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The Christian theologian Augustine uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for teaching and theology, repeating its description of divine wisdom as the power that orders and sustains creation.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 8:1
Deuterocanon
1 But she reaches from one end to the other with full strength, and orders all things well. 2 I loved her and sought her from my youth. I sought to take her for my bride. I became enamoured by her beauty. 3 She glorifies her noble birth by living with God. The Sovereign Lord of all loves her. 4 For she is initiated into the knowledge of God, and she chooses his works. 5 But if riches are a desired possession in life, what is richer than wisdom, which makes all things?
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Augustine, City of God 12.25
On the City of God Against the Pagans
Early Christian
For the same divine and, so to speak, creative energy, which cannot be made, but makes, and which gave to the earth and sky their roundness — this same divine, effective, and creative energy gave their roundness to the eye and to the apple; and the other natural objects which we anywhere see, received also their form, not from outside, but from the secret and profound might of the Creator, who said, “Do I not fill heaven and earth?” Jeremiah 23:24 and whose wisdom it is that “reaches from one end to another mightily; and she orders all things sweetly.” Therefore I do not know what kind of aid the angels, themselves created first, gave to the Creator in making other things. I cannot ascribe to them what perhaps they cannot do, nor ought I to deny them the ability they have.
Date: 426 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... In affirming the canonicity of the two ‘Solomonic’ books not written by Solomon, Augustine says of Wisdom and Sirach “the Church especially in the West has accepted them as authoritative from antiquity”; City of God 17.20). A survey of patristic comments on the liturgical use of what Rufinus called the ecclesiastical books bears out Augustine’s geographical distinction. Eastern sources restrict the liturgical use of documents to the books of the Jewish canon. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catechesis 4.36–38) emphatically asserts that only the 22 books accepted by the Jews find a place in Christian liturgy, and he advises catechumens to maintain this standard in their private reading. Athanasius (Festal Letters 39) assigns the ecclesiastical books the role of elementary instruction in the faith, as do the Apostolic Canons (canon 85); this position seems to discount their use in the liturgy. The Council of Laodicea is more explicit; in the same context in which it limits the OT canon to 22 books ... However, the matter stood differently among Latin writers: Jerome, Rufinus, and Augustine all affirm that the ecclesiastical books are used in the corporate worship of the Church ... if the Church reads a ‘scriptural’ book, it is a canonical book. Similarly, Augustine responds to the objection of some that the Book of Wisdom is not canonical by arguing that its employment in the liturgy implies its divine authority ..."
Edmon L. Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory: Canon, Language, Text, VCSup 114 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 54–55.
* 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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