Download An Explanation of Solomon`s Failures despite His Great Wisdom

James Brooks
Solomon’s Foolishness in Light of His Great Wisdom
The Bible contains many stories of considerable men who accomplished much for God.
Perhaps the greatest of these men was King Solomon. Next to Jesus Christ, Solomon was the
wisest man who walked the face of the earth. His literary exploits alone include several thousand
proverbial writings about God, science, morality and wisdom. He amassed more wealth for
himself than any other king in history. He lacked nothing in regards to wealth or want. Yet in
spite of all his great accomplishments, Solomon eventually turned his heart away from the God
who provided him with all of these amenities. Why, because he failed to exercise the one gift
that God had abundantly given him. He failed in his ability to exercise wisdom and followed the
way of the fool.
It will be demonstrated that all of Solomon’s ethical failures, including his idolatry,
polygamy, and personal ambitions can be aggregated to one single element. The irony of his
tragedy is that he himself came up with the principle that should have prevented his great
misfortune. It is found in Proverbs 26:4-5 and reads, “Do not answer a fool according to his
folly, Lest you also be like him. Answer a fool as his folly deserves, Lest he be wise in his own
eyes.”1 Because Solomon did not answer the fools in his life according to their own folly but
instead joined them in their foolish speculations of serving other pagan gods, his latter years
were enjoined with bitter misery that would provide the catalyst for dividing Israel’s united
kingdom. His life is a testimony to principle that to know and experience the joy of godly
wisdom, one’s reasoning can only be predicated on a Christian theistic world and life view.2
1
Unless otherwise stated, all Biblical quotes come from the New American Standard Version.
A world and life view is a network of assumed beliefs about the nature of reality, knowledge and ethics.
These are presupposed as a foundation of one’s worldview and cannot be empirically verified because they are
beliefs that are by which, one sets out to prove everything else. The point that Solomon makes, and one that he also
fails to use in Proverbs 26:4-5, is that unless one thinks God’s thoughts analogously, that is, thinking God’s thoughts
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The Principle Proverb Explained
The exact date of the Proverbs 26:4-5 writing is unknown but most conservative scholars
place it at approximately between 971 and 931 B.C.3 This particular Proverb has confused many
scholars and laity because of its apparent contradiction in how one should approach answering a
fool. Solomon appears to be instructing the reader to both answer the fool and not answer the
fool at the same time. Upon closer examination of this Proverb however, it becomes clear that
Solomon is not asking the reader to contradict himself, rather he wants to show the inconsistency
of one who does not think God’s thoughts analogously. Why, because this is the fool’s way of
thinking. This can be observed when examining the two verses closely.
The Principle Proverb Examined
Solomon has defined the term fool elsewhere in the book of Proverbs when he deems that
a fool is someone who, despises wisdom (1:7); hates knowledge (1:22); has no fear of God
(1:29); has no understanding (10:21); does what is right in his own estimation (12:15); acts
foolishly (14:24); rejects discipline (15:5); and trusts in his own heart (28:26). He concludes in
(26:4) that when one addresses the fool, that he should not do so according to the fool’s own
folly, or his way of thinking. The fool’s way of thinking is void of God and should not be
assumed. Unfortunately, he did not heed his own warning. His wives turned his heart to serving
other gods. 1 Kings 11 states that he began to offer incense and sacrifices to the gods Ashtoreth,
Milcom, Chemosh, and Molech in order to appease them. He gave up his Christian theistic
worldview in order to operate on his wives, thereby, reducing his own thinking to sinful
after him, one does not have the preconditions of intelligibility. The result is that this destroys all possibility for
knowing or proving any type of proposition whatsoever. Ethics become arbitrary and incoherent, eventually leading
one’s heart and thinking away from the God of the Bible. This is exactly what happened to Solomon.
3
Israel Loken, “Proverbs Notes” Unpublished writings, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas.
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absurdity. 4 Solomon violated his own principle of ethics and followed the fool’s way of
thinking. He is not the only one who has fell victim to this either. There are many Christians of
the postmodern era who also reject their Christian worldview in order to follow the fool’s path.
Modern apologist, philosopher and former Dallas Seminary professor Norman Geisler is a prime
example of proving Solomon’s thesis in Proverbs 26:4.
The Fool of Proverbs 26:4
Geisler is one of modern Christianity’s patron saints when it comes to defending the faith. He
has published several works on philosophy and apologetics and is held in high esteem by most
conservative Biblical scholars. However, like Solomon, Geisler makes one crucial mistake in
reasoning found in all of his apologetic and philosophical writings. He labors his point from the
fool’s perspective as found in Proverbs 26:4. This can be seen in how he argues for the existence
of God using moral prescriptions. He violates the Christian principle of analogues thinking in
favor of univocal thinking, which places man as the ultimate starting point, and reduces him to
becoming Solomon’s fool. This is demonstrated in how he regards the moral proof for God’s
existence:
1. All men are conscious of an objective moral law.
2. Moral laws imply a moral Lawgiver.
3. Therefore, there must be a supreme moral Lawgiver.5
Notice than in his syllogism he begins by stating that all men have an a priori notion of a
universal moral law. Since this is the case, all men already have an idea of morality. The
question that is begged however, is why do all men need to regress to the idea that moral law,
I am assuming God’s progressive revelation in the vernacular of our current dispensation in order to show
clarity and definition between Solomon’s worldview over against the pagan monotheistic and polytheistic
worldviews of the ancient Near East.
5
Norman Geisler and Ron Brooks, When Skeptics Ask (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990) 22.
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which we already know, must come from a transcendent being called God? One must first prove
that God exist in order to show that morality must necessarily come from God. Assuming
Geisler’s autonomous, univocal presupposition he cannot. Even modern atheists can show this to
be the case.
For example, atheist Kai Neilsen contends that men do not need to know or have a God in
order to explain moral concepts. He writes, “An understanding of goodness is logically prior to,
and is independent of, any understanding or acknowledgment of God.”6 Neilsen is working off of
the same proposition that Geisler’s is espousing, in that all men are conscious of an objective
moral law. But his findings are different because he concludes; “to make sense of life or to make
sense of morality, belief in God is not necessary.”7 The reason he thinks this way is his
underlying presuppositions that tell him there is no God.
Nielsen espouses that theists like Geisler have their perception of morality backwards. He
believes that they put their proverbial carts before the horse in that, if one rejects his premise that
one can know morality apart from God, then one reduces the morality issue simply to the divine
command theory. This is view states that morality becomes a matter of how God defines it,
which is what Geisler concludes. If God defines it as good it becomes good. One would have to
ultimately assert that there is ultimately no human freedom in determining what is good or moral.
However, since man already has innate ideas of this and exercises human freedom, contrary to
Geisler’s assumption, God does not exist.
Kai Nielsen, “Morality and the Will of God,” Critiques of God, ed. Peter A. Angeles (New York:
Prometheus Books, 1997) 248.
7
Kai Nielsen, God and the Basis of Morality. Florida State University: Online. 30 Sept. 2002. Available
FTP: http://www.fsu.edu/~religion/jre/arc/10-2/335.html
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Another moral dilemma Neilsen raises against Geisler’s argument can be seen in the
following example. If God were to tell a woman that she should kill her son, then the act of
killing her son would have to be good because God commanded it. Since God’s will is the
standard of ethical behavior, the mother killing her son would be perpetrating a good and moral
act. Nielsen obviously objects to this type of scenario. He states, “It’s wrong, God or no God, to
torture little children just for the fun of it. What basis we have for making that confident moral
claim is another thing, but we know, if we know anything, if we have any moral understanding at
all, that it is wrong.” 8 Nielsen feels comfortable with this understanding of morality and God’s
will because it appears to present Geisler’s conception of God with another ethical dilemma.
If God’s will determines what is good and moral and He tells a mother to kill her child,
then by default the act of killing becomes good. Conversely, if the act of killing her child is not
good and man can intuitively reason that killing is wrong, then the God concept is necessarily
dependant upon man’s reasoning for a coherent understanding of what good is prior to God
revealing it. The definition of Geisler’s God becomes dependent upon man and thus God
becomes irrelevant.
Nielsen contends that this ethical dilemma adequately halts the idea that God and His will
must necessarily predicate any form of the morality. He states the following:
“we cannot decide whether something is good or whether it ought to be done simply from
finding out that God commanded it, willed it, enjoined it... a man could not know how to
use God correctly unless he already understood how to use good.”9
A person who is educated in ethics and science should reject this notion of theism and conclude
that it is totally “irrational to believe in God.”10 Since Neilsen is assuming Geisler’s own
8
J.P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen, Does God Exist? (New York: Prometheus Books, 1993) 99.
Nielsen, “Morality and the Will of God” 249.
10
Moreland and Nielsen, Does God Exist? 48.
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proposition to labor this point, Geisler does not have an adequate response to this given his own
univocal presuppositions. Why, because he has reduced all metaphysical, epistemological and
ethical notions to starting with the fool’s line of reasoning. Geisler and Neilsen have become
strange bedfellows in that their presuppositions are the same. They can never get the upper hand
on the other. They have become reminiscent of the gunfighters in the old West Mexican standoff.
They both have each other in their sights but are unable to proceed any further. The reason that
they cannot is because Geisler has attempted to answer the fool according to his (the fool’s) folly
and has in essence become like him because he has ended up at the same destination as the fool.
This is exactly what happened to King Solomon in regards to his wives. He assumed their
worldviews and relinquished his own.
The Fool’s Answer in Proverbs 26:5
Solomon’s alternative was to adhere to what he wrote in Proverbs 26:5, “Answer the fool
as his folly deserves, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.” What he means by this is that
argumentation over worldviews should be accomplished within the context of establishing a
precondition of intelligibility. In other words, does whatever being espoused by the unbeliever
work within the framework of logic, morality, science and the uniformity of nature? If not, then
whatever is being espoused can be reduced to absurdity. This is where Solomon should have
been operating in his refutation of his wives’ paganism.
He should have stated that worshiping pagan gods undermines human reason and cannot
cogently be lived out as an ethic. This would be similar to what Paul did with the philosophers
on Mars Hill as well as what Christian apologists like Geisler should have been doing in the
current dispensation. The moral dilemma discussed earlier between Geisler and Neilsen could
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have been easily resolved if Geisler would have applied Solomon’s principle as discussed in
Proverbs 26:5.
For example, the problem with Nielsen’s thesis is that it is riddled with several
epistemological problems. He has stated that one does not need to have an understanding of
God’s revelation in order to understand moral concepts when he demonstrates by his use of
reason and logic that just the opposite is true and this is what Geisler should have pointed out.
Neilsen disproves his own thesis in order to try to prove his thesis.
This becomes apparent when he attempts to argue the atheistic position on the grounds
that morality and ethics and are left up to each individual to determine. He can assert this, but
when demonstrated in light of his own ethical claims, they too become incoherent and irrational.
This is what it means to answer the fool according to his folly and this is how it works itself out
in Neilsen’s argument.
Nielsen was previously noted as having said, “its wrong to torture little children,” but on
what basis is it wrong? If each individual or society is able to determine their own set of moral
and ethical standards, which he believes they can, then there might be a society where the torture
of small children may be considered the right thing to do. As noted philosopher B.F. Skinner
remarks:
“What a given group of people calls good is fact; it is what members of the group find
reinforcing as the result of their genetic endowment and the natural and social
contingencies to which they have been exposed. Each culture has its own set of goods,
and what is good in one culture may not be good in another. What is good for the
Trobriano Islander is good for the Trobriano Islander, and that is that. Anthropologist
have often emphasized relativism as a tolerant alternative to missionary zeal in
converting all cultures to a single set of ethical, governmental, religious, or economic
values.”11
11
B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Bantam Books, 1972) 122.
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The only way to reconcile Nielsen’s ethical dilemma is to have an absolute set of morals
by which to determine what is universally right or wrong. If not, then each person, culture and
society is free to choose their own set of ethics, which is what Nielsen should really be
advocating if he wanted to remain consistent within his own position. The only view that can
make moral and ethical standards intelligible is the Christian theistic worldview and this is what
he seems to want borrow in order to establish his own values. Moreover, this is what Geisler
should have been stressing instead of first trying to prove the universality of the moral notion and
then trying to trace the argument back to God.
Second, Nielsen’s thesis has taken way too much for granted. This is particularly the case
in his understanding of what is “good” in relation to what God wills. What God wills, that is,
what God allows to come to past in relation to the human experience by way of being evil or
wrong, in no way contradicts his goodness because His nature is the standard of goodness. His
nature and His will are two distinct entities that are not contradictory. Nielsen has created a false
dilemma that is associated with what philosophers have historically called the problem of evil.
The argument is summarily stated as such. If God is good then how can He allow evil? If God is
omnipotent then why doesn’t He put an end to evil? Since evil exists, there is no God.
What philosophers like Nielsen fail to consider is that the existence of evil, whether in
relation to what God wills or in its historic philosophical form, is only a problem for the atheist.
God’s nature is the standard of goodness and all that is good comes from God. Moreover,
without the conception of the Christian God there is no way to justify why evil, either moral or
natural exists. Without a standard of absolute good there can be no evil. The argument can also
be turned around on the atheist. Since God does exist and has revealed both good and evil
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intuitively and through special revelation, all men know God in the way they reason, use logic,
science and morality. If atheists like Nielsen want to reject this, the only alternative they are left
with in reconciling the problem of evil is that is evil exists because evil is. They don’t have a
plausible answer without having an absolute standard of morality by which to make such
assertions, which is what led he and Geisler into their Mexican standoff.
As far as God’s will is concerned, this is not a problem for the Christian theist. God has a
morally sufficient reason for the evil that he has ordained, either through primary or secondary
causes, known at least to Him. How do Christian theists know this? The Apostle Paul has
revealed in Ephesians 1:11that God has ordained whatsoever comes to pass because of His
divine purpose which “works all things after the counsel of His will.” Nielsen’s straw man
charge is easily settled in one’s proper understanding of God’s nature and His will. They are not
the same. God’s will allows evil in this world because He has purposed it but His nature abhors
it. Nielsen’s assertions and Geisler’s attempted refutations reveal that both have not adequately
reflected on the task before them.
Neilsen has failed to make his case in proving his atheistic ethical system. By the same
token, so has Geisler. If they were both true to their own conclusions, they couldn’t live them out
an ethic because of their internal inconsistencies. These internal inconsistencies must be shown
to the fool in order to show him that univocal thinking undermines human reason and reduces
itself to being unintelligible. What is produced is a fool that sees he cannot be wise in his own
eyes. This is what Neilsen cannot see because of his unregenerate heart and what Geisler will not
see given his univocal presuppositions. Both are running the fool’s errand right behind Solomon.
Solomon’s dilemma could have been rectified had he only embraced his own philosophy.
He should have shown his wives and subjects that worshipping other gods cause one to give up
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rationality and reason. The only way to know, understand, and have any ethical ideas at all is to
think God’s thoughts after him. If not, one becomes the fool. Solomon’s failures demonstrate
that one can be knowledgeable, be blessed materially, and never be in want. But to be wise, one
must apply wisdom and not merely have wisdom. This was Solomon’s great plight and the sole
reason why he experienced his shortcomings. He did not apply the wisdom that he had.
Two Principles Learned from Solomon’s Example
There are at least two principles that Christians can learn from Solomon’s writings and
his life’s failures. The first is that fleshly desires and material blessings never bring contentment.
This became obvious in Solomon’s attempt to amass great wealth and prosperity. It never made
him happy or satisfied his hunger for more. It only brought him misery, spiritual adultery, and
lack of contentment. This teaches Christians that the only thing that brings contentment in a their
lives is a relationship with Jesus Christ, in whom are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.”
The second principle that believers can learn from Solomon’s writings and failures is
how to properly defend the Christian faith, as demonstrated in Proverbs 26:4-5. Christians should
defend what they believe by evaluating every itching proposition in light of God’s revelation
because as Paul warns, there are many philosophies and speculations that are ready to take the
believer’s thoughts captive. Christians should therefore, not answer the fool according to their
folly but answer the fool as their folly deserves in order to show its irrationality. To do otherwise
is to ignore Solomon’s instruction.
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Conclusion
What can be concluded from this exercise is that Solomon’s life is warning to every
believer who can glean wisdom from his life’s example. In light of the repackaged speculations
of the fools of today, the question that postmodern Christians must answer is will they heed it?
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