• Grace growing at a pace
• The Commentary
  Making economies
• Paul's Place
  How a ministry is growing out of family tragedy
• Teamwork!
  How the church should avoid shooting itself in the foot
• How to visit holiday churches
  Some challenges
• Thrown out of the church
  Joseph Alleine and the Great Ejection from the Church of England
• Skateboarding to God's glory
• Chuck Colson, 1931-2012
  Obituary
• India: Good Shepherd Ministries
• Unapologetic Christianity
  Bible blunders?
• The Music Exchange
  Music from elsewhere
• Crossing the culture
  You say you want a revolution...
• Notes to growing Christians
  Ongoing commitment
• The Third Degree
  UCCF hi-tech
• Letter from America
  Simeon in the USA
• Monthly youth leaders column
  The quiet ones

other articles

• Salmon fishing in the Yemen
• Engaging with Martyn Lloyd-Jones
• The church, women bishops & provision
• CO2.1 - Beyond the EU's Emissions Trading System
• The renewed pastor - Writings in honour of Philip Hacking
• His blood works - The meaning of the word 'blood' in Scripture
• Excellence in preaching
• 20 first dates - My search for Mr. Right
• Travel through Rome - City of empire, Christendom and culture
• Religion for atheists
• Fighting fear with faith
• Making sanity out of vanity - Christian realism in the Book of Ecclesiastes
• Bringing the gospel home - Sharing your faith with family and friends
• Wigglesworth, the complete story
• The power to save - A history of the gospel in China

Life through a lens

MAKING SANITY OUT OF VANITY
Christian realism in the Book of Ecclesiastes
By Stanley D. Gale
EP Books. 176 pages. £ 6.99
ISBN 978 0 852 347 454

Stan Gale is clear that Making Sanity out of Vanity is not a commentary on Ecclesiastes, but on life, utilising Ecclesiastes as a lens.

Accordingly, it is not developed exegetically, but thematically, investigating most spectrums of life. The book is well presented and clearly written (although its cultural references best suit a Western context), and contains some good pastoral wisdom. Ultimately, Gale points us away from the ‘Vanity of vanities’ to Christ, the ‘Verity of verities’. Each chapter concludes with a list of ‘Questions from Qoheleth’, suitable for personal or group study.

The preface claims that Ecclesiastes is ‘extraordinarily relevant’, and for that reason I believe that Gale could have written a book that is exegetical, expositional, and still intensely practical, infused with helpful illustrations and applications, without changing his style or the book’s length (Dan Lioy’s The Divine Sabotage is an example). Also troubling is Gale’s somewhat novel ‘interpretive key’: two voices speak in Ecclesiastes — the Preacher (‘jaded, sceptical, cynical and fatalistic’, observing only life ‘under the sun’) and the Teacher, who warns against the Preacher’s earth-bound wisdom and looks heavenward instead. This is not as obviously textual as Gale would have us think, and seems to be based on dangerous presuppositions and misunderstandings.

I would have loved to report a biblically sound new book on Ecclesiastes suitable for average readers, individuals and small groups. Instead, I found a somewhat culture-driven reading that studies life, not Scripture and its Spirit-enabled application, and is marred by an interpretive key which adversely affects Gale’s book, and does injustice to Ecclesiastes as a whole.

Ryan King,
assistant pastor of Grace Baptist Church, Wood Green