"Who gave you this authority?"
The Only-begotten, the absolute Wisdom of God is the creator and maker of all things. “In wisdom you made all things”, as one of the Psalms says... As our human word is the image of the Son of God considered as Word (cf. Jn 1,1), so too the wisdom which is impressed in us is an image of the same Son considered as Wisdom. In this wisdom we have the power of knowledge and thought, and we become capable of receiving the creative Wisdom; and through this we are enabled to know its Father. As scripture says: “He who has the Son has the Father also” (1Jn 2,23), and again: “He who receives me receives him who sent me” (Mt 10,40)...
“But since, in the wisdom of God, as we have explained, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe” (1Cor 1,21). God no longer wanted, as in former times, to be known through the image and shadow of wisdom that exists In created things. He made the true Wisdom itself take flesh, and become man, and suffer the death of the cross, so that for the future all who believe might be saved by faith in him.
The Wisdom of God formerly revealed itself through its own image impressed on created things... and through itself revealed its own Father. It is the same Wisdom of God which later, being the Word, “became flesh” as Saint John says (1,14), and after “destroying death” (1Cor 15,26) and saving our race revealed himself still more fully and, through himself, his Father. Which caused him to say: “Grant that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17,3). Hence the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of him. The knowledge of Father through Son and of Son from Father is one and the same. The Father rejoices in him, and with the same joy the Son delights in the Father. “It was I in whom he rejoiced,” he says, “every day I took delight in his presence” (Prv 8,30).