Thadeus’s Reviews > Three Philosophies of Life - Ecclesiastes: Life As Vanity, Job: Life As Suffering, Song of Songs: Life As Love > Status Update

"As Kierkegaard points out, love in Christianity is not a feeling, as it is for Romanticism; rather, 'love is the works of love'. That is why Christ can command love. Only a fool tries to command a feeling."

Kreeft's piece on "Love Is Work" starting on page 110 is worth reading regularly. It starts out thus,
"Love is not passive. Love is singing a duet, and that is work. Joyful work, but work nonetheless."

'I had heard of you with the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees you.' This is the climax of Job. This is the most important verse in the book.

"This world is 'a vale of soul making', a great sculptor's shop, and we are the statues. To be finished, the statues must endure many blows of the chisel and be hardened in the fire. This is not optional."

"Today many more people lose their faith because they experience suffering and think God has let them down than lose their faith because of any rational argument. Job is a man for all seasons but especially for ours. His problem is precisely our problem."

“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, God 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."

"It is all very well to prefer altruism to egotism, to work for the good of others, but what is the good of others? Once I find the summum bonum, it must be shared, yes, but I cannot share it before I find it."

"Kierkegaard wrote, 'If I could prescribe just one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence.'...Ecclesiastes creates silence. Ecclesiastes is the first and necessary step toward salvation for the modern world."

"Ecclesiastes is the one book in the Bible that modern man needs most to read, for it is Lesson One, and the rest of the Bible is Lesson Two, and modernity does not need Lesson Two because it does not heed Lesson One."