Quote for today (and for friday) Monday, June 23, 2003 Jacques Ellul rocks. The book of his that I'm reading now _The Presence of the Kingdom_ should be required reading in any theology, Christian sociology, divinity, etc. program. So far, I've been continually going "whoa" on just about every page. So forgive me if I post tons of quotes just from that book daily. On second thought, don't forgive me... actually go out and get and then read the book. It's not too long--130 pages--and is pretty much the introduction to all of his other thoughts. Why is Ellul so significant? I'll have to address that question later. Here's the quote: "Well, I needed a key to use--as a guide as a compass, and also as an intellectual tool. I was hesitating, considering several themes and methods, when I was struck by Paul's words in Romans 12.2--'Do not be conformed to this present age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern the will of God, what is good, what is pleasing to him, and what is well done.' In this text there were three imperatives for me that I had to try to follow from then on, and for which I had to find methods adequate for the situation today. "'Do not be conformed to this age'--but there are two possible conformities. One is voluntary adherence (and for this, it suffices to know political programs, economic plans, doctrines). But that which above all drew me and seemed to me to fit in with Paul's level of thinking was the second: unconscious and involuntary adherence to what in this present age is so obvious that we don't think about it.--to those unstated rules, those taboos, those undiscussed truths; that which makes up the subconscious and unconscious of a community. The 'present age' is filled with these evidences. "I completely refused, however, the interpretation which views this 'present age' (aiÙn) as a kind of metaphysical reality, opposed to the Kingdom to come, and always in the same manifestation: this present age was neither the specific age in which Paul lived, nor a mysterious entity always the same--for me, the meaning is that each generation has to recognize that it is a question of its own age. "From that point on, I had to apply myself in discerning what were the foundations, the structures, the make-up of the present age: that is to say, of the twentieth century. In order to do that I had, on the one hand, to know the most important facts, but on the other hand, to interpret them in an exact manner. But the 'scientific' method of the social sciences seemed inadequate to me....It is thus that I chose the questions which I dealt with in this book." --Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, 2nd. ed. (1989), pp. xi-xii.