by Chris Alexion, Copyright October 01, 2006, all rights reserved. 341 views
I just heard a great sermon from Pastor Bill Einwechter introducing a series on Ecclesiastes. The sermon brought out a great point I hadn't thought of. This point is that Solomon's (assuming that Solomon was the author) emphasis in Ecclesiastes is largely apologetic.
The Preacher cynically examines life from a solely human reference point (what he calls life "under the sun"). He brings forward various secular approaches to life–power, workaholism, sexual escapism–and cuts them all off at the knees with the bitter refrain, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." As the classic rock song expressed it in our culture, "All we are is dust in the wind."
The Preacher's tack here is similar to the presuppositional approach of writers like Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til, as Pastor Bill noted. By leading the reader down the boulevard of broken dreams that any "under the sun" philosophy must inevitably become, Solomon leaves us with three options: (1) Embrace both life and biblical faith consistently; (2) Embrace life, but with no consistent philosophical base; and (3) Reject life itself. In Thales to Dewey, Clark emphasized the choice between skeptical futility and divine revelation, asking whether suicide really is such a bad thing, given secular presuppositions. Why not do it? Why live?
This line of thought got me thinking about another twentieth-century apologist–G. K. Chesterton. Chesterton's apologetic robustly affirmed life. For instance, his work Orthodoxy deals as much with the good life as with philosophical arguments. And Innocent Smith, the main character in Chesterton's Manalive, uses a revolver to "deal life" to a nihilistic Cambridge don who opined that life wasn't really worth living. Smith fires rounds around the professor, intentionally missing his head. The terrified academic realizes how much he really loves life and comes to embrace a more consistent philosophical outlook.
This makes me wonder whether the issue of a satisfying life may be more than a result of a consistent intellectual philosophy. I'm not sure yet how to phrase this thought, but it may be that a hearty love of life is itself a vital part of the defense of the faith. Can't we appeal to this in making our case? Clark may have had this in mind when he, unlike Van Til's disciples, offered the reader a choice rather than attempting an airtight transcendental argument.
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