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The Glory of Kings: A Festschrift for James B. Jordan
Fyodor Dostoevsky
(Christian Encounters Series)
Athanasius
(Foundations of Theological Exegesis and Christian Spirituality)
The Four: A Survey of the Gospels
Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom
From Behind the Veil: The Epistles of John
Deep Exegesis:The Mystery of Reading Scripture
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
Solomon pursued knowledge and wisdom, and concluded that the pursuit was no more than vapor and shepherding wind, and besides the more he knew the more pain and grief he suffered (1:17-18). There is so much in this wispy world that we cannot know:
Whether the result of our works will be universal love or universal hatred (9:1).
The time of our death (9:12).
Coming misfortunes (11:2).
The path of the wind, the knitting of bones in a woman’s womb, the deeds of God (11:5-6).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 9:41 am
Solomon captures the aporia of beginnings in Ecclesiastes 3:15: “That which is has been already, and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by.” This not only restates “there is nothing new under the sun” but also suggests that the search for an origin “uncorrupted” by a surplus is elusive, shrouded in the mist.
A human life begins when sperm unites with egg. But this human life would not begun unless the man whose sperm it is met the woman who contributes the egg. So even the beginning of a human life is not the beginning. And when we push back and back, we come finally to an infinite regress, the decree of an infinite God.
This too is vapor and shepherding wind.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 2, 2006 at 1:25 pm
INTRODUCTION
Solomon begins Ecclesiastes talking about the regularities of the natural world (1:3-11), and in chapter 3 turns to the regular rhythms of human life (3:1-8).
THE TEXT
“To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted. . . .” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-22).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 2, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Provan
Not: Go with the flow. But: Go with the vapor. You can’t hold what you’ve got anyway, so beat the vapor to the punch and let it go before it slips away. As Augustine knew, life one of those goods that can be possessed only when we are dispossessed.
Solomon implies the world is built to require us to live by faith; he also implies that the world is constructed to encourage us to live by gift, self-gift. Chesterton knew this: Whoever clings to life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life shall find it, Chesterton said, is not some bit of paradoxical mysticism, but purest common sense. It’s the way the world works.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 2, 2006 at 11:00 am
Despite the problems with his arguments about authorship, Provan
1) One might characterize modernism as the systematic effort to expunge the reality of the vaporousness (fleetingness, elusiveness) of human thought and life. Modernism is one massive experiment in shepherding wind; think of the political/economic vanities of communism. That experiment collapsed from within the modern world, especially from within modern science; quantum mechanics is the revenge of the vapor. So is modern astronomy; by demonstrating the vastness of space, it shows that humanity is indeed but a drop in the bucket.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, January 2, 2006 at 10:36 am
God is unchanging. The calendar changes, but Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. We have trouble thinking about the same thing for ten minutes, but “the Glory of Israel . . . is not a man that He should change His mind.” Our plans shift rapidly from one thing to another, but “The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation.”
Human beings, unlike God, are utterly dependent creatures, created from nothing, and therefore constantly changing. You are not intellectually or spiritually the same person you were last year, or yesterday. You don’t even stay physically the same from day to day. Flakes of your skin are always coming off, so that you get a brand new skin about every 30 days.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 1, 2006 at 10:25 am
The style industry exists to keep producing new styles, to keep everyone thinking that they have to buy a new wardrobe each year to keep up, to bring shame to everyone uncool enough to wear last season’s colors.
A celebrity, someone once said, is a person well known for being well known. But the half-life of fame is extremely short, and to keep yourself in the public eye you have to be willing to make yourself over again and again in order to keep ahead of the game.
Styles live, and styles die. Celebrities sit on top of the world for a week, but then are forgotten, and show up, pathetically attempting to regain a bit of lost notoriety by going a few rounds on Celebrity Boxing.
This too is vapor and shepherding wind.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 1, 2006 at 9:53 am
Ecclesiastes 2:24-25: There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him?
Many Christians have concluded that Ecclesiastes is an odd book that teaches a form of cynicism that contradicts most of the Bible. As we saw in the sermon this morning, this partly arises from mistranslations, which say that Solomon declares the whole world to be meaningless vanity.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Sunday, January 1, 2006 at 9:08 am
Iain Provan
Could Solomon not have spent a bit of time wondering what the simple folk do? (Lerner and Loewe’s Arthur did!) Could Solomon not have attempted to step imaginatively down from his throne to see things from the viewpoint of his subjects? Oh no, not the wisest man in the world.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, December 31, 2005 at 11:04 am
More thoughts on Ecclesiastes, stealing, as always, from James Jordan.
The image of “shepherding wind” has a particular application to the king, who is the shepherd of flock of Israel. Solomon recognizes that ruling a kingdom is like trying to shepherd wind, which is of course impossible for human beings. Solomon shepherded a whole nation, and specifically shepherded the workmen on the temple, and came to the insight that this is beyond him.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, December 31, 2005 at 10:27 am
Much of the following is borrowed from James Jordan’s lectures on Ecclesiastes given at the 2005 Biblical Horizons Summer Conference.
INTRODUCTION
Life in the twenty-first century is frantic and ever-changing. Today’s styles quickly become passé, old skills are soon useless, nothing holds still long enough to harden into habit. Ecclesiastes offers wisdom for living faithfully and joyfully in this kind of world.
THE TEXT
“I said in my heart, ‘Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure’; but surely, this also was vanity. I said of laughter—’Madness!’; and of mirth, ‘What does it accomplish?’ I searched in my heart how to gratify my flesh with wine, while guiding my heart with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the sons of men to do under heaven all the days of their lives. . . .” (Ecclesiastes 2:1-26).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 at 10:18 am
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon offers intriguing, somewhat paradoxical reflections on the problems of change and permanence. On the one hand, the reality that provokes his opening lament that the world is “vapor” is the apparently unchanging permanence: The sun rises and sets day after day, the rivers flow into the seas but the seas never change, the wind goes round and round and round (1:3-11). There is nothing new under the sun (1:10). At the same time, Ecclesiastes about the vapor of life, the fact that nothing we accomplish remains. Our projects fade, our labor counts for nothing, and then we die. Vapor is notorious impermanent, and Solomon says that “all is vapor” (1:2).
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 at 10:09 am
Iain Provan suggests the following interpretation of Ecclesiastes 8:12-13: “The clear implication of his thinking must be that there is some ‘time’ beyond the ‘times’ of life in which wrongs can be righted and imbalanced corrected; yet as we have seen Qohelet is agnostic about life after death (3:18-21). . . . So how is justice to be done? Qohelet never explains himself. He simply expresses his confidence in the moral nature of the universe while noting various data that bring this into apparent question. Unable to resolve the puzzle himself, he then characteristically advocates that the reader get on with life and not worry too much about the details, which lie with God.”
“Agnostic” is not an accurate description; it was clear from the time of Abraham that Yahweh of Israel is a God brings life from death. But, Provan is correct that Solomon does not give any clear indication of the basis for his confidence in the justice of God. Ecclesiastes thus raises the question that Paul answers is Romans, the question of God’s righteousness. Even with the gospel, we are still often left with Solomon, puzzling over the prosperity of the wicked and trusting that God will resolve things even when we cannot see how they can be resolved. But the gospel is a demonstration of God’s determination to do justice in the world.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, June 28, 2004 at 1:26 pm
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeatedly exhorts his readers to “eat, drink, and rejoice” as a response to the vaporousness of life”
“There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God” (2:24).
“I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one?s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor ?Eit is the gift of God” (3:12-13).
“Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one?s labor in which he toils under the sun during the years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward” (5:18).
Whiles these passages no doubt have a wider reference, the first reference is to the temple worship. “Eat, drink, and rejoice” is repeatedly used to describe what Israel does at the sanctuary (esp. in Deut 12; 14-16). Given that Solomon is the one writing, the temple would doubtless be prominent in his thinking, and would be see as the vantage point from which life could be assessed rightly (as in Psalm 37).
This has several implications: First, when we recognize that life is vapor, our response should be worship ?Enot merely hedonism. Second, insofar as these passages have wider reference to a festive lifestyle, they still center on the festivity of the temple. Temple worship is the place where we learn festivity, where we are disciplined and trained in festivity.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, March 3, 2004 at 1:08 pm
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