> ‎Chapter 1‎ > ‎Chapter 2‎ > ‎Chapter 3‎ > ‎Chapter 4‎ > ‎Chapter 5‎ > ‎Chapter 6‎ > ‎Chapter 7‎ > ‎Chapter 8‎ > ‎Chapter 9‎ > ‎Chapter 10‎ > ‎Chapter 11‎ > ‎Chapter 12‎ > ‎  

 

 

Introduction

When was it written? Proposals vary much. A good estimate would be around 3rd century B.C. A copy was in circulation at least by 150 B.C. Fragments have been found at Qumram.

The author calls himself son of David, and seems to be a king, Solomon, though he does not use that name. Even if he had used it, it would be inconclusive, since it was so common then to pick the name of a famous man as a sort of pen name. And especially Solomon, famed for wisdom, would be a natural choice for a wisdom book. Could it really be Solomon? the late type of Hebrew used is a reason for arguing for a date later than Solomon, though it possible later scribes may have updated some words. There are also two Persian loanwords, pardes ("park") and pigam ("decree"). But that proves little if anything.

Questions have been raised whether there was one or several authors. An impressive argument claims that some parts seem to rule out a future life, while others seem to imply it. We will offer a new solution to this problem later.

The seeming skepticism prompted debates among the rabbis until around the end of the first century A.D. (Cf. Mishna, Eduyoth 5. 3 and Yadaim 3. 5. Yet it was retained (Talmud, Shabbath 30b). In spite of debates the scroll became traditional reading -- as one of the Megilloth - on the third day of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles.

Most varied interpretations have continued into our own day. R. Y. B. Scott, author of the Anchor Bible edition, is almost gloomy. He says that in this book God is not only unknown to man by revelation, but unknowable through reason. -this is a distorted, undocumented comment. Scott also says that instead of a feeling of faith, hope and obedience, Qoheleth shows disillusionment.

A key text of St. Pal applies here. In Romans 3:29:

"Is He the God of the Jews only? No, He is also the God of the gentiles." It means this: If God had made eternal salvation depend only on keeping the Mosaic law, then He would act as if He did not care for any others. To think that is blasphemy, and St. Paul vehemently rejects the idea.

Instead, Paul insists that God has made salvation available to all thorugh faith. But it is important to understand that word faith in the Pauline sense - not in the way of Luther who jumped to the conclusion it meant: confidence the merits of Chrsit apply to me. No, Paul included three things: 1) believe what God says; 2) be confident in His promises; 3)obey His commands. (Even a major Protestant reference work, Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Supplement, p. 333, defines Pauline faith just as we have done, especially commenting that in Romans 1. 5 Paul speaks of "the obedience of faith", which they explain means: "The obedience that faith is".

But next we meet with other troubles. Some important theologians in the past have almost in practice denied what St. Paul said. They say that without divine revelation, it is so extremely difficult to know what morality requires, that few attain it. Still less likely is it that anyone would love God.

Modern anthropology comes to the rescue of S. Paul here: It finds that even primitive peoples have a surprisingly good knowledge of the moral code, in some detail. If they obey that, they really can reach final salvation. Vatican II in Lumen gentium §16 taught the same: "For they who without their own fault do not know of the Gospel of Christ and His Church, but yet seek God with sincere heart, and try, under the influence of grace, to carry out His will in practice, known to them through the dictate of conscience, can attain eternal salvation". (The correct translation is "can", possunt, . not "may", as Flannery has it. ).

The Encyclical on Missions of Pope John Paul II in Section 10 has the same teaching: "The universality of salvation means that it is granted not only to those who explicitly believe in Christ and have entered the Church.... For such people [those who do not know of Christ] salvation in Christ is accessible by virtue of a grace which, while having a mysterious relationship to the Church, does not make them formally part of the Church...." We underlined that word formally. It clearly means entering explicitly, getting one's name on a parish register. Yet there is a grace that saves them with a "mysterious relationship to the Church".

There are in all five texts of the magistrium which teaching simply the FACT that one can be saved without finding the Church and getting revealed doctine.

That FACT, and more, was already taught very early by St. Justin Martyr, one of the earliest of the Fathers in his Apology 1. 46, in which he wrote that some in the past who were considered atheists were really Christians, for they followed the divine Logos, the Word. In Apology 2. 10 Justin adds that that Logos is present in each man. Now of course a spirit does not take up space. It is said to be present wherever it causes an effect.

We ask what is that effect? We find it in Romans 2. 14-16 which says that the gentiles who do not have the revealed law, do by nature the things of the law, they show the work of the law written on their hearts." According to their response, of course, they will be saved or not saved.

So Paul was right, far from deserting the majority of mankind, and leaving it in darkness which in practice it would not overcome, and so would be damned - God instead writes the law on the hearts of primitives. As we said, modern anthropology confirms the factuality of this.

Now St. Justin had added that Socrates was an example of someone who was a Christian by following the Divine Word. (Socrates was NOT a homosexual - Plato often quotes him as saying that he who seeks truth must have as little as possible to do with the things of the body - far from foulness of homosexuality).

So Socrates read what the Spirit of Christ wrote on His heart - making known to Socrates how he should live. Socrates believed the Spirit, had confidence in what he read on his own heart, written by the Spirit, and obeyed in the "obedience of faith". So St. Justin rightly calls Socrates a Christian. (Let us recall the three components of Pauline faith given above: Socrates had all three).

So, Socrates was justified by faith, as Paul said. God did not leave Socrates in the dark.

Still further, if we add the thought of Romans 8. 9, which says that those who do not have and follow that Spirit do not "belong to Christ." But then, those who do follow the Spirit, belong to Christ. But in St. Paul's terms to belong to Christ means to be a member of His Mystical Body, and that means a member of the Church. So we can say that Socrates, and others who meet the same requirements, are members of the Catholic Church, not "formally" to borrow the word from the Missions Encyclical cited above, but yet really. We might call it a substantial membership.

As we saw above, many texts of the Magisterium affirm clearly that those who through no fault of their own do not reach the Church, can still be saved. so the Church has repeatedly taught the FACT that they can be saved. The Church did not explain the HOW. We have attempted to do that, using the words of St. Justin as related to St. Paul. Many more patristic texts like his can be found in the appendix, 28 pp. of Wm. Most, Our Father's Plan.

What of the many texts, some even in the liturgy, which speak of the world before Christ as in darkness and wandering? We need to notice that there are two very different ways of speaking about these things.

God guides everything by His all powerful Providence. To begin to understand that which is so profound as to cause St. Paul to exclaim (Rom 11. 33): "O the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are His judgements, and untraceable His ways!"

We start by distinguishing two areas: external economy and internal economy.

Economy means an area of divine management (Greek oikia, house, and nemein, to arrange. ).

The internal economy takes in all the things that lead to eternal salvation. In that area, the Father has accepted the infinite price of redemption: in return, He has bound Himself to offer forgiveness and grace without limit, infinitely. (cf. files "Predestination: Reasons for Centuries-Old Impasse", "St. Thomas on Actual Grace", "Predestination" and "He Wants Intensely to Make Us Happy".)

The external economy covers all else: what position a man will have in the outward order: will he be a lawyer, doctor, shoemaker or priest or bishop or even Pope? And also included is whether he will or will not reach full membership in the Church, the People of God. (We speak of full, for there is a lesser kind of membership, of which we will speak later on.

In the external economy we read (Prov. 21. 1): "The heart of the king is in the hands of the Lord: like a stream, wherever He wills, He directs it." This does not mean there is no free will. It does mean that by ordinary mans or even by transcendent power (over and beyond all our classifications) He can bring things about.

In the internal economy, He has made a commitment to free will, for that economy as we said leads to heaven or not to heaven. He wills it were trim on this only by way of exception, by extraordinary graces. He cannot, within good order, do it routinely: then the extraordinary would become ordinary. And someone could ask: Why did you set up these laws if you meant to go beyond them regularly?

But in the external economy He can operate in two ways:

1) Without violating freedom, and without resorting to any extraordinary means He can guide the hearts of rulers. Not so often does a human make a fully free decision, i.e., one in which he first sees e.g., 3 alternatives, then makes a list of the good and bad points of each, then looks over the picture and chooses the best. No, so much of the time, so many people simply follow their feelings, the grooves as it were.

God can within this framework, inject into a person a desire for something without violating the man's freedom. He does that regularly, e.g., by giving us an appetite for food, needed to keep us alive, and for sex, needed to keep the race going. He can also inject into a person a desire for religious life, or priesthood or for being an MD. The person then will most likely follow that groove, yet will do it freely. To have world, so many different callings are needed. Providence can arrange it in this way. (Although a desire for religious life or priesthood can be blocked out by materialism in a person who has grown up thinking it does him no good to give up any creature or pleasure for a religious motive).

2) He can operate by transcendence, that is, by so moving the person that he freely but infallibly does what God wills. In the internal economy this would be extraordinary (as a reduction of free will, for then God would make the first decision, not the person who ordinarily does: cf. 2 Cor 6. 1). Not so in the external economy.

We gather then, very clearly that Qoheleth even if he had not had the Mosaic law, still was guided by faith, Pauline faith, even without realizing how that was going on. So we must not call him a skeptic or say he simply gave up.

There is another way to explain his attitudes:

When a man makes considerable progress in spirituality, it is common that God will send him at times a flash of infused light. He will see and perceive - we did not say "feel", for this is not in the area of feeling or sensation -the total nothingness of all things in this world, of all things except God Himself.

Still further, in the last stages of what St. John of the Cross calls the Purgative Way, there are commonly three signs that God intends to give even infused contemplation: 1) Inability for discursive meditation; 2) the thought of God tends to return even after necessary interruption; 3) there is a total aridity: The soul finds no satisfaction in any thing in the world, or even in divine things (Cf. St. John of the Cross, Dark Night I. 9-10 and Ascent II. 13).

It is perfectly possible that Qoheleth went through this state and was given even infused contemplation. In it the soul sees no vision, hears no sounds, but experiences the presence of God as really as a hand pressed on a table. This may happen in a sweet way, i.e., with warmth and pleasure; or it may happen in an arid way. This later would be more likely what Qoheleth experienced - if we wish to assume he developed this far. We are of course far from certain.

St. Teresa of Avila wrote (Meditations on the Canticle of Canticles 6. 1) that God would delight to do nothing but give if He could only find souls to receive. St. Irenaeus, 4. 14. 1 wrote that God created man, not as having any need of him, but to have someone to receive His benefits. Would it not then be merest insanity for God to create our race to receive His benefits, and yet so arrange things that most people would be in such darkness as to be unlikely to receive salvation? And Lumen gentium §13 cites St. John Chrysostom saying: "He who sits at Rome, knows that those of the Indies are his members." In fact, in the Declaration on non-Christian Religions §2 the Council went so far as to say that "In Buddhism, according to its varied forms, the radical insufficiency of this changeable world is recognized, and the way is taught by which men with devout and confident soul can either attain a state of perfect liberation of soul, or with their own strivings and depending on higher help, can attain to the highest illumination."

In other words, since God is so eager to give His graces, when he finds conditions at all suitab e - even if very deficient in some respects - will make use of what He finds to raise a soul to "the highest illumination". In fact the early Christain writer Origen in his Homily on Numbers 16. 1 dared to say: "Since God wants grace to abound.... He is present not to the [pagan] sacrifices, but to the one who comes to meet Him, and there He gives His Word (the Logos seems meant, in the sense given by Justin). It means that God does not use pagan false worship as a means of salvation, but He can and gladly does use the good will found in those who in ignorance try to worship Him in such ways.

At this point we need to notice that John Paul II, in his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, said on p. 86 that Buddhism is in large measure "an atheistic system." Does this clash with the words cited above from Vatican II which speaks very positively of even Buddhism? There is no clash. If we were to meet a man on the street, and ask him: Do you believe in God? And he would say: No. Even so he may or may not be a real atheist, for if he reads and obeys what the Spirit writes on his heart - as we explained above in connection with Socrates, then without realizing it he does accept and obey God. And the development we added from Romans 8. 9 would let us say that such a man might even be in a lesser but substantial degree a member of the Church.

So there is a ample room for Qoheleth to have reached high on the spiritual level by way of his detachment from all the things of this life. So, even in the lower reaches of spirituality this perception, without the special infused light (with ordinary graces of light), can take place. St. Augustine wrote (Confessions 1. 1): "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and restless are our hearts until they rest in you." He let himself have every illicit pleasure he wanted but found nothing fully satisfactory. Instead he praised God for sprinkling bitterness into his pleasures, as he says (Confessions 2. 2). He was coming slowly then to know that all is vanity except God.

We do not mean earthly things are no good, o f course they are good. Vatican II, in the Decree on the Lay

Apostolate §7 wrote that they have a threefold dignity: they were declared good by God when He made each thing in Genesis; they are destined for our race, the highest thing in visible creation; Christ Himself in the incarnation took on Himself a created nature, and used created things. So they have a great dignity and goodness.

But that is all true if we speak of the on the absolute scale. We could also, with St. Paul in Philippians 3. 7-9 speak of them on the relative scale, that is, compared to eternity: "The things that were gain to me [Jewish privileges of the past] I have considered loss for Christ. Rather, I consider all things loss because of the lofty knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, because of whom I have made everything a loss, and consider them as dung, that I may gain Christ.". Qoheleth could not have spoken so clearly, for his knowledge of the future life was not that clear.

But even without a clear knowledge, there is really nothing on earth that satisfies the human heart. We may look ahead to getting some added good thing. But when we get it, it is great for a while, e.g., a new tape or recording. But when we have played it a dozen times, we find it dull. Even sex, strongest of human pleasures, wears down, so that there are manuals telling people to try to recapture the thrill.

Qoheleth then even without any clear knowledge of the future life, could see that creatures are simply not enough to fill our hearts. And, moved by inspiration, he could record that fact, with great force. It would help people even in his own day not to be so attached to earthly things - look, a man of fabulous wealth, perhaps a king, who can get everything he wants - even he finds things wear down and become dull.

But we in the future after Qoheleth, now that we have the great knowledge brought us by Christ, can still find Qoheleth very helpful.

Not strangely then, one modern author went far from the despair we saw expressed early on: Franz Delitzch (1875) called this book "the quintesssence of piety." Much earlier, St. Gregory Thaugmaturgus (died 270 AD: Commentarius in Ecclesiasten, PL 10. 987-1018) said its purpose was to show that all affairs and pursuits of men are empty and useless.

Did these early people know nothing of love of God-- such a claim is made. It comes from those who do not know what the word "love" means. It is found in the great Shema. But it also appears in those who meet the conditions given by St. Justin. For whereas to love anyone but God means to will good to the other for the others' sake, yet to love God means to will that He have the generous pleasure of giving to us. That means in practice: we obey. And to love Him is to obey. Cf. 2 John 6, and John 14. 21. That obedience within the framework described for Socrates is actually love of God.

Still a further objection emerges; Does not St. Paul give us a very dismal picture of most people, in the last part of Romans 1, and in Romans 3. 10-18 where he says there is no one who is just, and again in Romans 7. 7-25 he says he sees that is good, but is unable to carry it out.

We need to know that St. Paul has ways of speaking different from ours: he can take either of two perspectives on the situation of man vs. the law, and arrive at very opposite answers. 1) Often he says approximately this: the law makes heavy demands, it gives no strength - to be under heavy demand without strength means a fall, and being spiritually dead and cursed. Further, no one can keep the law: it is the ministry of condemnation (cf. 1 Cor 3. 9). 2) But if we add to that artificially restricted picture (we could call it focused, as if we were looking through a tube, and saw only what was framed by the circle of the tube) - if we add to our picture the fact that grace even before Christ was available to all, then one need not fall and be dead or cursed. Rather, he is, by the wisdom of the law, steered clear of the evils that lurk in the very nature of things: cf. 1 Cor 6. 12. In this perspective - and we must not overlook the passages- elsewhere, e.g., at the start of chapter 3 and 9 of Romans, Paul says that having the law was a great spiritual privilege. In fact, in Phil 3. 6 he claimed that even before coming to know Christ, he kept the law perfectly! How can that be? No wonder some exegetes say one cannot make sense of St. Paul.

But it can make excellent sense if we realize the two perspectives We might even coin a fine German word and say there are two kinds of Gesetzanschaung.

And Paul is not alone in using such a way of speaking. In First John at 1. 8 we hear that anyone who claims he does not sin is a liar. Yet in 3. 9:"he who is begotten of God cannot sin". Again, it is a case of shifting perspectives.

We could add that although Paul in Romans 1 paints so dismal a picture of gentiles, he in 1 Cor 6. 11, after giving a shorter list of great sins, adds: "Certain ones of you were these." That is, not all of you were great sinners. And he wrote this to Corinth, the most licentious city in all Greece!

The next major problem is this: Did Qoheleth deny any future life? Before replying we look at mankind in general. Did people in general know of survival? Many exegetes today say the Jews did not - they had unitary concept of man, body with breath of life. Breath goes into air, body rots, nothing left. But at the same time they did believe in surrival as is clear from necromancy - three times laws were needed against it in OT: Lev. 19 31; 20. 6; Dt 8. 11,

They were using excellent theological method -- without formally knowing about it of course. In it at times we meet two conclusions that clash. We recheck, they are still there. T hen we must hold both without any straining hoping someone sometime will find how to make them fit. The Fathers did this wonderfully on the human knowledge of Jesus in regard to Lk 2. 52 and Mk 13. 32(cf. Wm. Most, The Consciousness of Christ --patristic chapter).

 

We come now to Qoheleth, Many have insisted he denied all survival. Before even looking at his work we can be sure that is not correct to say he denied all survival. Exegetes tend to forget - if they ever knew it - that the Holy Spirit is the chief author of all parts of Scripture. Vatican II, in Dei verbum §11 said that everything asserted by the human author is asserted by the Holy Spirit This is to be understood within the framework of the approach via literary genres). So if erroneous ideas were asserted, it would be also the Holy Spirit was asserting them. Of course that is nonsense.

Further, It is clear that the Chief Author at times, as anywhere in Scripture, may have in mind more than what the human author perceived. Vatican II makes this clear in Lumen gentium §55. Speaking of Genesis 3. 15 and Isaiah 7. 14, the Council wrote: "These primeval documents, as they are read in the Church, and understood in the light of later and full revelation, gradually bring before us the figure of the Mother of the Redeemer." Now the full content comes out only in the light of late revelation, and gradually; the implication is that perhaps the original human writer may not have seen all that the Church now sees. (This is what is called the sensus plenior, the fuller sense. Exegetes have long debated whether or not it is possible. Yet we see Vatican II in the text just cited clearly making use of the idea.

 

The wretched thought of Martin Heidegger thinks that the correct response of man to seeing himself in a universe that makes no sense is simply Angst - a sort of total blank dismay.

But Qoheleth, as we suggested, is likely to have had some experiences of flashes of infused light, , or at last more ordinary graces of light. One of the first things these flashes do is to convey to the soul a deep perception of the fact that all in this life is of no account - if viewed just in itself, and not as a means to union with Christ.

Without seeing clearly that magnificent truth which is now accessible even to the most ordinary soul in Christ, Qoheleth saw the nothingness of all created things.

He seems even to have had some perception of a future life after death. We will consider later the indications of this, in two sets of texts in his work.

Today it is often said that the author did not believe in an afterlife - but we have already commented on such claims in general earlier, in connection with Psalms Sirach and Job. Some time ago many believed there must be two authors for the book, for what they considered contrasting or incompatible statements. However, if we recall proper theological method, we can gain some light. In divine matters, it is not unusual to find two conclusions which remain even after rechecking our work, but which seem to clash. Then we need to resist any temptation to force the meaning of either. Rather, we should accept both, and remain that way until someone finds a solution. It is likely that Qoheleth did precisely this.

The first set of texts do seem not to know an afterlife, though they do not deny it:

2:14: "The eyes of a wise man are in his head; the fool walks in darkness. I myself perceived: the same thing comes to all of them." That is, all die and turn to dust.

3:19: "For what happens to man is the same as happens to beasts. As one dies, the other dies".

3:20: "All are from dust and will return to dust."

3:21: "Who knows whether the spirit of the sons of man goes up and the spirit of the beasts goes down?" Of course the sense is debated. The word we have rendered "spirit" is Hebrew ruach. Its sense is similar to that of nefesh - which is also much debated. Both surely have a wide range of meanings. However, we notice here that the author considers if the ruach of humans goes up, but that of animals goes down. At least a hint of a difference.

9:5-6: "The dead know nothing. They have no more reward... their love and their hate and their envy have perished. Nor do they have any more forever a portion of all that is done under the sun." We spoke of this in commenting on Sirach and Job. Yes, the dead have no normal means of knowing what goes on on the earth. And being in the Limbo of the Fathers, not in heaven until after the death of Christ, their lot is indeed dim. They never will return to ordinary earthly life - we know that after the resurrection life will be much different. Qoheleth would not know what we know, but what he said is not false.

Yet no one of the above really proves a denial of an afterlife.

The second set seem at least to imply a future life:

3:17: "I said in my heart: God shall judge both the just and the wicked." But the author knew well it does not always work out so in this life - hence an implication of a judgment beyond this life.

8:12: "If a sinner does evil a hundred times, and prolongs his life, yet I know surely that it will be well with those who fear God." Again, a possible implication, especially since in 8:14 he adds: "There are just men to who it happens according to the deeds of the wicked; and there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the just."

12:14: "For God will bring every deed into judgment, every hidden thing, whether good or evil." Again, since it often does not happen in this life, there is an implication of retribution after death.

Comments

Since we have already covered at length the great problems of Qoheleht, fewer snd shorter comments are all that is still needed.