Reading Journal 2024: Hearing the Message of Ecclesiastes: Questioning Faith in a Baffling World

Reading Journal 2024: Hearing the Message of Ecclesiastes: Questioning Faith in a Baffling World
Author: Christopher J.H. Wright

I would recommend this to anyone interested in studying the book of Ecclesiastes (this is broad theological reflection mixed with a verse by verse exegetical approach) from a distinctly Christian perspective. Christopher Wright is known for his embrace of necessary tensions when it comes to matters of faith, and this small Old Testament book feels ready made for his sensibilities as the essential thesis is built around a seemingly irreconcilable tension (life is meaningless/life is meaningful).

I’m not entirely sure what his theological/denominational background is, but he tends to feel like that familiar evangelical voice who has spent some time challenging some of the norms, especially when it comes to versions of christianity that are afraid to ask some of the bigger questions. He does so while staying firmly rooted in his orthodoxy and confessions though, for what that is worth to different readers. From time to time he assumes certain theological positions, which is always a point where disagreements can emerge (I had a few), but for the most part he is simply dealing with the text head on and showing how he arrives at his interpretive choices from a Christian perspective (which he defines and describes as the fuller story to which Ecclesiastes is longing for and belongs).

On a simple scholarly level there are a lot of I don’t knows accompanying any legitimate analysis of the text- who wrote it, why and when they wrote it, whether it fits into the wisdom Tradition, what is the wisdom Tradition, how much was edited (by whom and when and why) and what is the original form. Wright doesn’t get bogged down in all of this, but he does do a nice job of explaining what these unknowns are in really simple terms, picking a viable lane, and encouraging us to be willing to evoke our imaginations even as we erect some visible and practical boundaries (can we imagine solomon behind the words of the text while knowing it most likely is not him, for example. This becomes a way hearing the words applied to a story that we know with a little more certainty, a story of a people that very well could have been reading the text. And there are plenty of examples of stories later in the scriptures where we know they would have been reading it in their own context).

There are lots of practical applications provided as part of an invitation to use the book to foster study by yourself or with a group. So it is definitely designed to simplify the complexities without losing its integrity as a scholarly source.