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The Christian theologian Athanasius uses the Wisdom of Solomon as an authoritative source for theology when he uses its description of wisdom as a companion to God to support trinitarian theology and the divinity of the Son.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Wisdom of Solomon 7:25
Deuterocanon
23 beneficent, loving toward man, steadfast, sure, free from care, all-powerful, all-surveying, and penetrating through all spirits that are quick to understand, pure, most subtle. 24 For wisdom is more mobile than any motion. Yes, she pervades and penetrates all things by reason of her purity. 25 For she is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Therefore nothing defiled can find entrance into her. 26 For she is a reflection of everlasting light, an unspotted mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness. 27 Although she is one, she has power to do all things. Remaining in herself, she renews all things. From generation to generation passing into holy souls, she makes friends of God and prophets.
Athanasius, On the Opinion of Dionysius 9:1
De Sententia Dionysii
Early Christian
And Dionysius, accordingly, did as he had learned from the Apostles. For as the heresy of Sabellius was creeping in, he was forced, as I said before, to write the letter in question, and to hurl at them what is said of the Savior with reference to His humanity and His humiliation, so as to stop them, by means of His human attributes, from saying that the Father was a son, and so to make the teaching about the Godhead of the Son easier for them, when in his other letters he calls Him from the Scriptures the word, wisdom, power, breath, and brightness of the Father. For example, in the letters written in his defense, speaking as I have described, he grows bold in the faith and in devotion to Christ. So just as the Apostles are not to be accused because of their human language about the Lord — since the Lord has been made man — but are all the more worthy of admiration for their wise reserve and timely teaching, so Dionysius is no Arian because of his letter to Euphranor and Ammonius against Sabellius.
Date: 387-400 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Origen is clear that his understanding of eternity here is of that which is beyond time, completely outside of its constraints. In consideration of a passage from Wisdom of Solomon 7:25-26, which describes wisdom as an "emanation of the clear glory of the almighty,” Origen says that God cannot be called almighty "if there are none over whom he can exercise his power. Accordingly, to prove that God is almighty [παντοκράτωρ] we must assume the existence of the universe ... With the abandonment of Origen’s doctrine of the pre-existence of souls / creation, and with the use of Methodius’s argument for the distinction between being / will and Creator / creature, the stage was now set for Athanasius (ca. 296-373) to respond to Arius and provide the first ever “explicit and systematic analysis” of the concept of God’s Fatherhood and his relation to the Son. ..."
Stevenson, Austin
The Eternal Generation of the Son: The Christological Significance for Origen and Nicaea
(pp. 13-22) CRUX: Fall 2015/Vol. 51/ No. 3, 2015
* 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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