Ecclesiastes and Inspiration
How does the book of Ecclesiastes impact your view of inspiration? I’ll be asking folks to think about this in my Sunday School class at First UMC of Pensacola as we study Ecclesiastes. What do you think?
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Tacky title, eh? I don’t apologize. I had fun constructing it. The other day someone asked me whether there were any scriptures I liked to go to when I was having problems. I gave the answer immediately and then explained, but I’m going to do the opposite here. I’m going to explain and then tell…
The simple answer is that it doesn’t affect my view of inspiration at all. It might do if I thought that inspiration meant that I could easily and trivially synthesise Ecclesiastes with, for instance, the Psalms of rejoicing (rather than those of lament) or the suggestions scattered throughout the New Testament that God will do loads of good things for the believer.
I’ve spent some of my life living psychologically in a Matt. 6 world and some living in an Ecclesiastes/Job world. The inspirations are appropriate to the situation in both cases.
Of course, Matt. 6:26ff and Ecclesiastes agree about living in the moment, even if they don’t agree about what might happen next. This isn’t a synthesis, though, it’s just advice which works independently of your situation.