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The Christian theologian Athanasius uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source of theology when teaching how nature reveals the creator, demonstrating how this Jewish wisdom text influenced early Christian tradition.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 13:5
Deuterocanon
1 For truly all men who had no perception of God were foolish by nature, and didn’t gain power to know him who exists from the good things that are seen. They didn’t recognize the architect from his works. 2 But they thought that either fire, or wind, or swift air, or circling stars, or raging water, or luminaries of heaven were gods that rule the world. 3 If it was through delight in their beauty that they took them to be gods, let them know how much better their Sovereign Lord is than these, for the first author of beauty created them. 4 But if it was through astonishment at their power and influence, then let them understand from them how much more powerful he who formed them is. 5 For from the greatness of the beauty of created things, mankind forms the corresponding perception of their Maker. 6 But yet for these men there is but small blame, for they too perhaps go astray while they are seeking God and desiring to find him.
Date: 50 BCE – 50 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
Athanasius, Against the Heathen 44:3
Early Christian
For as by His own providence bodies grow and the rational soul moves, and possesses life and thought, and this requires little proof, for we see what takes place — so again the same Word of God with one simple nod by His own power moves and holds together both the visible universe and the invisible powers, allotting to each its proper function, so that the divine powers move in a diviner way, while visible things move as they are seen to do. But Himself being over all, both Governor and King and organising power, He does all for the glory and knowledge of His own Father, so that almost by the very works that He brings to pass He teaches us and says, By the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the maker of them is seen.
Date: 335 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... For many Christian authorities the criterion for a book’s inclusion in the canon depended not on the language of composition, but on whether it was normative and authoritative for doctrine and public reading. Yet books that fell outside this category could still be canonical at a lower level, and used for private reading among Christians (compare Tertullian, Cult. fem. 1.3: Gallagher 2012: 20–1), and so were certainly not banned or ignored. Even Athanasius of Alexandria, whose festal letter of 367 ce is often held to demarcate a Christian canon, notes that though certain books are not canonical (οὐ κανονιζόμενα μέν), they were authorized by tradition (τετυπωμένα δὲ παρὰ τῶν πατέρων) for reading to recent converts. For Athanasius these works included Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Judith, Tobit, and also Esther, while with most other authorities he included both Esdras A and B in the Old Testament canon ..."
Alison G. Salvesen, “Deuterocanonical and Apocryphal Books,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Septuagint, ed. Alison Salvesen and T. M. Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 385–402.
* 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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