Going to Work with the Professor: Ecclesiastes and Meaning in Human Labour
Professor Paul Stevens on his way to meet a student
“Only when a person has become so unhappy or has penetrated the wretchedness of his existence so deeply that he must truly say: for me life has no value—only then can he make a bid for Christianity.”
Soren Kierkegaard[1]
“In spite of God’s respect and love for man [sic], in spite of God’s extreme humility in entering into man’s projects, in the long run one cannot but be seized by a profound sense of the inutility and vanity of human action.”
Jacques Ellul[2]
“I don’t know Who—or What—put the question. I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone—or Something—and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.”
Dag Hammarskjold[3]
I am a professor but not like the one who forms the title of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, a person who had enormous influence and a harem! I have been married to one wonderful woman for sixty years. I am calling the author of Ecclesiastes “The Professor” because the Hebrew form, Qoheleth, of the Greek title, Ecclesiastes, is based on the Hebrew word qahal which suggests that he is someone who gathers or convenes an assembly. He self-designates as a “Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem” (1:1), not quite calling himself Solomon after whom he styles himself. Other terms have been used to describe him: Preacher, Philosopher, Spokesperson, or President. This person I am calling the Professor is researching life. He is starting with concrete experiences in everyday life and trying to find the meaning of it. Rather than doing theology from above, which starts with revelation and proceeds to application, the Professor is doing theology from below.
Doing Theology from Below
So, to elaborate the conclusions of his research the Professor uses a word that appears over and again in the book: hebel, which is usually translated “meaningless,” in which he concludes, “Everything is meaningless” (1:2). The word suggests a puff of smoke, a vapour, futility or meaninglessness. And meaning is what keeps us alive, keeps us working, keeps us contributing to the common good, keeps us enjoying our work, as Victor Frankl discovered in the concentration camp during World War II. The Professor, whether in his own journey or as an apologist, is starting where the people are, with the futility of life, with the world, or with pure unadulterated secularism. And he does this through using a code word in the book which occurs some thirty times: “under the sun.”[4] It is a way of saying, “here is what life is like when viewed and experienced without any reference to a transcendent God.” In this context the Professor asks repeated rhetorical questions about life “under the sun.” “What do I gain for all my hard work?” (1:3). “Who knows what is good?” (6:12). “Who can tell what will happen…after they are gone?” (6:12). And he asks these questions about pleasure, wisdom (meaning the wisdom of the world), religion, money, and critically as a major theme in the book, about work, which is our subject. But the Professor also uses the phrase “under heaven” (2:3) and refers to “God” meaning “here is what life is like when viewed and experienced when a person has the fear of God.” But he throws his research data both “under the sun” and “under heaven” together in a mixture of seeming inconsistencies. Jacques Ellul, the French theologian, says of Ecclesiastes, “Few books contradict themselves as much as this one, and I believe one of its main meanings resides precisely in these inconsistencies. They guide us to a point where we must recognize the true character of human existence, and not just its reality: human existence is essentially self-contradictory.”[5] Why, I ask, would he write this way?
The Professor is a master of indirect communication for, as Ellul points out, we are faced here with “veiled truth.”[6] In a footnote Ellul notes that “since truth remains immutable, transcendent, and absolute, we can reach it only through the most easily misconstrued, unstable, and fluid medium: the word.”[7] He quotes Kierkegaard who thought that indirect communication was Jesus’ primary suffering, “since he could not communicate directly to people that he was the Christ, the Son of God, God himself (this explains why he never applies these titles to himself, using instead ‘son of man’). Because of his indirect communication, this man who is God represents both the possibility of faith and the possibility of scandal.”[8] Kierkegaard himself in his Journals and Papers notes that “illusions are rarely destroyed directly.”[9] In other words, “a direct attack elicits a defensiveness within one’s listener which, in turn, fortifies their illusion.”[10] Thus, not only when communicating about himself did Jesus use indirect communication but when he taught about the kingdom of God through parables he was casting down images which the person hungry for God and his kingdom[11] might grasp while others listen but do not hear. They won’t get it. So, Robert Farrar Capon says,
In resorting so often to parables, [Jesus’] main point was that any understanding of the kingdom his hearers could come up with would be a misunderstanding. Mention ‘messiah’ to them, and they would picture a king on horseback, not a carpenter on a cross; mention ‘forgiveness’ and they would start setting up rules about when it ran out. From Jesus’ point of view, the sooner their misguided minds had the props knocked from under them, the better.[12]
The Professor does not use parables to communicate indirectly but he does use contradiction, and effectively so. So, what is the illusion that the Professor seeks to destroy? Is it the meaninglessness of work in the world? Or is it the presumed agency of faith which when embraced will make work immediately successful, satisfying, and joyful? Or both?
The book of Ecclesiastes is sadly misunderstood, as evidenced in my Old Testament professor in theological school, several decades ago, who said that the person who wrote this book needed counselling! J. Daryl Charles suggests that it is possible that the writer is reflecting personally on his own experience—the view I personally take—though he prefers to see the writer contrasting two competing metaphysical outlooks as an apologist.[13] Essentially this book belongs to the genre of wisdom literature which includes Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and some Psalms.[14] Unlike prophetic literature the message is not a cannon ball of inspiration, a blast from the other side. In this book wisdom comes to us more in the nature of a hint—a hint that God is present, whether bidden or not, a suggestion whispered that God does provide meaning in life. And so, the book is included in the canon, the books of the Bible that will not “defile the hands,” just as much as Romans, Isaiah or Zechariah. This Professor is inviting us to do a thought experiment what life is like without God and with God for that is one of the characteristics of wisdom literature. Charles outlines the following characteristics of wisdom literature:
Its focus on how to live
Its accent on actions, human labor, and economics
Its pedagogical use of nature through analogy to reflect lessons for human nature
Its implicit theology
Its accent on experience and observation
Its distinction between truisms and unchangeable truth.[15]
One characteristic of wisdom literature that is salutary is noted by Charles. “Wisdom knows no vocational dichotomy, no ‘sacred-versus-secular’ or tiering of classes.”[16] So while our focus on the work passages in Ecclesiastes of the two views represented in the book, the secular view “under the sun” and the sacred view “under heaven” there is no dichotomy between so-called “sacred work,” such as the work of a pastor, and so-called “secular work,” such as a merchant shipping grain across the Mediterranean. The interpretative key to the whole life and thought experiment of the Professor is found in verse 11 of chapter 3: “He [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from the beginning to end” (3:11). So, what I now wish to do is to separate the “under the sun” statements—which the Professor has interspersed with the “under heaven” statements about work—something which the Professor has left strangely and intentionally connected.
Work “Under the Sun”
“What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?” (1:3).
“I undertook great projects… houses, parks… a harem…. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (2:4-11).
“So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me…. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? (2:17-23).
“And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (4:4).
“There was a man all alone…. ‘For whom am I toiling?’ he asked…. This too is meaningless—a miserable business” (4:8).
“Whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (5:10).
“The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep” (5:12).
“No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning” (8:17).
“Enjoy life with your wife… all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might… for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working, nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom” (9:9-10).
But meaninglessness is not the whole truth. Interspersed with these dreary and soul-deadening thoughts there are hints of another way. In his literary-rhetorical strategy[17] the Professor provides a mixture of observations about life’s meaning. Indeed, this other way of looking at life is a theistic one.
Work “Under Heaven”
“A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This, too, I see is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (2:24-26).
“I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever…. God does it so that people will fear him” (3:12-14).
“So I saw that there us nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot” (3:22).
“God is in heaven and you are on earth” (5:2).
“Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God” (5:7).
“This is what I have observed to be good; that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot. Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart” (5:18-20).
“I know that it will go better with those who fear God, who are reverent before him. Yet because the wicked do not fear God, it will not go well with them, and their days will not lengthen like a shadow” (8:12-13).
“So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun” (8:15).
“When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth—people getting no sleep day or night—then I saw all that God had done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun” (8:16-17).
“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things” (11:5).
“Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well” (11:6).
“You who are young, be happy while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth… but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment” (11:9).
“Now all has been heard: here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of mankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment...” (12:13-14).
Derek Kidner in his concise and pithy commentary on Ecclesiastes notes that the “compulsive worker of chapter two, over-loading his days with toil and his nights with worry, has missed the simple joys that God was holding out to him. The real issue for him is not between work and rest but, had he known it, between meaninglessness and meaningful activity. As verse 24 points out, the very toil that tyrannized him was potentially a joyful gift of God (and joy itself is another, in verse 25), if only he had the grace to take it as such.”[18] So I must ask out of this survey a question. What are we to make of this contrast, of this futility in everyday work and, at the same time the hint of God’s presence, his inscrutable presence in the affairs of the world and the details of our work life? What does the theistic view of work, work seen from and experienced under God, actually mean?
Work is a Gift
Charles does a study of the keywords in the book. Hebel (meaninglessness) appears 38 times, the noun and verb forms of simha (enjoyment, pleasure, contentment) and samah (to enjoy, to be content) together appear 17 times. And tob (good) appears 52 times.[19] Dorothy Sayers has it right. Work was meant to be a way of life, a source of delight, a way in which human being can find fulfilment and a means of glorifying God. Work should be undertaken for the love of the work itself.[20] In the Genesis narrative, especially chapter three, it is not work that is cursed but the ground that is cursed. Thorns and thistles will impede the work of Adam and Eve but it is the workplace that bears the worst effects of the Fall. What does it mean to say “work is a gift” east of Eden? It means we a given this opportunity for self-expression and neighbour love. We are given the joy and satisfaction that comes with work in the presence of God. It means we are given a calling to work—it is vocational not merely aspirational.[21] It means we created with the capacity to be like God in that we work.
But what if work is not satisfying? What if, as the joyless worker in chapter two discovered, it is just plain hard. What if we will be followed by a fool? What if we must leave all we have worked for to someone else? What if we find ourselves so occupied with the sweat of work, whether mental or physical, that we cannot sleep at night? The inspired author, I assume, is genuinely searching for an answer. This question plumbs the depths of our experience of work. It is a question asked not only by people at the end of a long hard day at the office or home, or by workaholic professionals who have discovered that their exciting careers are mere vanity and emptiness. Perhaps we can understand this kind of questioning. But it is sometimes also secretly asked by people in Christian service careers who wonder if their preaching, counselling and leadership is, in the end, useless and to no avail. Yet, taking account of the book of Ecclesiastes as a whole, it is crucial to observe that the Professor is not “down on life” as a matter of principle. On the contrary, he affirms that "A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil.” In fact, he says that this positive disposition to work is “from the hand of God" (2:24). So, the Professor is in a bind and, as a consequence, so are we.
In the picture are Suzanne and Bob Taylor. They had faithfully and joyfully served in the remotest to the most dangerous places in the world. They continue to serve in Vancouver BC. Isaiah 52: 7 “…How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news…”
Work is an Evangelist
This question about the uselessness of work probes our souls deeply. If work, even volunteer work in Christian service, proves to be meaningless, then perhaps we are being invited to conclude that we were not made for work in the first place, but rather made for God. The frustration, futility, resultlessness and meaninglessness of much of our work life drives us to seek God, who has set eternity in our hearts, that God-shaped vacuum in our souls. This is the “heavy burden God has laid on mankind!” (1:13), namely finding meaning, true fulfilment and happiness in life.[22] If the Professor is right, then we will not find satisfaction in our work even with the help of our faith, but rather find our satisfaction primarily in God in the experience of our work. It is a subtle but telling distinction. And when we come to the Lord and take a theistic approach to life we find work is not utterly meaningless but rather satisfying and a gift of God.[23] It is true that God’s ways are past our finding out, but God is providentially involved in our lives. Let me illustrate.
A young woman I taught in Africa graduated with a certificate but was assigned to a job that was much less than she dreamed of, and this work was a burden laid on her (3:10). I asked her a simple question, a silly, stupid, Western question: “Do you like your new job?” But she answered from the perspective of “under heaven.” “I like it in Jesus,” she replied—a sublimely simple shift from intrinsic to extrinsic meaning, though the extrinsic becomes intrinsic to the work itself. That is to say, the shift is from the meaningfulness of the work itself, taken at face value, like extracting oil from the ground, the shift is from purely intrinsic meaning to extrinsic meaning that is experienced in the context of our work. Thus, work becomes an evangelist to take us to Christ. And the gospel we hear from Jesus is not that if we accept him we will be insanely happy and successful in our jobs, but that we will find our work to be satisfying “in Jesus.” He alone can fill the God-shaped vacuum in our souls. So, it is not just the Old Testament Professor but Jesus who asks the probing question we have been pondering. With absolute courtesy Jesus comes to us in the workplace not to tell us what to do with our lives but to ask what meaning we are discovering in our work. And then, with infinite grace, he offers himself.[24] But that is not all we learn about work from the Professor.
Work is God’s Work
All of the above comes to us with the force of a hint, a suggestion, because the ways of God are past our finding out. Kidner says, “the fascination of the book throughout its length arises largely from such collisions between obstinate facts of observation and equally obstinate intuitions.”[25] There is providence involved, and this means that we are called vocationally to the work we do. Our lives are not a bundle of accidents but God is engaged with us in in a hidden way, bidden or not bidden. This means there is mystery in God. If God could be fitted into our puny brains he would be too small a God to worship. As Job said, “These are but the outer fringe of his works; how faint the whisper we hear of him!” (Job 26:14), or as the Professor put it, “As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God” (Eccl 11:5). “Ecclesiastes constitutes a necessary reminder that God cannot be calculated, manipulated, localized, or humanly understood,” so says Charles.[26] But what a pregnant hint! The thought goes deeper in chapter eleven.
If God makes everything, if God is the “maker of all things” (11:5), then why work? But, says the Professor in effect, if you do not work you will not know that God is working! So Ellul reflects on this amazing truth:
If you do nothing, if you fail to sow, if you keep staring at the clouds, you will not know the work of God who does everything. These words astonish: God does everything, yet I must do something! God will cause one thing or the other to succeed, or both things. But you and I must do them!... If you do nothing, you will be unable to perceive the work of God, because there may be no work of his to observe!... Let God do his work through you (but his action is through you, so your action is necessary!).[27]
Kidner expresses it this way: “Even as procreators we do no more than activate the mysterious process in which God brings into being a new life.”[28] Here is a further indication of indirect communication. We are placed in a contradiction. “Everything lacks consistency. [Yet] God makes everything,” Ellul points out.[29] And the Professor is not a skeptic. He believes that God has made everything beautiful in its time. But that too is a word that applies to work. As Ellul says, “the time when a thing is beautiful is God’s time. In our action we must try to discover how to accomplish, in our time, the work God wants beautiful in his time. This amounts to discerning God’s time.” Ellul continues, “We need to learn how to work at just the moment God makes it beautiful, when he will take it up and take it over.”[30] So we need discernment when to invest, when to create, or in the Professor’s words, when is the best time to ship grain across the Mediterannean, because of the risk involved in work.
Work Involves Risk
In Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, Peter Bernstein observes that “the word ‘risk’ derives from the early Italian risicare, which means ‘to dare.’”[31] Thus Bernstein opens up a fascination commentary on the role of risk. “In a sense,” he continues, “risk is a choice rather than a fate. The actions we dare to take, which depends on how free we are to make choices, are what the story of risk is all about. And that story helps define what it means to be a human being.”[32] But far older than this modern assessment of risk is the Professor’s admonition to “Cast your bread on the waters,” which in the NIV is interpreted as “Ship your grain across the sea” (11:1). If you see a cloud the size of a man’s hand on the horizon and fear a storm, through which your investment may be lost, you will never take the risk. In the same way, “Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap” (11:4). So, the Professor wisely counsels investment in more than one venture, indeed seven or eight (11:2), as you do not know which will be fruitful, this or the other. The Greek dramas show human beings as helpless before the impersonal fates.[33] In some societies luck determines the outcome. So, in his history of risk and risk management Bernstein reflects on the impressive achievement of the Arabs in inventing the mathematical symbols we universally use today. He notes how Christianity spread across the Western world and how
“The will of a single God emerged as the orienting guide to the future, replacing the miscellany of deities people had worshipped since the beginning of time. This brought a major shift in perception: the future of life on earth remained a mystery, but it was now prescribed by a power whose intentions and standards were clear to all who took the time to learn them. As contemplating of the future became a matter of moral behaviour and faith, the future no longer appeared quite as inscrutable as it had. Nevertheless, it was still not susceptible to any sort of mathematical expectation. The early Christians limited their prophecies to what would happen in the afterlife.”[34]
“Why, given their advanced mathematical ideas, did the Arabs not proceed with probability theory and risk management?” asks Bernstein. “The answer,” he ventures is this: “I believe, has to do with their view of life. Who determines the future: the fates, the gods, or ourselves? The idea of risk management emerges only when people believe they are to some degree free agents. Like the Greeks and the early Christians, the fatalistic Muslims were not ready to take the leap.”[35] Bernstein continues to assert the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation “would set the stage for the mastery of risk.”[36] “Trade,” he asserts, “is… a risky business. As the growth of trade transformed the principles of gambling into the creation of wealth, the inevitable result was capitalism, the epitome of risk-taking.”[37]
Of course, the Professor writing in the third century BC was not advancing sophisticated, mathematically-based risk management. But in the context of a personal God who is sovereign rather than impersonal fate, whimsical gods, or luck, he is assuring the merchant in Alexandra that it is not gambling to ship his grain to Rome, or to sow seed in the ground even though there are clouds on the horizon. Providence, which in Ecclesiastes is rightly deemed as inscrutable, means that God is ceaselessly operative in human affairs “even when this working is unseen and indescribable.”[38] But there is more to our experience of work that this.
Work Is Joyful
Joy is the hall mark of the Christian person. It is a dominating theme in Ecclesiastes. We are to be inundated with joy—“God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart” (5:19)—a remarkable reflection on our calling and the amazing gift of God. Charles says that “joy [is] depicted in the carpe diem [enjoy the moment] refrains from 2:24-26 through 11:7-12:1. This joy mirrors the inbreaking of ‘eternity’ (3:11), as it were. Joy is intrinsic to the life of faith, not merely an antiseptic, or palliative from the pain of normal living. Rather joy is “internal, constitutive, and grounding in their character.”[39] When we accept the presence of God we do not become suddenly and insanely happy with our work-life. But we have joy, the mark of God’s presence. The joy we experience is not just intrinsic to the work itself, like a treasure buried in the soil waiting to be found. The joy is in God. But we experience the joy of God in the context of our work, our marriages and in everyday life. Derek Kidner opines on chapter 5:18-20, “we catch a glimpse of the man for whom life passes swiftly, not because it is short and meaningless but because, by the grace of God, he finds it utterly absorbing.”[40] All of the above—the gift, the evangelistic role of work, the sense that we are working with God and doing God’s work, the risk implicit in much work, and the joy of working—are viewed “under heaven” or in the “fear of God,” to which subject we must finally turn.
Work in the Fear of God
In this book God is Creator, Sovereign and Unsearchable Wisdom. This last descriptor drives us to admit that God is hidden and “reduces our most brilliant thoughts to little more than guesses,” as Kidner says.[41] But God is also described in Ecclesiastes as a Judge who “will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (12:14) The professor is bringing us to the point where, when we say that nothing matters “under the sun,” that all of life is meaningless, it is only so that we can hear “as the good news that it is” that “everything matters.”[42]
And when we come to Jesus, in the fear of God, as the professor encourages us as his stated conclusion in 12:13—“Fear God and keep his commandments”—in reverent, awesome affection for God, we find meaning in work as well as meaning in life. The fear of God is not sheer fright of God, though some philosophers, especially Rudolf Otto has proposed that we experience a mysterium tremendum and “numinous dread” in the presence of God. But we experience this mystery, this awesome One beyond-ourselves, in the context of a relationship of grace and affection towards God, who is not a mere It, in the sense of raw impersonal power, but as Martin Buber once said in his famous book, I and Thou, God is to be experienced as a Thou not an It. My Thou. Personal.
The fear of the Lord in the Old Testament, says Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke, “involves both the non-rational and the rational: the former, fear, love and trust; the latter, ethics, justice and uprightness.”[43] Waltke continues to expound on the non-rational: “The heart that both fears and loves God at one and the same time is not divided but unified in a single religious response to God…. both emotions are rooted in trust: faith in his threats, causing one to fear, and faith in his promises, causing one to love.”[44] So he concludes that “without the felt awareness of God’s holiness humans would not throw themselves through the veil of God’s wrath against sin upon his merciful heart. As Newton taught us to sing, ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.’”[45] “Such fear,” Dr. James Houston says, “brings blessing in every sphere of life.” [46]
Blessings, not hebel—meaninglessness, is what we can experience in the workplace. So concludes Charles, “Humans are created with a sense of the transcendent—the eternal (‘olam)—in their hearts (3:11).… In its implications the statement is utterly profound, suggesting that human person’s deepest longings cannot be filled by that which is temporal. It suggests that in the experience of true joy, something of the transcendent—something of the eternal—manifests itself. It is the antidote to the hebel of life ‘under the sun.’”[47] Thus the Professor’s ruminations can be considered an eloquent, though down-to-earth research (as theology done “from below”) anticipating the statement of the apostle Paul in Romans chapter eight. “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration [hebel], not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:19-21).[48] Jacque Ellul concludes his meditation on Ecclesiastes with these probing words: “Qoheleth knows wisdom can follow only one first step: relationship with God… everything begins with this fear of God…. God has led us by the hand to this last door, which is the first door to life.”[49]
Copyright, R. Paul Stevens 2022
References:
[1] Soren Kierkegaard, Journals and Papers, trans. Howard and Edna Hong (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), Vol 2, entry #1152.
[2] Jacques Ellul, “Meditation on Inutility,” The Politics of God and the Politics of Man, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 190.
[3] Dag Hammarskjold, Markings, trans. Leif Sjoberg and W.H. Auden (New York: Knof, 1964), 205, quoted in Jacque Ellul, Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1990), 213.
[4] 1:3, 9, 14; 2:11, 17, 18, 22; 3:16; 4:3, 7, 15; 5:18; 6:1, 12; 8:9, 15, 17; 9:3, 6, 9, 11, 13; 10:5
[5] Jacques Ellul, Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes, trans. Joyce Main Hanks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 39.
[6] Ellul, Reason for Being, 119.
[7] Ellul, Reason for Being, 118.
[8] Ellul, Reason for Being, 119.
[9] Soren Kierkegaard, Point of View For My Life as an Author, trans. Walter Lowrie (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 24-25, quoted in Christian Beck Breuninger, “The Usefulness of Soren Kierkegaard’s Strategy of Edification for Homiletics,” MCS Thesis, Regent College, Vancouver, BC, May 1988, 41.
[10] Breuninger, “The Usefulness of Soren Kierkegaard,” 41.
[11] See J. Daryl Charles for evidence of the essentially negative approach to the book in his chapter on “Interpretive Strategy in Ecclesiastes,” J. Daryl Charles, Wisdom and Work: Theological Reflections on Human Labor (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2021), 48-60.
[12] Robert Farrar Capon, The Parables of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 8.
[13] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 59. Charles outlines the nature of wisdom literature in his chapter, “Wisdom Literature and the Wisdom Perspective,” 17-47.
[14] Namely Psalms 1, 37, 49, 73, 78, 91, 126.
[15] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 23-24.
[16] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 39.
[17] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 56.
[18] Derek Kidner, A Time to Mourn, and a Time to Dance: Ecclesiastes and the Way of the World (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1976), 35.
[19] Footnote, Charles, Wisdom and Work, 154.
[20] Dorothy L. Sayers, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos? Why Christians Must Choose Either Dogma or Disaster (Or, Why It Really Does Matter What You Believe) (Manchester: Sophia Institute, 1974), (89-116), 89.
[21] See Charles on the influence of Martin Luther on the Protestant doctrine of vocation in his reading of Ecclesiastes, Charles , Wisdom and Work, 141-147.
[22] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 7.
[23] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 12.
[24] Some of the above two paragraphs have been abstracted from R. Paul Stevens, Work Matters: Lessons from Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 21-24.
[25] Kidner, A Time to Mourn, 82.
[26] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 83.
[27] Ellul, Reason for Being, 226.
[28] Kidner, A Time to Mourn, 15.
[29] Ellul, Reason for Being, 227.
[30] Ellul, Reason for Being, 237.
[31] Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996), 8.
[32] Bernstein, Against the Gods, 8.
[33] Bernstein, Against the Gods, 17.
[34] Bernstein, Against the Gods, 19.
[35] Bernstein, Against the Gods, 35.
[36] Bernstein, Against the Gods, 20.
[37] Bernstein, Against the Gods, 21.
[38] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 16.
[39] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 125.
[40] Kidner, A Time to Mourn, 58-9.
[41] Kidner, A Time to Mourn, 16.
[42] Kidner, A Time to Mourn, 20.
[43] Bruce K. Waltke, “The Fear of the Lord: The Foundation for a Relationship with God,” in J.I. Packer and Loren Wilkinson, eds. Alive to God: Studies in Spirituality (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1992), (17-33), 21.
[44] Waltke, “The Fear of the Lord,” 25.
[45] Waltke, “The Fear of the Lord,” 24.
[46] James Houston, I Believe in the Creator (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 189, quoted in Waltke, “The Fear of the Lord,” 31.
[47] Charles, Wisdom and Work, 108-9.
[48] See Charles for other NT confirmations Acts 14:15; Rom 1:21, 1 Cor 3:20; 1 Cor 15:17; Eph 4:17; Titus 3:9), Wisdom and Work, 65.
[49] Ellul, Reason for Being, 303.
