Quodvultdeus

In his own words on Wisdom of Solomon

• Wisdom of Solomon 2:17

  Joseph is sent by his father to visit his brothers and the sheep. Our Joseph, as well, Christ the Lord, says, "I have been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." It is said, "The brothers hated Joseph because of his dreams." And our Joseph, too—Christ—cried out concerning his brothers the Jews, "They hated me without reason." Seeing Joseph, the brothers said, "Here comes the dreamer. Come, let us kill him, and see what becomes of his dreams." The godless, as Solomon says, said about our Joseph, "Come, let us kill the righteous one, because he is displeasing to us." And they continue, "He claims to possess knowledge of God and declares himself a son of God. Let's see if his words are true, and let's find out what will happen in the end." He confirms what is in the Gospel, when he says about the son sent to the vineyard workers, "This is the heir. Come, let us kill him, and the inheritance will be ours." After seizing Joseph, the brothers stripped him of his many-colored tunic and threw him in a ditch. Our Joseph, by the mouth of the prophet, says the same of his passion: "They threw me in the outer ditch, in darkness and the shadow of death." By the Gospel's authority we are told how he was stripped of his tunic, which was woven from top to bottom and which the soldiers refused to divide among themselves, thus confirming the unity of the church. Heretics are excluded from this casting of lots, because it was to be that only one would possess it, that is, unity. "Taking," Scripture says, "a kid from the goats, Joseph's brothers dipped the tunic in its blood" and took it to their father, falsely saying that a wild beast had torn him to pieces.

  THE BOOK OF PROMISES AND PREDICTIONS OF GOD 1:26.36-37

• Wisdom of Solomon 6:7

  The prophet Isaiah says, "Then the wolf and the lamb will pasture together. The leopard will lie down with the kid. The ox, the lion and the lamb will eat hay together. And a little child will guide them." And David says, "See, the kings of the earth have assembled and joined together. They saw and were amazed." And again he says, "Who is like the Lord our God, who lives on high and looks down on earthly things? Who raises the indigent from the earth and lifts the poor from the dust, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people?" And also Solomon says, "He has made the small and the great, and he cares for all alike." And he says further, "Wisdom has built her house, with seven pillars as its foundation. She has sacrificed her victims, prepared her wine in its cup and spread her table. She has sent out her servants, calling out and saying, 'Come, eat my bread and drink the wine that I have prepared for you.' " The Lord confirms this in the Gospel, with the parable of the banquet prepared by the powerful rich man for his son. "He sent his servants to tell those who had been invited to come, and they excused themselves. One said, 'I have bought a field and I am going to see it, please excuse me.' Another said, 'I have bought five pairs of oxen.' And another, 'I have just taken a wife.' " In these three excuses we have "the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes and worldly show," which detained the Jews and kept them from coming to Christ's table, to which they had been invited. "Go," says the father, "into the plazas and the streets and bring to me those whom you find." The pagans were thus brought in. "There is still room," says the servant. The father responds, "Go along the hedgerows and the byways, and force those you find to come in." Among these are the rich, kings and certain heretics who have left the Lord's flock, who are constrained to come by him who says, "No one can come to me if the Father who sent me does not draw him." And to those who come he says, "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day." The apostle Paul shows who these are when he says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave nor free person, nor man nor woman. All of you, in fact, are one person in Christ Jesus." The verses of the Sibyl, which we cited above, confirm this: "I will lower the hills and raise the valleys from their depths. There will no longer be anything sublime or exalted among what is human." Maro, in agreement with the Sibyl, says, "Nor will the herds fear the great lions."

  THE BOOK OF PROMISES AND PREDICTIONS OF GOD 3:39.46

• Wisdom of Solomon 6:24

  Having arrived at Jerusalem, Ezra, inflamed with zeal for the Law, decided first of all to purify the people of their vices, since, as the prophet said, "A wise king is the salvation of his people." Having found the book of Moses, he showed, among other things, that the wrath of God was kindled against the people because they had married foreign wives against God's commandment. With severity, which was his strength, he convinced them to send back their wives and their children. No longer held back by carnal delights and wanting to propitiate God, they did what was commanded of them without hesitation. In this way they symbolized the Christian people, whom the first among all priests admonishes, "If anyone leaves house, fields, wife or children because of my name, he will be repaid many times over here and will gain eternal life."

  THE BOOK OF PROMISES AND PREDICTIONS OF GOD 2:37.83

• Wisdom of Solomon 7:24

  For other heretics [the Arians], Christ, who is the very way by which one goes to the Father, is not equal to the Father according to his divinity. And even if he says, "I and the Father are one," they say, "If he was sent by the Father, he is inferior. The one who sends is greater than the one who is sent." This is a human argument, not a divine testimony. O heretic, the Trinity's way of doing things is different from yours, and you do not understand it, because you understand it carnally. Your heart is not pure, even regarding God. In fact, Christ is called "sent" in that he assumed human existence. As God, he is equal to the Father. Where did the Father send the Son that he himself would not be, together with him? Where did the Son go, that he would not be with the Father, as he says, "I am in the Father and the Father in me," and, "Philip, one who has seen me has seen the Father." He is the one who says through the prophet, "I fill heaven and earth," and of whom Solomon says, "He reaches from one end of the earth to the other with power, governing all things well. By his purity he pervades and penetrates all things." But you, heretic, say that the one who sends is greater and the one who is sent less, because you think in terms of intervals of time. But you err greatly by placing within time the one who made time. If you profess that the Father is God and that the Son is God and believe that the Father and the Son are eternal, do not consider the Son inferior because he made you, just because he made himself inferior to redeem you. But, you reply, he said, "The Father is greater than I." If you mean this phrase regarding the humanity he assumed, you err no longer. He says, "The Father is greater than I" in the same way that the prophet said of him, "You have made him a little less than the angels." Tell me, under what aspect do you consider him to be inferior? Power? "The Father judges no one, only the Son." Works? "Everything was made through the Son." If you believe, regarding time, that because you are older than your son, it is like this with God and his Son—may God keep the faithful from hearing these words! It is unworthy to believe such things of God. If in fact the Son is the Word according to the divinity of God, as John the Evangelist says, "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God," could there have been a time when the Father was without the Word, or was there a beginning before the beginning itself, given that the Son said that he was the beginning? Indeed, when the Jews asked him, "Who are you?" he replied, "The beginning." Thus what is written in Genesis, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," refers to the Son, who is the beginning. So, the Father is always God and the Son is always God, because the former has never not been Father and the latter has never not been Son. The Father did not diminish himself in generating the Son but generated from himself another like him, so that he would remain entirely in him. The Holy Spirit is not separated out as though he were a portion of that from which he proceeds; rather he is complete from another who is himself complete. And by proceeding from him, the Spirit does not diminish him, nor by being united to him does the Spirit make him any greater. And these three are one God, of whom the prophet says, "You are the only great God."

  ON THE NEW SONG 7:1-17

• Wisdom of Solomon 10:14

  Joseph is put in prison. Our Joseph, the Christ, as Isaiah says, "was numbered among the wicked." The innocent man is led among the guilty by the wisdom of God, which "descended with him," as it was written, "into the pit and did not abandon him in chains." Our Joseph, Christ, exclaims, "I have become like a man without strength, free among the dead." What follows—that is, that the chief jailer saw how full of grace Joseph was and gave all of the keys and all oversight into his hands13—had to happen in the sense that, to him before whom the heavens bowed down in the figures of the sun, the stars and the moon, and the earth in the figure of the sheaves, would also submit the subterranean creatures of the prison, so that before our Joseph, Christ, "every knee would bow, of heavenly beings, of earthly beings and of those under the earth." Nor do I find it incompatible with the mystery of our Lord's passion that two of Pharaoh's eunuchs were thrown into prison with him, so that in a certain sense the number of the three crucified would be fulfilled. Our Joseph, Christ, revealing the mysteries, had to punish the one with a merited punishment and save the other by a gratuitous grace. These sacred acts were done then under the veil of allegory, so that the full revelation would be reserved to us.

  THE BOOK OF PROMISES AND PREDICTIONS OF GOD 1:28.40

• Wisdom of Solomon 10:17

  God gives to Moses the following instructions for the celebration of the Passover—that is, of that passage that represents all of the action of our faith and the mystery of the passion of the Lord. The Jews were to ask the Egyptians for gold and silver objects and clothing and, carrying them away, to despoil the Egyptians of what they had given them under the devastating shock of the loss of the firstborn. Fearing also for themselves, the Egyptians sent the Jews away with all they had given them, so that "to the just," as the prophet says, would be restored "the reward of their labors." Considering the two cities they built for the Egyptians, the spoils the Jews carried away in no way constitute a theft but only the restitution of what was owed them. In fact, this passage had a mystical sense. According to the divine command, they must slay an unblemished year-old lamb under the tent, bathing the doorposts of the house with its blood. None of its bones are to be broken. It must be eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, with loins girded, in all haste. Nothing must be left for the next day. The authority of the Gospel tells how all of these instructions, which had a symbolic sense, are to be fulfilled. It commands us to eat the flesh of lambs until that day that will have no sunset—that is, until the resurrection—"not with the old yeast but with the unleavened bread of purity and truth." We are to eat after marking with his blood the doorposts of those on whose foreheads his cross will shine, eating "with bitter herbs," it says, that is, with those who pass a bitter life in grief. But these latter are blessed, because they will be consoled.

  THE BOOK OF PROMISES AND PREDICTIONS OF GOD 1:37.53