Video Transcript: The Place and Purpose of Wisdom Literature within the Biblical Canon

Hi. I'm Wayne Brower, and I've been a pastor all my life. But I've also spent time focusing on  concentrated Biblical Studies. I've earned several master's degrees and a PhD in Biblical  Studies. And I'm planning to take you with me on a journey through the wisdom literature of  the Old Testament. The Wisdom literature is probably not the part of the Bible that we read  most frequently, focusing usually instead on the Gospels and Paul's letters in the New  Testament, and of course, sometimes on the Psalms and the history of Israel. But there are  other parts of the wisdom literature that I think you will find fascinating. And we'll take a  deeper look at all of these things together in these in this course. Now, the Wisdom literature  focuses on those key issues of our lives. And there are really four primary issues that we all  face at one time or another. I call them the questions of origins, unity, purpose, and destiny.  And those four questions are issues that we will find ourselves facing, particularly at the  critical moments of our lives. Sometimes when there's a tragedy, sometimes when we're  involved in accidents or diseases, sometimes when we reach the end of our lives, and  sometimes when others around us face those kinds of things. These are the critical issues of  life. How did we get here? Not just how did I get here I was, of course born to my parents, but  more importantly, the larger scope of things, How did life itself get started? Is there a purpose to it? Is there some kind of meaning to it? Is there an intention about it? Or did it happen by  happenstance or faith or chance? A second question is that of unity, what holds life together,  scientists are always talking about coherence, or consilience, the idea that there is some  method by which all things, have some association with others so that we can go to different  places on planet Earth and the same laws of physics still hold, we can go to the moon. And  although the effect of gravity will be much less because of the smaller size of the moon, the  laws of gravity still are in place the same laws of gravity, we can go into outer space, and we  presume we can go to distant planets, and the same laws of physics will be in place there.  What is the glue that holds all things together and in our own lives? Why do we suppose that  there's meaning which transcends each individual expense of instance of life itself that we  experienced day by day? What is it that we're looking for in terms of larger meaning or unity  and purpose? That brings us to the third question, what is the purpose of what we're doing  here, not just what holds all things together so that we can count on similar experiences of  life in different places, and at different times and even in different cultures? But is there a  purpose behind our existence? Are we living merely day by day? Or are we actually focused  on some larger journey of life, which has a beginning, a middle and an end? And that there  are values that guide us toward particular destinies? That, of course, brings up the fourth  question, what in fact, will be our destiny? What happens when we die? What will be the fate  of the universe? What will be the outcome of human existence? Is there the possibility that we live beyond death? All of these questions are issues that human beings face, one time or  another throughout the stages of life. Now, with those questions in mind, there are I think,  three dominant methods by which humans have attempted to give answer to those questions. I call these the closed system naturalism of scientific evolutionism. And the closed system  intelligent design, which is the parent philosophical identity for religions and perspectives like  Hinduism, and Buddhism, and process theology. And then there's the third possibility that  there is a God who created all things and that this world is actually a response to the Creator,  a creaturely response interactive with its divine maker. Let's take a deeper look at each of  those. A closed system naturalism assumes that all meaning is confined to the system as we  perceive and are able to assess it. That means that everything happens by natural law and  causes and effects and chemical interchanges and the interaction of matter and energy and  that everything is dynamic, of course, but it is there is no transcendent meaning behind it,  there is no Creator who created it. There is no ongoing life in the system. It is the system  itself, which continues to replicate things based simply on the laws of physics and the  chemical properties of things, and the interaction of matter and energy. Because life exists, it  is, in part an anomaly. Somehow it happened, but we don't know why it happened. But since it happened, what is true about life is that life desires to sustain itself. That means that once we  start living, we want to keep living. And somehow this becomes the competition among living  species for survival. In scientific naturalism, or in evolutionary theory, it's the survival of the  fittest among the species in interacting between the species, somehow once life has been 

generated, by whatever means, there is a desire for life to be sustained. And the best of life  by that measure is whatever can last or survive. The second possible worldview system giving rise to many philosophies and religions, etc, is what I call the closed system intelligent design  perspective. Here, there's a sense that there is transcendence, but transcendence is not  necessarily outside the system. Rather, Transcendence is essentially the driving force or the  life of the system itself. We think about two things in particular time and life. Somehow we  cannot truly or fully understand either of these time moves us all along at the same pace. No  matter where we are in planet earth, time happens. We have days, we have minutes, we have hours. Now we've put those markers in place. And yet somehow, we do move progressively  from one stage of life to the next we move ahead. That's what time does. But can we explain  time itself? Not really, time happens to us, but we can't really explain why it is the marker  that keeps us all with the same experiences progressing at the same pace. Along the way, we  can't move back into the past, we can't move ahead into the future, now is the only existence we have. And that is part of the strangeness and the dynamism of time. Similarly, there is life. Life is that mysterious creative force that powers the universe. But what is life itself? We know when flowers die, that something changes. We know when bugs appear in the spring that  something dynamic is taking place, we know that when an animal is born, or when a child is  born, or when something is it comes into being that there's a quality about it that has life. But what exactly is that life, we cannot define that? Well, this perspective assumes that whatever  time and life are they together form a kind of impersonal transcendence that we can  sometimes name God or the power or being itself or the ground of all being, there is a driving  force that inhabits and is essential to the universe as we know it, the meaning of life is to go  with that flow of whatever that essence is, and not against it. So it has many this, this  perspective has many of the same properties as closed system naturalism, but considers  transcendence to be part of the mystery of the system. And here's where there are  connections to Buddhism and Hinduism, process theology and other like minded religions and  philosophic views, that we are individuated from the oneness of all being as human beings  and plants and animals, where we have individual identity and we think about ourselves and  somehow we have a unique sense of self, but that the oneness of our being, or the the  uniqueness of our being separates us from the oneness of all beings. And somehow we have  to divest ourselves of whatever it is karma or bad deeds or things that we have picked up  along the way or material substance, and we have to eventually merge back into the oneness of all things and so we lose our individual identity ultimately. And in order to get there we  have to go with the flow of whatever time life and the mysterious transcendence that we  might call a God is all about. Well, those are two possible ways of looking at the world within  which we live. And then there's that third one, the one that I call the Creator, creature  interactive system with dynamic purpose. In other words, there is a God who existed before  time and outside of matter and, and is the source of life himself. And that this god  intentionally created the universe that we live in. And including in that creative activity,  formed humankind as the crown, the pinnacle, the key element of creation that we were  intended to be as we are, and this world was created as a home for humankind. Humanity  reflects God's character and is meant for multiple relationships, relationships with its creator,  relationships between different human groups and different human persons, relationships  with the world around us relationships with the animals, relationships with the material  substance that we can use, and form and shift and change, but mostly a relationship with the  Creator Himself. Now, of course, if that relationship is to be truly a free relationship, a  relationship in which we reflect the image of God, or we reflect something of God's own  character, then it cannot be forced, it is something in which we have freedom to respond or  even not to respond or to respond negatively. And that's what allowed evil to enter this world.  And what we have is a world in which there is a Creator, who has created beings who reflect  God in the image of God by giving them the ability to create and procreate, and also to love  and to respond to love. And we have not always done so wisely or appropriately, that's what  we call sin. But the Creator rather than just dismissing it all, as something that doesn't  matter, based upon the freedom that the Creator gave to us, responds to the needs that are  here. And that we now live in a world which is compromised and broken, but a world in which 

the Creator continues to give shape to a redemptive process. Now, I think as we review these  three possible cosmological options, you can begin to see that the answers to the questions of life take on different significance. Depending on which of these cosmological perspectives  these worldviews one might assume. For instance, if one assumes the closed system,  naturalism, then things have always existed forever in an evolutionary unfolding, maybe  initiated with what is often termed the Big Bang, but not necessarily. So Stephen Hawking and others have proposed the possibility that the world is a continually inflating and deflating  entity that has moved through cycles of expansion, and then deflation. And once it kind of  begins to deflate and collapses in on itself as a giant black hole, that whole culmination forces a new Big Bang, and so we're running through systems. But in any case, what the unity of  everything is about is a shared history, we have all originated from the same things, and  therefore we have similar properties. And therefore there's a steady evolution of species from  one to the next, and everything is connected, and who knows what's coming next. Our  purpose in this existence is survival. Since we exist, we want to continue to exist. And that's  where Darwin's theory of the evolution of things and the species that originate from one to  the next, and those within a particular species that survive and those that don't, the survival  of the fittest comes in, over a long period of time, of course, and our destiny has very little to  do with meaning it is simply that the material and energy of the universe recycles itself when  I die, nothing essential is lost. The fact that I existed is really of little consequence, I will just  simply feed the next processes that follow after me with the molecules and matter and  energy that is resident in me right now. We simply recycle material substance and energy to  keep the system running. Now the closed system intelligent design takes on those same  questions. Origins, for instance, are similar. We either are continuing to explore the same  processes that have existed from all time, perhaps there was a big bang, maybe there will be  cycles of inflation and deflation and the collapsing of the universe, whatever. But the  difference here is that there's a perspective that says there is an intelligence which runs the  system, keeping it all together, call it being itself or the ground of all being or what we term  God or the process theology idea of God is unfolding through the processes of time and  space. The purpose is to enhance expressions of whatever life is resident in that, in that  creative force, not a creator outside the system, but the system itself. And our destiny is  similar to that in the closed system naturalism to recycle our material substance and energy,  just to keep the system running. Now, the third major worldview option looks at things from a  completely different point of view. All things are brought into being by a Creator, who has a  sense of personhood, that transcends everything else. God decides to create all things, and  everything has unity based upon the common design, source and divine purpose that's  inherent in God making all things the purpose of all things is to enhance our human capacities to reflect our creators relational character. We were made in the image of God as human  beings and to multiply creative activity, Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth. And  our destiny is to live well to share creative activity to love God and others, and to join in  renewing the creation that's been debilitated by evil, one day to resurrect to eternal life where all of these purposes will be perfected, and ongoing forever. You can see the difference among the three dominant worldviews and you can begin to see the different possible religions and  philosophic traditions that arise out of each of these, we can talk about each of these more,  but you get the idea. What I want to suggest to you is that in the context of the Bible, we  need to keep that last worldview in mind. And for that reason, there are in the Hebrew Bible,  the Old Testament, the Christian Bible, Old Testament, and the Hebrew Bible. There are three  sections, there's a Torah, which speaks about how God engineers a relationship in the context  of a broken world with His people, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy,  we call them the Five Books of Moses and the Pentateuch. And then there are those  collections in the Old Testament. And we'll talk about this at another time with regard to the  New Testament, called the prophets of Navi'im. These are authorized spokespersons who then address the issues of that covenant relationship, that redemptive covenant relationship in the  ongoing out working of Israel's history. We talk about Jeremiah and Isaiah, Ezekiel, The Twelve. And then there's a collection called the K'tuvim, the writing sort of a collection of other  spiritual literature that reflects the worldview that's present in the Torah, and the Navi'im the 

law and the prophets. And here's where we find the wisdom literature. Now, we're talking  about literature, which reflects that worldview, that functions out of that system and begins to express what it is that meaningful life is about in that context. So in the big picture that I'm  suggesting, there are three major kinds of literature. There's covenant making, there's  covenant living, and there are covenant questions, we'll get back to these again. But it's in  those questions which probe how does this life with God unfold that the wisdom literature  occurs? Here, God through the workings of spirit in the wisdom of individuals in the  community begins to teach us how to respond more faithfully, to the compromised world in  which we live, and the great values of the Creator's insights and love for us. That's what we're going to take a look at. So Wisdom literature, probes, human issues, problems, needs and  values. It's often anonymous. It assumes a divinely initiated moral matrix that there is a way  that's right and a way that's wrong. It assumes human sin and responsibility, and it's often  expressed in poetry, all of which we'll take a look at in the lectures ahead. For further  reference, I would encourage you to look to my book Covenant Documents: Reading the Bible  Again For the First Time. I think you'll find that helpful in terms of exploring these issues more