Scot McKnight has a post criticizing the prosperity Gospel (see here). Under that post, Derek Leman comments:
"Another
angle of critique of health and wealth (in addition to your
community-cross-kingdom-ecclesiology answer) is a good read of Proverbs,
such as Michael Fox in the Anchor-Yale series. Wisdom literature is
self-correcting. The eudainonism (happiness-formula) of the secular
proverbs in the book is corrected and offset by the religious proverbs.
Fox does a great job of explaining why wisdom comes forth with both
happiness-formulas and ethical-spiritual calling."
I appreciated
Derek's comments because, so often in debates about the prosperity
Gospel, it's one sides hurling its proof-texts at the other side, and
vice-versa. I wrote a post about this a while back (see here).
The thing is, there are passages in the Bible that accord with the idea
that God blesses people materially, and there are passages in the Bible
that say "not necessarily" (albeit not in those exact words). But,
according to Derek, wisdom literature is self-correcting in that it has
passages with happiness-formulas, and yet that is corrected by passages
about religion and ethics.