© 2010 Jim LePage. All rights reserved. Used by Permission | Click image to purchase various images based on Biblical books!

Below is an interview between myself and OT Scholar Pete Enns. He is one of the foremost thinkers on critical scholarship and evangelical faith. You can read his thoughts on Ecclesiastes below, which in my opinion is one of the most confusing books in the bible. You can read the other parts of the series here….

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What do you think are some misunderstood passages in the book?

There are a few passages, in my opinion, that are often misunderstood because of the perceived theological need to make Qohelet’s words safe.

One clear example is 3:1-8, made famous by The Byrds (“to everything, turn, turn, turn….”). Nice harmonies, bad theology. When Qohelet says there is a time and season for everything, he is not getting mellow like a 60s flower child. He is resigning himself to the fact that all things—birth and death, sowing and reaping, dancing and mourning, etc.—have times and seasons that are utterly out of human control. They are God’s times and seasons. We just go along for the ride.

Take birth and death. What control do we have over these things? Does anything we do control our own death or getting a dreaded late night phone all? No. Do we in any sense control the time and season of our own birth? Of course not. And try determining when it is time to sow seeds and when it is time to reap the harvest. God directs the seasons. All the rhythms of life are out of our control.

That is Qohelet’s point in 3:9, the verse right after the “turn, turn, turn” list. He laments, “What do workers gain from their toil?” This is a lament, a recognition that we can only be resigned to this state of affairs. No matter what one does, the rhythm of the cosmos described in verses 1-8 is undisturbed. All we do is wasted effort because it changes nothing.

The fact there is a time and a season for everything does not make for a good “Precious Moments” wall hanging or a peaceful folk melody. It makes you reach for the bottle (as Qohelet does in chapter 2!). [Read more...]

© 2010 Jim LePage. All rights reserved. Used by Permission | Click image to purchase various images based on Biblical books!

Below is an interview between myself and OT Scholar Pete Enns. He is one of the foremost thinkers on critical scholarship and evangelical faith. You can read his thoughts on Ecclesiastes below, which in my opinion is one of the most confusing books in the bible.  You can read the other parts of the series here….

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How does all of this fit with the rest of the Bible? Isn’t Ecclesiastes way out of sync with the life of faith Scripture holds out for us?

Ecclesiastes lets us in on the dark side of faith, something every Christians experiences sooner later. I would say that Ecclesiastes is in conversation with Israel’s religious tradition.

The baseline Old Testament teaching (let’s call it) is that God rewards Israel when faithful and punishes when disobedient. This theology is behind the Pentateuch, many of the prophets, and Proverbs. Psalm 1 is a good summary of that idea. What Ecclesiastes shares with Job and many of the lament psalms is a critique of that baseline teaching.

In their own way, each of these says, “Life is not the way God promised it would be, with blessings to the righteous and curses to the wicked. The opposite is true uncomfortably often. What is the world is God doing? What is he waiting for?” [Read more...]