Kreeft - Three philosophies of life: Ecclesiastes: life as vanity, Job: life as suffering, Song of Songs: life as love

THREE PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE

PETER KREEFT

Three Philosophies of Life

Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity
Job: Life as Suffering
Song of Songs: Life as Love

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

for John Mallon

who knows

Cover by Riz Boncan Marsella

1989 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-262-0
Library of Congress catalogue number 89-84054
Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Inexhaustibility of Wisdom Literature

I have been a philosopher for all of my adult life, and the three most profound books of philosophy that I have ever read are Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs. In fact, the book that first made me a philosopher, at about age fifteen, was Ecclesiastes.

Books of philosophy can be classified in many ways: ancient versus modern, Eastern versus Western, optimistic versus pessimistic, theistic versus atheistic, rationalistic versus irrationalistic, monistic versus pluralistic, and many others. But the most important distinction of all, says Gabriel Marcel, is between the full and the empty, the solid and the shallow, the profound and the trivial. When you have read all the books in all the libraries of the world, when you have accompanied all the worlds sages on all their journeys into wisdom, you will not have found three more profound books than Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs.

These three books are literally inexhaustible. They brim with a mysterious power of renewal. I continually find new nourishment in rereading them, and I never tire of teaching them. They quintessentially exemplify my definition of a classic. A classic is like a cow: it gives fresh milk every morning. A classic is a book that rewards endlessly repeated rereading. A classic is like the morning, like nature herself: ever young, ever renewing. No, not even like nature, for she, like us, is doomed to die. Only God is ever young, and only the Book he inspired never grows old.

When God wanted to inspire some philosophy, why would he inspire anything but the best? But the best is not necessarily the most sophisticated. Plato says, in the Ion , that the gods deliberately chose the poorest poets to inspire the greatest poems so that the glory would be theirs, not mans. It is exactly what Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians. And we see this principle at work throughout the Bible: the striking contrast between the primitiveness of the poet and the profundity of the poem, between the smallness of the singer and the greatness of the song, between the absence of humanys,istication and the presence of divine sophia , divine wisdom. Something is always breaking through the words, something you can never fully grasp but also never fully miss if only you stand there with uncovered soul. Stand in the divine rain, and seeds of wisdom will grow in your soul.

Three Philosophies of Life

There are ultimately only three philosophies of life, and each one is represented by one of the following books of the Bible:

1. Life as vanity; Ecclesiastes

2. Life as suffering: Job

3. Life as love: Song of Songs

No more perfect or profound book has ever been written for any one of these three philosophies of life. Ecclesiastes is the all-time classic of vanity. Job is the all-time classic of suffering. And Song of Songs is the all-time classic of love.

The reason these are the only three possible philosophies of life is because they represent the only three places or conditions in which we can be. Ecclesiastes vanity represents Hell. Jobs suffering represents Purgatory. And Song of Songs love represents Heaven. All three conditions begin here and now on earth. As C. S. Lewis put it, All that seems earth is Hell or Heaven. It is a shattering line, and Lewis added this one to it: Lord, open not too often my weak eyes to this.

The essence of Hell is not suffering but vanity, not pain but purposelessness, not physical suffering but spiritual suffering. Dante was right to have the sign over Hells gate read: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Suffering is not the essence of Hell, because suffering can be hopeful. It was for Job. Job never lost his faith and his hope (which is faith directed at the future), and his suffering proved to be purifying, purgative, educational: it gave him eyes to see God. That is why we are all on earth.

Finally, Heaven is love, for Heaven is essentially the presence of God, and God is essentially love. (God is love.)

Three Metaphysical Moods

Heidegger begins one of his most haunting books with the most haunting question: Why is there anything rather than nothing ? He speaks of three moods that raise this great question. They are three metaphysical moods, three moods that reveal not just the feelings of the individual but also the meanings of being. And these three are the three metaphysical moods that give rise to the three philosophies of life that we find in Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs. Heidegger says,

Why is there anything rather than nothing?... Many men never encounter this question, if by encounter we mean not merely to hear and read about it as an interrogative formulation but to ask the question, that is, to bring it about, to raise it, to feel its inevitability. And yet each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the hidden power of this question, even if he is not aware of what is happening to him. The question looms in moments of great despair, when things tend to lose all their weight and all meaning becomes obscured. Perhaps it will strike but once like a muffled bell that rings into our life and gradually dies away. It is present in moments of rejoicing, when all the things around us are transfigured and seem to be there for the first time, as if it might be easier to think they arc not than to understand that they are and are as they are. The question is upon us in boredom, when we are equally removed from despair and joy, and everything about us seems so hopelessly commonplace that we no longer care whether anything is or is notand with this the question Why is there anything rather than nothing? is evoked in a particular form. But this question may be asked expressly, or, unrecognized as a question, it may merely pass through our lives like a brief gust of wind.

Despair is Jobs mood. His suffering is not only bodily but also spiritual. What has he to look forward to except death? He has lost everything, even Godespecially God, it seems.

Joy is the mood of love, young love, new love, falling in love. That is the wonder in Song of Songs: that the beloved should be ; that life should be ; that anything, now all lit by the new light of love, should be as mysterious a glory as it was to Job a mysterious burden.

Boredom is the mood of Ecclesiastes. It is a modern mood. Indeed, there is no word for it in any ancient language! In this mood, there is neither a reason to die, as in Job, nor a reason to live, as in Song of Songs. This is the deepest pit of all.

Three Theological Virtues

These three books also teach the three greatest things in the world, the three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.

The lesson Ecclesiastes teaches is faith, the necessity of faith, by showing the utter vanity, the emptiness, of life without faith. Ecclesiastes uses only reason, human experience, and sense observation of life under the sun as instruments to see and think with; he does not add the eye of faith; and this is not enough to save him from the inevitable conclusion of vanity of vanities. Then the postscript to the book, in the last few verses, speaks the word of faith. This is not proved by reason or sense observation, as in the rest of the book. This word of faith is the only one big enough to fill the silence of vanity. The word that answers Ecclesiastes quest and gives the true answer to the question of the meaning of life is known only by faith: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.

Next page