Three Philosophies Of Life Part 2

The universe seems exactly like Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind. This is the face it turns on us: "Frankly, my dear, I just don't give a d.a.m.n."

2.Death.

Death is the most inconvenient thing in life, but also the most obvious-like an elephant in your kitchen. It is also the strongest reason why life seems vain. What profit is there in an investment in any of a country's businesses if the country is about to be destroyed?

But death is now. As soon as we are born, we begin to die. We are all equally bankrupt, some of us not yet declared: the small and arrogant oligarchy of the living, surrounded by the far more populous democracy of the dead.

What is the meaning of death? Here is all that human reason based on observation of life here under the sun can answer: The fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other.... All go to one place; all are from the dust and all turn to dust again. Who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward and the spirit of the beast goes down to the earth? (Eccl 3:19-21).

Who knows, indeed? Here under the sun, no one. Unless there should appear here under the sun a man who came from beyond the sun, beyond the horizon of death's night-unless we saw the Rising Son. But Solomon had not yet seen that man, only the man of dust, "from the earth, earthly", not the man from heaven; and what he says about the man of dust, the first Adam and all his descendants, is simply true. As Pascal put it in the Pensees Pensees, "the ending is dreary, however fine the rest of the play. They put a little dirt over your head, and that is the end, forever. That is the end awaiting the world's most ill.u.s.trious life."

Alexander the Great is said to have directed that he be buried with his naked arm hanging out of his coffin, with his hand empty, to show the world that the man who conquered the world left it as he entered it: naked. "Naked I came from my mother's womb; naked I return." Underneath our temporary life-clothing, we are all death-naked.

As an argument takes its point from its conclusion, so a story takes its point from its ending. If death is, as it seems to be, the final end, then life's story is vanity with a vengeance. The cosmos has been groaning in evolutionary travail with us, and we are only the cosmic abortion.

3.Time.

Time is vanity because "time is just another word for death". Time is a river that takes from us everything it gives us. Nothing remains; time ravages the very stars.

Is there progress? Does time go anywhere? Are we in a story? Not if observation under the sun tells us the truth about time. For such observation sees only cycles, "a time to be born and a time to die... a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted.... What gain has the worker from his toil?" (Eccl 3:2, 9). There is "nothing new under the sun". There is no good news, no Gospel. Progress is a myth, and evolution, it not another myth, is only a temporary segment of a vaster cosmic process, the "up" side of the cycle. Entropy is the "down" side. The myth of progress is like believing you are climng a mountain just because you arc going up an anthill on the way down.

If time is vain, life is vain, for all of life is temporal. Time is the fundamental and ineradicable feature of all our experience under the sun, spiritual as well as physical, for it takes time to think as well as to act; our souls are in time just as our bodies are, though not in s.p.a.ce. Yet despite this ubiquitous and inescapable vanity of time there is one light of hope, one c.h.i.n.k in the forbidding wall, one verse where Solomon opens a window out onto another world, like the poet's "cas.e.m.e.nts opening on perilous foam" of "faerie lands forlorn". After bemoaning time's meaningless cycles, he says, about G.o.d, "he has made everything beautiful [that is, fitting] for its time, but he has also put eternity into man's mind [or heart, or spirit]." We experience only time, yet we desire eternity, timelessness. Why, for Heaven's sake? Where did we ever learn of this thing called eternity, to desire it? Why, if our existence is totally environed by time, do we not feel at home in it? "Do fish complain of the sea for being wet?" Yet we complain of time. There is never enough time for anything. Time, our natural environment, is our enemy.

Perhaps there is land. Perhaps we were not always fish or will not always be. Perhaps-more than perhaps. Innate desires bespeak real objects. If there is hunger, there is food. And there is an innate hunger for eternity.

But this food is not found under the sun. Solomon shows us, by contrast, what and where the meaning of life is by showing what and where it is not. It is Yonder. There is More. There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in all our philosophies. That is the announcement of hope. Hope's messenger has infiltrated even into the castle of doom. Our desire for eternity, our divine discontent with time, is hope's messenger.

4.Evil.

The problem of evil, of injustice, of the sufferings of the innocent, of bad things happening to good people, is the oldest of all puzzles and the strongest of all arguments against belief in the goodness of G.o.d and the goodness of life.

There is a vanity which takes place on earth, that there are righteous men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked men to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous... (Eccl 8:14).Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness (Eccl 3:16).Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them. On the side of their oppressors was power, and there was no one to comfort them! (Eccl 4:1).

The poor and oppressed you will always have with you, Jesus said. Twenty centuries have not solved the problem, nor will twenty more. Time does not solve evil. Nothing under the sun does.

Even a little evil seems to destroy a lot of good: "Dead flies make the perfumer's ointment give off an evil odor; so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." One bull in a china shop, one madman's finger on a machine gun or a nuclear b.u.t.ton, one ill-chosen word, one infidelity, can ruin a whole life. Good is hostage to evil. This too is vanity.

5.G.o.d.

Is meaning in G.o.d, then?

Yes, but not in Solomon's G.o.d. Not in the G.o.d known by unaided reason. Not in "nature and nature's G.o.d". That is simply an it, not a who, a piece of celestial machinery called the First Cause or Great Architect or unknown Designer behind nature's known design. If all we know about G.o.d is what we read from nature, we shall conclude five things: 1.that G.o.d exists; 2.that G.o.d is powerful enough to make the world; 3.that G.o.d is intelligent enough to design the world; 4.perhaps also that G.o.d is aesthetic enough to create the beauty of the world, a great work of art; 5.but not that G.o.d is good, loving, or even just or that he cares about us and our lives. There is no evidence under the sun for that, the thing we really care about, the thing that would make G.o.d not just "the Force" but the Father. We are terrified little children, "lost in a haunted wood", and we need Abba, Daddy, not a Force or First Cause. We need a G.o.d whose name is not x x but but I I.

This Solomon is not a fool. Therefore he has not said in his heart, "There is no G.o.d." But this Solomon is also not a child of G.o.d. G.o.d is not his Father but his blank, his Unknown: "Consider the work of G.o.d: Who can make straight what he has made crooked?"

The G.o.d of nature lets brain tumors appear in little babies' heads. The most pious possible reactions to that fact are agnosticism and intellectual humility: Then I saw all the work of G.o.d, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out; even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out... (Eccl 8:17).As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of G.o.d who makes everything (Eccl 11:5).

Is it possible to believe in G.o.d and still despair, still not know why you are living? Certainly. Solomon does. For his G.o.d is like the moon: there, but not here, controlling the tides of his life but not entering into any personal relations.h.i.+p with him, no face-to-face encounter as with Job. Solomon's G.o.d has no face; he is only Being, only Am, not I Am. For Solomon's epistemology is purely naturalistic, and nature is only G.o.d's back. But Scripture is G.o.d's mouth, and Jesus is G.o.d's face. Ecclesiastes is a perfect silhouette of Jesus, the stark outline of the darkness that the face of Jesus fills.

The Need for an Answer: Three Demonic Doors.

It is essential that we escape Ecclesiastes' conclusion somehow. It is essential, in an absolute and unqualified way, that vanity be refuted, that the most horrible of all demons be exorcised.

There are three doors by which this demon can enter our lives. There is an emotional, psychological door, connected with depression. There is also a centralsunr, a spiritual door, which has no name but is the opposite of faith. Its name is not doubt, for great faith can coexist with great doubt, as in Job. Nor is it simply unfaith, not-yet-faith, for that can be seeking, and "all who seek, find". Rather, it is a kind of antifaith such as we see in great atheists like Sartre and Nietzsche, who care as much about G.o.d's unreality as the great saints care about G.o.d's reality. There is also a third door, a rational, intellectual, philosophical, argumentative, reason-giving door. And that is the door Ecclesiastes opens.

It is equally necessary to bar all three doors. Psychology has its bar for the first door. Religion has its far greater bar for the second, far greater door, the central door. But philosophy too must have its bar for its door, the third door. Each bar is different. Psychology cannot use philosophy's bar, rational arguments, to fight depression. Religion cannot use mere psychological techniques to heal souls, though our age is full of fools who try. Psychologists can remove guilt feelings, but only G.o.d can remove real guilt. And philosophy cannot bar its door with nonrational, nonphilosophical bars, whether those bars arc subrational, superrational, or simply nonrational. Even if religious faith is far greater than reason, it is not a subst.i.tute for reason. And wc are commanded by our faith itself to "be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you".

No one wants wants to admit Solomon's conclusion that "all is vanity". But we cannot simply a.s.sert that we disbelieve it. Solomon has given us some very good reasons for believing it. He has built a strong case, a strong building. We must undermine it. We must refute his argument. to admit Solomon's conclusion that "all is vanity". But we cannot simply a.s.sert that we disbelieve it. Solomon has given us some very good reasons for believing it. He has built a strong case, a strong building. We must undermine it. We must refute his argument.

I think G.o.d providentially arranged for this book to be in the Bible for that express purpose. G.o.d is practicing "Socratic method" on us, giving us a question, a challenge, and demanding that we we give the answer, the response. Life does that to us. We keep asking life, "What is your meaning?" and life responds by throwing challenges at us that demand that we respond to them. Life asks give the answer, the response. Life does that to us. We keep asking life, "What is your meaning?" and life responds by throwing challenges at us that demand that we respond to them. Life asks us us, "What is your your meaning?" Adam, after the Fall, wondered where G.o.d was, and G.o.d, instead of answering, asked him, "Adam, where are you?" Job looked for G.o.d as his Answer Man, but when G.o.d showed up, he asked Job for meaning?" Adam, after the Fall, wondered where G.o.d was, and G.o.d, instead of answering, asked him, "Adam, where are you?" Job looked for G.o.d as his Answer Man, but when G.o.d showed up, he asked Job for his his answers: "Now it is my turn to ask the questions and yours to answer." The mystics and resuscitated patients say that the "Being of Light" they see asks them a question, though not usually in words: something like: "Give an account of yourself. I am the Light. Stand in the light." answers: "Now it is my turn to ask the questions and yours to answer." The mystics and resuscitated patients say that the "Being of Light" they see asks them a question, though not usually in words: something like: "Give an account of yourself. I am the Light. Stand in the light."

There is nothing more boring than an answer to a question you never asked or cared about. Most religious education is like that-most secular education, too. Unlike our human teachers, G.o.d did not make that mistake. Ecclesiastes is the question. The Bible is a diptych, a two-paneled picture. Ecclesiastes is the first panel, the question. The rest of the Bible is the second panel, the answer. The Bible is like life, like history according to Toynbee: "Challenge and response". Ecclesiastes is the challenge. The rest is the response.

Well, have we understood the response? Can we answer Ecclesiastes? Can we translate our faith into the language of reason? Can we "give a reason for the hope that is in us"?

Rules for Talking Back.

When we talk back, we want to do more than just "share our feelings" or opinions. That is childish; that is just "getting it out", "getting it off our chest". We want not just to get something out but to get something in in: the truth. We want ot just to "express our opinion" but to be impressed by the truth. We want not just to externalize what is inside but to internalize what is outside: to learn the truth, to find out whether Solomon speaks the truth. That is, if we are honest.

There are only three ways to refute any argument. This is not negotiable, conventional, or changeable, not the man-made rules of a man-made game. This situation is inherent in the structure of reason itself. Aristotle did not invent it; G.o.d did.

An argument-any argument-has three ingredients, and any one of these three ingredients can be defective. But there arc only these three. An argument is composed of propositions, statements, sentences. These in turn are composed of terms (words or phrases). An argument is built of these building blocks, just like a physical building. Its propositions are like storys, and its terms are like rooms. Each argument is a three-story building (if it is a syllogism, the natural and most usual form of argument and the form we find in Ecclesiastes). The storys are called two "premises" and one "conclusion". The conclusion is like the top story; it is where the building goes goes. Each story has two rooms, called the "subject term" and the "predicate term". Thus a syllogistic argument looks like this: There are three things that must go right with any argument: 1.The terms must be unambiguous.

2.The premises must be true.

3.The argument must be logical.

Thus there are three things that can go wrong with any argument: 1.The terms may be ambiguous.

2.The premises may be false.

3.The argument may be illogical.

Ecclesiastes' basic argument is as follows: All "toil" is "under the sun".

All "under the sun" is "vanity".

Therefore, all "toil" is "vanity".

If we are to refute this argument, we must find in it one of the following: 1.an ambiguous term.

2.a false premise.

3.a logical fallacy.

But no term is used ambiguously, and there is no logical fallacy-the conclusion logically follows from the premises. We must therefore find a false premise.

There are only two premises: that all toil, all human work, is under the sun, and that all that is under the sun is vanity, for the five reasons given. Well, is there a toil that is not under the sun? Is there a human work that is not confined to this earth? What are we doing here? Are we not building an eternal Kingdom? Will nothing last? William Butler Yeats writes of a little girl watching the waves destroy sand castles on a Normandie beach, thinking of all the great civilizations that had come gone in that place, and lamenting, "Will nothing last?"

But we will last. We are constructing our very selves with every choice we make, like statues sculpting their own shape with the chisel of free will. And those selves, souls, characters, are destined for eterni. We are the Kingdom of Heaven. We are the answer to Solomon. But this answer does not come clear until hundreds of years after Solomon, through the most outrageous paradox, which Kierkegaard calls "the absolute paradox", of the event of eternity entering time, G.o.d's becoming a man, sharing the life of man so that man could share the life of G.o.d. Ecclesiastes is the question to which Christ is the answer.

And the second premise-he has tried the five most popularly practiced experiments with life, but is there nothing he has not tried? Is there anything else under the sun, anything that is not in vain? The next book in the Bible, also bearing the name of Solomon, gives the answer. Solomon has tried pleasure, and nine hundred wives, but not love. In Song of Songs Solomon loves only one woman. The one can give what the many cannot give: a meaning larger than life's vanity. Love, true love, agape, charity, total self-giving, is the one thing in this life under the sun that is "stronger than death", that smells of eternity, that alone never gets boring, that is never exhausted, that becomes more fulfilling, not less, the more it is practiced. Love is infinite. For G.o.d is love. Love is also true wisdom. Fools say love is blind. But G.o.d is love; is G.o.d blind? One of those three propositions must go. In Ecclesiastes, G.o.d is not love. In Song of Songs, love is not blind.

One More Answer to Ecclesiastes; The Divine Interruption The most ineradicable reason Solomon gives for vanity is the very nature of time itself as cyclic. And the four great divine deeds revealed in the Bible all break the cycle and introduce something radically new, something from without, outside time itself, something from eternity rather than from the past, therefore something radically new: Creation, Incarnation, Resurrection, and Last Judgment. Here is something new under the sun because it comes from beyond the sun. Here are meaning and hope, though terror too. Here is true transcendence.

The Postscript.

The last six verses of Ecclesiastes, most scholars think, were added by a second author, the original book ending with verse 8 of chapter 12: exactly where it began, with "vanity of vanities, all is vanity". The second author adds the orthodox answer to Solomon's question, the answer the rest of the Old Testament gives, in the last two verses: "The end of the matter: all has been heard. Fear G.o.d and keep his commandments. For this is the whole duty of man. For G.o.d will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil" (Eccl 12:13).

The other thirty-eight books of the Old Testament are summarized in these last two verses. Here indeed are the meaning and purpose of life. For the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But it is not the end.

The fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore belongs to the beginnings, and is felt in the first cold hours before the dawn of civilization: the power that comes out of the wilderness and rides on the whirlwind and breaks the G.o.ds of stone; the power before which the eastern nations are prostrate like a pavement; the power before which the primitive prophets run naked and shouting, at once proclaiming and escaping from their G.o.d; the fear that is rightly rooted in the beginnings of every religion, true or false; the fear of the Lord, that is the beginning of wisdom; but not the end (G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man) The Everlasting Man).

Conclusion.

Ecclesiastes is a bright book of life. It is bright precisely in its dazzling darkness. It is a book of life precisely because it honestly and nakedly confronts the fact of death. It is a great, great book because it explores, deeply and uncompromisingly, a great, great question: What are our lives here under the sun for for?

That is the greatest question in the world. The only greater book than this would have to be a book that gave the greatest answer in the world-a book like the next book in the Bible, the Song of Songs. The philosopher asks the question, but the lover answers it. The head thinks, but the heart sings.

In the Song of Songs, life is seen as a love song. Our lives are notes in a great music, a cosmic harmony, a "music of the spheres", and the point of the song is love because the singer of the song is G.o.d-our story, history, is his story-and G.o.d is is love. But that is another story. And the way to it is by way of Job. love. But that is another story. And the way to it is by way of Job.

JOB:.

Life as Suffering.

It is universally recognized that Job is one of the greatest books ever written: a masterpiece, an all-time cla.s.sic: To the sensitive reader, it is real magic. It is terrifying and beautiful, beautifully terrifying and terrifyingly beautiful. It is fascinating, haunting, teasingly mysterious, tender, and yet powerful as a sledgehammer. It can be obsessive as few books can.

Though bottomlessly mysterious, it is also simple and obvious in its main "lesson", which lies right on the surface in the words of G.o.d to Job at the end. Unless you are Rabbi Kushner, who incredibly manages to miss the unmissable, you cannot miss the message. If Job is about the problem of evil, then Job's answer to that problem is that we do not know we do not know the answer. We do not know what philosophers from Plato to Rabbi Kushner so helpfully but hopelessly try to teach us: why "bad things happen to good people". Job does not understand this fact of life, and neither do we. We "identify" with Job not in his knowledge but in his ignorance. the answer. We do not know what philosophers from Plato to Rabbi Kushner so helpfully but hopelessly try to teach us: why "bad things happen to good people". Job does not understand this fact of life, and neither do we. We "identify" with Job not in his knowledge but in his ignorance.

The book of Job is an enigma answering another enigma. The enigma it answers is life's deepest problem, the problem of evil, of suffering, of injustice in a world supposedly ruled by a just G.o.d. This G.o.d, however, is not a hard, bright, brittle, little formula but a mystery. He is the G.o.d of whom Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, "G.o.d is not nice. G.o.d is not an uncle. G.o.d is an earthquake." We may or may not like the G.o.d who is an earthquake rather than an uncle, but our likes and dislikes do not change reality. If wc cannot take the G.o.d of Job (and the rest of the Bible), that is skin off our noses but not off G.o.d's. We do not make the universe hold its breath by holding ours.

Job is mystery. A mystery satisfies something in us, but not our reason. The rationalist in us is repelled by Job, as Job's three rationalist friends were repelled by Job. But something deeper in us is deeply satisfied by Job, and is nourished. Job is not like consomme, clear and bright, but like minestrone, dark and thick. It sticks to your ribs. When we read Job we are like a little child eating his spinach. "Open your mouth and close your eyes." Job, like spinach, is not sweet tasting. But it puts iron in our blood.

The power of Job is like the power of the Hebrew language itself. Max Picard described this language (in The World of Silence The World of Silence) as severely limited but concentrated in power (like a laser beam), able to say only a few things, but those few things that it says it says with a trumpet. Its words are like great columns sunk one by one into the earth. The words are vertical words; they join Heaven and earth, as the one Word of G.o.d, Jesus, was to do centuries later. Hebrew is the language of the Incarnation. There is a similar "feel" of "verticality" about Job, as if it were written in Heaven.

I would never have understood Job without the help of two very great writers: J.R. R. Tolkien and Martin Buber. Of course I still do not understand it, but now I can at least stand under it and not under something else that I confuse with it (that is mis-under-stand-ing). Tolkien is the one who translated Job for the Jerusalem Bible, and Buber is the one whose single suggestion gave me the key to open Job's most mysterious locked door. Let me briefly explain each of these two contributions.

Only once have I ever encountered a translation that made such a difference, that so opened up for me a previously closed book. That was Frank Sheed's translation of Augustine's Confessions Confessions, which I found to be as living as molten lava. The most widely used translation of the Confessions Confessions is the one by a Mr. Pine-Coffin, and it is worthy of his name. It is a dead translation. Sheed's is living. When I first read Job in the Jerusalem Bible translation, I did not know Tolkien was the translator. Then, after the remarkable experience of seeing the book open up and come to life and leap out at me from the pages, I later found out that the can opener was Tolkien, whom I always thought to be one of the great epic storytellers of all time. Surely nothing since is the one by a Mr. Pine-Coffin, and it is worthy of his name. It is a dead translation. Sheed's is living. When I first read Job in the Jerusalem Bible translation, I did not know Tolkien was the translator. Then, after the remarkable experience of seeing the book open up and come to life and leap out at me from the pages, I later found out that the can opener was Tolkien, whom I always thought to be one of the great epic storytellers of all time. Surely nothing since The Divine Comedy The Divine Comedy can match can match The Lord of the Rings The Lord of the Rings except except Paradise Lost Paradise Lost. Together with The Aeneid The Aeneid and and The Iliad The Iliad and and Odyssey Odyssey, these six make up an epic cla.s.s of their own.

But I must thank Martin Buber even more for putting in my hand the golden key that opened up the central door, the central theme of the book, the central solution to the central enigma. Even more than that, this key opened up one of the deepest secrets of theology for me, Christian theology as much as or even more than Buber's own Jewish theology, by illuminating the koan koan puzzle of G.o.d's own self-revealed name, the sacred Tetragrammaton, the Ultima Thule of human thought, the revelation of the nature of ultimate reality, the essential nature of G.o.d as he is in himself, not just in relation to us. All this was done in a startlingly simple, unexpectedly unsophisticated way. The key to Job is in Exodus 3:14. puzzle of G.o.d's own self-revealed name, the sacred Tetragrammaton, the Ultima Thule of human thought, the revelation of the nature of ultimate reality, the essential nature of G.o.d as he is in himself, not just in relation to us. All this was done in a startlingly simple, unexpectedly unsophisticated way. The key to Job is in Exodus 3:14.

But I am going too fast. I will not talk any more about this solution yet, because a solution is meaningless without an appreciation of the problem. I hope I have whetted your appet.i.te with the promise of a spiritual meal of gourmet dimensions and with just desserts. But we must now begin at the beginning, with the enormously troubling problems raised by this book. I do not mean the problems about about the book raised by scholars (for example, who wrote it, why, when, where, and so on) but the problems about life, that is, about ourselves, raised the book raised by scholars (for example, who wrote it, why, when, where, and so on) but the problems about life, that is, about ourselves, raised by by this book. What arc they? this book. What arc they?

Job is like an onion, or a set of nesting boxes, or a package wrapped in many layers. Peel off the outside, and there are more and more on the inside. It is bigger on the inside than on the outside-like a human being, and like the stable in Bethlehem, and like Mary's womb. There are surely many more problems, and levels of problems, than the four I see and say here, but these four, at least, are there, and they are a start, a priming of your pump so that you, the free and independent reader, can find more on your own.

1.The "Problem of Evil"

This is surely the the problem, the problem of problems. Most generally, it is the problem of why there is evil at all, especially in a universe created and ruled by an all-good and all-powerful G.o.d. Aquinas formulates the problem with maximum succinctness in problem, the problem of problems. Most generally, it is the problem of why there is evil at all, especially in a universe created and ruled by an all-good and all-powerful G.o.d. Aquinas formulates the problem with maximum succinctness in the Summa the Summa; "If one of two contraries is infinite, the other is wholly eliminated. But G.o.d is infinite goodness. Thus if G.o.d exists, evil would be wholly eliminated. But there is evil. Therefore G.o.d does not exist" (STh I, 2, 3, Obj. 1). Augustine's version is a little longer and a little more explicit: "If G.o.d were all-good, He would will only good, and if He were all-powerful, He would be able to do all that He wills. But there is evil [as well as good]. Therefore G.o.d is either not all-good or not all-powerful, or both." A third formulation of the problem is more practical than theoretical: How could G.o.d-the all-good and all-powerful G.o.d-let bad things happen to good people? This formulation is closer to job's complaint. It is not just the sheer existence of evil, any evil at all, but the personal presence and experience of evil, the specific evil of injustice, that is the pressing problem. Punishment for deserved crime is evil in a sense, because punishment has to hurt, but in another sense it is not evil at all but good: it is justice. But Job is experiencing not justice but injustice. Bad things-very, very bad things-are happening to him, and he is "good people", in fact very, very "good people" according to the author of the book (Job 1:1) and, even more authoritatively, according to the author of Job's very being, G.o.d himself (Job 1:8). I, 2, 3, Obj. 1). Augustine's version is a little longer and a little more explicit: "If G.o.d were all-good, He would will only good, and if He were all-powerful, He would be able to do all that He wills. But there is evil [as well as good]. Therefore G.o.d is either not all-good or not all-powerful, or both." A third formulation of the problem is more practical than theoretical: How could G.o.d-the all-good and all-powerful G.o.d-let bad things happen to good people? This formulation is closer to job's complaint. It is not just the sheer existence of evil, any evil at all, but the personal presence and experience of evil, the specific evil of injustice, that is the pressing problem. Punishment for deserved crime is evil in a sense, because punishment has to hurt, but in another sense it is not evil at all but good: it is justice. But Job is experiencing not justice but injustice. Bad things-very, very bad things-are happening to him, and he is "good people", in fact very, very "good people" according to the author of the book (Job 1:1) and, even more authoritatively, according to the author of Job's very being, G.o.d himself (Job 1:8).

There are only four possible answers to this problem. First, there is the obvious (but wrong) answer for someone who believes in the G.o.d of the Bible, the G.o.d who is both all good and all powerful: namely, that Job is not "good people". This is the answer of Job's three friends, and it is enormously reasonable. The author of the book has to go out of his way to tell the reader at the very beginning that Job is "a sound and upright man, one who fears G.o.d and turns away from evil" and to put this truth into the mouth of G.o.d himself (Job 1:8). Otherwise, like Job's three friends, we would certainly opt for this solution. The shocking contrast between appearance and reality, between what appears to be the obviously true solution and what is the real, infinitely more difficult and mysterious and surprising solution, is one of the main dramatic interests of the book. We must not see Job's three friends as fools, because they are not and because then we would miss the great drama, the irony, the contrast between appearance and reality. We must sympathize with the friends in order to be shocked by G.o.d, as they were. In a sense this is the main reason the book was written: to shock the reader with G.o.d, the real G.o.d, the "Lord of the Absurd", to use Father Raymond Nogar's t.i.tle, as distinct from the comfortable and convenient G.o.d of our own expectations and categorizations. If G.o.d himself, the all-wise designer of the whole story we arc in, were not not this shocking and surprising "Lord of the Absurd" but rational, predictable, comfortable, and convenient, then life would not be a mystery to be lived but a problem to be solved, not a love story but a detective story, not a tragicomedy but a formula. For tragedy and comedy arc the two primary forms of mystery, and if Job teaches us anything, it is that we are living in a mystery. this shocking and surprising "Lord of the Absurd" but rational, predictable, comfortable, and convenient, then life would not be a mystery to be lived but a problem to be solved, not a love story but a detective story, not a tragicomedy but a formula. For tragedy and comedy arc the two primary forms of mystery, and if Job teaches us anything, it is that we are living in a mystery.

The first answer to the problem, then, the answer of Job's three friends, namely, that Job is not not "good people", is to be rejected because (1) it is evidently not the answer of the author of Job, (2) G.o.d himself refutes this answer both at the beginning of the book when he speaks to Satan about Job's virtues and at the end when he praises Job and castigates Job's thee friends, and (3) this answer would reduce life's central mystery to a problem. So we must turn to a second possible answer. "good people", is to be rejected because (1) it is evidently not the answer of the author of Job, (2) G.o.d himself refutes this answer both at the beginning of the book when he speaks to Satan about Job's virtues and at the end when he praises Job and castigates Job's thee friends, and (3) this answer would reduce life's central mystery to a problem. So we must turn to a second possible answer.

Perhaps G.o.d is not good. This is the answer Job flirts dangerously with when he dreams of dragging G.o.d to court and winning his case if there were only an impartial and just judge to sit above both himself and G.o.d, but laments that there is no such judge and that G.o.d has all the power on his side, but not justice. In other words, G.o.d is not good, but G.o.d is powerful, so goodness (justice) and power are ultimately separated, not one. This is a horrible, an unspeakably horrible, philosophy, and only Job's honesty and scepticism about his own innocence deliver him from it: How dare I plead my cause, then.

Or choose arguments against him?

Suppose I am in the right, what use is my defense?

For he whom I must sue is judge as well.

If he deigned to answer my citation, Could I be sure that he would listen to my voice?

He, who for one hair crushes me, Who, for no reason, wounds and wounds again, Leaving me not a moment to draw breath, With so much bitterness he fills me.

Shall I try force? Look how strong he is!

Or go to court? But who will summon him?

Though I think myself right, his mouth may condemn me; Though I count myself innocent, it may declare me a hypocrite.

But am I innocent after all? Not even I know that, And, as for my life, I find it hateful.

It is ah one, and this I dare to say; Innocent and guilty, he destroys all alike.

When a sudden deadly scourge descends, He laughs at the plight of the innocent....

Yes, I am man, and he is not; and so no argument, No suit between the two of us is possible.

There is no arbiter between us To lay his hand on both (Job 9:14-23, 32-33).

The Resurrection of Christ fills the Christian with cosmic joy because it definitively, concretely refutes the horrible philosophy that goodness and power are ultimately separated. Goodness incarnate, the only totally good man who ever lived, the only infinitely good thing ever to appear to finite eyes, triumphed over death, the great evil power that no man can conquer, "the last enemy". The psychological consequences of belief in the Resurrection are so ingrained in the Christian consciousness that we usually do not realize the chasm between Yes and No here, between belief and unbelief. Try to imagine it: one day you realize that G.o.d does not care, that almighty power is indifferent to good and evil, that the story of the universe and the story of your life are told by a bland, blank blah instead of a loving Person. That is the horror that looms on Job's horizon here.

Denial of the Resurrection, or of the conjunction of ultimate goodness with ultimate power, can take another form, and this is a third answer to the problem of evil: instead of denying G.o.d's goodness, we can deny G.o.d's power. Imagine one day discovering the bones of the dead Jesus in a Jerusalem tomb. The logical result is the same in both cases-the phenomenon of evil is "explained"-but the psychological results are different. If the G.o.d we wors.h.i.+p is power but not goodness, goodness is demoted and power exalted in objective reality, and therefore in our lives, too, if we are sane enough to conform our lives to objective reality. We then begin to wors.h.i.+p power and reduce goodness to a secondary thing, a means to the end of power or success. Thus religion is divorced from ethics. If, in contrast, the G.o.d we wors.h.i.+p is goodness but not power, we still put goodness and ethics at the highest level, as absolute, but we cannot trust or expect the good to triumph. We side with G.o.d, but we are not confident we are on the winning side. We are good but not confident. It we believe solution number two, the affirmation of G.o.d's power but not of his goodness, we are confident but not good. If we believe solution number three, the affirmation of G.o.d's goodness but not of his power, we are good but not confident.

Solution number three, the denial of G.o.d's omnipotence, is a very popular solution today, as it was in pagan times. The pagan version of it was polytheism, dividing G.o.d into little G.o.dlets, none of which has total power. The modern version of it is reducing G.o.d to nature or time (process). "Process theology" is the fas.h.i.+onable form of this heresy today. Rabbi Kushner and Dr. Nicholas Woltersdorff have both recently written very popular books propounding this solution for the very same reason: each of them had to rethink his faith in light of a tragic death of a beloved teenaged son. Each had to hold on to the love of G.o.d, G.o.d as lovable, G.o.d as good. Each concluded that G.o.d was not in total control of things, that G.o.d is still growing and perhaps will always be growing and learning, that G.o.d is subject to natural laws. This means that the lovable and loving Person of G.o.d is not the ultimate, but that impersonal necessity or the laws of nature are ultimate. They are above G.o.d himself. This "solution" takes from us the precious gift of confidence and trust. We can no longer be little children, as Christ commands, and call G.o.d "Abba" ("da-da"), totally secure in his arms. We have to fend for ourselves. G.o.d is reduced from omnipotent Father to Big Brother. He is powerful, but not all powerful.

Job never flirts with this solution. Like most people, he implicitly argues that if there is a G.o.d at all worthy of the name, he must be omnipotent. If he created the universe, he must be omnipotent, for it takes infinite power to create everything out of nothing. Ordinary language agrees with job; the adjective we spontaneously affix to the name "G.o.d" is almighty almighty, as if it is G.o.d's first name. Throughout the Bible the question is never whether G.o.d is real (only "the fool has said in his heart, 'There is no G.o.d'") or whether G.o.d is all powerful (only a pagan polytheist or a modern naturalist would question that) but whether G.o.d is good and trustable; what he is up to, and what wc are supposed to be up to. Job is a biblical book not only in the sense that it is in the Bible but also in the sense that it a.s.sumes the theology of the rest of the Bible. To try to interpret it as contradicting the rest of the Bible, as Kushner and others do-to interpret it as teaching that G.o.d is not all powerful or that job is right and G.o.d is wrong or that life is a problem to be solved rationally rather than a mystery to be affirmed by faith (all these notions are essentially Kushner's interpretation)-is to do fundamental violence to the solid foundation of biblical a.s.sumptions that neither job nor the book of Job, neither the character nor the work and its author, ever put into question.

If we cannot solve the "problem of evil" by denying that (1) bad things do happen to good people, as Job's three friends do by saying that Job is not a good person; or by denying that (2) G.o.d is all good; or (3) G.o.d is all powerful, then the only thing left seems to be (4) denying G.o.d's very existence. But this simply magnifies all the terrible consequences of all the other "solutions". Furthermore, it is not Job's or the book of Job's solution, for neither Job nor the author of Job is a "fool". What fifth solution is then possible?

Perhaps the problem cannot be solved at all. Or perhaps it is not a problem but a mystery. Or perhaps there is a solution after all, a partial solution, even on the rational level. Let us look more carefully by considering the argument of Job's three friends. Here it is: 1.Faith premise: G.o.d is just.