As we have just seen, Christian realism leads to the conclusion that violence is natural* and normal to man and society, that violence is a kind of necessity imposed on governors and governed, on rich and poor. If this realism scandalizes Christians, it is because they make the great mistake of thinking that what is natural is good and what is necessary is legitimate. I am aware that the reader will answer at once: “You have shown that violence is inevitable and necessary in undertakings of any kind; therefore violence is legitimate, it must be used.” This is anti-Christian reasoning par excellence. What Christ does us is above all to make us free. Man becomes free through the Spirit of God, through conversion to and communion with the Lord. This is the one way to true freedom. But to have true freedom is to escape necessity, or rather, to be free to struggle against necessity. Therefore I say that only one line of action is open to the Christian who is free in Christ. He must struggle against violence precisely because, apart from Christ, violence is the form that human relations normally and necessarily take. In other words, the more completely violence seem to be of the order of necessity, the greater is the obligation of believers in Christ’s Lordship to overcome it by challenging necessity.
This is the fixed, the immutable, and the radical basis of the Christian option in relation to violence. For the order of necessity is the order of separation from God.
Jacques Ellul, Violence (New York: The Seabury Press, 1969), 127-8.
* When talking about what is natural, he is talking about nature in its fallen mode of being; that is, because the universe is fallen, the structures of sin are also a part of what we consider to be nature and so can be found in nature; this, of course, points to some of the problems involved in the exploration of ‘natural law.’ Of course if we can discern nature in purity, the natural law would also be good; but when we live in a world of sin, then we must be careful and not confuse how things work now as if that is how they should work in eternity. This of course goes to the root of many modern debates and undermines them all–HK
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