Orthodox teaching on Ecclesiastes

[sinjin smithe]

I am wondering what the teaching of the church is in regards to the book Ecclesiastes.

[Justin]

It was in my Bible the last time I checked.

(Anything specific you were curious about?)

[sinjin smithe]

The area I was curious about is Ecclesiastes 4:2-3. Essentially, it says that is better not to be born than to be born. I am wondering why it states this as so, and if the Fathers have anything to say about it.

[Andonis]

Good question Sinjin, we read this book recently in our fellow ship group and it was strikingly interesting. it gives a very clear portayal of the vanity of our whole existence, whereby we will spend the majority of our lives entertaining vain earthly cares and persuits. one does ask the question, well maybe it is better to not be born in the first place. i remember one of the posters here, i think it was Elizabeth whom mentioned the negative drive for celibacy to not propogate the species. maybe Ecclesiastes was more or less telling us the same thing. to be born is to begin to live a life of sin, only the unborn do not..

[sinjin smithe]

The thing is, if it is better not be born, then one asks him/herself why were they born to begin to live a life of sin? If it is better to never exist, then why do we exist? That is my question. I ask myself, if it is better if I was never born, then why I am here on this Earth? To fall away from God through sin?

[Justin]

I have some thoughts on the passage, but I'll hold off for a few hours while I do some reading. Better to share the thoughts and words of those more advanced in the faith (if I can find them) than to babble on myself.

Justin

PS. sinjin, I hope you didn't take offense regarding my first post. After I posted it and went offline I wished that I hadn't posted it in the way I did, but it was too late by then. I was just trying to be "light-hearted" with my Bible comment, but it probably came off wrong.

[Owen Jones]

Sinjin,

Another way of asking the question is this: what kind of God would create a world He knew He would have to save?

[sinjin smithe]

Sinjin,

Another way of asking the question is this: what kind of God would create a world He knew He would have to save?

That is a good way of asking the question. Now, why would God do this? Why would it be better to not be born?

[Andonis]

i guess somehow God may want us to experience the miracle of our creation, and taste of the divine things he has so generously bestowed. although we live and sin, those times when we are touched by the hand of God, when we are able to see him both in moments of exhiliration, and in moments of despair, one comes to treasure that he has been given the opportunity to share in God's amazing works and energies. those moments, when our hearts are able to be lifted from the earth and catch a glimpse of the heavenly, that inner peaceful quiet contentment, makes it all worthwhile.

maybe Ecclesiastes was also trying to highlight the futility of mans beleif that his wordly efforts somehow constitute qualification for God's grace and approval, when he attempts to measure his life against himself and other men.

reminding all that is through God's kindness, his mercy and grace that he receives our wish to re enter with him, into the garden of Eden.

[Andonis]

by the way, i'd be really interested to find out how much reading all you posters of Monachos do? you are all so well informed it seems to me that your study would be intense. i'm looking for inspiration i guess to apply myself more.

[Justin]

sinjin,


The thing is, if it is better not be born, then one asks him/herself why were they born to begin to live a life of sin? If it is better to never exist, then why do we exist? That is my question. I ask myself, if it is better if I was never born, then why I am here on this Earth? To fall away from God through sin?

First, it is only those who fall away that what you are saying could possibly be relevant for. In this way, the problem you mention is comparable to Matt. 18:6. For those who are Christians, though, there can be no such despair, as the Divine Chrysostom mentions in his commentary on Matt. 5:4:


"Blessed are they that mourn."

...And here too again he designated not simply all that mourn, but all that do so for sins: since surely that other kind of mourning is forbidden, and that earnestly, which relates to anything of this life. This Paul also clearly declared, when he said, "The sorrow of the world worketh death, but godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, not to be repented of."

But then there was just a thread on doubt on this forum not too long ago, so I suppose much of this has already been gone over.

Now, what is Solomon saying? He says that "they [the oppressed] had no comforter". This life must indeed have appeared dark and dim at times to those living before Christ! The Church teaches that David, Moses, etc. understood God and could even, as if looking through a cloud, perceive Christ (for that matter, even non-Jews, e.g., Plato, were said to be able to perceive Christ's coming in a certain way). I think solomon's words fit what many at the time probably thought, that this life seems meaningless, that, as the modern saying goes "Life stinks, and then you die." But are we, as Christians, to take what the wise Solomon said literally? He also laments the uselessness of knowledge (e.g., Eccl. 2:13-16), should we then cast off knowledge? I think he is getting at a larger point, and that we musn't take what he is saying in a woodenly literal way. Think of it this way, when Jesus says to pluck your eye out, do you take it literally? (Matt. 18:9)

What is he getting at? I think he is showing that it is through sorrow, and not enjoyment of the world and what it has to offer. Solomon ends the book with this statement: "Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." (Eccl. 12:13-14)

[Owen Jones]

Eccl. is in there for the nihilists and cynics like me to relate to. A few other comments about what's been said. Christ said He came,not for the righteous, but for sinners, implying that there are many righteous people in the world doing just fine. Also, immortality was a common, almost universal belief prior to Christ. So too was there the belief in a dying and rising God and in some quarters even a virgin birth of that God. The uniqueness of the Christian message lies in its fullness, or completeness (not its facticity).

Existential loneliness, while probably always a factor in human experience, is probably more a factor in "modern" secular societies. The best treatment of this is probably Joseph and His Brothers by Thomas Mann, vs. his early work, The Magic Mountain.

What was the attractiveness of the Gospel, back then? It carried a powerful message to the poor, to people of "low estate," raising them to the level of royalty. While still hierarchical, it inverted the traditional hierarchies. It turned a person's soul into the locus of the cosmic battle, instead of great battles between empires. Later, the transformation in people brought about by this faith, impressed the high and mighty, rich and powerful so much, they they forsook their riches and power for the riches of this spiritual kingdome that had been so sublimely revealed to them through people who were nothing and had nothing. Christianity is the Beauty of being nothing and having nothing. This was something totally new in human history. The power of that teaching, in my not so humble opinion, was obscured by the phenomenon of Christian empire, and later, by liberalism and various forms of secular gnosticisms that extol the virtues of the common man against the reactionary forces of the greedy and the rich. So the POWER to save is now a power represented by the liberal democratic state apparatus.

Finally, just some disjointed, ignorant comments about the Orthodox doctrine of sin. The thing that strikes me about Orthodox theologizing is that one thing always leads to another thing. While presumably our doctrine of creation and the fall determine everything else, you cannot even talk about creation and the fall without talking about Christ (who walked in the Garden), or the Jewish law, which forms a contextual backdrop. This is why patristic sermons typically lasted about an hour to two hours. You had to cover every peak and valley and tributary because everything is connected. The doctrine of creation and fall is/are mystical doctrines that cannot be neatly codified.

So if you want to make a distinction between Orthodoxy and Western Christianity (RC and Prot), I think the best way to proceed is on the practical level. The cure in Orthodoxy is disctinctly different. And, in fact, the cure precedes the theory of it in Orthodoxy. But typically, we look for some person or point in history where the West "went wrong." I think that misses the point.

[Owen Jones]

Regarding your specific question, Sinjin, from Eccl., it's just an honest lament. Not everything is an allegory or ripe with doctrinal certitude.

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear Sinjin, Andonis, Owen, Justin and others,

The approach of the Fathers to the book of Ecclesiastes has been predominantly as toward a text that expresses the frustrated recognition of the human heart at the fallenness of humanity and the cosmos. It is a book that presents a great potential for misinterpretation, given its largely 'negative' tone (and for this potential, Ecclesiastes is often included in first-year courses on OT studies as a test of interpretation); but this is largely noteworthy in Ecc because of the condensation of such tone into a brief text. There is equal pessimism in some of the Psalms, and in passages of the historical books.

The greatest potential for misinterpretation in Ecc comes in the manner in which one reads the exasperation of the author with regard to the vanity of the world and humankind. Such comments as 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity' (Ecc 1.1) and 'What is crooked cannot be made straight and what is lacking cannot be numbered' (1.15) can be very suspicious if they are read as commentary on the manner in which God made the world. 'God made a crooked and vain world that will always be vain and cannot be straightened' is a very dangerous (not to mention wrong) assertion.

This is not, however, the manner in which the Fathers read this book. They read it as the commentary of a man's attitude toward the fallenness he experiences in the world and its inhabitants -- a fallenness to which humanity and the cosmos have succumbed, and in which they are stuck fast. It is a pessimistic, though realistic, examination of the state of a sinful world and people. But in pointing out the vanity and futility of God's creation as fallen, so the Fathers suggest, is to demonstrate by converse example that purposefulness and value of the cosmos as God means it to be. Pseudo-Dionysius writes, in a fragmentary commentary on Ecclesiastes (here with reference to the phrase, 'What profit hath a man with all his labours under the sun?'):

"For what man is there who, although he may have become rich by toiling after the objects of this earth, has been able to make himself three cubits in stature, if he is naturally only of two cubits in stature? Or who, if blind, has by these means recovered his sight? Therefore we ought to direct our toils to a goal beyond the sun: for thither, too, do the exertions of the virtues reach." (Fragments I, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1.3)

There is a futility to human endeavours in a fallen context of existence, for these endeavours too are fallen, and only externalize the brokenness within the human person (who, for example, believes his toils have the ability to control his being, his 'stature'). And so the conclusion: 'Therefore we ought to direct our toils to a goal beyond the sun' - that is, our toils must be moved into the realm of actualising the divine will, rather than our human (and cosmic) fallenness. Only in such a way will vanity be avoided.

Pseudo-Dionysius later writes:

"The run of the discourse in what follows deals with those who are of a mean spirit as regards this present life, and in whose judgment the article of death and all the anomalous pains of the body are a kind of dreaded evil, and who on this account hold that there is no profit in a life of virtue, because there is no difference made in ills like these between the wise man and the fool. He speaks consequently of these as the words of madness inclining to utter senselessness; wherefore he also adds, 'the fool talks too much'." (Commentary on Ecclesiastes 2.15)

Here he makes clear that the author of Ecclesiastes is condemning the view that the life of virtue and the life of sin are equal, since all men eventually come to the same lot - death. Ecc makes this condemnation in a cynical way, by presenting it as the true situation of life; but Dionysius argues that it is in the author's biting irony that the true message is to be found. The world is so dread, so dismal, that men go about talking of virtue and vice as all the same in the end; but these men are fools.

The question of whether or not God created the world and humankind in the vain state in which these now find themselves, is one to which a wrong answer can be given if one reads Ecc without an appreciation for this sense of fallenness. Augustine, for example, read it thusly:

"This wisest man devoted this whole book to a full exposure of this vanity, evidently with no other object than that we might long for that life in which there is no vanity under the sun, but verity under Him who made the sun. In this vanity, then, was it not by the just and righteous judgment of God that man, made like to vanity, was destined to pass away?" (Augustine, City of God 20.3)

That man was 'made like to vanity' is a heavy and problematic claim. Augustine got a bit carried away with it; though in fairness to him, many of the Church Fathers reflected similarly. Still, the view which the patristic witness teaches overall is that the cosmos was not created in the dismal state to which Ecc bears witness, but that it has fallen into this state, and continues to fall into it. Since we know that such was not God's formulation or intention, the very cries of pessimism that Ecc brings forth against human life and the world, reflect the reality of true life that lies in their potential.

INXC, Matthew

NB: For those interested, St Gregory the Wonderworker wrote an interesting 'metaphrase' of Ecc: A Metaphrase of the Book of Ecclesiastes (http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-06/anf06-08.htm#P282_34583)

[Owen Jones]

Dear Matthew,

Thanks for that exposition on what is my favorite book of the Bible in many ways. I find no contradiction in that and in the fact that my favorite musical piece, The Messiah, contains my favorite musical passages: the crooked straight and the rough places plain.

But is Psuedo really psuedo???

Regarding Augustine, I think it is important to point out that he is consistent with the Greek Fathers in his teachings on deification of man. Because the doctrine of the Fall is a mystical doctrine, it allows us the freedom to speculate on it somewhat.

[Owen Jones]

What I really wanted to say about Ecclesiastes is that I wish it was required reading for every politician and seller of snake oil who promises cheap salvation.

[M.C. Steenberg]

But is Psuedo really psuedo???

Dear Owen, you are going to have to expand a bit on this question for me; I'm not certain that I know precisely what you're asking.


Regarding Augustine, I think it is important to point out that he is consistent with the Greek Fathers in his teachings on deification of man. Because the doctrine of the Fall is a mystical doctrine, it allows us the freedom to speculate on it somewhat.

I would suggest that it's a bit more accurate to say that Augustine presents, at times, a doctrine of deification that is consistent with that of the Greek Fathers. This fact is becoming more widely appreciated in modern scholarship; and has been discussed in other threads in this community, recent Orthodox writings have also been more open to admitting favourably of some of Augustine's teachings.

Nevertheless, despite this fact of a genuine notion of deification being present in places among Augustine's writings, there are plenty of places wherein Augustine's reflections upon human sin and the 'Fall' not only do not support a notion of deification, but in fact contradict or stand opposed to it. It is his overall ambiguity on this matter that is so problematic: he neither wholly upholds, nor wholly denies, such a doctrine. Hence the potential that's resulted in such a distortion of 'Augustinianism' over time.

(That was just an aside: I don't wish to get too far away from the actual theme of the present thread.)

INXC, Matthew

[Owen Jones]

Was Dionysius not really there at the Aereopogus, but rather someone who lived centuries later?

[M.C. Steenberg]

Dear all: please note that I have moved this 'Orthodox teaching on Ecclesiastes' thread from the Doctrine topic area to the better suited In Depth: Texts, Sources and Fathers topic. For those of you interacting with the community by email, please only use the reply-by-email feature for this thread on this and subsequent messages (attempting to reply-by-email to previous messages may result in your post becoming 'lost' along the way).

INXC, Matthew

[M.C. Steenberg]

In a recent post in this thread, in which I offered a few quotations of a fragmentary commentary on Ecclesiastes by one to whom I referred as 'Pseudo-Dionysius', Owen wrote:


Was Dionysius not really there at the Aereopogus, but rather someone who lived centuries later?

I should have expected, Owen, that you might bring up this question. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

The collection of writings now in our possession under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, show many internal signs of having been composed around the time of the late-fifth or early-sixth centuries. Despite the claims of the author to be the Dionysius of Acts 17.34, the author of these texts demonstrates an obvious and strong familiarity with the essentials of Neoplatonic philosophy (via the thought of Proclus and Plotinus) as well as the full scope of the New Testament canon. A knowledge of the writings of the whole NT cannot genuinely have been had by someone converted in the days of St Paul; and a familiarity with Plotinus (died c. AD 270) and Proclus (c. AD 485) obviously necessitates a date posterior to, or in the very least contemporary with, the latter of these authors. The internal evidence would seem very strongly to suggest that the author's claim to be the Dionysius from the days of St Paul, was an effort at granting the authority of tradition to his writings (this being a strategy neither uncommon nor negatively considered in the ancient world).

Such is supported by patristic quotations from and references to the writings of our Dionysius, which do not appear before the conjectural date of the late-fifth/early-sixth century. And despite the fact that many of the Fathers quote Dionysius as being the same person as him found in Acts, the relatively recent establishment of this theory's unlikelihood has not caused much stir among Orthodox theologians and thinkers. It has never been the details of Dionysius' person that have granted him his place of high esteem in the Church, but rather the truth of his teachings. If some of the Fathers thought that his writings were those of the genuine Areopagite, this does not invalidate either him nor them. Some Fathers thought dew crept up from beneath the earth onto the grass; others thought that rainbows were the phenomenon of geometrically unique clouds. Neither idea is accurate; but it is not in such details that the authority of the Fathers lies.

You may be interested to read an online article on Denys found here (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05013a.htm). It is a Catholic text, but in its historical consideration says much the same as you will find in the analyses of Orthodox writers.

INXC, Matthew