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Ellul: Stop Making Sense

This entry is part 6 of 25 in the series Presence in the Modern World

Let’s keep going with Chapter 1 of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World, because by God, I want to finish it.

In the last post — well, let’s see if I can summarize Ellul thus far (and please correct me where I’m wrong):

  • Christians should live fully in the sinful world, understanding that we can neither make it less sinful, nor accept it as it is.
  • Societal problems — economic, social, political — are all caused solely by the underlying spiritual problem of sin.
  • Therefore, our role as Christians is to point other people toward the only solution to that spiritual problem, Jesus Christ.
  • One way we do this is by how we act (and react) in daily life.
  • Our actions should be tailored to specific situations, informed by a living, ever-deepening, individual faith in God, and consistent with the broad guidance of Christian ethics.
  • Christian ethics are not a “moral system,” or rules that must be followed in every circumstance. Instead, they are broad, general outlines to be considered.
  • Christian ethics are also subject to ongoing review and change by the broader church community.

Whew, ok.

Does this mean that a Christian can do, willy-nilly, whatever she claims that her faith is leading her to do? No; she still must objectively consider the implications of her actions, and that’s where ethics come in. Ethics are what we use to evaluate our actions before deciding what to do in a specific circumstance.

Now remember, this whole question of Christian ethics came up when Ellul was talking about how laypeople need to live in the world as salt (manifest God’s covenant), light (bear witness to salvation), and sheep (reflect ongoing sacrifice).

Ellul is not talking about being nice, or doing those good things that everyone would recognize as good. In fact, he says that, when we live and act in accordance with our faith and true Christian ethics, our works won’t even make any sense to the world. Everything we do should point directly to God, should only make sense “in the light of Jesus Christ.”

In other words: if your church is feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and giving money to the poor, these are certainly good things, but are they specifically pointing people toward Jesus Christ? Do those you serve understand the difference between you and every other nonprofit, non-sectarian, community service organization? Is there a difference?

Ellul says that everything we do must be oriented toward the “combat of faith” with the world, and should result in glory to God. If we simply do what the world already thinks it would be good for us to do, then the world will have no reason to look to God.

This is a difficult concept. Most of us think that “being Christians in the world” means, for example, running a food bank, donating clothing, or, perhaps, advocating for certain legislation or political outcomes. Ellul says that none of these activities matter in and of themselves. If the world already thinks that your actions are “good,” or at least understandable, then there’s no reason to look past those actions toward God. (Your political advocacy, even dressed up in Christian language, keeps people focused on the world, not God, and won’t make the world any less sinful, or save your society from collapse, in any event.)

Now, I don’t think that Ellul is saying that we shouldn’t be feeding the hungry or fighting oppression. I think he is saying that our goal is not to solve the world’s problems, because we cannot, but to bear witness to the only one who can solve those problems.

It’s easy to volunteer at a soup kitchen, or drop off a bag of canned goods, and then just go about the rest of our day. Instead, about everything that we do, before we do it, we should be asking: is this pointing the world toward Christ? And I don’t mean in some abstract, “Maybe If I’m Nice Someone Will Ask Me Why and Then I’ll Be Sure to Mention God” kind of way.

Finally, remember that when we treat ethics as absolute guidelines or specific moral instructions, we are actually rejecting the Holy Spirit’s role in our lives.

Are we done with Chapter 1 yet? Ha, hardly. Up next: Praying for Hitler!

Ephemera, 8/20/23

I have a personal interest in the Paris-Brest-Paris ride this year, since my husband is attempting it for the first time. If you’re not familiar with this quadrennial 1200-km ride that attracts thousands of people from all over the world, that’s fine; most Americans aren’t. We always explain it by starting, “Have you seen that America’s Test Kitchen episode about a wheel-shaped pastry called a Paris-Brest …”

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Will 2024 be the year I finally read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell? Adam Roberts’ piece reheats my desire, which has been cooled off for a while. I’ve attempted it twice, enjoyed what I read immensely, and yet in both cases petered out about halfway, distracted by life. I actually love big books, but there are big books and then there are BIG books. I’ll move it back to the TBR shelves, maybe.

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Phil Christman is always entertaining to read, even when he’s talking about things in which I barely have any interest, but I am always interested in 1980s college-alternative-new-wave-whatever music, and since I came to it fairly late in the decade, I love a good set of historical recommendations.

Perhaps one of these days, like Phil with ’80s alternative and David Bentley Hart with classical, I’ll launch a series based on my own esoteric deep-cut interest, which is in “Christian” new-wave/alt-pop from, say, 1981-1987, which was both better and worse than you think from that description. (If you generally enjoy ’80s post-punk pop, then objectively speaking, this is just a great song.)

Ellul: Do Not Confuse Christian Ethics with Morality

Returning to Chapter 1 of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World. (Remember, I’m taking these notes as I go, section by section, so I reserve the right to realize later that I’m making incorrect assumptions and assertions! In other words, maybe I’m getting it wrong; feel free to tell me so.)

In my last post, we discussed Ellul’s contention that only laypeople can present “theological truth” to the world, since unlike clergy, they have no separation from the world.

This means that we must live our daily lives as “salt of the earth, light of the world, sheep among wolves” — essentially, pointing the world to Christ — not by following any formula or set of rules, but by the way we act in any particular situation.

It would be easier to grasp Ellul’s point here if he offered concrete examples about what exactly it might mean to live as salt/light/sheep, but maybe he is avoiding examples on purpose. A concrete example would suggest that there is always a single behavior required for a particular situation, or a set of guidelines we can follow for living as Christians. But those guidelines would add up to “morality.”

And that, Ellul says, is the problem: we confuse “Christian ethics” with morality, or virtues. But moral systems are what we use to try and improve the human world, and that’s exactly what we cannot do. We’re so desperate to relieve the tension of living in a sinful world that we create moral systems to try and improve that world. But that world cannot be improved, and Christianity does not equate to morality. (EDIT: Maybe that would more accurately read “that world cannot be made less sinful.” There are things about the world that can be improved at a certain objective level, I think, but the sinfulness — and ultimate collapse — remains.)

If we want to understand this, we need to understand Ellul’s definition of Christian life, which he views as a state of constant struggle between judgment and grace.

At every moment, we are being judged, and we are being forgiven. It is the struggle between these two states that ensures our freedom because, at every moment, we are being “placed in a new situation.” That new situation sets us free from both “satanic fetters” and any pre-determined, legalistic program of morality.

Ellul’s Christian faith certainly reminds me of Kierkegaard and his “individual before God.” For Ellul, there can be no accounting of God’s ethical demands appropriate for every circumstance, because “all Christians are in fact responsible for their works and conscience.” Each individual’s faith is a “living attitude” and that faith is what will determine their individual actions in every circumstance, as opposed to a specific moral guideline.

But, and here’s the requisite complicated rub, just because there are no guidelines, doesn’t mean there isn’t any guidance. We are able to (and in fact, required to) “trace the outlines” of Christian ethics, so that we might better respond in “specific, variable situations.” But these ethics cannot replace the “combat of faith” within each individual Christian for determining their behavior.

So, as we struggle each day to deepen our individual faith in Christ, we decide on which actions to take based on that faith, along with the broad lessons (not hard-and-fast rules) we learn from Christian ethics. Those ethics themselves, Ellul says, should be “continually subject to question, review, and reformulation through the efforts of the whole church community.”

In this discussion of ethics and individual action, Ellul appears to embrace a Kierkegaardian existential faith, while also preserving a role for the church, of which Kierkegaard thought little.

Note: I’m going to try to figure out how to better track these Ellul posts, perhaps by creating a single page listing them in chronological order.

Ellul: Do Not Confuse Christian Ethics with Morality

This entry is part 5 of 25 in the series Presence in the Modern World

Returning to Chapter 1 of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World. (Remember, I’m taking these notes as I go, section by section, so I reserve the right to realize later that I’m making incorrect assumptions and assertions! In other words, maybe I’m getting it wrong; feel free to tell me so.)

In my last post, we discussed Ellul’s contention that only laypeople can present “theological truth” to the world, since unlike clergy, they have no separation from the world.

This means that we must live our daily lives as “salt of the earth, light of the world, sheep among wolves” — essentially, pointing the world to Christ — not by following any formula or set of rules, but by the way we act in any particular situation.

It would be easier to grasp Ellul’s point here if he offered concrete examples about what exactly it might mean to live as salt/light/sheep, but maybe he is avoiding examples on purpose. A concrete example would suggest that there is always a single behavior required for a particular situation, or a set of guidelines we can follow for living as Christians. But those guidelines would add up to “morality.”

And that, Ellul says, is the problem: we confuse “Christian ethics” with morality, or virtues. But moral systems are what we use to try and improve the human world, and that’s exactly what we cannot do. We’re so desperate to relieve the tension of living in a sinful world that we create moral systems to try and improve that world. But that world cannot be improved, and Christianity does not equate to morality. (EDIT: Maybe that would more accurately read “that world cannot be made less sinful.” There are things about the world that can be improved at a certain objective level, I think, but the sinfulness — and ultimate collapse — remains.)

If we want to understand this, we need to understand Ellul’s definition of Christian life, which he views as a state of constant struggle between judgment and grace.

At every moment, we are being judged, and we are being forgiven. It is the struggle between these two states that ensures our freedom because, at every moment, we are being “placed in a new situation.” That new situation sets us free from both “satanic fetters” and any pre-determined, legalistic program of morality.

Ellul’s Christian faith certainly reminds me of Kierkegaard and his “individual before God.” For Ellul, there can be no accounting of God’s ethical demands appropriate for every circumstance, because “all Christians are in fact responsible for their works and conscience.” Each individual’s faith is a “living attitude” and that faith is what will determine their individual actions in every circumstance, as opposed to a specific moral guideline.

But, and here’s the requisite complicated rub, just because there are no guidelines, doesn’t mean there isn’t any guidance. We are able to (and in fact, required to) “trace the outlines” of Christian ethics, so that we might better respond in “specific, variable situations.” But these ethics cannot replace the “combat of faith” within each individual Christian for determining their behavior.

So, as we struggle each day to deepen our individual faith in Christ, we decide on which actions to take based on that faith, along with the broad lessons (not hard-and-fast rules) we learn from Christian ethics. Those ethics themselves, Ellul says, should be “continually subject to question, review, and reformulation through the efforts of the whole church community.”

In this discussion of ethics and individual action, Ellul appears to embrace a Kierkegaardian existential faith, while also preserving a role for the church, of which Kierkegaard thought little.

Note: I’m going to try to figure out how to better track these Ellul posts, perhaps by creating a single page listing them in chronological order.

Ephemera, 8/15/23

I recently read Clare Carlisle’s biography of Kierkegaard; it was illuminating about Kierkegaard, but also a well-written and insightful work in its own right. She writes here about the way in which marriage impacted the life and work of both Kierkegaard and George Eliot. Of SK, she says:

“Kierkegaard once wrote that marriage requires complete openness between husband and wife, and that he could not open himself to another person in this way. Perhaps he was driven by his artistic and philosophical vocation to seek a solitary life. Or perhaps his decision to stay single (and celibate, as far as we know) was shaped by the belief, held as sacred by his Christian church, that certain forms of desire — homosexuality, for example — were sinful and shameful. Kierkegaard took these questions to the grave, boasting that no one would ever discover the secret that explained his inner life. All we know is that he felt unable to become a husband, and that he interpreted this incapacity as a spiritual situation.”

* * * *

I wrote earlier about the film Passages; the wonderful Garth Greenwell writes about it with much greater insight and greater style, and at greater length. His piece reminds me that there is so much more in the film than I could wrap my head around in my single viewing — including Tomas’ career as filmmaker. Of the Tomas character, Greenwell writes:

“He put me in mind of a line from the theologian Denys Turner, whom I’ve quoted before in this newsletter. Talking about the ascetical practices of certain mystics, Turner makes a quip about the ‘pre-ascetical self’ — the self before it’s submitted to any kind of discipline — being ‘a riot of desires,’ hardly a self at all. Art can come from that, of course — Tomas doesn’t hold a candle to the giants of artistic bad behavior; but Tomas’s emotional riots, his fervors, his temper tantrums, his utter disregard for others, are no guarantee of the quality of his art … The only thing they can guarantee — for everyone around him, for himself above all — is pain.

* * * *

So that people don’t think I only write snarky comments about Covenant blog posts, this one about Paul Simon, his career and his beautiful new album is quite enlightening and worth a read. I saw Simon perform during his “Rhythm of the Saints” tour a lifetime ago, and remember it as a great show. Most vividly I recall, before playing “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” he said something like, “There are two definitive versions of this song, one sung by Art Garfunkel and the other by Aretha Franklin. I only sing it to remind people that I wrote it.”

Laypeople of the World, Unite (I Mean, Unite Two Opposing Concepts and Hold Them in Tension)

This entry is part 4 of 25 in the series Presence in the Modern World

Continuing with my (extremely slow) reading of Ellul’s Presence in the Modern World. There’s still a lot of Chapter 1 left, so if I don’t step up the pace, this book may take the better part of my remaining life to finish. And it’s not even a very long book!

In the last post, I talked about Ellul’s contention that “it is by living and receiving the gospel that political, economic, and other problems can be resolved.”

This is done through accepting the tension (and “liv[ing] it out to the full“) between knowing that it is impossible to make the world less sinful, while still refusing to accept it the way that it is.

It’s up to laypeople to live out this tension and present “theological truth” to the world, because, as he wrote earlier in the chapter, “for them in particular there is no separation from the world” — and the clergy “does not understand the world’s situation.”

Unfortunately, modern laypeople tend to compartmentalize their faith aside from the rest of their life, or else they have reduced it to a “moral system” (which is not theological truth, or even faith). Since God uses “a material medium, human means, to act by his Spirit,” and this material medium — the laity living out their faith, in tension, in full — does not exist to any great extent, “the gospel no longer affects the world.”

We (laypeople) live and act in the midst of economic, political, and ideological realities, and our role is not to pick and choose amongst these forces to find the “best” ones, but to recognize that they are all sinful and “cannot be improved in some other way.” Our role instead is to demonstrate “Jesus Christ’s forgiveness” for all of these sinful realities.

Ellul says that laypeople are not “guinea pigs” — and I think perhaps here he means that they are not merely being dispatched by the church to attempt a seemingly impossible task, but instead their very existence (if they are “liv[ing] out the tension each day of their lives”) is what actually enables the church to understand the world’s dire situation, and the world to recognize the spiritual problems it is trying (and failing) to solve with other means. The layperson is where the world and the church connect.

I think that failure of the laity to recognize the importance of our role may be the biggest problem the church faces, not only in mainline denominations such as my Episcopal Church, but across the spectrum. We compartmentalize, and we moralize (on left and right), and everything else is up to the clergy and the church staff; that’s what we pay them for, right?

Ephemera, 8/13/23

The title I used for the last post came from a Philip K. Dick story I originally read in The Best Science Fiction of the Year #9. I bought a copy of that book when I was 10 or 11 from the paperback racks at a local discount store, and it remained in my possession for many years after that. Several of the included stories live on in my memory, but most vividly George R. R. Martin’s “Sandkings,” which scared the living hell out of me. I also read it over and over. (I always read very inappropriately for my age; around the same time I read The Shining and The World According to Garp.)

* * * *

“The main problem with turning the world into language is that it’s, well, impossible. The word is always less than the thing it is meant to represent.” (Stephen Dobyns)

* * * *

I just don’t get Linktree, especially the folks who fill theirs with links to specific articles, stories, poems that they have published, so that it’s just a long, vertical string of links running down the page. It’s the very definition of user-hostile. Just get a website, maybe? Am I missing something about this?

Anyway, what do I know, I’m posting this on a blog. 2005 Internet was the best Internet.

Passages: The Exit Door Leads In*

Last night my husband and I saw Passages. It’s our fifth film at a theater in six weeks, which is a record for us, not only post-pandemic but for our entire relationship. We’ve always liked “going to the movies,” but never did it quite as often as we have been doing recently, and frankly I like the new pattern.

The film is so skillfully written, filmed, and acted that we talked about it, considering the characters and scenes from different angles, on the way to the car, on the drive home, and again this morning over breakfast.

In short, Tomas and Martin, both expatriates living in Paris, have been married for a number of years; the film begins at the point of a relationship already distant and strained. Following a mild argument with his husband, Tomas has sex with a woman, Agathe. Over the next ninety minutes, we follow Tomas and Martin’s relationship as it ends, renews, ends, renews, and finally ends.

The film pretends to be about the disintegration of a marriage, but is really about two people who happen to be married to each other. (And a third person, who gets somewhat short shrift, not to mention ill treatment.)

The title is, I think purposefully, reminiscent of the mid-70s book by Gail Sheehy about adult stages of life, which popularized the concept of “mid-life crisis.” To me, this seems like a joke on the part of the filmmaker. Tomas is excited over his affair with Agathe because it offers a chance to feel something “different,” and he describes it as “growth.” He says he wants to see Martin “grow” as well.

Which is a lie, of course; when Martin, angry and hurt, begins his own relationship with another man, Tomas reacts with near-panic, which leads to a number of complications.

There is no “growth,” here, for either of the two men — perhaps for Agathe, who learns a hard lesson indeed, but there is no evidence of Tomas and Martin being any different at the end than they were at the beginning.

It’s telling that the film starts, essentially, in medias res; the relationship is already strained, and I don’t think we ever learn anything about either of their lives, separate or together, before the moment of the opening. (Aside from some facts about Tomas’ family, which we learn about in a very funny scene with Agathe’s parents.)

And when Tomas first excitedly tells Martin of his sex with Agathe, Martin responds, “This always happens when you finish a film.”

On the surface, we are presented with Tomas (in a fantastic performance from Franz Rogowski) as the villain of the piece, struggling with his “feelings” and the havoc they wreak on his own life and everyone else’s. Martin is presented — again, on the surface — as the sympathetic one.

Except, actually, Martin is just as culpable for bad choices and selfish desires as Tomas. Tomas wants new experiences; Martin wants a child, but to what end? Martin proves himself willing to hurt other people in order to get what he wants, just like Tomas.

These characters are not going through a “mid-life crisis,” and the passage through which they are going is ultimately not leading to anywhere different than where they started. Completely ungrounded in their being, even as they both seem relatively stable and successful, they are seeking something that they feel is missing, because they have no idea what it is that they’re actually missing.

The film ends with Tomas cycling wildly and aimlessly through the city at night. It freezes on his face and fades to black.

* Yes, I know I stole the title from Philip K. Dick.

Ephemera, 8/10/23

Maybe the real AI was the stupid things we made along the way.

* * * *

Richard Beck on the subversive nature of the Bible: It “denies the ultimacy” of any political system (we are not citizens of this world), the prophetic tradition opposes oppression and injustice, and the themes throughout the scripture are about emancipation, liberation.

Beck says that the entirety of “political theology” may rest on the simple statement that the Bible exists “to unsettle the nations.” This seems right; those who claim Biblical support (and thus God’s blessing) on their state, or their ideology or particular political beliefs, whether currently in power or only seeking to be, are missing the point entirely. God has no interest in your political debates, he is only interested in justice.

I think it’s important for everyone, no matter left or right or in-between, whether they are in positions of authority, or seeking an electoral victory, or fomenting a revolution, to ask themselves: Why has every human political system in history led to oppression and injustice of some sort? And what makes me think my preferred political outcome would wind up any different?

I can’t help but go back to Ellul: Our world’s will always leads toward suicide. “If Christians work with all their might for a human project, they are only human beings like others and their effort has no added value. But if they accept their specific function as Christians, which does not necessarily involve participating in the world in material or measurable ways, then this is decisive for human history.”

* * * *

Speaking of Ellul, through the end of this month Wipf and Stock is offering a 40% discount on his books; use code IJES40 to purchase from them directly.

Ephemera, 08/07/23

“Got a special celebration on your parish calendar? A.I. can compose a unique hymn for the occasion!” Is this satire?

* * * *

I’ve very recently started reading David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament as part of my morning routine, usually a chapter at a time. Reading the gospel as something both familiar and strange has really fired me up and improved my focus. I’ve been writing lengthy notes on each chapter in my own journal; don’t worry, I’m not subjecting the interwebs to my stream-of-consciousness Biblical babbling. But these readings may lead to some other posts here.

I mention all this just because Richard Beck had a great quote from DBH’s introduction to this translation (which makes a fascinating essay in its own right) which feels perfect for a Monday. Of the shocking and strange message of Christianity (which most of us forget is either shocking or strange, we are so immersed in, or bored by, it), DBH says, “I doubt any of us has ever understood it nearly as well as we imagine.”

* * * *

I still remember the first time I heard Sinead O’Connor. I was a college freshman, and my friend Chris played “The Lion and the Cobra” for me in his dorm room. “Mandinka” is what always gets mentioned, and it’s a great song on a great album, but it’s the very first track, “Jackie,” with its cold and plaintive opening, that haunts me to this day.

I’ve been washing the sand
With my salty tears
Searching the shore
For these long years
And I’ll walk the seas forever more

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