Jacques Ellul (1912-1994)

Selection from What I Believe (1989)

[Jacques Ellul, What I Believe, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 143-151. Permission for use granted by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.]

I believe in the secret presence of God.

. . . . But here a first problem arises.

When people do succeed in breaking free from belief in God, they simply create another religious belief to replace it. We always assimilate religion or God to a specific image, to specific rites or groups, to a specific conception, and when we banish these (as the Catholic Church and the Christian God were banished in France), we think that we have achieved freedom of thought. But we then proceed to an apotheosis of reason or science and we have new gods. . . . First there is the great diversity of gods that people have worshiped. If I am a Christian, it is by accident of birth. . . . [O]ne cannot say that one god is more true than another. For me to say that my God is true is inadmissibly presumptuous. . . .

The next major obstacle is that of evil. If God were God and good, he would not permit all the evil that takes place on the earth. Some of this evil come from natural events and disasters (for which God is responsible if he is the Creator). Some of it comes from human actions, but if human beings were made in the image of God, why is there wickedness in them? Why could not God change them and make them good? Then there is death. We can understand that death is a natural reality. When we study cells and consider the laws of organisms, we see that death has its place. But if creation derives from an act of will, how can the Creator tolerate death with its train of sufferings both for those who die and for the bereaved who loved them? Suffering and death are a scandal that cries to heaven and that we cannot evade. We all know the famous dilemma of unbelief formulated by Bakunin: Either God is omnipotent but bad, or good but impotent. To this dilemma there seems to be no solution. . . .

To this kind of reasoning we must add the findings of science. Historical science unpacks the sacred texts to show that they are not inspired but simply give us at best certain human opinions about God. Physics, biology, and astronomy scrutinize matter and nowhere find even the slightest trace of a beginning denoting the existence of anything other than matter. Insofar as science succeeds in formulating scientific laws of matter and of the functioning of the human brain, there is no place for miracles. Miracle as a transgression of the laws of nature is strictly impossible. Once a law is there it admits of no exceptions. All stories of exceptions are legends or musings. The main point, however, is that God cannot act. If he exists, he is completely paralyzed.

Furthermore, the God of religions is radically incompatible with our reason. Religious people talk about truth, the absolute, eternity, and omnipotence, but what do such words mean? In reality, they mean nothing at all to our intelligence and reason--they have literally no meaning whatsoever. They have no content for reason, for science, or even for the imagination. The proof is that when the sacred texts speak about such things, they have to resort to anthropomorphisms. But what are gods that are angry, that punish, that reward, that are jealous, that make war, or that repent? It is easy to say that this is just a manner of speaking, but since we cannot speak in any other way, is there any point in resorting to such a concept of God? One important theological current, that of negative theology, honestly recognizes that we can know nothing about God. God is hidden, secret. We can speak about him only negatively. We can say what is not God, or what God is not, but we can say nothing more. . . . The usual surrender by Christians when cannot answer questions is the statement: "It is a mystery." Strictly speaking, for reasonable people, this saying nothing.

Another important factor in this whole process is what the gods have made of people. In the name of religion people have waged cruel wars. Convinced of the truth of their religion, they have tried to impose it on others and overcome their errors. Religion has always caused division, hatred, and misunderstanding. People of one religion cannot stand those of another religion. This intolerance is not all in the past. In the name of the communist religion millions of people are reduced to slavery and wars are waged (Afghanistan, Vietnam, and Ethiopia). In the name of the Muslim religion other wars are shedding blood across the world (Iraq and Iran, Lebanon, the Sudan) . . . Who can deny all this when the Christian religion, the religion of love, has been as bad as the rest with its own wars and conquests, its own suppression of heresy by force, its own intolerance and lack of understanding? There can be no denying all this. And finally there is the terrible impact that Christianity has had on the Western psyche. Westerners have lived under terror of judgment by a terrifying God. They have been made guilty by an idea of sin. They have wandered through a world filled with prohibitions. They have run up against sexual taboos. All this has brought disasters in its train, for they have sought overcompensation in a drive to dominate, to conquer, and to expand.

Confronted by this monstrous process which has been going on since the origins of Christianity, it would be absurd to reply with arguments or to attempt apologetics. I will be content to make two kinds of remarks. First, science, though more modern, is less certain. Second, this type of objection rests on a strange misunderstanding to which, we have to admit, Christians themselves are prone.

Modern science is much less certain of itself because of its very advances, which have opened up immense vistas but also posed increasingly difficult riddles. To be brief, I will simply recall Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the challenge to Einstein's thesis that God does not play dice, the discovery of complex systems and feedback, the principle of nonseparability, the recognition of open systems, and the abandonment to a large extent of something that was always regarded as fully established, the mechanism of causality. All the sciences are now engaged in new researches and in mounting uncertainty, biology as well as history, chemistry as well as psychology. We have found out that pure science does not exist, that science is never pure, not even mathematics. . . . I believe, for example, that the commonly accepted theory of the big bang that started the universe poses a problem. This universe did not always exist. At a single point there was an unimaginable and incalculable concentration of energy which exploded and at a stroke produced the matter of the galaxies. Where did this energy come from? . . . .

The other side of the change that is bringing correction has occurred in the understanding of Christian revelation. Almost all the arguments that I adduced are based on a mistaken understanding, on a metaphysical elaboration that is alien to biblical revelation and that has been superimposed on it. The God who has been thus presented is not the God of the prophets or the God of Jesus Christ but the God of the philosophers. Speculating on the divine nature, on the relation between God and the world, on God as origin, these philosophers finally constructed a totally intellectual image of God that derives from Greek philosophy, and it is this image that the rationalists of the 18th and 19th centuries tore to pieces. Theology also constructed a system which thought it could encompass and explain everything (apart from the mysteries). But when this theological explanation of natural phenomena collided with the scientific explanation, instead of reflecting afresh on the sure data (of the Bible), theologians stuck to their system and opposed reason and scientific experimentation. Some of them thought they could solve the problem by postulating two spheres, the real world for science and the spiritual world for religion. But this was another mistake. For the real can no more be separated from the spiritual than the body can from the soul. The spiritual without the body is a vapor without substance.

The main problem with all this kind of thinking was that it ignored dialectic. It was purely logical and linear and rational. . . . We need to see that science and revelation are not two different spheres but have two different ends. The one is designed to give explanation, the other to give meaning. But this meaning is inexhaustible, for it changes as that changes to which meaning must be given, and it becomes more profound as there is better understanding of the Scripture through new investigation.

This whole detour was necessary to make the point that the biblical God is hidden and yet present. I believe in God's secret presence in the world. God sometimes leaves us in silence, but he always tells us to remember. That is, he recalls us to the word which he has spoken and which is always new if we rebuild the path from the word written to the word lived out and actualized. He is a God incognito who does not manifest himself in great organ music or sublime ceremonies but who hides himself in the surprising face of the poor, in suffering (as in Jesus Christ), in the neighbor I meet, in fragility. We need to lay hold again of the elementary truth that God reveals himself by the fleeting method of the word, and in an appearance of weakness, because everything would be shattered is he revealed himself in his power and glory and absoluteness, for nothing can contain him or tolerate his presence. God cannot be known directly but only through that which is within the realm of human possibilities. . . . [W]e can be sure that in our situations of wealth and power and domination and expansion and high technology and unlimited growth God is not present. He tells the rich that they have their reward; why then should they have God as well? This is why God is silent in our Western world of opulence and technology. He is certainly present, as in the rest of the universe. But he is present incognito and in secret. He is present as he was when the serpent spoke to Eve and she was enlightened about the tree and took the fruit in order to be as God. He is present incognito and has enough respect to allow the creature to choose its own destiny after issuing a warning. . . .

. . . . What constantly marked the life of Jesus was not nonviolence but in every situation the choice not to use power. This is infinitely different. Not using power is not weakness. Weakness means inability to do what I would like to do or ought to do. Not using power is a choice. I can, but I will not. It is renunciation. This general and specific decision not to use power does not rule out occasional acts of violence. But this violence is an expression of brutal conflict, whereas the nonuse of power is a permanent orientation in every choice and circumstance. Power is there, but one refuses to use it. This is the example set by Jesus. The consideration that the omnipotent God, in coming among us, decides not to use power, is one of the most revolutionary imaginable. We do not yet see it at the moment of Jesus' birth, for then the child that God has chosen to be the Messiah is weak. At this moment God strips himself of power and presents himself to us as a little child delivered up to us. . . . The nonuse of power as a way of life may be seen in his messianic career from its beginning to its end. It may be seen when he asks John the Baptist to baptize him, renouncing the possibility of a baptism of fire. It may be seen when he is three times tempted to manifest his divine power and three times refuses. . . . The temptation is ongoing.

We know that Jesus sometimes refused to work miracles. These were miracles that people wanted as proof that he was the Messiah. In these circumstances he refused the request. He never performed miracles except as a sign of his love. The clearest example, because in this case Jesus specifically expressed his choice and decision, was that of his arrest. When Peter wanted to defend him with the sword, he stopped him and said: "Do you not think that I could have twelve legions of angels that would come to defend me?" (Matt. 26:53). He was able to mobilize celestial forces, but did not choose to do so. Finally, on the cross, he refused to work the miracle that they asked of him: "If you want us to believe in you, come down from the cross" (Matt. 27:40). He did not come down. The whole time, then, the extraordinary choice was operative not to take the way of power as Messiah and Lord. . . . The choice of Jesus was in line with many prophetic injunctions to the effect that horses and chariots could not protect Jerusalem, that God alone would defend them, that they should seek only his protection in demonstration of their trust in him, that he was their wall, their shield, and that they should renounce all others (cf. Isa. 31:1; Ezek. 17:15).

But this permanent orientation of Jesus, this express choice not to use power, places us Christians in a very delicate situation. For we ought to make the same choice, but we are set in a society whose only orientation and objective criterion of truth is power. Science is no longer a search for truth but a search for power. Technology is wholly and utterly an instrument of power; there is nothing in technology other than power. Politics is not concerned about well-being or justice or humanity but simply aims at achieving or preserving power. Economics, being dedicated to a frenzied search for national wealth, is also very definitely consecrated to power. Our society is the very spirit of power. The main difference from previous societies is that they also undoubtedly sought power but did not have the means to achieve it. Our society now has the means to achieve unlimited power. Thus we Christians today are placed in the most difficult of all situations. We have to repudiate both the spirit of the age and the means that it employs. If we do not, if we yield even a fraction to these forces, we will betray Jesus Christ just as surely as if we committed some individual and limited sin. For this is a choice for life (nonviolence being part of it), and no other is possible. Pretending that we can express the Christian faith in works of love (aid to the poor and sorrowing, etc.), or in revolutionary acts to achieve justice, is treason if we engage thereby in the use of power. For the last word of love is that never in any circumstance will it express or indicate power in relation to others. Today only a nonuse of power has a chance of saving the world.