In Front | Reading Ecclesiastes as Christians

As Christians, we read Ecclesiastes in the context of a larger canon. We don’t draw conclusions about God from this one book in isolation. 

The fourth century bishop Gregory of Nyssa referred to Ecclesiastes as a struggle that we can prepare for by reading other books of the Bible. He suggests Proverbs as a kind of “warm-up” for the more demanding spiritual exercise of Ecclesiastes:

For just as those who have trained in wrestling in the gymnasium strip for greater exertions and efforts in the athletic contests, so it seems to me that the teaching of Proverbs is an exercise, which trains our souls and makes them supple for the struggle with Ecclesiastes. 

But even with this warm-up: 

One could think of every hyperbole and still not properly express in words what great struggles the contest with this scripture involves for the contestants, as they fight for a foothold for their thoughts.

Source: Eric S. Christianson, Ecclesiastes Through the Centuries, 2012, p. 1.

The truth of Ecclesiastes is difficult because life is difficult. The Bible doesn’t offer escape from life’s trials, but it promises that we can trust God as “we’re fighting for a foothold for our thoughts.” When we suffer and when we’re in doubt, the Bible doesn’t offer cheap consolation but rather a relationship with God. God’s Word doesn’t dismiss life’s tragedies or difficulties, but contextualizes them in God’s love and our promised future with Him. 

The 20^th century Christian writer Hilaire Belloc says it well:

The advantage of the Faith in this principal trial of human life is that the Faith is Reality, and that through it all falls into a right perspective. That is not a consolation—mere consolation is a drug and to be despised—it is the strength of truth. We know … that we are immortal and that those we love are immortal, and that the necessary condition, before eternity, is loss and change, and that we can regard them in the light of their final revelation and of reunion with what we love. I do not say this because I would make less the enormity of these blows. I know them as well as anyone and I reeled under them. But with the Faith they can be borne: they take on their right value. They are not final. 

Source: Hilaire Belloc, Letters From Hilaire Belloc, edited by Robert Speaight, 1958, p. 191.