Philip Yancey on Ecclesiastes

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility. Humility is endless.
~T.S. Eliot

Yancey wonders how exactly this book made it into the Bible. Placed back to back with Proverbs, the book of how to live life in wisdom, it almost seems like Ecclesiastes is there to mock. But the form is possibly a tactic used by other philosophical writers and authors. Draw the reader in by denouncing everything that is apparently a part of God's rule. Love wisdom?---no, whether you love it or reject it the results are the same etc. And then, just as the paths of hedonism are lived out the writer has you trapped, and he states, "Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man," (12:13).

There are moments of spiritual transcendence. "Drippings of grace," C. S. Lewis called them. Points in time whether it be in love, sex, beauty, music or what have you that an unexplainable joy and yearning is experienced. G. K. Chesterson writes before his commitment to Christ:

There had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he had saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not thought of Christian theology.

But God's gifts cannot be the thing sought after or they will fail to satisfy. Wine will turn into alcoholism, says Yancey, and so on. We must acknowledge that we cannot perceive or understand God's ways fully and learn to submit to them. Yancey adds however that he does not feel Ecclesiastes is just a form of reverse apologetics. It is a reminder of the limits of being human. It sets forth the pitfalls of a life without God at the center whether pagan or Christian. The fall of Solomon's kingdom came just after its greatest wealth and reign. It is a depiction of the "city of man" v. the "city of God," the kingdom of this world v. the kingdom of heaven.