God, the universe and all that: Part 3

This is the third instalment of a five-part series (read parts 1 and 2.)

We’ve been looking at Psalm 8 and have discovered that stargazing should make us wonder why God the creator should have anything to do with us.

At this point, if you were sceptical about the existence of the creator himself, I could point you to proofs of a designer in the universe. For example, I could use the ‘fine-tuning’ argument for the existence of God—the fact that there are over 20 fundamental physical constants in the universe that all work together to make the universe work as it does, and that can’t be explained as a coincidence—at least, not yet. If any one of these constants had been a tiny bit different, life couldn’t appear. For example, if the force of gravity was even slightly different by a colossally tiny factor (1 part in 10⁴⁰), no life-supporting stars could exist. Or I could talk about the statistical improbability of life itself emerging—the fact that even a small protein has 10⁹⁵ possible folding combinations, and the chances of a protein folding by accident into a functional life-conducive shape during the lifetime of the universe is something like 1 in 10⁶⁵.

But then you might come back with an answer—the multiverse. Do you know about the multiverse? The multiverse is a philosophical theory, born out of reflection on cosmology and quantum theory. It’s the idea that we are just one out of a gigantic number of different possible universes. The multiverse is a way to solve the problem of the fine-tuning of the universe. Since there’s such a huge or infinite number of possible universes, it’s no problem that our universe just happens to exist by chance—a universe with impossibly fine-tuned life-supporting physical constants, where proteins folded in just the right way. The multiverse is an act of faith; it’s not a scientific hypothesis in the strict sense. There is no scientific evidence for the multiverse; in fact, there’s no experimental test that anyone has conceived that could possibly prove it or disprove it. It’s a philosophy that tries to solve the apparent design of the universe without resorting to a designer. The multiverse theory is complex, physically and philosophically, and it seems to me to be the last resort of the desperate. But if you’re philosophically committed to atheism, that’s what you’ve got at your disposal at the moment.

But actually there’s a bigger problem with my proofs for a designer. You see, even if my arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer were true and irrefutable, and even if you believed them, what does that actually prove? That there is a great designer—a purpose—to the universe doesn’t say anything about you and me.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is a great grand design to the existence of the 70 sextillion-plus stars out there. Say there is some grand 13-billion-year-old design to it all, and that God the creator is behind it all. So what? What on earth would that have to do with you, your life, your relationships, your joys, your sorrows, your acts of kindness, your feelings of guilt at those evil things you’ve said and thought and done, your goals, your children, your ethics, your conviction that it’s wrong to hurt and right to love, and your death as you dissolve back into the dust you came from? What is that to God? Why does that matter at all in this gigantic universe?

Yet this is the question of our poet, as the song continues:

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

(Ps 8:5-8)

This is actually a real puzzle—a problem—the crisis of the song—that this God, the one who made the heavens for some reason, deliberately and personally sees you and me as important. You and I are a key part of his creation. We (as the song says) are “crowned … with glory and honor”. We are rulers. We have dominion.

These words ‘rule’ and ‘dominion’ recall the words of Genesis 1-2. They are used to describe the reality that humans are put on the earth by God himself to care for it, not to exploit it for our own ends. It’s a statement of our glory and our responsibility, not a statement of our God-given right to use the world any way we want. Our poet in this biblical song recalls these words to express wonder at the fact that we specks of dust are somehow glorious in God’s eyes. The evidence of the stars suggests that we are nothing, but God himself, the creator of the stars, says we are something. We have been made by God for a purpose in this world: we have responsibility. We have responsibility to God to do what is right—to rule the works of God’s hands. And, as the rest of the Bible points out, we have a responsibility to live rightly in our relationships with each other—to honour God, to care for his world, to care for each other, to live under his loving rule.

But that’s the problem. That’s the puzzle. How is it that such a great creator—such a great and super-powerful supreme being—has given us specks of dust this responsibility?

Verse 9 gives us no answer:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The song ends where it began. It hasn’t solved the puzzle; it has just expressed it. God is great in the earth, and somehow, for some reason, we are important to him.

To be continued …

Comments on the Sola Panel

God, the universe and all that: Part 2

From the Sola Panel

In the second instalment of a five-part series, I contemplate the extent of our significance in the universe. (Read Part 1.)

We’ve been looking at Psalm 8, and we’ve discovered that stargazing helps us to see how insignificant we really are.

Just think about the size of space for a moment. Imagine you could get into the fastest jet on earth (last time I checked, this was the SR-71 Blackbird). Its official speed record is almost 2,500 miles per hour. Now imagine you could speed it up 100 times to 250,000 miles per hour. Then imagine that you could take it on a trip to space. It would take you an hour to get to the moon—that’s pretty reasonable! It would take you eight days to get to Mars, the closest planet to Earth. It would take you four months to get to the planet Saturn (remember, we’re travelling 100 times faster than the fastest jet ever built). It would take you a year and a half to get to the planet Pluto at the edge of our solar system. To get to the closest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri, it would take you 12,000 years. To get to the centre of our own Milky Way galaxy, it would take you 80 million years. To the next closest galaxy, Andromeda, it would take you seven billion years. To get to the edge of the visible universe, it would take you 40 million million years. And they think that the size of the non-visible universe is vastly huger than this: that would take you a million million million million, etc. years.

I’ll quote another modern ‘poet’—this time, the late Douglas Adams, writing The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy:

Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.¹

The ancient biblical poet was ignorant about billions of parsecs or millisecond pulsars. He just knew that space was big, wonderful, majestic and beyond us. That’s the universe we live in.

So the Bible has a question for you: who are you?

what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

(Ps 8:4)

What is man? Who am I in comparison to this world? Who are you? You are one of seven billion tiny organisms, living on an infinitesimally small pinprick of a dust ball, who are giving birth, breathing, eating, maybe reproducing and dying.

But that’s the Bible’s question: what is it to be human? What is your existence—your family, your career, your study, your relationships, your life—compared to this immense universe with its big bang, its nebulas and its millisecond pulsars?

But did you notice something? That’s not quite the way the song puts it, isn’t it. It’s not just the universe that’s big; this biblical song makes an even more profound point. It’s a point about God himself: God is big. See verse 1:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.

We’re not just talking here about how small we are compared to the universe; this is a song about our relationship to the majesty of the Lord—the God who created that universe.

Now it’s important to realize that this ‘God’ spoken about in the Bible has nothing to do with superstition and magical religion. The Bible’s view of God is the opposite of superstition. In fact, it’s the biblical view of God that enabled the early Christians to throw astrology away and promote astronomy instead. Astrology is the belief that the stars have something to do with our lives. Astrology happens when people look out at the stars, see how distant and high they are, and decide that somehow, in some magical way, these stars have a direct influence on their own personal lives.

But just listen for a moment to Augustine, a Christian theologian who was writing in about 425 AD—a man whose influence over western thought has been profound and continues to this day. This is what Augustine says about astronomy and astrology, and their relative value:

Astronomy … makes possible systematic predictions about the future, which are not speculative and conjectural but firm and certain; but we should not try to extract something of relevance to our own actions and experiences, like the maniacs who cast horoscopes, but confine our interest to the stars themselves.²

Augustine rejected astrology because he believed in the God of the Bible—the God we meet here in this very song—a God whose glory is above the heavens. See verse 3: this is the God who made the heavens, and set the moon and stars in place. This is the God who is majestic and great, and above and beyond those stars themselves. He is a God of order who set those heavenly bodies where they should be. But he’s done it for his glory, not for magical speculation about how your week is going to pan out.

So the question of verse 4 is a question about our place before this God:

what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Why on earth would this God, who created the stars, be interested in you and me? There are more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand in all the beaches on the earth. According to an Australian estimate in 2003, there are 70 sextillion stars. This is 7 x 10²². Who are we in all of this? I can’t resist quoting Douglas Adams in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy again:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.³

Even then, he’s talking about one galaxy amongst quadrillions. And that’s just the visible universe.

There is a God who made it all. So what on earth would he have to do with us? Who are you? What is man?

To be continued …

¹ Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Del Ray, 2005 (1979), p. 65.

² Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, II.113.

³ Adams, p. 3.

Comments on the Sola Panel

God, the universe and all that: Part 1

On the Sola Panel:

In the first instalment of a five-part series, I’m pondering what astronomy has to teach us.

I’m a fan of space. I don’t actually know much about the details of astronomy or cosmology or astrophysics; I just think that the space is really cool.

If there are any real scientists reading this, I want to say thanks. I know that most of your work involves boring and tedious searching, collating and number crunching. Thanks for doing all that stuff so that I can see those fantastic pictures of nebulas on the internet and wonder at it all.

For example, I’m a fan of millisecond pulsars. A gigantic star, millions of light years away, explodes in a huge supernova. It creates a fireball ten million billion billion times bigger than Hiroshima. In its ashes, it leaves behind a neutron star made of dense atomic nuclei, squashed together at a density 10 trillion times greater than steel. A teaspoon full of neutron star weighs about the same as Sydney Harbour. Sometimes this neutron star will steal stuff from a nearby star and start spinning. Some neutron stars spin hundreds of times a second—a whole star rotating as fast as an idling car engine. Many of these super-dense, revving stars send out pulses of electromagnetic radiation, milliseconds apart. And we might be able to use these millisecond pulsars as standard cosmological clocks to help us detect gravitational waves, explore space-time bending, and understand more about the tiniest particles in the universe.

But apart from the wow factor, what’s the point of learning about space?

Some people might say that, in the end, astronomy is a complete waste of time. Sherlock Holmes, that fictional epitome of scientific rationalism, cared nothing for astronomy. When his friend Dr Watson scolded him for being ignorant even of the basic facts of the solar system, he interrupted and said, “What the deuce is it to me? … you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”¹

Is Mr Holmes correct? Is stargazing a completely useless exercise?

Well, you could point out that weather and tide and climate predictions need detailed solar, lunar and planetary modelling. You could also point out that car engines need modern mechanics, which is all based on the laws of motion formulated by Isaac Newton, who used the orbits of planets to calculate and build his theories. Or you could point to the humble GPS satellite navigator, which relies on Einstein’s theory of relativity and orbiting satellites. Of course, astronomy is useful; after all, it helps us to work out whether it’s raining, and how to drive quickly to the cricket and back without taking a wrong turn!

But I want to suggest that stargazing is far more important than all this. In fact, the Bible itself gives us a very good reason for considering the stars. There is a song in the Bible about the stars—a song composed thousands of years ago in ancient Israel. This is how the song begins:

O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
to still the enemy and the avenger.

(Ps 8:1-2)

You’ll notice that this poet believes in God (just like many of the astronomers down through the ages). In fact, this whole song is a prayer to the creator of the universe. We’ll come back to this shortly. But for the moment, let’s look at his exercise in stargazing. Do you see what he says in the third verse of the song?

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place …

When you think about it, stargazing is something that would have been easier and more natural for an ancient Israelite than for us. Yes, we can use our light, radio and gamma ray telescopes to penetrate vast distances, and we can use our complex mathematical and cosmological theories to make determinations and predictions. Of course, the ancients couldn’t do that. But on the other hand, they had a very big advantage over us: they had a clear, unpolluted sky in their backyards. We have so many lights on earth—especially in our cities—that the lights of the stars and the moons are drowned out. When I go into my backyard on a clear night, all I can see are a few pinpricks. But this biblical songwriter could step into his own backyard and see far more than you or I. He could see the glory of it all—the heavens, the Milky Way, the wandering planets.

We don’t tend to look up very much at all, do we. We don’t use the night time to look at the heavens; we use the night time to look down—to watch TV, to immerse ourselves in virtual worlds online. We know cyberspace very well, but this ancient poet sees real space with his naked eyes. We know the intimate details of the lives of rock stars and football stars, but this song is about the real stars. At this point, this biblical poet is far more in touch with the reality of the universe than we are. And knowing these stars—seeing them there before him—what does this do for the poet? How does it make him feel? Look at verse 4:

what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

What does astronomy do for this poet? What is the use of astronomy for all of us? Astronomy is very useful. It does something very negative for us, but it’s still very worthwhile: it reminds us how very very very small and insignificant we really are. In case you’re wondering, the words translated ‘man’ here mean ‘all humanity’. The question “What is man?” is an expression of amazement that human beings have any importance at all in the face of the evidence of the stars.

To be continued …

¹ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘A Study in Scarlet’ in Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Long Stories, John Murray, London, 1929, p. 17.

Comments on the Sola Panel

Replacing the Spirit with the sacraments

I’ve been listening recently to an online lecture series called Space, Time, [Matter] and Sacraments. The speaker (an influential Church of England Bishop called N. T. Wright) posed some very important questions. For example:

How is the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection made “real” to us in our own lives now?
How is the promise of new creation, which we know will be truly physical and not just a fluffy boring harp-playing cloud-sitting eternity, made “real” to us now who still live embodied lives in the midst of the old creation?

His answer to these questions involved more than 3 hours of lectures and question times, but it can be summarised in two words: “the sacraments”, by which he meant primarily the physical activities of the “Eucharist” and water Baptism but also other traditionally “Catholic” sacraments such as marriage, confession, confirmation, etc.

Wright’s basic argument was that because the new creation in Christ is real, material and physical, it is appropriated in real, material and physical ways, through physical sacrament as well as through spoken word.

On the positive side, Wright said many interesting and helpful things about physicality and Christian community. As usual he offers correctives to modern over-individualistic “disembodied” misunderstandings of the gospel. And he was at pains to keep God’s word and the sacraments together; he certainly didn’t believe in a “magical” operation of the sacraments where they just “work” regardless of whether God’s Word is being preached.

Nevertheless after a while, something struck me. During the entire three hours, he never spoke about the Holy Spirit’s vital place in the answer to these (above) questions. From memory, all I can remember about what Wright said about the Holy Spirit was:

A passing mention when referring to Romans 8 (but he didn’t really make anything of it)
Another passing acknowledgement when quoting a poem that mentioned the Holy Ghost
An acknowledgement that Calvin talked about a “spiritual” eating and drinking in the Lord’s Supper, after which he immediately said that while he basically agreed with Calvin, nevertheless he wanted to emphasise the physical, material aspect of the sacraments (implying that he believed that Calvin was right when it came to a “real presence” and not quite right when he emphasised the spiritual rather than the physical).

Wright also made quite a few negative comments about the “spiritual” nature of much modern reflection about the Christian life and church, which he frequently connected with un-Christian individualism and gnosticism. In the vast majority of cases, “spirit” and “spiritual” were neutral or negative concepts for him.

Before I criticise Wright, I need to concede a few things. Yes, he was asked to speak on the sacraments, not the Spirit, so of course he should be focussing on them. Yes, I know that Wright would never deny that he believes in the Spirit (he frequently mentions the Spirit in his writings on Jesus and Paul). And yes, even at the beginning of his lecture series, Wright acknowledged that he was being exploratory in his own reflections about the sacraments, and that most of his beliefs about the sacraments in his life so far had come through his church experience, so this isn’t his “final word”.

Nevertheless, despite all these caveats, I still think there is something deeply wrong here. Wright deliberately went out of his way to frame his discussion in terms of these questions (above) about the way in which the story of Jesus and the new creation is made “real” in our lives. The answer of the Bible to these questions (e.g. Romans 8), which is also the answer of John Calvin, is that these things happen primarily by the Holy Spirit. This is not to deny that the new creation is physical, nor to deny that there should and will be physical manifestations of the new creation in our lives and communities, nor to deny that sacraments are or should be involved. But to spend more than three hours answering the question in relation to the sacraments, without any real discussion of the Spirit, is a very grave error. I content that Wright, at this point, has substituted the sacraments of the church for the Holy Spirit of God.

Is God Green #1: God, the World and Us

A shorter version of this article will soon be posted on webSalt, a publication of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

Is God Green? Part 1

The View from Above

More than 40 years ago, the Apollo space missions to the moon sent pictures of the earth back home. For the first time ever, humanity saw its planet from afar. The clouds, the land, the oceans, sitting there: whirling, powerful, innocent, vulnerable. And that image caused a revolution in the hearts and imaginations of millions around the world. Suddenly, the world was no longer an endless vista of untapped resources and infinite possibilities. Instead, we began to realize how small, how fragile, how very delicate our home really is. No longer were environmental issues confined to a few lonely voices. We began, en masse, to get very anxious about what we were doing to this lonely globe. 40 years later, in the news, almost every day there’s something about our environment.

There’s

Global warming
Endangered species and extinction
Air pollution
Soil contamination
Water pollution
Light pollution
Noise pollution
Deforestation
Overgrazing
Irrigation
Landfill
Radioactive waste
Uranium mining
Recycling
Genetic modification

The list goes on and on

How do you feel about these issues? Are you worried, distracted, anxious, complacent, apathetic, confident, skeptical?

How should Christians approach these issues?

I’ve actually preached on this topic 4 times over the last 7 years. Before I did my ministry training I was a solar energy engineer. And over the last 7 years the general consensus on environmental issues has changed. The first time I preached in 2003, people who cared about the environment were seen as a bit weird and alternative, “tree-huggers”. The second time in 2006, environmental issues were trendy. Now, environmental issues seem to be part of the air we breathe. Everyone cares about the environment now; it’s not trendy any more, it’s just a given.

And Christians are getting on the bandwagon too!

Take, for example, The Green Bible

The blurb from the website says:

The Green Bible will equip and encourage people to see God’s vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it. With over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth.

Verses in the Bible about the earth are highlighted in green. Is that the way that Christians are to approach this topic? To me, The Green Bibleseems to be a kind of Christian way of playing catch-up to the world. The world around us cares about global warming. So we publish a Bible on recycled paper that highlights the green verses, just to prove how with-it we really are!

But I want to suggest that actually there’s a far better approach. That actually everything in the Bible is relevant to issues of the environment, not just 1,000 green verses. But to really come to grips with these issues, we need to get a firmer grasp on the Bible’s whole message—from beginning to end. We need to understand God and his purposes for our world first. And that’s what this 3-part series is all about. We’ll be looking at God’s plan for us, for the world, for his son Jesus, and particularly, how those plans relate to us in the world.

First, let’s look at a few alternative visions of the world; three very popular non-Christian approaches to the environment, just to help you to see how different they are to the Bible.

Dualism

First, Dualism. Dualism is an old belief, thousands of years old, but it’s still around today. The idea of dualism is that there are two ‘realms’, the ‘physical’ realm and the ‘spiritual’ realm. In the higher, spiritual realm are souls, angels, eternity, God. In the lower, physical realm is matter, change, bodies, the earth. If you’re a dualist, then the higher realm is better and more important than the lower, physical realm.

How do you treat the world if you’re a dualist? There are two possibilities.

Either, you see the physical environment as ugly, evil and distracting to the soul, something to be avoided, so that when you hear about environmental issues, you ignore them, you shut yourself into a monastery and contemplate your navel.

Or you could, as a dualist, join in the abuse of the physical environment, because it’s not really important. Who cares about the environment? It doesn’t matter. It’s not spiritual. It’s just matter. Do what you like with it. Some Christians have been guilty of dualism in the past. In fact, the apostle Paul had to combat dualism back in the first century, because Christians were in danger of falling into it. 1 Timothy 4:1-5 says:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

The Bible isn’t dualist, it believes the world is good. Are you a dualist? Do you think the spiritual is all that matters?

Materialism

The second popular approach is called materialism. For example, say you’re a materialist. If you’re a materialist in the proper sense, you believe that there is no God (or if there is, he’s got nothing to do with the world or with you). The material world is all that matters. You have no soul. You are, first and foremost, a consumer.

Ultimately you can abuse the world if you like, there’s no higher power to tell you what to do. You can buy whatever make-up you feel like, who cares if it’s tested on animals? You leave the lights on at home, burn up as much petrol as you feel like, because matter is matter. As long as you’re happy who really cares what you do?

The former Soviet Union was a whole superpower founded on communal materialist principles. The Aral Sea in the Soviet Union, was once the size of Tasmania. Over the 20th Century, this great sea has shrunk by 80%. That is, only 20% of the Aral sea is left. Its waters have been diverted for irrigation of cotton farms to bring wealth to the Soviet Union. What’s left is heavily polluted by weapons testing, industrial projects, and fertilizer runoff. Apparently, the disappearance of a whole sea the size of Tasmania was no surprise to the Soviets; they planned for it to happen.

Which makes perfect sense to a materialist. A sea is just a sea. Drain the sea to grow your cotton if it makes your society better off. Of course, if you’re a materialist, you might start to get a bit worried if you think the world won’t sustain your wasteful behaviour. You might start to realize that if you keep draining seas then maybe there won’t be any seas left. Which would be very inconvenient for you because you can’t grow any more cotton or at least it would be inconvenient for your biological offspring who will carry your DNA into the next generation. Where would they ride their jetskis? And so, you might do something about the environment, because you are afraid that your lifestyle will be affected. Are you a materialist? Here’s some logic for you; it’s often used on the street by environmental groups: We shouldn’t cut down the Amazonian rainforests. Why? Because we might find a cure for cancer there, and you might have cancer one day, and you might need those rainforests. If you think that’s the best argument not to cut down the rainforests, then you’re probably a materialist. Because that reason is all about you, your future consumption and health

Paganism

Some people have come along and said, No, materialism is no good at all! There’s something so selfish and wrong about it! Surely the world is more than just a thing to be consumed. Surely, there has to be some higher power or powers that should prevent us from abusing and raping our environment like this. A popular solution amongst environmentalists is to embrace what’s called ‘paganism’.

Pagans believe in God, in a sense. But the trick is, God is in the world – the world itself is God. They usually don’t call it God—they call it, ‘Mother Nature’, or ‘Gaia’. For a Pagan, the world is one big interconnected organism. And all things have equal value and equal status as part of that whole. Plants and animals have souls, spirits, that are worshipped. We have to respect everything in nature, the whole ecosystem. Humans have no right to use nature for our own ends.

But the problem with Mother Nature is that she often isn’t very motherly. In fact, some people believe that humanity is a cancerous growth that might be spewed out by Mother Nature one day. James Lovelock, for example, has written a book with a lovely title, called The Revenge of Gaia: Why the Earth is Fighting Back – and How We can Still Save humanity!

Paganism can breed great fear and anxiety, because how do you know what Mother Nature will do to you, and when? Maybe global warming is inevitable? Maybe Mother Nature will produce massive storms and tsunamis that wipe us out as a species? Maybe Mother Nature has given up on us and is going to start again? Who are you or I to say?

The view from above

How you view the environment is very much caught up with what you think of God, what you think of God’s relationship to the world, and what you think of your place in the world. The view from above makes a difference to what you do here on earth.

So what about the Bible? What’s the Bible’s view from above? Is God green at all? Does he care about the world? Well to answer that I want to explore the story that the Bible tells about the world. The Bible has a lot to say about the world: where the world came from, what state the world is in, and the future of the world. And as it tells this story to us, I hope we will see that God and you and I are very much involved in that story. We are intimately caught up in the story of the world. I hope that as we understand the Bible’s story of the world, it will help us to know what to do with the world, how to think and feel and act rightly towards the world. And hopefully make a positive difference

People and the world (Genesis 1-2)

In this first article, we’re going to concentrate on the beginning of the story of the world, where it came from.

Please look up Genesis 1, the opening chapter of the Bible. It would really help for you to read it through right now. This chapter describes the creation of the world. I want to focus on some of the key points of the passage in front of us.

The first point is that the world is not the same as God. God chose to make the world—but God was there before the world was made. The first verse says: in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In other words, God isn’t a pagan.

The second point is that the world is good. Whenever God makes something, he sees that it is good. The light is good, verse 4. The land and sea are good, verse 10. The trees are good, verse 12, and so on. God loves what he has made. And that means that the world has value, given to it by its creator

The third point is that you and I, men and women, we have a special place in the world. We’re part of the world, we’re not God. But we are made in the ‘image of God’. See, especially, verses 26-28. We are part of the world, but we have a special place in the world. A special relationship to God, different to the world. We also have a special relationship to the world: we are the rulers of the world under God.

We also see that in Psalm 8). God has made us to rule the works of his hands. Everything he has made is under our feet (‘flocks and herds, wild beasts, birds, fish.’) Our job is to rule these things. That is our God-given role.

How to rule the world

In 1967, a man called Lynn White wrote a famous article called ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’. It was more sweeping artistry than real history. But it was very influential. You may have heard of it. In his article, Lynn White blamed Western Christianity for most of the environmental degradation that has happened in the history of the world.

His accusation was this: The Bible—and Genesis 1 especially—had been used to justify wholesale exploitation of the environment. Lynn White says:

‘God planned all of this [creation] explicitly for man’s benefit and rule: no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes.’

We can’t deny that some Christians in the past have been arrogant and selfish towards the environment? And to our modern ears, the Bible does sound pretty harsh, doesn’t it? ‘Fill the earth’, ‘subdue it’, ‘have dominion’, ‘rule’. Doesn’t that sound like God has given us the world to dominate, to bash into shape?

But like anything in the Bible, we need to read these verses in context. Remember in this chapter that God saw that the world was good before he made human beings. The world has positive value in God’s eyes, simply by being created by him. So as we rule, we have to remember that we are ruling something God has made and that God believes is good. It’s not just good for us, it’s good for God even before we came along.

(If you want to know more, have a look at Psalm 104)

Secondly, have a look at how that rule is described in the next chapter:

The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. (Genesis 2:15, NIV)

Our ‘rule’ is not selfish rule. It’s not being a despot or a tyrant or a dictator. Ruling the world is all about serving; serving God (who made the good world), and serving the world itself by taking care of it.

This makes sense of what we see humans doing all the time. There’s an organization called Save the Whales—they even have a song. You can download the MP3. But you won’t find a bunch of whales getting together to form a society called ‘save the humans’, will you? Whales can’t download MP3s about saving humans. That’s because humans are there to look after the whales, not vice-versa. Our special role in the world is to be the servant kings of the world. God does not want us to exploit the world purely for our own greedy gain. But at the same time, God doesn’t want us to leave the world alone. We’re not just to be the stewards of the world, not just the park rangers, making sure nothing happens to it. God wants us to be active, to turn chaos into order like he did at the beginning. To save whales, to fill the earth and subdue it.

At the beginning of the story of the world, human beings were good for the world. And as we rule, we also enjoy the benefits of being God’s rulers. If we look back at chapter 1, we see:

Then God said [to the human beings], “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground– everything that has the breath of life in it– I give every green plant for food.” And it was so. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:29-31)

We can enjoy the world as we subdue it, and this is very good, according to God. When you eat food, that is very good, because that is what the food is for. Here’s a description of ecological harmony from the Bible:

He who tends a fig tree will eat its fruit (Proverbs 27:18).

So how does this all work out? How do you and I actually go about ruling? How do we know what to do?

Did you notice that repeated little phrase ‘according to its kind’ in Genesis chapter 1? It’s there in verse 11, 12, 21, 24, 25. God has made vegetation according to their various kinds; fish according to their kinds; birds, livestock, wild animals, according to their kinds. There’s variety in creation. This variety helps us to understand that we do different things with different parts of creation. This next little verse is an example of how this works:

Whoever is righteous has regard for the life of his beast, but the mercy of the wicked is cruel (Proverbs 12:10 ESV).

One of the things about being righteous is that you have regard for the life of your beast. That is, you know the value of an animal’s life—not just for your own selfish purposes, but in terms of what God has made. The righteous persons understands that the animal has been made a certain way ‘according to its kind’. And he respects that creation. An animal is different to a human, of course. Respecting a chicken is different to respecting your mother. But a righteous person will still respect the life of the chicken, as a chicken. It’s not just an egg-producing machine. Do you buy free-range eggs? Why? Why not? Do you regard the life of the chicken? Not just the taste or the eggs. The life. Because God thinks the chicken is good. The good ruler of the world is the one who discerns what this value is. While we eat the eggs and the chicken nuggets, we also take care of the chicken while it’s alive according to what God has made it, not just what we can get out of it. This is what ruling and subduing, is all about

What is a tree for?

Try to work out all the things a tree is for, according to God.

A tree is good.

A tree is beautiful.

A tree is for food.

A tree is a blessing from God for his creation, even in those wild places where no human being has set foot.

This is interesting, because this part of the book of Job is all about how God has made and cares for all the little details of his creation even though human beings may have nothing to do with it! God says to Job ‘Do you know when the mountain goats give birth?’ (Job 39:1). The point is that Job has no idea when the mountain goats give birth. But God does; and he cares about the mountain goats giving birth. Reading Job 39-40 is like watching those nature documentaries: when you watch those shows you go, ‘wow, all this stuff happens and I never even knew’. But God knows, and God has a purpose.

Also,

A tree is for birds.

A tree is a blessing from God for people and a sign of peace, giving shade and shelter to those under his protection.

A tree is a gallows for a man cursed by God.

A tree is for houses for kings and people.

A tree is for the praise of God’s glory.

A tree has lots of purposes. Some of the purposes of a tree are for humans. But others have nothing to do with us, do they? A tree is there to praise God, a tree is there to feed and house birds. And of course we’ve discovered other purposes for trees, too, that the Bible doesn’t mention. A tree is for making oxygen.

Even in warfare, God tells his people that they should do what’s right by the trees.. Not wanton destruction, but sustainable development.

If these are the things a tree is for, how should we rule trees? Our job as rulers is to discern the purpose God has given for things, and act accordingly. So we should do our best to make sure that as many of the purposes for trees as possible are fulfilled. Cut some down for building, leave some for the birds, make sure there are beautiful forests. This is what people mean when they talk about ‘sustainable development’. It’s what the Bible calls ‘wisdom’.

It’s not always easy, is it? There’s no cut-and-dried answers to this. Christians may disagree with each other on this. We may have to use scientific tools in our pursuit of understanding; research and maps, etc. But that is exercising dominion.

And actually a lot of it is quite simple. When you go to press ‘print’ on your word processor, to send a file to the printer, to use paper, that comes from woodchips, from trees. You should ask—am I using this tree in the best way? Do I really need this printout? Can I save the paper so more trees can fulfil their God-given purpose in other ways? Especially in old growth forests. Can I recycle the paper? This is possible and right in God’s world

We had a go at starting up a compost heap a few years back. Why? Because each Australian, on average, contributes one tonne of waste each year, and we’re turning the land into tips to get rid of this rubbish. But God has made the land for reasons other than dumping rubbish. It’s for beauty, for living in, for growing crops, for recreation. And it’s getting to the point where it’s harder to find land to do these things, because the land is taken up with rubbish. So our compost heap helped to reduce our rubbish and helped the earth that God has given us to be used for other purposes. It’s not rocket science. We are created by God to rule our world, to serve our world, to enjoy our world.

The curse

But I know what you’re thinking. ‘Stop telling me about your compost heap. What about the Aral Sea? What about Chernobyl? What about Global Warming?’

We’ve only just looked at the beginning of the story, haven’t we? We still have a huge problem, don’t we? The fact is, we don’t rule the world properly. We’ve stuffed it up, big time, and all around us is the evidence.

Does the Bible tell us why? Well, yes. And in the next couple of articles we will look in more detail at that terrible circumstance. But we will also see what God has done about our crazy broken world.

This article is part 1 in a 3-part series, adapted from a talk given at the Wollongong ECU Reload Conference in 2009.

Read Part 2

Is the wisdom literature of the Old Testament an exercise in natural theology?

Introduction

Proverbs, Job and Ecclesiastes have posed a puzzle for interpreters eager to account for their place in the canon. What, if any, connection there is between the Old Testament Law and Prophets, whose topic is the Israel’s history, and this ‘wisdom literature’, which, at best, seems only to allude to Israel’s history? One popular answer, described as a ‘scholarly consensus’, has been that it is

something like “natural theology”; that is, it is theology that discloses to serious discernment something of the hidden character and underpinnings of all reality. Thus the wisdom teachers do not rely for insight on prophetic utterance or decrees from Sinai that explicitly claim to be revelatory, but believe that what is given as “true” arises in lived experience rightly (wisely) discerned.¹

We shall examine to what extent this ‘scholarly consensus’ is accurate. Firstly, we shall explore some of the theological presuppositions that inform the use of the term ‘natural theology’ in Old Testament scholarship. Then, we shall summarise the argument for natural theology in the wisdom literature. This will be followed by various direct and indirect challenges to the argument for natural theology. We shall treat at some length the issues of the theological tensions within the wisdom literature itself, and the nature of the connections between wisdom and salvation-history. Finally, we will look at the argument against natural theology, and present some conclusions.

The meaning of ‘Natural theology’

‘Theology’ is a remarkably fluid concept. It can have a range of meanings, from vague universal notions such as Schleiermacher’s ‘feeling of absolute dependence’;² through discernment of impersonal transcendent order;³ through discernment of the attributes of infinite being; to personal understanding of the covenant God of Scripture. The variety of conceptions of ‘natural theology’ amongst the scholarly literature compounds this fluidity. Collins’ description, for example, is more aptly described as ‘natural anthropology’: ‘the attempt to give an autonomous account of the common human experience independently of special revelation.’⁴ Goldingay, among others, seems to assume that discovering something about the truth of man and the world automatically leads to discovering something about the truth of God.⁵ However, the proper subject of any theology should really be God himself; and Barth is surely right (if sweeping) in describing natural theology as ‘guaranteeing the knowability of God apart from grace and therefore from faith.’⁶

Barth believes that natural theology (as practised by the Roman Catholic tradition) is logically impossible because the triune God is compartmentalised (only the ‘creator’, not the redeemer, is deemed knowable from nature) and in the process is redefined away from the true God.⁷ Barr, the champion of the existence of natural theology in Scripture, disagrees:

“[B]y nature”, that is, just by being human beings, men and women have a certain degree of knowledge of God and awareness of him, or at least a capacity for such an awareness; [. . .] anterior to the special revelation of God made through Jesus Christ, through the Church, through the Bible⁸

Barr’s definition is precise and has been the most influential in biblical studies. It is important to note that natural theology is different to ‘theology of nature’, although the two have been confused. Theology of nature is posterior to special revelation; it relies on that revelation to make inferences about empirical observations; and so is unconvincing apart from its foundation in special revelation.⁹ When, for example, the author of Job ‘recognises how elusive wisdom is: and having recognized the problem, declares that its solution lies in “the fear of Yahweh” (28:28)’¹⁰ we need to ask whether this is this natural theology or theology of nature. The answer will depend on whether the author of Job relied on an anterior conception of the fear of Yahweh. We shall discuss this in more detail below.

There is also a prior question lurking behind the many of the discussions: What is the nature of revelation itself? The scholarly consensus has operated on the principle that Scripture (like all theology) is a ‘response’, ‘reflection’, ‘articulation’ or ‘record’ of revelation rather than revelation itself.¹¹ Even for Barr, Scripture is ‘not revelation coming from God to humanity but [. . .] Israel’s [. . .] response to and interpretation of that revelation.’¹² But where is this revelation to be found? The earlier biblical theology movement (prior to 1970) was dominated by a view of revelation that was historical, and not propositional. God does not speak, he acts in salvation-history, and Scripture (like all theology) is a recitation and interpretation of those acts.¹³ The problem is that the wisdom literature simply does not fit into these salvation-history categories. God does not ‘act’ in the wisdom literature!¹⁴

However, this fact did not lead to a questioning of the presuppositions of the nature of Scripture outlined above. Rather, it led to a broadening of the possibilities for revelation. The ‘special revelation’ that occurred in the particular history of Israel became viewed as but one mode of revelation. Wisdom could then be construed as ‘a mode of theological reflection and articulation in ancient Israel that was parallel or alternative to that of historical deeds.’¹⁵ This parallel or alternative mode of reflection is based on common ahistorical human experience and language,¹⁶ on nature and creation;¹⁷ it is ‘undated, international, individualistic, empirical, prudential, everyday, practical’.¹⁸ It is a true, but not ‘special’, mode of God’s revelation: for the Israelite, to say that wisdom came ‘from God’ and to say that it came ‘from experience’ was basically to say the same thing.¹⁹ Thus the sage mediates the knowledge of God by observing general order in the world, just as the prophet and priest mediate the knowledge of God by observing salvation-history.²⁰ The conclusion that the wisdom literature is natural theology (as defined by Barr, above) follows quite logically on these premises.

In defence of natural theology

Barr’s argument for natural theology in the wisdom literature relies heavily upon two sources: the observation of detailed verbal similarities between Egyptian and Israelite wisdom²¹ and Collins’ more in-depth argument.²² We will examine each of these in turn.

It is quite clear that there is a strong correlation between the wisdom of Israel and that of other nations in the Ancient Near East. Almost certainly the former shows some degree of reliance upon the latter. Mesopotamian instructions and proverbs seem have been known to Israelite scribes: e.g. the counsels to the disciple as ‘My son’ in the Instruction of Shuruppak find parallels in Proverbs and Ecclesiastes (Prov 1:8, 10, 15; 2:1; 3:1, 11, 21; 4:10, 20; 5:1, 20; 6:1, 3, 20; 7:1; 19:27; 23:15, 19, 26; 24:13, 21; 27:11; 31:2; Eccl 12:12).²³ Egyptian instructions and complaints are relevant to the wisdom literature, particularly the Instruction of Amen-em-Opet of ca. 1100 BC which ‘is generally acknowledged to have directly influenced Proverbs 22:17-24:22’.²⁴ For example, the Instruction of Amen-em-Opet has a warning against avarice, which has influenced Proverbs 23:4-5.²⁵ The ‘transcultural’ nature of the observations is, for Barr, a pointer towards the existence of natural theology.²⁶

Collins, in arguing that the wisdom literature is ‘a genuine specimen of natural theology’, posits a two-stage process at work in the wisdom literature: ‘an analysis of human experience and a correlation with a normative religious tradition’.²⁷ The analysis of human experience was entirely antecedent to any notion of salvation-history.²⁸ The use of the covenant name ‘Yahweh’ is not evidence of an antecedent reliance upon salvation-history, but of a postcedent correlation in which it was demonstrated that ‘the route of wisdom leads to the same terminal as the admittedly different route of prophecy’.²⁹ This correlation of wisdom and history was quite minimal, especially when compared to the non-canonical books like Sirach which identify wisdom with Torah (e.g. Sir 19:20, 19:24, 21:11, 34:8, 39:1).³⁰

The analysis of experience was of two types. Firstly, an understanding of human cognitive limitation (Prov 3:7, 16:1, 19:31, 21:30, 27:1) or contradiction (Job and Ecclesiastes) leads to an understanding of God as ‘the infinitely free’, the opposite of limitation.³¹ Secondly, an understanding of order in the universe leads to an understanding of God as the impersonal instigator of cause-effect moral order.³² Especially important is the personification of wisdom (Proverbs 8), which implies that the individual perceptions of order have been built into a big picture of universal order.³³ One must question, on Collins’ schema, how successful the correlation between natural theology and Yahwistic faith actually was, given that the impersonal infinitely free originator of causality looks quite different to the personal covenant-making Yahweh who intervened in Israel’s history. Barth’s claim that the god of natural theology bears no resemblance to the God of special revelation begins to look quite apposite.³⁴

Barr adds his own observations about Ecclesiastes. He is aware that Ecclesiastes’ conclusion that ‘the honest investigation of what goes on under the sun does not lead to God’ may be construed as ‘prime material for the rejection of natural theology’.³⁵ His primary answer is that Ecclesiastes’ reaction against natural theology proves that natural theology was going on in the wisdom tradition, and that Ecclesiastes doesn’t turn to revelation to solve its difficulties.³⁶ This seems quite unsatisfactory. Firstly, proof of natural theology in the wisdom tradition is not proof of natural theology in the wisdom literature, any more than the existence of false prophets made Jeremiah’s prophecy against them false (Jer 14:13). Secondly, it must be assumed that Ecc 12:9-14, which does appear to turn to revelation for an answer, is an appendix foreign to the rest of the book. We will discuss this below.

Scripture as revelation

Having outlined some of the major planks in the argument for natural theology in the wisdom literature, we will present evidence that challenges them. Firstly, there is a case that the authors of Scripture, and even of the wisdom literature, were self-consciously writing revelation, not just reflecting upon revelation. Waltke argues that Proverbs 30:1-6 is a self-conscious claim for verbal plenary inspiration.³⁷ Given that 30:1-6 occurs in a summary position in Proverbs and that the speaker seems to be originally a non-Israelite, this implies that the whole of Proverbs, including the elements reliant upon non-Israelite sources, is ‘special revelation’. It is worth pursuing Waltke’s analysis in detail, expanding upon it in some parts.

Many scholars argue that the passage is a conversation between Agur (a non-Israelite skeptic of natural theology) and an unnamed Israelite sage who is defending natural theology.³⁸ However, this is based on an assumption that the text as it stands is incoherent, since there are no formal speech markers or divisions. Waltke believes that the text as it stands is coherent; it is all the speech of Agur.³⁹ The prophetic term מַשָּׂא (‘pronouncement’) in Proverbs 30:1 seems out of place in wisdom literature, so many argue that it must be a place name.⁴⁰ However, according to Waltke, the prophetic allusion is intended, and it reinforces the prophetic force of the very next word נְאֻם (‘oracle’).⁴¹ Agur is implying inspiration by joining prophetic genre terms to the wisdom genre term ‘sayings’ (דִּבְרֵי)—as he does by joining his sayings to God’s words to David and to Moses in Proverbs 30:5-6.⁴²

Proverbs 30:3 is literally, ‘I have not learned [perfect לֹא־לָמַדְתִּי] wisdom; and/but the knowledge of the holy one is what I will know [imperfect אֵדָע]’. Almost all English versions apply the negative particle לֹא to both verbs (e.g. ‘I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.’, ESV). However, Waltke’s plainer reading takes the second verb as a positive cohortative ‘but I want to experience knowledge of the Holy One’.⁴³ Thus Agur, the pre-Israelite pagan who has no wisdom, is contrasted to Solomon, the Israelite teacher who made wisdom known (cf. the vocabulary of Proverbs 1:2-7 and 9:10).⁴⁴ But Agur wants to learn, and his desire is granted in Proverbs 30:4-6.

The answer is in the form of a cluster of allusions and quotations of salvation-history material. All of these allusions and quotations are about knowing Yahweh through his deeds and speech. In Proverbs 30:4, the question ‘Who has ascended to heaven and come down?’ may be based on Deut 30:12-13, about the accessibility of the law only because of God’s gracious revelatory act.⁴⁵ The further question ‘What is his name?’ (מַה־שְּׁמוֹ), quotes Israel’s foundational question (Exod 3:13). The answer in Exodus is the sovereign Yahweh who has spoken and acted in the history of Israel.⁴⁶ David’s confession of the reliability of ‘every word of God’ from Psalm 18:30 (Proverbs 30:5) is the answer to the problem of Proverbs 30:2: those who are ‘too stupid’ should take their refuge in the reliable word of Yahweh.⁴⁷ Finally, the warning against going away from God’s revelation in Proverbs 30:6 is a quotation from Deut 4:2 / 12:32, which is an explicit ‘canon formula’ protecting the status of God’s word in a time of canon-formation.⁴⁸ So a foreigner who is now converted to faith in the revelation of Yahweh is able to take his place among Israel’s wisdom teachers.

Order: immediate and universal

We should also question the assumption that the discernment of some order in the universe is enough to have any understanding of universal, transcendent order. Murphy had earlier argued that many of the individual observations in Proverbs are dealing with a ‘limited aspect of reality’.⁴⁹ Hence there are many ambiguities and antinomies (e.g. Prov 26:4-5). Part of the purpose of Job and Ecclesiastes, then, is to correct against generalisation and absolutisation of wisdom sayings (e.g. Eccl 8:17).⁵⁰ Goldsworthy makes a distinction between ‘immediate’ and ‘ultimate’ meaning.⁵¹ Wisdom as the discernment of ‘ultimate meaning’ seems to be on view in Proverbs 8 (e.g. Prov 8:22, where wisdom is the first of God’s works) and Job 28 (where wisdom is at the foundations of the earth, deeper than man can reach).⁵² While this wisdom can ‘make itself known’ (Niphal reflexive תִּוָּדֵעַ) in the midst of fools, it does not ‘rest (תָּנוּחַ)’ in their hearts as it does in those of the wise (Prov 14:33, taking the plain reading of the MT).⁵³ Thus, although people may be wise in individual circumstances—even the fool is thought wise if he remains silent (Prov 17:28)—they do not in this way infer anything about universal order or God.

Differences from other ANE wisdom.

There are very important differences between biblical wisdom literature and other wisdom literature from the ANE. The Egyptian idea of semi-divine ‘order’ (Maat) has been likened to the personification of wisdom in Proverbs 8, but ‘Wisdom in Proverbs displays a vigor and a personality in pursuit of her lovers that goes far beyond the abstract Egyptian goddess.’⁵⁴ While Maat is ‘read off’ from the course of the world, Wisdom’s activity is much closer to that of intentional revelation from an active God. Wisdom ‘calls’ (קרא, Prov 8:1, 4), just as Yahweh did at important revelatory moments: to Moses (Exod 3:4), Israel at Sinai (Exod 19:3) and Samuel (1 Sam 3:4-10). Another example is the difference between the Akkadian pessimistic dialogue between master and servant, which looks at the meaninglessness of life and recommends suicide; and Ecclesiastes, which looks at the ‘futility’ of wisdom but recommends trust in the creator.⁵⁵ Like the ‘conversion’ of Agur,⁵⁶ we have grounds to suggest that addition of Yahweh’s name into wisdom incorporated from other sources⁵⁷ is evidence of more than simple correlation: faith in Yahweh appears to be a discriminatory principle at work in the process of incorporation.

Tensions in the wisdom perspective

We are beginning to see that the ‘wisdom perspective’ is not so easily separable from the ‘salvation-history’ perspective as is often assumed. Jenks argues for evidence of a type of Hegelian dialectic between the wisdom perspective (emphasising predictable created order) and the salvation-history perspective (emphasising mystery) within the wisdom literature itself, beginning in Proverbs (e.g. 16:1, 9), increasing in Job and Ecclesiastes, and resulting in a new synthesis in Sirach. This highlights the existence of a prophetic perspective within all of the wisdom literature.⁵⁸ Waltke goes much further and argues that the two ‘perspectives’ have much more in common and share a common source. He draws numerous connections between Proverbs and the prophetic books, e.g. Proverbs 29:18 which mentions the necessity of covenantal code תּוֹרָה and prophetic vision חָזוֹן .⁵⁹

Job 28 is important in this regard. Its structure (moving from human inability to Yahweh’s revelation) is similar to Proverbs 30:1-6.⁶⁰ Job 28 can be described as a ‘metaphor of the entire book’.⁶¹ The mining of verses 1-11 parallels the search for wisdom that Job and his friends undertook through Job’s experiences. ‘Human wisdom and achievement are not denigrated, any more than Job’s wealth and happiness were in the prologue.’⁶² However, the inaccessibility of wisdom in verses 12-19 parallels the fact that wisdom was not found through an extensive analysis of the created order.⁶³ Only God truly knows wisdom, for only he has exhaustive knowledge of the universe, being the creator (28:23-27). The inescapable conclusion is that the fear of the covenant Yahweh of Israel is ‘ultimate’ wisdom, which consists primarily in repentance. It points to the theophany of chapters 38-41.⁶⁴ However, ‘[t]heophany is a distinctly un-empirical, un-everyday phenomenon. So the Book of Job only solves the problem it examines by looking outside the tradition from which it begins.’⁶⁵

Wisdom in Ecclesiastes is severely limited. We have, for example, relative (rather than absolute) comparisons of two forms of conduct (Ecc 4:6, 9, 13; 5:5; 7:1-3, 5, 8; 9:17f);⁶⁶ maxims that only provide partial guidance (Ecc 7:1-12)⁶⁷ and slight, pragmatic claims for wisdom’s benefits (Ecc 10:12-15), ‘a far cry from the lofty claims of traditional wisdom!’⁶⁸ This is all in the context of a book with a repeated cry: הֶבֶל! The meaning of הֶבֶל is important for the interpretation of the book. Its literal meaning (‘vapour’ cf Isa 57:13; Prov 13:11, 21:6; Ps 144:4) gives rise to a wide variety of possible metaphorical meanings.⁶⁹ ‘Meaningless’ (niv) is unsatisfactory, for many things described in Ecclesiastes are immediately comprehensible. ‘Vanity’ (ESV) sounds too much like a Platonic renunciation of physicality.⁷⁰ Fox posits that הֶבֶל means ‘absurd’, as understood by Camus, ‘a disjunction between two phenomena that are thought to be linked by a bond of harmony or causality, or that should be so linked’. It is a relational concept, and depends upon human perception of contradiction.⁷¹ This is appealing, but it is hard to see how ‘absurd’ can be a metaphorical usage of the word ‘vapour’.

Perhaps we should take הֶבֶל as an epistemological, rather than an ontological, term. That is, it is not things or situations, but wisdom itself that is ‘vapour’. An observation may look substantial and have immediate utility but, like vapour, it disappears when one tries to grasp and use it as a guide to ultimate wisdom. Thus the following can be described as vapour: Qohelet’s speech (Ecc 1:2, 2:1, 12:8), Qohelet’s observations (Ecc 1:14 ‘I have seen [. . .] and behold: the whole [of my act of seeing] is vapour’, Ecc 4:4, 2:11), Qohelet’s wisdom (Ecc 2:15), ‘Words’ in general (Ecc 5:7, 6:11), proverbs and observations about life (Ecc 2:21, 23, 26; 3:19; 4:7ff, 4:16, 5:10, 6:2, 6:9, 7:6, 8:10, 8:14), and the sage’s or the individual’s life (Ecc 6:12, 7:15, 9:9, 11:10). This would also make sense of the epexegetical phrase וּרְעוּת רוּחַ which often follows הֶבֶל (Ecc 1:14; 2:11, 17, 26; 4:4, 6; 6:9). It could mean ‘a striving after wind’;⁷² a more dynamic description of the same phenomenon of failing to grasp ultimate reality by observation. Alternatively, Fox, taking רְעוּת to have an Aramaic root, translates the phrase ‘thoughts [consisting of] breath’.⁷³ Either way, the result is the same. Empirical observations seem, at first, substantial (and they are in a limited way) but when one tries to use them to reach to ultimate reality the whole structure disappears.

Salvation-historical resolution

Is salvation-history wisdom’s resolution to its internal tensions? We should begin by noting that the ‘wisdom perspective’ is not intrinsically alien to salvation-history. The inextricability of the universal creation narrative (Gen 1-11) from the particular history of Abraham and his descendents is well documented.⁷⁴ The call of Abraham in Genesis 12 looks forward to a time when all the ‘families of the ground’ (כֹּל מִשׁפְּחֹת הָאֲדָמָה) will be blessed. Thus the end-point of salvation-history is the restoration of order in human and non-human creation, which is precisely what we see in the wisdom literature.

Von Rad, on the basis of an historical reconstruction of Israel’s situation, claimed that wisdom was, in fact, ‘a response made by a Yahwism confronted with specific experiences of the world’⁷⁵ Although wisdom is a common human activity (Prov 10:13, 14:6, 16:16, 20:5, 13:20),⁷⁶ wisdom literature was an attempt to integrate it with Yahwistic faith. Just as prophets recognised the will of Yahweh in human history, so Proverbs 16:7-12 (which alternates proverbs including and excluding Yahweh) sees an ‘experience of Yahweh’ in the ‘experience of the world’.⁷⁷ Looking at other key verses, (Prov 1:7, Prov 9:10, Prov 15:33, Job 28:28), von Rad claims that ‘the fear of Yahweh’ is the ‘prerequisite of wisdom’.⁷⁸ This ‘fear of Yahweh’ is essentially ‘faith’, the ‘prior gift of the knowledge of God’ that is a prerequisite for all of Israel’s thinking.⁷⁹

However, Collins and Barr are unconvinced; they believe von Rad is too affected by his historical reconstruction and pays too little attention to the lack of salvation-history material in the wisdom literature itself.⁸⁰ Granted, there are some parallels between the law and wisdom, so that wisdom can be seen as the application of the law to the whole of created being (e.g. Deut 5:17 and Prov 1:10-19; Deut 5:18 and Prov 5).⁸¹ The historical Solomon appears to have been a patron of wisdom, both optimistic and pessimistic, which led to his being alluded to in the literature (Prov 1:1, Eccl 1:1, 1 Kings 4:29-34).⁸² But this does not by itself connect wisdom to salvation-history, for the transmission could still have been purely secular. However, a stronger case can be made from both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.

The phrase, ‘the fear of Yahweh’ is a very important link between the wisdom literature and salvation-history. In Deuteronomy, the ‘fear of Yahweh’ is all about ‘diligence to observe the laws of God in faithful response to his saving acts’ (Deu 6:2, 13, 24; 8:6; 10:12, 20-21; 31:12-13).⁸³ Goldsworthy argues compellingly that it must be understood in the same way in Proverbs, because the writers were Israelites.⁸⁴ Collins’ case that this is a later correlation between wisdom and salvation-history cannot be sustained, for the ‘fear of Yahweh’ is found throughout Proverbs.⁸⁵ There are explicit links between wisdom and law-keeping outside of the wisdom literature (Deut 4:5-6, Ps 19:7, Jer 8:8). Proverbs 1:7, 9:10 and 15:33 (and Job 28:28) link the ‘Fear of Yahweh’ very strongly with wisdom or its cognates. Blocher argues that 1:7 and 9:10 should be translated, ‘the fear of the Lord is the principle of wisdom / knowledge’. That is, revealed knowledge of God has a logical priority in the wisdom literature, and can thus be used to discriminate and incorporate chronologically prior observations from, for example, Egyptian wisdom.⁸⁶ Practically, it means that wisdom has a religious foundation; wisdom can only proceed properly when one renounces autonomy and trusts the LORD at every step of one’s practical or intellectual progress (Prov 3:5-7).⁸⁷

As we saw above, Barr’s claim that Ecclesiastes engages in natural theology hinged on the claim that it does not turn to special revelation to solve its difficulties.⁸⁸ This, in turn, depends on the common assumption that Ecc 12:9-14 is an appendix whose thought is foreign to the rest of the book.⁸⁹ However, Andrew Shead has shown that it is an epilogue summarising (not criticising) the argument of the book as a whole.⁹⁰ The structure of the epilogue itself suggests that it is claiming to summarise the rest of Qohelet.⁹¹ The ‘final word’ (verses 13-14) is that ‘when life with all its enigmatic realities is properly observed, the observer should decide to fear and obey God.’⁹² Thus there is a ‘creative clash’ between the vanity of observation (the inner frame of the book, 1:2-12:8) and the fear of God occasioned by revelation (1:1, 12:9-14) such that both are needed to support each other.⁹³ For example, 1:15 (‘what is crooked cannot be straightened’) is resolved in 12:9 – the teacher ‘straightened’ proverbs through his fear of God and belief in judgment.⁹⁴ In another article, Shead draws out the possibilities for reading another passage (Ecc 7:23-8:1) in the light of the epilogue.⁹⁵ This gives us a ground for reading passages such as the reality of prior creation (Ecc 12:1) and future judgment (Ecc 3:17, 11:9) in light of the salvation historical understandings of the personal creator and judge, which are required to resolve the tensions raised by Ecclesiastes.⁹⁶

Theology of nature

We can thus conclude that the wisdom literature is not at all an exercise in natural theology. It relies upon the special revelation given by God’s words and deeds in Israel’s history. It even claims, in its own way, to be special revelation. We can concur with Goldsworthy that, although the perception of order by empirical observation is a true perception as far as it goes, it doesn’t go very far unless it starts ‘from the facts given by revelation of an eternal, personal God who is the ultimate source of all things and their order.’⁹⁷ The starting point of wisdom is God the creator, which comes by special revelation.⁹⁸ ‘Without a knowledge of the God of salvation-history, there could be no true wisdom, no real knowledge of the world.’⁹⁹ The similarities with Egyptian or Mesopotamian wisdom do not show a common ground for ‘ultimate meaning’, only a common ground for ‘immediate meaning’.¹⁰⁰ Job and Ecclesiastes, in fact, argue against natural theology. Job learns that God’s order is above the order perceptible to humanity.¹⁰¹ In Ecclesiastes, God has set such strict limits for wisdom that we cannot by ourselves see a large enough picture of reality. This is compounded by human sin.¹⁰²

Rather, the wisdom literature contains a theology of nature. It seeks to answer the question: Given God’s revelation in his inspired prophetic word, and given specific observations about the world, what should the person who fears Yahweh do? The wisdom literature attempts to connect empirical reality with ultimate reality. Even if those who originated the folk wisdom didn’t think about this connection, there came a time when it had to be considered because of the situation of Israel as a nation. Israelites were driven to a unitary view of the world because of God’s saving acts, showing that he reigns over the whole earth and was saving Israel into a physical kingdom that ruled the physical creation.¹⁰³ It is not that the heathen knew nothing at all, but rather the heathen lacked any ultimate guiding principle for their knowledge, which only came through the revelation of Yahweh.¹⁰⁴ Agur, for example, (Prov 30:1-6) found in Yahwistic faith a universal, foundational, discriminating principle to guide his wisdom; not that he abandoned all of his previous wisdom; but rather, he brought that natural experience into submission to revelation.

However, the wisdom literature also warns us about the limits of our ability to connect empirical reality with revealed theology. In contrast with the non-canonical Sirach (e.g. 19:20 ‘All wisdom is the fear of the Lord, and in all wisdom there is the fulfilment of the law’), the connection between revelation and observation is not watertight. As Job and Ecclesiastes show, often we will not be able to put the two together and need to trust God’s goodness. Yahweh’s revelatory theophany leads to humility for Job, but his sufferings remain unexplained (Job 42:1-3).¹⁰⁵ ‘When with abundance dreams and vapours and words grow, then fear God!’ (Eccl 5:7, my translation). Similarly, when there is a wearisome increase in making books and study (or even in writing and reading essays), ‘Fear God and keep his commandments [. . .] For God will bring every deed into judgment, because of everything that is hidden, whether good or bad.’ (Eccl 12:12-14).

Bibliography of Sources Cited

Barr, James. Biblical Faith and Natural Theology: the Gifford Lectures for 1991. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.

Barth, Karl. The Doctrine of God. Edited by G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance. Translated by T. H. L. Parker et. al. Church Dogmatics II/1. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957.

Blocher, Henri. ‘The Fear of the Lord as the “Principle” of Wisdom’. Tyndale Bulletin 28 (1977): 3-28.

Brueggemann, Walter A. ‘The Social Significance of Solomon as a Patron of Wisdom’. Pages 117-32 in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East. Edited by John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990.

_______. Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997.

Clifford, Richard J. The Wisdom Literature. Interpreting Biblical Texts. Nashville: Abingdon, 1998.

Collins, John J. ‘The Biblical Precedent for Natural Theology’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45/1 supplement (1977): B35-B67.

Dumbrell, William J. Covenant & Creation: An Old Testament Covenantal Theology. Exeter: Paternoster, 1984.

Fox, Michael V. A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: a Rereading of Ecclesiastes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.

Fyall, Robert S. Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job. New Studies in Biblical Theology 12. Downers Grove: IVP, 2002.

Goldingay, John. ‘The “Salvation History” Perspective and the “Wisdom” Perspective within the Context of Biblical Theology’. Evangelical Quarterly 51/4 (1979): 194-204.

Goldsworthy, Graeme. Gospel and Wisdom: Israel’s Wisdom Literature in the Christian Life. Biblical Classics Library. Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995.

Jenks, Alan W. ‘Theological Presuppositions of Israel’s Wisdom Literature’. Horizons in Biblical Theology 7 (1985): 43-75.

Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm (eds.). ‘tW[r>’. Article 8891 in The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Translated by M.E.J. Richardson. CD-ROM ed.Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 1994-2000.

Lasor, William S., David A. Hubbard, and Frederic W. Bush. Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament. 2nd ed. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.

Lefebure, Leo D. ‘The Wisdom Tradition in Recent Christian Theology’. Journal of Religion 76/2 (1996): 338-48.

Murphy, Roland E. ‘The Interpretation of Old Testament Wisdom Literature’. Interpretation 23/3 (1969): 289-301.

_______. Proverbs. Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 22. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998.

Pfeiffer, Robert H. ‘A Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant’. Pages 437-38 in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. Translated by John A. Wilson, Robert H. Pfeiffer and Robert D. Biggs. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Rad, Gerhard von. Wisdom in Israel. London: SCM, 1972.

Scott, R. B. Y. ‘Priesthood, Prophecy, Wisdom, and the Knowledge of God’. Journal of Biblical Literature 80 (1961): 1-15.

Shead, Andrew G. ‘Ecclesiastes from the Outside In’. Reformed Theological Review 55/1 (1996): 24-37.

______. ‘Reading Ecclesiastes “Epilogically”’. Tyndale Bulletin 48/1 (1997): 67-91.

Waltke, Bruce K. ‘The Book of Proverbs and Old Testament Theology’. Bibliotheca Sacra 136/544 (1979): 302-17.

_______. ‘Agur’s Apologia for Verbal, Plenary Inspiration: an Exegesis of Proverbs 30:1-6’. Pages 303-20 in The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World. Essays in Honor of Ronald F. Youngblood. Edited by Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss and Steven M. Voth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.

Wilson, John A., Robert H. Pfeiffer, and Robert D. Biggs. ‘The Instruction of Amen-em-Opet’. Pages 421-24 in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. Edited by James B. Pritchard. Translated by John A. Wilson, Robert H. Pfeiffer and Robert D. Biggs. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Wright, G. Ernest. God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital. Studies in Biblical Theology. London: SCM, 1952.

¹ Walter A. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 681.

² John J. Collins, ‘The Biblical Precedent for Natural Theology’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45/1 supplement (1977): B46-47.

³ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B48-B52.

⁴ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B42.

⁵ John Goldingay, ‘The “Salvation History” Perspective and the “Wisdom” Perspective within the Context of Biblical Theology’, Evangelical Quarterly 51/4 (1979): 202.

⁶ Karl Barth, The Doctrine of God (ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; trans. T. H. L. Parker et. al.; Church Dogmatics II/1; Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1957), 85.

⁷ Barth, Doctrine of God, 79-85.

⁸ James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology: the Gifford Lectures for 1991 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), 1.

⁹ Leo D. Lefebure, ‘The Wisdom Tradition in Recent Christian Theology’, Journal of Religion 76/2 (1996): 340.

¹⁰ Goldingay, ‘Perspective’, 199-200.

¹¹ Brueggemann, Theology, 680; e.g. R. B. Y. Scott, ‘Priesthood, Prophecy, Wisdom, and the Knowledge of God’, Journal of Biblical Literature 80 (1961): 1-15.; Roland E. Murphy, ‘The Interpretation of Old Testament Wisdom Literature’, Interpretation 23/3 (1969): 290.

¹² Barr, Biblical Faith, 195-97.

¹³ G. Ernest Wright, God Who Acts: Biblical Theology as Recital (Studies in Biblical Theology; London: SCM, 1952), 11-12; critiqued by Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B36; critiqued by Goldingay, ‘Perspective’, 195.

¹⁴ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B36.

¹⁵ Brueggemann, Theology, 680; emphasis mine.

¹⁶ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B37.

¹⁷ Murphy, ‘Interpretation’, 291-92.

¹⁸ Goldingay, ‘Perspective’, 201.

¹⁹ Murphy, ‘Interpretation’, 293.

²⁰ Scott, ‘Knowledge of God’, 1-15.

²¹ Barr, Biblical Faith, 92.

²² Barr, Biblical Faith, 91.

²³ Richard J. Clifford, The Wisdom Literature (Interpreting Biblical Texts; Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 26-27.

²⁴ Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 33.

²⁵ Cf John A. Wilson, Robert H. Pfeiffer, and Robert D. Biggs, ‘The Instruction of Amen-em-Opet’, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ed. James B. Pritchard; trans. John A. Wilson, Robert H. Pfeiffer and Robert D. Biggs; 3rd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 421-24, chapter 7, with Proverbs 23:4-5.

²⁶ Barr, Biblical Faith, 92.

²⁷ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B38.

²⁸ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B45.

²⁹ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B41.

³⁰ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B52-B53.

³¹ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B46-B48.

³² Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B48-B49.

³³ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B50-B52.

³⁴ Barth, Doctrine of God, 79-85.

³⁵ Barr, Biblical Faith, 93.

³⁶ Barr, Biblical Faith, 93.

³⁷ Bruce K. Waltke, ‘Agur’s Apologia for Verbal, Plenary Inspiration: an Exegesis of Proverbs 30:1-6’, in The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World. Essays in Honor of Ronald F. Youngblood (ed. Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss and Steven M. Voth; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 303-20.

³⁸ William S. Lasor, David A. Hubbard, and Frederic W. Bush, Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form, and Background of the Old Testament (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 468.

³⁹ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 305.

⁴⁰ Lasor, Hubbard, and Bush, Old Testament Survey, 468; RSV.

⁴¹ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 314, fn 7.

⁴² Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 304.

⁴³ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 303, 306.

⁴⁴ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 306.

⁴⁵ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 311.

⁴⁶ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 310.

⁴⁷ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 305.

⁴⁸ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 312-13.

⁴⁹ Murphy, ‘Interpretation’, 293-94.

⁵⁰ Murphy, ‘Interpretation’, 294-99.

⁵¹ Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom: Israel’s Wisdom Literature in the Christian Life (Biblical Classics Library; Carlisle: Paternoster, 1995), 140.

⁵² Robert S. Fyall, Now My Eyes Have Seen You: Images of Creation and Evil in the Book of Job (New Studies in Biblical Theology 12; Downers Grove: IVP, 2002), 69-70.

⁵³ Contra Roland E. Murphy, Proverbs (Word Biblical Commentary Vol. 22; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 102 & 7.

⁵⁴ Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 34.

⁵⁵ Robert H. Pfeiffer, ‘A Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant’, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (ed. James B. Pritchard; trans. John A. Wilson, Robert H. Pfeiffer and Robert D. Biggs; 3rd ed.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 437-38.

⁵⁶ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 307 (see above).

⁵⁷ E.g. Prov 22:19 is added into ‘Amen-em-Opet’ 1.

⁵⁸ Alan W. Jenks, ‘Theological Presuppositions of Israel’s Wisdom Literature’, Horizons in Biblical Theology 7 (1985): 43-75.

⁵⁹ Bruce K. Waltke, ‘The Book of Proverbs and Old Testament Theology’, Bibliotheca Sacra 136/544 (1979): 307.

⁶⁰ Waltke, ‘Verbal Plenary Inspiration’, 310.

⁶¹ Fyall, Job, 66.

⁶² Fyall, Job, 68-69.

⁶³ Fyall, Job, 69-70.

⁶⁴ Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 85.

⁶⁵ Goldingay, ‘Perspective’, 199.

⁶⁶ Lasor, Hubbard, and Bush, Old Testament Survey, 505.

⁶⁷ Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 107.

⁶⁸ Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 108.

⁶⁹ Michael V. Fox, A Time to Tear Down and a Time to Build Up: a Rereading of Ecclesiastes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 25-27.

⁷⁰ Fox, Ecclesiastes, 26.

⁷¹ Fox, Ecclesiastes, 30-33.

⁷² Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, and Johann J. Stamm (eds.), ‘tW[r>’ (8891), in The Hebrew & Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (trans. M.E.J. Richardson; CD-ROM ed.; Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 1994-2000).

⁷³ Fox, Ecclesiastes, 42-48.

⁷⁴ E.g. William J. Dumbrell, Covenant & Creation: An Old Testament Covenantal Theology (Exeter: Paternoster, 1984), 55-64.

⁷⁵ Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (London: SCM, 1972), 307.

⁷⁶ von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 57.

⁷⁷ von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 62.

⁷⁸ von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 65-73.

⁷⁹ von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, 68.

⁸⁰ Collins, ‘Biblical Precedent’, B45; Barr, Biblical Faith, 92.

⁸¹ Waltke, ‘Proverbs and Old Testament Theology’, 313-14.

⁸² Walter A. Brueggemann, ‘The Social Significance of Solomon as a Patron of Wisdom’, in The Sage in Israel and the Ancient Near East (ed. John G. Gammie and Leo G. Perdue; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990), 117-32.

⁸³ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 68.

⁸⁴ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 70.

⁸⁵ Murphy, Proverbs, 256.

⁸⁶ Henri Blocher, ‘The Fear of the Lord as the “Principle” of Wisdom’, Tyndale Bulletin 28 (1977): 15.

⁸⁷ Blocher, ‘Fear of the Lord’, 17-18.

⁸⁸ Barr, Biblical Faith, 93.

⁸⁹ Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 111.

⁹⁰ Andrew G. Shead, ‘Ecclesiastes from the Outside In’, Reformed Theological Review 55/1 (1996): 24-37.

⁹¹ Shead, ‘Ecclesiastes Outside In’, 28-33.

⁹² Shead, ‘Ecclesiastes Outside In’, 32.

⁹³ Shead, ‘Ecclesiastes Outside In’, 34.

⁹⁴ Shead, ‘Ecclesiastes Outside In’, 32.

⁹⁵ Andrew G. Shead, ‘Reading Ecclesiastes “Epilogically”’, Tyndale Bulletin 48/1 (1997): 85.

⁹⁶ Contra Clifford, Wisdom Literature, 105; Fox, Ecclesiastes, 322.

⁹⁷ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 139.

⁹⁸ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 139-40.

⁹⁹ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 140.

¹⁰⁰ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 140.

¹⁰¹ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 102.

¹⁰² Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 110.

¹⁰³ Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom, 131.

¹⁰⁴ Blocher, ‘Fear of the Lord’, 15-18.

¹⁰⁵ Fyall, Job, 70.

Desire: reconnected (Song of Songs 7-8)

A Sermon on Song of Songs 7-8

Lionel Windsor, 18 July 2004

Desire … disconnected

We seem to live in a world where sexual desire is everywhere, but means almost nothing. Turn on the TV, and you’ll soon find sexual desire in the ads, in the movies, on the sitcoms. Take a drive, and there it is displayed on the billboards. Open a newspaper, and you’ll find it everywhere; the driving force of so many scandals, sensations and sleaze.

Sexual desire, it seems, can achieve anything. It can sell ice cream and cars. It can spice up a news item. It can keep millions of moviegoers entertained for hours. Sexual desire seems to have a life of its own: strong, powerful, evocative, captivating. And yet, sexual desire is so often disconnected from anything meaningful or worthwhile.

You know the story: two career-oriented individuals meet. They date. They feel desire. They share a bed. They share an apartment. They call themselves ‘partners’, like a business transaction. After a while they get sick of each other. Their partnership is dissolved. Their careers both move on. If it’s a sitcom, they laugh and stay friends. If it’s real life, each of their hearts becomes a little bit more scarred and bitter.

Desire is everywhere, but so often it’s not connected, not anchored, not secure or firm or meaningful beyond temporary convenience.

Of course that shouldn’t be surprising to you if you know anything about the story of the Bible. Right back in the beginning, when God made the heavens and earth, and all the living creatures, God’s crowning glory of his creation was humanity, man and woman, who were both naked and felt no shame, made to serve God together as one flesh. Sexual desire is right there at the beginning of the Bible, fundamental to who we are as God’s special creatures: a mutual loving and giving and receiving.

Desire … distorted

Yet that desire was very soon twisted.

When the man and woman turned their backs on God, and failed to believe him or obey him, they were cursed in their own relationships too

In Genesis 3:16, God curses the woman, and says

‘your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you’

Desire, disconnected from God’s purposes, became a cruel power play. Unsatisfying, yet still so appallingly real. As the Bible’s story continues, we soon see desire become the empty transaction of prostitution, the chilling weapon of rape, the cheap thrill of multiple partners. And in so many marriages even today, desire is little more than a bargaining chip.

Desire … restored (the ideal)

But the Bible is the story of how God acted to restore the relationship between himself, humanity and the whole created order. Initially he did it through the nation of Israel. The one nation God chose to restore the world. And there is a great climax in the biblical story when the nation Israel finally came of age. David, and then Solomon, come to the throne. And we see in Solomon a picture of what the ideal relationship between God and his people should look like: God’s king ruling over his people in his land. Worshipping God in his temple. Blessed by God with wealth and prosperity. Bringing wisdom and wealth to all the nations. Not perfect, by any means, but still a wonderful picture. What better time was there than the glorious reign of king Solomon to sing about God’s ideal for sexual desire? Because when God’s people are restored there is also the hope of restoring that thing that is so fundamental to being human: The love between a man and a woman.

And so we have the greatest Song of all, dedicated to Solomon. Song of Songs, the ideal for sexual desire. It is an ideal, of course. This a song, not a medical journal, or a list of rules, or even a story with a plotline. It is a song that celebrates an ideal. That means none of us will perfectly live up to it. In fact, it may be impossible for you to reach it at all, given your past or present life situation. It may be a source of pain if you are single, divorced or unhappily married. But this ideal is still important to grasp and understand, as an anchor that enables us to orient our lives to God’s plan, or even to help others orient their lives towards it. As Hebrews 13:4 says: marriage should be honoured by all.

Today we’ll be looking at the last two chapters of the song, 7 and 8. We will find there how sexual desire is both celebrated as an ideal, and connected with the things that give it meaning.

Desire … restored (Chapter 7)

Desire nurtured (7:1-8)

Please look with me at chapter 7, verse 1:

Here the man is speaking to his beloved:

¹ How beautiful your sandaled feet, O prince’s daughter! Your graceful legs are like jewels, the work of a craftsman’s hands. ² Your navel is a rounded goblet that never lacks blended wine. Your waist is a mound of wheat encircled by lilies. ³ Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. ⁴ Your neck is like an ivory tower. Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon by the gate of Bath Rabbim. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus. ⁵ Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel. Your hair is like royal tapestry; the king is held captive by its tresses. ⁶ How beautiful you are and how pleasing, O love, with your delights! ⁷ Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. ⁸ I said, “I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples, ⁹ and your mouth like the best wine.

Some of the language sounds very strange to us. Your nose is like a tower of Lebanon? Husbands, don’t try this at home, OK? But you have to understand how an ancient Israelite’s mind worked. For them, the greatest thing in the world was the promised land, the land that God gave to Israel and blessed with abundance, especially in Solomon’s reign. A land overflowing with wheat and wine and fruit. The jewels and tapestries of royal prosperity. For them, the promised land was heaven on earth. And so the man describes the girl as a slice of heaven¸ in the language of his time. We might speak of sunshine and starlight. They spoke of pools and mountains and towers.

Do you notice how purposeful and deliberate the man is in describing his beloved? Not cold and calculating. But not weak and aimless either. So often our own culture treats love as something that just happens to you, something you fall into, or that strikes you without warning. An arrow fired by Cupid when you’re not looking. Now love at first sight happens, and it can be great, but if you leave it there, the desire usually doesn’t last. Cupid, in case you didn’t know, is a pagan Greek idol, he’s not an angel of God.

Desire has to be worked at, maintained, lovingly and purposefully nurtured. That is what the man is doing in these verses. His eyes move over his beloved’s feet, legs, navel, waist, breasts, neck, eyes, nose, head, hair, mouth.

Maybe your reaction to this part of the Bible is to think: That’s all very well, but the desire has disappeared from my marriage. I’ve fallen out of love, just like I once fell in love. Well maybe, just maybe, it’s because you’re passively waiting around for desire to happen to you again. If you sit there and wait, desire for your spouse is very unlikely to just happen. It needs time and effort and loving care, it may need you to do something. Love is active, not passive. It’s an action, not just a feeling. You may need to spend more time with your spouse, praising their positive characteristics and thanking God for their beauty.

Of course, that’s why pornography is so disastrous, isn’t it? It takes the active desire that belongs to your spouse or future spouse, and makes it passive. It disconnects desire from reality. And connects it to something unreal and unattainable. Pornography steals love from where it belongs. Statistics show that pornography has stolen the love of millions of Australians. Don’t let it steal yours. But foster and nurture your desire for your spouse.

Desire enjoyed (7:9-13)

In verses 9-10, the girl rejoices in her lover’s desire and responds:

⁹ May the wine go straight to my lover, flowing gently over lips and teeth. ¹⁰I belong to my lover, and his desire is for me.

See how active she is, too? She invites him to come with her into the countryside

Verse 11:

¹¹ Come, my lover, let us go to the countryside, let us spend the night in the villages. ¹² Let us go early to the vineyards to see if the vines have budded, if their blossoms have opened, and if the pomegranates are in bloom– there I will give you my love. ¹³ The mandrakes send out their fragrance, and at our door is every delicacy, both new and old, that I have stored up for you, my lover.

These verses, I think, show how natural and good their desire is. It is connected to the creation, to life and growth. And so connected to God’s good original purposes in creation. It’s almost a restoration of the situation of Adam and Eve. Remember, when the man and woman originally sinned against God, they were thrown out of the garden, and the woman’s desire for her husband was cursed, disconnected. Yet in these verses we see that desire restored and placed back in the garden. Natural, good, meaningful and purposeful; connected again to creation. Remember, this is an ideal, not a rule.

Desire … connected (Chapter

And yet … something is still missing. The girl yearns for more; she is still not satisfied. She says, ‘if only’…

When love so desires? (8:1-4)

Please read with me from chapter 8, verse 1:

¹ If only you were to me like a brother, who was nursed at my mother’s breasts! Then, if I found you outside, I would kiss you, and no one would despise me. ² I would lead you and bring you to my mother’s house– she who has taught me. I would give you spiced wine to drink, the nectar of my pomegranates. ³ His left arm is under my head and his right arm embraces me. ⁴ Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.

The girl realizes that it’s not enough just to have this desire. The desire must be awakened appropriately. The desire has to be further connected to the reality of her life. The girl has a family, a mother, she has a whole life, already rich with relationships. And she wants her lover to be completely connected into her life. Not just an appendage, a thrill, a disconnected compartment of her experience. ‘Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires,’ she says.

When does love desire to be awoken? When is the appropriate time? The following verses go towards answering it:

Desire needs to be connected to total commitment (8:6-7)

Let’s read from verse 6

⁶ Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. ⁷ Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.

She doesn’t simply want to be an object of his desire. She wants to be a seal over his heart, incorporated into his very existence, unable to be removed. Why? Because she knows the strength of love, and she realizes that there must be a strong commitment, to match the strength of their desire. Love / desire here is described as utterly powerful like death, all-consuming like fire, infinitely valuable like vast wealth. Such a strong force cannot be treated lightly. It must not be aroused or awakened without the security of a commitment.

A few years ago, my brother-in-law’s friend bought a Subaru WRX. A beautiful car, world Rally Blue, gold-trimmed hubcaps, able to go from 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in 5 seconds. It cost him about $80,000. But the power of the car had to be matched by its safety and security features:High quality airbags for high-speed crashes, a password-encrypted engine cut-off switch to guard against car-jacking, GPS Satellite tracking so that police can track the car from outer space if it’s stolen. You don’t buy a superb car like that and then forget about safety and security, do you? You’d be an idiot.

How much more powerful, and valuable, is sexual desire. Our world so often treats sex like an old pushbike, something you can lend to friends, use to go for cheap thrill rides. But the Bible says that love is so valuable that if you were to give all the wealth you owned for it, it would be utterly scorned. It’s as powerful as death. It needs the security and connectedness of lifelong commitment.

That’s why a well-nurtured, valued, lifelong marriage is what connects sexual desire to reality. It makes sexual desire the smooth-running engine room of life-long relationships, rather than the destroyer of lives, or a burnt-out stolen vehicle in the ditch.

But there’s more.

Desire is not just about private commitment. The girl does not just want to be a private seal on the man’s heart, she wants to be a public seal on his arm, a ring on his finger; displayed to the world.

And we see in this chapter that desire is also connected to social reality. The girl has a mother who loves her and gave her birth. In verses 8-9 she has older brothers, who wanted to protect her beauty and purity when she was growing up. And so in verse 5 she dreams of coming home from the desert, leaning on her lover, having her friends and family wondering and rejoicing at her relationship.

That’s why marriage is a public ceremony. Not just an excuse for a big party, but a public affirmation, a connection of your private life with public reality. Friends, family.

There is a myth going around, that most people believe. The myth that sex is only the activity of two consenting adults in the privacy of their own bedroom. Nothing more. Just a completely private matter, totally disconnected from anything else. Have you heard that myth? That is so wrong. Your private love life will have a profound public effect on everybody around you. If you’re not faithful and committed in your love life, how can you be expected to be faithful and committed in any other part of your life? It’s why the private lives of politicians do actually matter. It’s why your own private life matters. Not just to God, but to all of us. It’s why you can’t isolate what you do or think or say in private, and pretend it won’t make any difference to anybody else.

And so, in verses 13 and 14, we see the ideal for sexual desire. A man and a woman, continuing their relationship, fulfilled and yet constantly ebbing and flowing in love. Connected with friends, connected with creation, connected in commitment with one another.

¹³ You who dwell in the gardens with friends in attendance, let me hear your voice! ¹⁴ Come away, my lover, and be like a gazelle or like a young stag on the spice-laden mountains.

You can almost hear the song fade-out into the sunset.

Peace greater than Solomon (8:10-12)

I said at the start that Solomon was a picture of God’s ideal king. But do you notice in verse 10-12 that Solomon, in fact, totally failed? Let’s read them, and see the contrast:

¹⁰ I am a wall, and my breasts are like towers. Thus I have become in his eyes like one bringing contentment. ¹¹ Solomon had a vineyard in Baal Hamon; he let out his vineyard to tenants. Each was to bring for its fruit a thousand shekels of silver. ¹² But my own vineyard is mine to give; the thousand shekels are for you, O Solomon, and two hundred are for those who tend its fruit.

Solomon himself fell tragically short of God’s ideal in the area of love and desire. His desire was so disconnected from God’s purposes, that he had a harem of a thousand. He entered into marriage simply to cement political alliances and make commercial treaties. That’s nothing more than political, state-endorsed prostitution. It eventually led his heart away from God, and, even more, led to the slow but sure destruction of his kingdom, and his people and even the promised land.

You know, in Hebrew, you say Solomon ‘sh^elomo’. The girl says that sh^elomo can keep his harem and his money. In verse 10, she has found shalom, contentment, peace, wholeness, in her husband.

Jesus was the true descendent of sh^elomo. Who brings true peace, true shalom. Forgiving our sins, restoring our relationship with God, reconnecting our lives. Perfectly at the last day, and even, in part, in our lives now.

So what will you, a follower of Jesus, do with his word here? Maybe you need to ask God for forgiveness through Jesus. Forgiveness for treating your God-given desire with contempt. Disconnecting it from your life. Using it in a way it was never intended. Hurting others, defying God’s good purposes

Maybe you need to work at living the restored life God has given you in Christ. Reconnect your desire to the reality of God’s purposes.

Perhaps you need to foster and nurture desire in your marriage, actively loving your spouse, purposefully and deliberately matching your desire with your relationship. Maybe you need to ask for help in this area.

On the other hand, maybe you need to stop using your desire in disconnected ways that harm relationships, and seek to help those you have hurt.

Maybe you just need to be thankful for what God has given you.

Or perhaps you are someone who cannot realize this ideal in your life, because of singleness, or divorce, or sickness, either temporary or permanent. If that’s you, remember that the Song of Songs is a song about this world, and this creation, which is still incomplete and marred by sin. Ultimately what matters is a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that will bring true peace, no matter what your circumstances. Ephesians 5 speaks to everybody, no matter what their situation, when it says,

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

If you belong to Christ, then you have true, everlasting peace, connection and fulfilment; and commitment from the one who will never let you down.

Christianity and evolution – the real problem

The problem in the debate between Christianity and evolution is not really scientific at all but rather philosophical. We need to distinguish between ‘science’, which is a discipline, and ‘scientism’, which is a philosophical stance. Christians too often try to attack some of the results of science, when what we really should be attacking is scientism.

Scientism is basically the belief that, for every phenomenon in the world, a scientific explanation is both necessary and sufficient. That is, if you can explain something by using science, then every other type of explanation is ruled out. This idea was taken up by the atheistic proponents of evolution in the nineteenth century, who proclaimed that, since Darwin’s theory could explain the origin of life, then all other explanations (especially the Bible’s creation account) were both unnecessary and also incorrect. Unfortunately, the majority of their Christian opponents (e.g. the American fundamentalists) didn’t challenge this assumption but rather took it on board and (unwittingly) assumed it themselves! So the task of the Christians became the disproving of evolution, because if evolution was right then God must not exist. This is nicely summed up in Douglas Adams’ satire on the science/religion debate which concludes with God saying ‘Oh dear, I hadn’t thought of that’ and promptly vanishing in a puff of logic. (from ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’).

But scientism really is quite flawed. For example, just because I could analyse and completely describe to you the chemical constituents of the ink and paper of the books in your bookshelf doesn’t mean that what’s actually WRITTEN in the books is meaningless! I can’t ultimately analyse what’s written in the books scientifically, by doing experiments on them. I have to analyse them by reading them! So the scientific explanation, while it may be helpful and true as far as it goes, is not the only explanation of things. It may not even be the most helpful explanation of certain things (e.g. books), and it certainly doesn’t rule out other explanations (e.g. literary, historical, theological). If evolutionary theory did happen to be right, or partially right, then this would not rule God out at all.

Christians should be challenging scientism rather than putting all of our eggs in the basket of disproving evolutionary theory. If we can show that a scientific explanation for something doesn’t necessarily remove a theological explanation, then the heat is off both sides. Christians don’t have to go to the stake against evolution, and atheists don’t have to go to the stake for it. There is room for more rational assessment of evolutionary theory. Opponents of evolution can point out some of its problems in the various evolutionary theories that exist today, while proponents can accept that these problems exist without it becoming a major issue.

However, scientism won’t go away so easily, because actually, the real problem is not even philosophical. The real problem is rebellion against God. Real people in the real world don’t disbelieve because of evolution. Rather they use evolution as an excuse for their unbelief, and unwittingly adopt the flawed assumptions of scientism in doing so. The solution isn’t to attack science, but to show that our rebellion is real but has been paid for by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Is God Green? Part 1

The View from Above

Dualism

Materialism

Paganism

The view from above

People and the world (Genesis 1-2)

How to rule the world

What is a tree for?

The curse

Introduction

The meaning of ‘Natural theology’

In defence of natural theology

Scripture as revelation

Order: immediate and universal

Differences from other ANE wisdom.

Tensions in the wisdom perspective

Salvation-historical resolution

Theology of nature

Bibliography of Sources Cited

Desire … disconnected

Desire … distorted

Desire … restored (the ideal)

Desire … restored (Chapter 7)

Desire nurtured (7:1-8)

Desire enjoyed (7:9-13)

Desire … connected (Chapter

When love so desires? (8:1-4)

Peace greater than Solomon (8:10-12)

Recent Posts

Post categories

Sites I like…

Books

Churches

Friends & Family

General resources

Language Resources

News

Sites where I write stuff

Theological Colleges

Site map

Posts by date

Social Networks

Admin