarian doctrine. Thus Ignatius applied to Christ language from 7:29–30 about Wisdom, and from 18:14–15 about the logos (Ephesians 18.2–3; Magnesians 8.2). Origen cited Wisdom’s attributes to support the eternal generation of the Son by the Father and the sharing of the Father and Son in the same essence. Augustine used the same passage to argue for the full equality of the persons of the trinity. Augustine also drew often on 9:15–17, according to which the perishable body weighs down the soul and spiritual insight requires the gift of the spirit, to formulate his anthropology; and he saw in the portrayal of the persecuted righteous one in 2:12–20 a prediction of Christ’s passion. Ambrose, among others, found a foreshadowing of the crucifixion in the reference to the saving wood of Noah’s ark: “Blessed is the wood by which righteousness comes” ..."
Randall D. Chesnutt, “Wisdom of Solomon,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Wisdom Literature, ed. Samuel L. Adams and Matthew Goff (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 104–121.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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