Epicureans - UPDV Updated Bible Version

The Epicurean creed compresses to a single line: "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (1 Cor 15:32; Isa 22:13). Scripture meets that creed at three points — Solomon tries it on, the prophets and apostles judge it, and Paul answers it with the resurrection. The Bible's witness on the Epicurean is therefore not a survey of one school of philosophy but a verdict on a way of life that takes pleasure as its end and the present life as its horizon.

The Creed: Eat, Drink, For Tomorrow We Die

Two voices state the creed in the same words. Isaiah hears it in besieged Jerusalem, where the people meet a day of mourning with feasting: "but saw joy and gladness, slaying oxen and killing sheep, eating flesh and drinking wine: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we will die" (Isa 22:13). Paul throws the same line back in argument: "If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (1 Cor 15:32).

The same logic runs through Amos's indictment of the easy rich — "who lie on beds of ivory, and stretch themselves on their couches, and eat the lambs out of the flock, and the calves out of the midst of the stall" (Amos 6:4) — and through the rich fool's monologue: "Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry" (Lk 12:19). Ben Sira phrases it as proverb: "Do not withhold from the good things of a day; And in what was acquired, do not pass by. ... Give and take, and enjoy your soul; For there is no seeking of delight in Sheol" (Sir 14:14, 14:16). The creed is the same wherever it is found: the present is the only thing there is, so spend it.

Solomon's Experiment

Ecclesiastes runs the experiment in the laboratory of one royal life. The opening of the test is candid: "I said in my heart, Come now, I will prove you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure: and, look, this also was vanity" (Ecc 2:1). The Preacher does not theorize; he tries it. "I searched in my heart how to cheer my flesh with wine ... and how to lay hold on folly, until I might see what it was good for the sons of man that they should do under heaven all the days of their life" (Ecc 2:3). The investment is total — works, houses, vineyards, gardens, pools, slaves, silver, gold, "men-singers and women-singers, and the delights of the sons of man, many women" (Ecc 2:8). "And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them; I did not withhold my heart from any joy" (Ecc 2:10).

The verdict on the experiment comes one verse later: "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do; and, look, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun" (Ecc 2:11).

Yet the same book also commends a chastened version of the same activity: "Is it not good that man should eat and drink, and make his soul enjoy good in his labor? This also I saw, that it is from the hand of God" (Ecc 2:24); "for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy good in all his labor ... for this is his portion" (Ecc 5:18); "to eat, and to drink, and to be joyful: for that will go with him in his labor" (Ecc 8:15); "Go your way, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has already accepted your works" (Ecc 9:7). The Preacher does not deny that food, drink, and labor's joy are good; he denies that they are an end. They are a portion, "from the hand of God," to be received and not made into a creed.

The Pleasure-Seeking Life and Its Results

Where the creed runs unchecked, scripture catalogs the results. "He who loves pleasure will be a poor man: He who loves wine and oil will not be rich" (Prov 21:17). Isaiah turns to the imperial woman who said in her heart, "I am, and there is no other besides me," and announces that "these two things will come to you in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood" (Isa 47:8-9). The seed in the parable that "fell among the thorns" stands for those "choked with cares and riches and pleasures of [this] life, and bring no fruit to perfection" (Lk 8:14). The widow "who gives herself to pleasure is dead while she lives" (1 Tim 5:6). The last days are marked by men who are "lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God" (2 Tim 3:4), and Paul reminds Titus that "we also once were ... serving as slaves to diverse desires and pleasures" (Tit 3:3). James pronounces sentence in the same idiom the rich fool used: "You⁺ have lived delicately on the earth, and taken your⁺ pleasure; you⁺ have nourished your⁺ hearts in a day of slaughter" (Jas 5:5). Peter names false teachers who "count it pleasure to revel in the daytime" (2 Pet 2:13).

Ben Sira turns the same warning toward the disciple's table: "Do not delight yourself in too much luxury, For double is its poverty" (Sir 18:32); "Do not be insatiable in every luxury, And give not yourself wholly to every dainty" (Sir 37:29). And the connoisseur's verdict on the man of self-denial — "John the Baptist has come eating no bread nor drinking wine; and you⁺ say, He has a demon" (Lk 7:33) — shows the creed's contempt for any life that rejects it.

"Striving After Wind"

The Preacher's word for the whole project is the same word the apostles use. "All was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was no profit under the sun" (Ecc 2:11). Ben Sira: "All his works will surely rot; And the work of his hands will draw after him" (Sir 14:19). Jesus: "For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" (Lk 9:25). Paul: "those who use the world, as not using it to the full: for the fashion of this world passes away" (1 Cor 7:31). John: "the world passes away, and its desire: but he who does the will of God stays forever" (1 Jn 2:17); "Don't love the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 Jn 2:15).

The pleasure-seeker's mistake is a mistake about time. He treats the passing as the lasting. Luke 21:34 sets it next to the day of reckoning: "lest perhaps your⁺ hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that day come upon you⁺ suddenly as a snare." James 4:4 names it for what it is: "the friendship of the world is enmity with God."

Paul's Answer: The Resurrection

The pivot in 1 Cor 15:32 is conditional. "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Paul concedes that, granted the Epicurean premise, the Epicurean conclusion follows. He does not argue that the creed is internally incoherent; he argues that its premise is false. The dead are raised, and so the conclusion does not follow. The whole structure of 1 Corinthians 15 stands behind the line: the resurrection is what removes the creed's foundation.

The Vanity of the Philosophers

The apostolic and patristic witness against the philosophers' creed is direct. "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And the discernment of the discerning I will bring to nothing" (1 Cor 1:19). The wisdom Paul preaches is "not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing" (1 Cor 2:6). Colossians warns plainly: "Take heed lest there will be anyone who makes spoil of you⁺ through his philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ" (Col 2:8). The Epistle to Diognetus presses the same judgment on the schools that named God among the elements: "Or do you approve the vain and foolish words of those credible philosophers? Some of them say God is fire (to which they themselves shall go — this they call God), and some say water, and some other elements created by God" (Gr 8:2).