by Peter Kreeft
THREE PHILOSOPHIES OF LIFE
PETER KREEFT
Three Philosophies of Life
Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity
Job: Life as Suffering
Song of Songs: Life as Love
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
for John Mallon
who knows
Cover by Riz Boncan Marsella
© 1989 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-262-0
Library of Congress catalogue number 89-84054
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Introduction
The Inexhaustibility of Wisdom Literature; Three Philosophies of Life; Three Metaphysical Moods; Three Theological Virtues; “The Divine Comedy” before Dante
Ecclesiastes: Life as Vanity
The Greatness of Ecclesiastes; Ecclesiastes as Ethics; Ecclesiastes the Existentialist; The Modernity of Ecclesiastes; God’s Silence in Ecclesiastes; The Summary of Ecclesiastes; The Author of Ecclesiastes; Short-Range Meanings-Enough?; The Great Cover-Up; Five Ways to Hide an Elephant; The Obscene Syllogism; Five “Toils”; Five Vanities; The Need for an Answer: Three Demonic Doors; Rules for Talking Back ; One More Answer to Ecclesiastes: The Divine Interruption; The Postscript; Conclusion
Job: Life as Suffering
1. The “Problem of Evil”; 2. The Problem of Faith versus Experience; 3. The Problem of the Meaning of Life; 4. The Problem of God
Song of Songs: Life as Love
1. Love Is a Song; 2. Love Is the Greatest Song ; 3. Love Is Dialogue; 4. Love Is Synergistic; 5. Love Is Alive ; 6. Love Is Gospel; 7. Love Is Power; 8. Love Is Work; 9. Love Is Desire and Fulfillment; 10. Suffering Goes with Love; 11. Love Is Free; 12. Love Is True to Reality; 13. Love Is Accurate; 14. Love Is Simple; 15. Love Is Individual; 16. Love Is All Conquering; 17. Love Is a Surprise ; 18. Love Is Fearless; 19. Love Is Exchange of Selves; 20. Love Is Triumphalistic; 21. Love Is Natural; 22. Love Is Faithful; 23. Love Is Ready; 24. Love Is All Inclusive; 25. Love Is “Sexist”; 26. Love Is as Strong as Death
Endnotes
INTRODUCTION
The Inexhaustibility of Wisdom Literature
I have been a philosopher for all of my adult life, and the three most profound books of philosophy that I have ever read are Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs. In fact, the book that first made me a philosopher, at about age fifteen, was Ecclesiastes.
Books of philosophy can be classified in many ways: ancient versus modern, Eastern versus Western, optimistic versus pessimistic, theistic versus atheistic, rationalistic versus irrationalistic, monistic versus pluralistic, and many others. But the most important distinction of all, says Gabriel Marcel, is between “the full” and “the empty”, the solid and the shallow, the profound and the trivial. When you have read all the books in all the libraries of the world, when you have accompanied all the world’s sages on all their journeys into wisdom, you will not have found three more profound books than Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs.
These three books are literally inexhaustible. They brim with a mysterious power of renewal. I continually find new nourishment in rereading them, and I never tire of teaching them. They quintessentially exemplify my definition of a classic. A classic is like a cow: it gives fresh milk every morning. A classic is a book that rewards endlessly repeated rereading. A classic is like the morning, like nature herself: ever young, ever renewing. No, not even like nature, for she, like us, is doomed to die. Only God is ever young, and only the Book he inspired never grows old.
When God wanted to inspire some philosophy, why would he inspire anything but the best? But the best is not necessarily the most sophisticated. Plato says, in the Ion, that the gods deliberately chose the poorest poets to inspire the greatest poems so that the glory would be theirs, not man’s. It is exactly what Saint Paul says in 1 Corinthians. And we see this principle at work throughout the Bible: the striking contrast between the primitiveness of the poet and the profundity of the poem, between the smallness of the singer and the greatness of the song, between the absence of humanys,istication and the presence of divine sophia, divine wisdom. Something is always breaking through the words, something you can never fully grasp but also never fully miss if only you stand there with uncovered soul. Stand in the divine rain, and seeds of wisdom will grow in your soul.
Three Philosophies of Life
There are ultimately only three philosophies of life, and each one is represented by one of the following books of the Bible:
1. Life as vanity; Ecclesiastes
2. Life as suffering: Job
3. Life as love: Song of Songs
No more perfect or profound book has ever been written for any one of these three philosophies of life. Ecclesiastes is the all-time classic of vanity. Job is the all-time classic of suffering. And Song of Songs is the all-time classic of love.
The reason these are the only three possible philosophies of life is because they represent the only three places or conditions in which we can be. Ecclesiastes‘ “vanity” represents Hell. Job’s suffering represents Purgatory.1 And Song of Songs’ love represents Heaven. All three conditions begin here and now on earth. As C. S. Lewis put it, “All that seems earth is Hell or Heaven.” It is a shattering line, and Lewis added this one to it: “Lord, open not too often my weak eyes to this.”
The essence of Hell is not suffering but vanity, not pain but purposelessness, not physical suffering but spiritual suffering. Dante was right to have the sign over Hell’s gate read: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Suffering is not the essence of Hell, because suffering can be hopeful. It was for Job. Job never lost his faith and his hope (which is faith directed at the future), and his suffering proved to be purifying, purgative, educational: it gave him eyes to see God. That is why we are all on earth.
Finally, Heaven is love, for Heaven is essentially the presence of God, and God is essentially love. (“God is love.”)
Three Metaphysical Moods
Heidegger begins one of his most haunting books with the most haunting question: “Why is there anything rather than nothing?” He speaks of three moods that raise this great question. They are three metaphysical moods, three moods that reveal not just the feelings of the individual but also the meanings of being. And these three are the three metaphysical moods that give rise to the three philosophies of life that we find in Ecclesiastes, Job, and Song of Songs. Heidegger says,
“Why is there anything rather than nothing?”. . .
Many men never encounter this question, if by encounter we mean not merely to hear and read about it as an interrogative formulation but to ask the question, that is, to bring it about, to raise it, to feel its inevitability.
And yet each of us is grazed at least once, perhaps more than once, by the hidden power of this question, even if he is not aware of what is happening to him. The question looms in moments of great despair, when things tend to lose all their weight and all meaning becomes obscured. Perhaps it will strike but once like a muffled bell that rings into our life and gradually dies away. It is present in moments of rejoicing, when all the things around us are transfigured and seem to be there for the first time, as if it might be easier to think they arc not than to understand that they are and are as they are. The question is upon us in boredom, when we are equally removed from despair and joy, and everything about us seems so hopelessly commonplace that we no longer care whether anything is or is not—and with this the question “Why is there anything rather than nothing?” is evoked in a particular form.
But this question may be asked expressly, or, unrecognized as a question, it may merely pass
through our lives like a brief gust of wind.
Despair is Job’s mood. His suffering is not only bodily but also spiritual. What has he to look forward to except death? He has lost everything, even God—especially God, it seems.
Joy is the mood of love, young love, new love, “falling in love”. That is the wonder in Song of Songs: that the beloved should be; that life should be; that anything, now all lit by the new light of love, should be—as mysterious a glory as it was to Job a mysterious burden.
Boredom is the mood of Ecclesiastes. It is a modern mood. Indeed, there is no word for it in any ancient language! In this mood, there is neither a reason to die, as in Job, nor a reason to live, as in Song of Songs. This is the deepest pit of all.
Three Theological Virtues
These three books also teach the three greatest things in the world, the three “theological virtues”: faith, hope, and charity.
The lesson Ecclesiastes teaches is faith, the necessity of faith, by showing the utter vanity, the emptiness, of life without faith. Ecclesiastes uses only reason, human experience, and sense observation of life “under the sun” as instruments to see and think with; he does not add the eye of faith; and this is not enough to save him from the inevitable conclusion of “vanity of vanities”. Then the postscript to the book, in the last few verses, speaks the word of faith. This is not proved by reason or sense observation, as in the rest of the book. This word of faith is the only one big enough to fill the silence of vanity. The word that answers Ecclesiastes’ quest and gives the true answer to the question of the meaning of life is known only by faith: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes has intellectual faith; he believes God exists. But that is not enough. “The demons also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). Ecclesiastes proves the need for real faith, true faith, lived faith, saving faith, by showing the consequences of its absence, even in the presence of intellectual faith.
Job’s lesson is hope. Job has nothing else but hope. Everything else is taken away from him. But hope alone enables him to endure and to triumph.
Song of Songs is wholly about love, the ultimate meaning of life, the greatest thing in the world.
These three books also give us an essential summary of the spiritual history of the world. G. Chesterton did that in three sentences: “Paganism was the biggest thing in the world, and Christianity was bigger, and everything since has been comparatively small.” Job shows us the heights of pre-Christian hope and heroism. It is not strictly pagan, of course, but it is not yet Christian. Song of Songs shows us the spiritual center of the Christian era, the era the modern secular establishment has told such incredible lies about, the Middle Ages. Finally, Ecclesiastes tells us the truth about the modern, post-Christian world and world view: once the divine Lover’s marriage offer is spurned, the modern divorcee cannot simply return to being a pagan virgin, any more than an individual who spurns Heaven and chooses Hell can make Hell into Purgatory, hopelessness into hope.
“The Divine Comedy” before Dante
In these three books of the Bible we have Dante’s great epic The Divine Comedy played out, from Hell to Purgatory to Heaven. But it is played out in our hearts and lives, not externalized into cosmic places, circles, stairs, and airs. And it is played out here and now, as seeds, though it is completed after death, as flowers.
There is movement between these three books, just as there is in The Divine Comedy. First, there is movement from Ecclesiastes to Job, like Dante’s movement from Hell to Purgatory. This is found in the last two verses of Ecclesiastes. The conclusion of the rest of Ecclesiastes is “vanity”, but the conclusion of the last two verses is: “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.” This is precisely the philosophy Job lives, and the result is that Job finds God and moves through Purgatory to Heaven.
And this is the second movement: from Job to Song of Songs. It takes place at the end of Job, when Job finally sees God’s face. Ecclesiastes is the sunset, the end of hope; Job is the night with hope of morning; Song of Songs is the morning, which already begins to dawn at the end of job. Song of Songs begins when God appears to Job, for where God is, there is love.
Love is the final answer to Ecclesiastes’ quest, the alternative to vanity, and the meaning of life. But we cannot appreciate it until we look deeply at the question. This question is more than a question; it is a quest, a lived question. Scripture invites us on this quest, this journey through the night to the Rising Son. It is life’s greatest journey. Will you climb aboard the great old ark of the Bible with me? I will try to call out to you what I see as we take this journey together. For that is really all a teacher can do.
ECCLESIASTES:
Life as Vanity
The Greatness of Ecclesiastes
The Bible is the greatest of books, and Ecclesiastes is the only book of philosophy, pure philosophy, mere philosophy, in the Bible. It is no surprise, then, that Ecclesiastes is the greatest of all books of philosophy.
What? Ecclesiastes the greatest of all books of philosophy? But the author does not even know the dialogues of Plato, or the logic of Aristotle, or even the rules of good outlining! He rambles, frequently changes his mind, and lets his moods move him almost as much as his evidence. How can this sloppy old tub be the Noah’s ark of philosophy books? Furthermore, the whole point of this book is “vanity of vanities”, the meaninglessness of human life. How could a book about meaninglessness be so meaningful?
The first objection could be answered by realizing that greatness comes not from the form but from the content. The form of Ecclesiastes is simple, direct, and artless. But the content, as we shall see, is the greatest thing that philosophy can ever say.
But what of the second objection? How can a book about meaninglessness be meaningful? A great book must be sincere, must practice what it preaches. For instance, the Tao Te Ching, that great Chinese classic (ching) about the spiritual power (te) of the Way (Tao), itself wields a mysterious spiritual power (te) over the reader, a power of the same subtle, waterlike, irresistible nature as the Tao itself. Or a great book about violence and passion, like a Dostoyevski novel, must itself be violent and passionate. A book about piety must be pious. And thus a book about vanity must be vain, must it not?
No. The philosopher who wrote Ecclesiastes is the least vain of philosophers. Vanity cannot detect itself, just as folly cannot detect itself. Only the wise know folly; fools know neither wisdom nor folly. Just as it takes wisdom to know folly, light to know darkness, it takes profundity to know vanity, meaning to know meaninglessness. Pascal says, “Anyone who does not see the vanity of life must be very vain indeed.”
Compared with the neat little nostrums of comfort-mongering minds who cross our t’s and dot our i’s, Ecclesiastes is as great, as deep, and as terrifying as the ocean. If this philosopher were alive today and knew the reigning philosophy in America, pop psychology, with its positive strokings, OKs, narcissistic self-befriendings, panderings, patronizings, and bland assurances of “Peace! Peace!” when there is no peace, I think he would quote John Stuart Mill that it is better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; and William Barrett: “It is better to encounter one’s own existence in despair than never to encounter it at all.”
Ecclesiastes has been called the greatest book ever written by passionate pessimists and God-haunted agnostics like Herman Melville, who says, in chapter 97 of Moby Dick, that “the truest of all books is Ecclesiastes”. And Thomas Wolfe says, in chapter 47 of his classic American novel You Can’t Go Home Again,
Of all that I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man’s life upon this earth, and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence and truth. I am not given to dogmati
c judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one, I could only say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.
If we find nothing in our first reading of Ecclesiastes to confirm this judgment, we had better read again. For we must either cavalierly dismiss the verdict of giants or climb onto their shoulders and look again. Does it not seem at least likely that it is the dwarf rather than the giant who misreads the landscape?
I have a friend who camps in the Maine woods each summer. One day he met an old hermit who had not lived in “civilization” for forty years. He seemed uncannily wise (at least wiser than secular people in our civilization, though not wiser than a Christian), and when my friend asked him where he got his wisdom, he pulled from his pocket the only book he hd had for forty years. It was a tattered, yellow copy of Ecclesiastes. Only Ecclesiastes. That one book had been enough for him. Perhaps “civilization” is so unwise because nothing is ever enough for it. The old hermit had stayed in one place, physically, and spiritually, and explored its depths; civilization, meanwhile, had moved restlessly on, skimming over the surface of the great deeps. While civilization was reading the Times, he was reading the eternities.
Ecclesiastes as Ethics
Ecclesiastes would be classified by premodern philosophers as a book about ethics, because it poses the most important of all ethical questions, the question all the great ethical classics are most fundamentally about: Plato’s Republic, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine’s Confessions, Aquinas’ “Treatise on Happiness” in the Summa, Pascal’s Pensées, Spinoza’s Ethics, Kierkegaard’s Either / Or; the question of the summum bonum, the greatest good, highest value, ultimate end, or meaning of life.