16. In Closing...
Ecclesiastes is astounding in many ways. How could the following words be inspired by the Holy Spirit? -
"Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless!" (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV)
So was the writer of Ecclesiastes just some vagrant nihilist who gatecrashed the Biblical "ceilidh"? It may surprise some to note that it is Paul himself in the New Testament who most echos these words from Ecclesiastes. Compare the quote from Romans at the opening of this essay:
"For the Creation was subjected to futility/ frustration/ decay/ meaninglessness..." (Rom 8:20)
Ecclesiastes uses the observed therapeutic cyclic patterns of nature as a solace from the turmoil of fretful speculation - a lesson Job also learned. Zen exponents would be comfortable enough with the following sepia snapshot of the human condition, I think -
"Vanity (Absurdity, Frustration, Futility, Nonsense, Meaninglessness) of vanities," says the Preacher; "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." *[but see note below]
What profit has a man from all his labor
In which he toils under the sun?
One generation passes away, and another generation comes;
But the earth abides forever.
The sun also rises, and the sun goes down,
And hastens to the place where it arose.
The wind goes toward the south,
And turns around to the north;
The wind whirls about continually,
And comes again on its circuit.
All the rivers run into the sea,
Yet the sea is not full;
To the place from which the rivers come,
There they return again.
All things are full of labor;
Man cannot express it." (Ecclesiastes 1:2-8)
And Calvinists would be sanguine enough regarding the following Zen mindset at least -
"The winter night was so cold that Tanka took the wooden Buddha of the monastery, chopped it into pieces and lit a bonfire to keep himself warm".
Fearghas MacFhionnlaigh.
*[“Fleeting transience (הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים hevel havalim),” says Kohelet, “All is fleeting”."Transience" as the only appropriate translation of הֲבֵל hevel here is persuasively argued in an insightful online Jewish article by Ethan Dor-Shav entitled Ecclesiastes, Fleeting and Timeless (2004). The link from Dor-Shav's own blog subtitles the article (with surely a fair degree of over-statement) as "Buddhist teachings of King Solomon".
As I read the aforementioned essay I was reminded of Dooyeweerd's insistence that nothing temporal has meaning in itself. That all meaning flows from the eternal LORD. That temporal experience thus becomes meaningful only as we transcendently offer it to the eternal LORD via our supratemporal heart: "I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts" (Eccles. 3:11). As Abel (הבל /Hevel/Breath/Transience), prefiguring the Good Shepherd, was the first to exemplify (Gen 4:4). Dooyeweerd writes:
"This means that in the Christian experience the religious fullness of meaning remains bound up with temporal reality. Every spiritualistic view which wants to separate self-knowledge and the knowledge of God from all that is temporal, runs counter to the Divine order of the creation. Such spiritualism inevitably leads to an internally empty idealism, or to a confused kind of mysticism, in spite of its own will or intentions. In the order of this life - that of the life beyond is still hidden from us as to its positive nature - all human experience remains bound to a perspective horizon in which the transcendent light of eternity must force its way through time. In this horizon we become aware of the transcendent fulness of the meaning of this life only in the light of the Divine revelation refracted through the prism of time. For this reason Christ, as the fulness of God's Revelation, came into the flesh; and for this reason also the Divine Word-revelation came to us in the temporal garb of human language."(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Paideia Press 1984 Vol. II, p. 561).]
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See also the strongly critical:
Zen and the Art of Not Knowing God by Stephen H. Short
Zen: A Trinitarian Critique by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith
Zen and the Art of Not Knowing God by Stephen H. Short
Zen: A Trinitarian Critique by Rev. Ralph Allan Smith
