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13 Responses to “The subversion of Christianity”

1. Gaz on November 4th, 2006 6:28 pm

   Can it be that instead of trying to understand the person of Jesus we try and create a caricature of him that we can understand and model to the world.
   The real Jesus is to difficult to understand.

2. knsheppard on November 5th, 2006 1:00 am

   I find Ellul’s writings fascinating, but, I always get a little nervous around the ‘r’ word, because I think it stands in need of elucidation. What do we mean by religion, and, how is Jesus then subverting it? Isn’t how we define the term (an obviously constructed thing) extremely important here?

3. topher on November 5th, 2006 7:35 am

   I apologize for the long comment. I hope that it serves to add to the conversation.

   I agree that the terms here could use better definition. Though I feel that I am on the same page with Alan (and others) and what they mean by “religion;” it is important to recognize that the definition we are referring to, is a specific understanding of the term.

   There is a model that I use to clarify the issue of “religion” vs. “anti-religion” and I find it quite useful for teaching purposes.

   To begin, a premise:
   1. There are two components to the christian life as it is lived out: LISTEN and OBEY
   (as a side-note: I believe that this is what we mean on the most basic level when we use the term “anti-religion”)

   2. Ideally, this is a relationship that is in play throughout our daily lives. Both large and small decisions are meant to be lived while in communion with the Spirit of God. Listen/obey… listen/obey… listen/obey… throughout our day.
   (this can also be referred to as empathy/honesty, but we can get into that some other time)

   3. In James 1:22, James writes: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. DO WHAT IT SAYS.”
   This might be rightly explained as Listen/NOT-OBEY. I would say that this is neither a character of “religion,” nor “anti-religion,” but the character of disobedience.

   4. Another scenario that we see is what I describe as NOT-LISTENING/Obey. When we are making decisions outside of a relationship with the Spirit, we are relying on dogma. Therefore, another way to describe this could be DOGMA/Obey or “Religion.”
   Christ, when speaking to the Jews in John 5, says: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that BY THEM you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about ME, yet you refuse to come to me to have life.”

   5. In summary, I think that the simplest way for me to describe “religion of Christiandom” vs “anti-religion of Christ” is that the first tends more toward DOGMA/Obey, while the second will tend more toward LISTEN/Obey. The first being more of a static, “image of what a Christian should look like”… and the second being a relationship with the almighty God that is dynamic and wild. The first: Law, the second: Grace.

   6. On a practical note: where this holds the most meaning for me is in my role as a leader in my community.
   I ask myself: “is my priority in telling people what decisions they should make in their own lives, or is it to facilitate chances for people to slow down and tune in to the voice of God… and allow HIM to direct their steps?” In a big way, I believe that discipleship is about teaching people to “fish,” rather than mearly “giving them a fish” (metaphorically speaking.)

   Was I able to explain this clearly enough? Any thoughts?

4. Alan Hirsch on November 5th, 2006 10:12 am

   Actually Ellul does define what he means by religion. Something like all artificial efforts to sacralize the cosmos and to mediate this experience. He also plays around the root word in religion (religio = to bind,) that is to bind the revelation to a tradition.

   Thnaks for the insights so far.

5. Matt Wiebe on November 5th, 2006 12:45 pm

   I find myself in agreement with this sentiment, but the question it provokes in me is this: does this then mean that structure in the body of Christ is inherently anti-Jesus? Or is that too simplistic an answer? I ask this because Christian anarchy seems to be the logical conclusion to this line of thinking.

6. Matt Stone on November 5th, 2006 11:41 pm

   Where did the language of truth faith come from?

   I think we need to consider how Jesus and his earliest apostles used language and symbols subversively. It’s not enough to know what they said, language games require an understanding of context. How were they twisting it?

   How we they reframing the language of the Roman pagan mystery schools and the Empiror cult (like ‘logos’ and ‘musterion’ and ‘euangelion’) within the context of their status as an occupied people.

   How were they reframing the signs and stories of the Old Testament amongst many competing Jewish sects who were all claiming the authority of scripture.

   The language of true faith was borrowed from other faiths, so it has no inherrantly Christian meaning unless you observe how these Christians originally used it for their own purposes. Mere aping is more likely to leave you with Gnosticism or Zionism.

7. Alan Hirsch on November 7th, 2006 1:43 pm

   I take your point about true faith Matt. I might have better used the term ‘authentic faith.’ It hs all the verbal hallmarks of authenticity but religion obscures the meaning–something like that.

8. Daniel on November 8th, 2006 1:10 pm

   I only have a moment, but I think a conversation that a friend and I have been having applies here. It seems that we are addressing an issue of power. Whenever I spend time with a Christian from the majority world, I find that their concept of power is profoundly Christ-centered. I often hear testimony of supernatural healing, audible or at least extremely timely answer to prayer, dreams and visions, and the like.
   Could it be that we in Christendom are satisfied with the wrong kind of power? We certainly have it. Political, interpersonal, informational, even environmental. We have succeeded in ruling everything that might affect our lives.
   Perhaps we will find that our counterfeit power never lived up to its promise, and return to the powerful creator we call Father. Until then, I doubt that Jesus is interested in being just another bullet in our gun. He wants to be unparalleled in our reliance on him.
   I like what you talked about at the Missio conference concerning the marginalized Church. It might be said that the powerless Church is the truly powerful Church.

9. celtic son on November 14th, 2006 12:21 am

   connection with the church, historical and global, is accessed in christ by the spirit… in christendom (read western, affluent, materialist etc etc church)we can speak about the spiritual realm, we can teach about the principles of healing and faith etc… but we don’t actually see it… we don’t see it because in all honesty we consider ourselves too educated to actually believe it…

   authentic power is available, healing is possible… we need to understand that our principal place of residence is with Christ in heavenly places - what happens in the natural follows the activity in the spirit!

   we are conduits of god’s power, rather than powerful ourselves, we can be instruments to see god’s kingdom come… subversion exists when we are disconnected from the true source

   a celtic son

10. Soapboxes » Blog Archive » Subversive Jesus on November 14th, 2006 3:44 pm

    [...] Alan Hirsch on his blog talks about the subversive Jesus.  He begins by quoting Jacques Ellul from his book The Subversive Christianity: [...]

11. Matt on May 12th, 2008 2:33 pm

    I think the problem may be a misunderstanding of Jacque Ellul. Jesus was fundamentally apolitical and sometimes anti-political. His purpose was twofold: to destroy the priesthood and to destroy the Temple. Doing so enabled his followers (then and now) to recognize that they didn’t need a special class to serve as mediators between them and God, and freed them to recognize that God did not reside in a box within a temple controlled by this class. Jesus (re)introduced both the notion of God’s omniscience and one’s ability to have a personal relationship with their creator. No man, woman, class, organization, or institution can supplant these truths but their nature is to try to do exactly this. They inherently interfere with these ideas at best, or destroy them at worst. These institutions, and the anti-Christian notions they are built upon are therefore evil because they disempower the individual.

    Religion (especially Paulian Christianity), is based on the EXACT opposite of what Jesus taught. Both the temple and the priest class were reintroduced by those who sought power and were incapable of understanding the message. Ceremony, dogma, rules, proscribed morals, etc. all are dictated by an ordained class within an institution that succumbed to the same temptations of power that Jesus himself both resisted and taught his earlier followers to resist (material possessions, politics, judgment, violence, etc.) This is why Christianity is strewn with apparent hypocrisy which even children recognize instinctively. Even a superficial reading of Jesus’ words when compared to the interpretations, political preachings, and activities of the Church make these contradictions obvious. They demand ceremony, authority, and obedience, where an individual relationship with a private God without the priesthood and Church was what Jesus taught. This, Ellul believed, could only occur in small, devout groups dedicated to the resistance of the temptations that larger organizations inevitably yield to because they accept, and are eventually lead by power-seekers. It was, ironically, also the violent invasion of another religion (Islam) into the region that required this already large (and antithetical institution) to see a need to adopt violence and further power to protect itself.

12. Matt Stone on May 13th, 2008 11:30 am

    Matt, could you clarify what you mean by Paulian Christianity? If you’re refering to the tendancy of some Christians to place Paul’s writings at the centre of Christianity to the virtual exclusion of the rest of the New Testament I can understand you critiquing that as unbalanced, but are you putting Paul and Jesus themselves as diametrically opposite?

    Also, would it not be fairer to say Jesus “relativised” the value of ceremony and rules than to say he did away with them altogether. The New Testament is full of early Christians expressing themselves in symbolic ways and exhorting people to live a moral life so I’d be more cautious myself on that score.

    I was recently some stuff which distinguished between anti-clericalism and a-clericalism which I think would be useful to this discussion. Anti-clericalism is, as the name suggests, the rejection of all hierachy within the body of Christ. A-clericalism, is different in that while it also attacks the clergy-laity divide, saying there is nothing clergy can do that the laity can’t also, it nevertheless affirms that gifting, leadership and experience is important in terms of equipping the whole body. The task of leaders is to facilitate their own redundancy and empower the people of God as a whole in their area of giftedness.

    Along similar lines I would say there is a case for defining Christianity as a-religious rather than anti-religious. Ceremony is not evil (or are we going to ban weddings and baptisms now?) but it does become evil when it becomes a God substitute, when it stands between the worshipper and God and becomes a control mechanism. Ceremonies are supposed to serve us, we are not supposed to serve them.

13. Matt on May 13th, 2008 3:45 pm

    I think you make some excellent points here. I am by no means an expert on Ellul, so it’s far easier to speak about my own views given the detail your points require.

    I do not place Paul’s writing and Jesus’ teachings as diametrically opposed per se, but his unique views were adopted during the first councils precisely because they lent themselves to the institutionalization of Christianity, which IS in direct opposition to Jesus’ teachings, and there are certainly major differences between Paul’s views and the other writers on Jesus.

    I mean no offense here, but in my view, Paul was a self-proclaimed apostle who never met Jesus. It’s too suspicious to base a religion on the one guy who never even met him. In addition, I see far too many contradictions with the other books to justify having relied so heavily on his interpretations, and it was Peter whom Jesus chose as leader after all.

    Paul’s exceptions on divorce come to mind, as does the deification of Mary based on the mistranslation from the Hebrew “young woman” to the Greek “virgin”. (There is no mention of an immaculate conception until far later, and I recall a passage where Jesus rejects his mother and sisters and sends them away for not understanding his mission. The Greeks, whom Paul was customizing his message for, were already familiar with virgin births such as Zeus). Also, I know it’s an uncomfortable fact that many have ignored, but Jesus said on several occasions that he did not come to save gentiles (see from Matthew 15:22), so Paul’s writings are a more comfortable fit for non-Jews (like me).

    I take the view that since the book of Mark is the oldest, and that there may have been another gospel (The Q), on which Matthew and perhaps Mark as well were based, we cannot know for sure what the early Christians believed. I do not doubt that different groups had different ceremonies, and I don’t believe that ceremony is necessarily a problem (as you mentioned with “Ceremonies are supposed to serve us, we are not supposed to serve them.”).

    I like your distinction between anti-clericalism and a-clericalism, and I agree. But proscribing specific ceremonies while rejecting ALL others IS in direct contradiction to a personal relationship with God. Sure, leaders and ceremony have their purpose, but Paul laid down rules, which suited the Church leaders looking to justify their hunger for authority later. Paul was the most successful of early Christian writers in terms of influence precisely because he was such a prominent leader, a prolific writer, and because his unique interpretations lent themselves perfectly to the establishment of Christianity as an institution. My point here is that the very purpose of the first councils were to establish doctrine and to eliminate all alternative views, and THIS, is in direct opposition to Jesus’ teachings of small groups.

    I believe that since the nature of God (and Jesus) are inherently mysterious, an understanding must be pursued on a personal level. Given the historical uncertainty, I look to Jesus’ words, as cross-referenced from those who knew him, not those who simply wrote about him.

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