Excerpts from The Subversion of Christianity
I’ve published my first “real” post for “Under Christ’s Archy” called “Excerpts from The Subversion of Christianity – The Contradictions.”
The purpose of the post is to promote discussion based on some excerpts from the first chapter (“The Contradictions”) of Jacques Ellul’s book The Subversion of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).
Here are a couple of the excerpts:
How has it come about that the development of Christianity and the church has given birth to a society, a civilization, a culture that are completely opposite to what we read in the Bible, to what is indisputably the text of the law, the prophets, Jesus and Paul? (p 3)
What Jesus says is that those who hear his words and do them are like the one who builds on the rock. In other words, the rock is hearing and doing. The second part, however, is more restrictive. Those who hear the words he speaks and do not do them are like the one who builds on the sand. Here undoubtedly practice alone is the issue. We can thus say that it is the decisive criterion of life and truth. (p 5)
Jump over to the post, read the other excerpts, and interact with the question that I ask there.
Alan,
My comment to your post on Under Christ’s Archy is a quote from Elluls book, which I’ve had for more than 20 years. As a pastor in a Baptist church, at the time, I resisted what Ellul was saying. Not many years later I realized his perceptions were mostly spot on.
The quote is from the foot of page six, “No recognizable revelation exists apart from the life and witness of those who bear it. The life of Christians is what gives testimony to God and to the meaning of this revelation. ‘See how they love one another’ –this is where the approach to the Revealed God begins”.
Aussie John,
Thanks for the addition. That’s too good to be left in a footnote.
-Alan