Creer que Dios habla

Nota.- Aquí publico el texto que sirve de base a las clases que corresponden a la sección II de la aproximación metafísica al problema de Dios. Son también la base de la ponencia que estoy escribiendo para el seminario de la Universidad de Notre Dame de octubre, por lo que el texto cambiará diariamente. No sólo por huachafería (que nunca nos falta a los profesores) sino más bien por falta de tiempo, publico el borrador de la conferencia en inglés.
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Introduction

In his famous book Theology of the Old Testament, Gerhard von Rad describes the Book of Qohelet as a marginal instance in the Wisdom Tradition and Qohelet himself as a skeptic. This marginality should be understood in contrast to the optimism allegedly present in that tradition before the Qohelet Horizon and his skepticism as a peculiar kind of it, namely one directed against theoretical knowledge, especially when it is applied to religious thought.

I would say that when found in any cultural form optimism is ultimately an affirmation of some set of beliefs based in some wide extended and commonly accepted theoretical knowledge of reality. Thus, in this paper I’ll understand ‘theoretical knowledge’ as every effort of the mind commonly displayed to construct an intellectual vision of reality that may serve as a metaphysical shelter. Consequently, Qohelet’s skepticism would represent the challenge posed by an individual of living without any of these common visions, i.e. the challenge of living, as it were, in the open.

Based on passages as Qo 1, 8: “All things tire and nobody is capable of expressing them”, we assume that Qohelet is indeed a skeptic in some sense of skepticism. But nevertheless he is also a believer. Both these assumptions lead us to consider the possibility of a rather awesome marriage (at least to our modern ears) of skepticism and religion. Being a faithful skeptic would mean worshiping God ‘in the open’, i.e. without any kind of metaphysical shelter whatsoever. This is the kind of faith I belief the Book of Qohelet presents to us and I truly think that it may be of great relevance in our time.

In fact, Qohelet never doubts God’s existence. What he as a faithful believer radically seems to doubt of is the possibility of theoretically knowing anything about God or about His Providence or anything else in any theoretical way, and this—I would like to state from the beginning—is in my opinion the main asset of his wisdom. If we also concede that he isn’t an agnostic, then we are facing a rather odd conjunction of faith and radical doubt. The sole challenge of understanding this skeptical faith is in my opinion one of the main reasons for the otherwise astonishing presence of such an iconoclastic Book in the Old Testament.

Now, if my views are correct, I would like to lead my reflections in this paper to the conclusion that Qohelet’s faith should be seen as a good warranty, as it were, for a healthy spiritual life, a function that it had not only at his time but that pertains at our troubled times as well.