What the world needs now is hope, sweet hope
John H Saturday 4th August, AD 2007
To conclude this series of posts looking at Ellul’s book Hope in Time of Abandonment (see previous posts: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4), let’s return to the first part of the book, where Ellul sets out what he describes as “the central question for preaching, for evangelization, and perhaps for the entire Christian life today”: the relative priority of faith and hope in the church’s proclamation.
The “warfare of faith” must continue to be waged against “the idols and false gods” through the proclamation of Christ the Lord, Ellul argues:
But with regard to helping man and finding an answer to his anguish, his longing, his misfortune (in which, to be sure, he takes delight), it is not the proclamation of the faith which is decisive, but the proclamation of hope. (pp.79f.)
The vital mission of the church today is “to proclaim, bear witness to, and live hope”:
Yet we still persist in pushing the message of faith, which no longer belongs to our times.
Ellul acknowledges that this sounds “scandalous”, but argues that the proclamation of the gospel “is a response to man’s real unhappiness, to his desperate search”. By contrast, “[w]here man is not looking for anything, he cannot hear the Gospel”. This is where the proclamation of faith becomes problematic today, because “faith relates to truth”, but:
…[modern man] scarcely bothers any more about truth, because, though very poor, he is a multimillionaire in the quantity of truth. He has going for him the truth of science and medicine, and that’s all he needs. He has his fill of truths. What can the truth of the Gospel possibly have to add?
Ellul anticipates the objection that “these truths are not in the same category with revealed truth”, but responds:
Quite so, nevertheless they occupy the entire field of the conscience and of the intellect. There is really no room left for revealed truth. All we can say to these soakers-up of “scientific truth” is just what Jesus said to the rich. (p.81)
Ellul goes on to stress (pp.84ff.) that he is not saying the church should stop preaching faith, or that faith and hope (or love, for that matter) are in opposition to one another. It is a question of where the emphasis should lie, and the point at which the gospel proclamation is able to “reach the heart and change a life”. This proclamation “cannot focus on the totality and complexity of everything in the Bible”. It is necessary to choose “a word” for the times, not a “jumble of words”:
Luther chose salvation by faith, just as the primitive church chose the Lordship of Christ. What I am saying is that hope is the centre of today’s proclamation. (pp.83f.)
As is often the case with Ellul, there is a degree of hyperbole in what he writes here (and I’m not sure either Luther or the primitive church would have seen themselves as “choosing” a particular emphasis). But I think he has an important message here for how the church goes about its mission today, and especially the work of evangelism.
A lot of what we do amounts to saying, “Our information is better than your information”. The problem is that people are awash with information and facts today – information and facts that have so much more immediate relevance and usefulness than the gospel – and so the “information-rich” feel little need of the additional information of the gospel.
What the world lacks – lacks so completely that it doesn’t even notice anything is missing – is hope. So if the church and individual Christians were able truly to live out and proclaim the hope we have in Christ – that waiting, praying, realistic hope described by Ellul – then we will be offering something new, rather than simply competing in the overcrowded marketplace of information.
We may even find, as the Christians of the first century found, that this hope then provides an opening for effective communication of the information-content of the gospel, leading to faith as the word of God is heard once again.
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I have not read it, but I suspect J. Moltmann’s Theology of Hope would complement Ellul’s thesis in this book. For a theological philosopher, perhaps G. Marcel’s Homo Viator: Introduction to a Metaphysic of Hope. I’ve only read Marcel in translation, but he is an often overlooked thinker of the 20th century who did some remarkable work.
Perhaps there is a helpful critique here, too, for those who emphasize different theories of truth and knowledge (“narrative” comes to mind) as the way in which to contextualize the gospel and reach the heart. But this is still open to Ellul’s critique of limiting the proclamation to faith/truth. His proposal is the more radical.
“What the world lacks is hope.” Yes, I think this is right. The world has no shortage of wishing and wishful thinking. But these are not true hope. It doesn’t help that we use the word ‘hope’ loosely. “I hope I don’t fall down on my bike ride.” What Ellul is getting at, I think, is that deeply abiding sense of hope that somehow things will be put right, both in our lives and in the world at large. This is often “hoping against hope.” And so there is despair and disaffection and boredom.
Thank you for writing up this series of posts, John.
Help me out here… he’s saying that faith is related to truth, and as such, it becomes irrelevant in today’s marketplace of ideas where people are constantly being bombarded by various truths? (“All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.”)
This sounds like faith = intellectualism. This may be the case in many Christian traditions, but it shouldn’t be. I’d say that faith is related to Christ, who’s not just another idea out there, but a living reality active for the believer today. Our sacramental faith is particularly adept to providing and sustaining hope– we have the resurrected Christ with us. But I think something must be missing in translation for me in what he’s saying…
Kelly: from what Ellul has said elsewhere, I don’t think he had an “intellectualised” view of faith as such. I entirely agree that “faith is related to Christ” who is a living reality and not just another idea.
However, the knowledge of Christ as a living person present in the sacramental and word-centred life of the church is a knowledge for those who already have faith. For those outside, the content of the gospel – that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, that he was seen etc. – does constitute ideas and information, and people have their fill of ideas and information (even if those ideas and information are, in the end, as empty and false as the material wealth of the financially rich).
Hence hope is necessary as a demonstration that Christ is a living reality to us, not just “better information”.
Joel: Ellul does refer to “the great work of Moltmann” on a number of occasions, in particular The Theology of Hope. In a sense Ellul’s argument builds on Moltmann by saying we need not just a theology of hope, but hope itself. He writes (p.170:
I am not about to elaborate a theology of hope. I shall keep to a much more lowly level (that of a person who had lived his faith without hope, and to whom hope was one day given), to a much more elusive moment (that in which hope is born), and to a less comprehensive outlook. What is the significance of hope when it is born?
[...] I’m about to put this blog on a brief hiatus (or perhaps I should call it “paternity leave”), as my wife is due to give birth within the next week or so. As part of clearing the decks before downing tools, here is a post I meant to include in my recent series on Jacques Ellul’s book Hope in Time of Abandonment (see this post for links to the whole series). [...]
Outstanding presentation of Ellul’s thesis. He was a man before his time. I believe he is spot on in focusing in on the hope of the gospel as the needed message of today! Thanks, bro.
[...] 6, 2008 Don’t Preach Faith or Truth, Preach Hope Posted by jdodson under Books, Cultural Engagement, Pastoral Ministry, Preaching, Sermons | Tags:hope, jacques ellul | Read this outstanding summary on why we need to be preaching hope instead of faith or the truth of the gospel. In an age when truth is commonplace and quotidian—internet, science, mathematics—people need to hear the gospel where they are lacking, where they are bankrupt. That place is hope. [...]