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Hope in Time of Abandonment
One of my favorite authors is Jacques Ellul. This book, I read much later than most of the other titles of his I've studied. Hope In A Time of Abandonment considers how our hurriedness prevents God from revealing Himself. How God must allow our busyness to find its uselessness so that we might be still and listen. God waits for us to see our need. This book is a reflective read—perhaps contemplative. Ellul posits that God makes Himself scarce so that we might pursue Him. God allows the doors, options, and solutions to dry up so that we might see our need. Ellul's thoughts are haunting. Take the following as one example among many that I extracted from this book.
"When man is not made hopeless by God's silence, it is because he (man) has destroyed his awareness, to the point of wanting nothing better than to be identified instead of identifiable."
Ellul's ideas are not just profound. They are also remarkably relevant to a modern world. He serves as a kind of prophet, delivering hard truths to a world and religious community that prefers comfort, indulgence and to be spoon fed. I appreciate his incisive thoughts and his exactitude in calling out the superficiality that can pervade our religious discourse.
"When man is not made hopeless by God's silence, it is because he (man) has destroyed his awareness, to the point of wanting nothing better than to be identified instead of identifiable."
Ellul's ideas are not just profound. They are also remarkably relevant to a modern world. He serves as a kind of prophet, delivering hard truths to a world and religious community that prefers comfort, indulgence and to be spoon fed. I appreciate his incisive thoughts and his exactitude in calling out the superficiality that can pervade our religious discourse.
306 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
9 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Ellul
119 books446 followersBaptised Catholic, Ellul became an atheist and Marxist at 19, and a Christian of the Reformed Church at 22. During his Marxist days, he was a member of the French Communist Party. During World War II, he fought with the French Underground against the Nazi occupation of France.
Educated at the Universities of Bordeaux and Paris, he taught Sociology and the History of Law at the Universities of Strausbourg and Montpellier. In 1946 he returned to Bordeaux where he lived, wrote, served as Mayor, and taught until his death in 1994.
In the 40 books and hundreds of articles Ellul wrote in his lifetime, his dominant theme was always the threat to human freedom posed by modern technology. His tenor and methodology is objective and scholarly, and the perspective is a sociological one. Few of his books are overtly political -- even though they deal directly with political phenomena -- and several of his books, including "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" and "The Technological Society" are required reading in many graduate communication curricula.
Ellul was also a respected and serious Christian theologian whose 1948 work, "The Presence of the Kingdom," makes explicit a dual theme inherent, though subtly stated, in all of his writing, a sort of yin and yang of modern technological society: sin and sacramentality.
Educated at the Universities of Bordeaux and Paris, he taught Sociology and the History of Law at the Universities of Strausbourg and Montpellier. In 1946 he returned to Bordeaux where he lived, wrote, served as Mayor, and taught until his death in 1994.
In the 40 books and hundreds of articles Ellul wrote in his lifetime, his dominant theme was always the threat to human freedom posed by modern technology. His tenor and methodology is objective and scholarly, and the perspective is a sociological one. Few of his books are overtly political -- even though they deal directly with political phenomena -- and several of his books, including "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" and "The Technological Society" are required reading in many graduate communication curricula.
Ellul was also a respected and serious Christian theologian whose 1948 work, "The Presence of the Kingdom," makes explicit a dual theme inherent, though subtly stated, in all of his writing, a sort of yin and yang of modern technological society: sin and sacramentality.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 16, 2017
Wow. This is the second Ellul book I have read and both have stretched me. I just happened to notice this book on a shelf at the library and I am glad I did. I am sure that I did not grasp all the points he was making, but I can say the book was fantastic.
Ellul's book is more about God's "hiddenness" than abandonment. Before any misconceptions are jumped to, Ellul does not deny the traditions of Christian orthodoxy such as Jesus' death and resurrection for the forgiveness of human sin. His point is that God is not speaking. This is not because humans are sinful or not listening, it just simply is, thus we cannot blame anyone. Further, we cannot do anything to get God to speak other than hope.
Ellul says that Christians are too preoccupied with arguing about faith. He argues that everyone has faith in something, all people have many beliefs. But hope is absent. That said, there can be hope that God will speak again. After all, God has spoken before. So we move forward with this hope. But we must beware placing our hope in the wrong things whether they be Communism (he was writing in the 1970s) or even the institution of the Church.
Ellul's description of a hopeless world is almost prophetic. One thing that sticks out in his analysis is that a hopeless world is an age of scorn. In such an age persons condemn other persons, destroying their dignity and leaving them with no hope of any sort of future. The vitriol in this as well as the divisiveness can be seen in the political discourse today. Yet the church does not come off innocent, as Ellul sees the church as showing no evidence of God acting and thus resorting more and more to the charisma of humans (gimmicks) to get people to pay attention. This is an abject failure as the church is the people who should have hope. Ellul does not say we sit around passively waiting for God to speak. Instead we go into the world as people of hope, bringing hope (and faith and love and so on I would imagine) to a hopeless people.
Ellul's book is more about God's "hiddenness" than abandonment. Before any misconceptions are jumped to, Ellul does not deny the traditions of Christian orthodoxy such as Jesus' death and resurrection for the forgiveness of human sin. His point is that God is not speaking. This is not because humans are sinful or not listening, it just simply is, thus we cannot blame anyone. Further, we cannot do anything to get God to speak other than hope.
Ellul says that Christians are too preoccupied with arguing about faith. He argues that everyone has faith in something, all people have many beliefs. But hope is absent. That said, there can be hope that God will speak again. After all, God has spoken before. So we move forward with this hope. But we must beware placing our hope in the wrong things whether they be Communism (he was writing in the 1970s) or even the institution of the Church.
Ellul's description of a hopeless world is almost prophetic. One thing that sticks out in his analysis is that a hopeless world is an age of scorn. In such an age persons condemn other persons, destroying their dignity and leaving them with no hope of any sort of future. The vitriol in this as well as the divisiveness can be seen in the political discourse today. Yet the church does not come off innocent, as Ellul sees the church as showing no evidence of God acting and thus resorting more and more to the charisma of humans (gimmicks) to get people to pay attention. This is an abject failure as the church is the people who should have hope. Ellul does not say we sit around passively waiting for God to speak. Instead we go into the world as people of hope, bringing hope (and faith and love and so on I would imagine) to a hopeless people.
May 16, 2025
I need to reread this book, especially the last part. I think Ellul continues to have something we need to hear and understand in the Western church. Other parts of the book haven't aged as well. 1970's France is not America in 2021. We haven't (yet) secularized to the extent France has. Our problem is with syncretism, not post-Christendom.
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Reread in 2025. I agree with what I said above, but I will add a little more to what I said.
Ellul defines hope as man's answer to God's silence. He is mostly consistent in sticking with that definition. The strength's lie in Ellul's cultural analysis and his desire to bring Christians to the point of action. He wants to close off all false hope and leave us with a true hope.
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Reread in 2025. I agree with what I said above, but I will add a little more to what I said.
Ellul defines hope as man's answer to God's silence. He is mostly consistent in sticking with that definition. The strength's lie in Ellul's cultural analysis and his desire to bring Christians to the point of action. He wants to close off all false hope and leave us with a true hope.
April 5, 2019
This review places me in an awkward position because, although I admire Jacques Ellul and his several works very much, this book is really somewhat "time-bound" in ways that others of his are not.
This is because his argument was written when both "God is dead" and "God has abandoned us" were relatively hot theological topics -- but that time was 50 years ago! The book, therefore, is an excellent time capsule for those who wish to understand what those expressions meant and the context in which they were expressed, but it just does not "speak" to our time (at least for this reader).
Be advised, too, that this argument is entirely within the Christian theological world and, therefore, does not attempt to explain some similar sentiments experienced in Jewish theology caused by the horror of the Holocaust and the seeming "abandonment" of the Jewish people by their God.
It seems to me that in our time the theological problem -- such as one can attempt to define it, at least -- is more about both how we can understand the historical view of a "personal" God who intervenes in history when science has rolled back much of what before had been wrapped in faith and myth AND those who adhere tightly to human doctrine versus the "how" we were to live that Jesus taught.
So it is possible that some others might have a very different reaction after reading this book than I; I guess it depends on "where" you find yourself in your own knowledge of and speculation about these sort of ultimate questions.
This is because his argument was written when both "God is dead" and "God has abandoned us" were relatively hot theological topics -- but that time was 50 years ago! The book, therefore, is an excellent time capsule for those who wish to understand what those expressions meant and the context in which they were expressed, but it just does not "speak" to our time (at least for this reader).
Be advised, too, that this argument is entirely within the Christian theological world and, therefore, does not attempt to explain some similar sentiments experienced in Jewish theology caused by the horror of the Holocaust and the seeming "abandonment" of the Jewish people by their God.
It seems to me that in our time the theological problem -- such as one can attempt to define it, at least -- is more about both how we can understand the historical view of a "personal" God who intervenes in history when science has rolled back much of what before had been wrapped in faith and myth AND those who adhere tightly to human doctrine versus the "how" we were to live that Jesus taught.
So it is possible that some others might have a very different reaction after reading this book than I; I guess it depends on "where" you find yourself in your own knowledge of and speculation about these sort of ultimate questions.
January 4, 2025
"Hope is a protest before this God, who is leaving us without miracles and without conversions, that he is not keeping his Word. Thus it is not a nice peaceful confidence that things are going to get better and that the situation is going to change. It is a real indictment of God in the name of the Word of God. ... It is still from God that we look for this realization, this fulfillment, but a God turned in man's favor. That was already done, once for all, in Jesus Christ. It has been achieved. The union is brought about. 'God has crossed over to man's side,' as Karl Barth says. Well and good, so let us see it. So let God show that he actually is maintaining our right, that he is walking with us, that he is all around and going before us" (180-81).
"Doubt...is also the possibility and the form of hope. The person who is plunged into doubt is not the unbeliever, but the person who has no other hope but hope" (205).
"The person who claims to be full of hope but fails to lead a life of prayer is a liar. Prayer is the 'reason' for hope, at the same time that it is its means and expression. ... Prayer is the assurance of the possibility of God's intervention, without which there is no hope" (273).
"Without hope, reality becomes an unbearable mechanism, a continual damnation, a source of hear and apprehension which cannot be appeased" (275).
"Doubt...is also the possibility and the form of hope. The person who is plunged into doubt is not the unbeliever, but the person who has no other hope but hope" (205).
"The person who claims to be full of hope but fails to lead a life of prayer is a liar. Prayer is the 'reason' for hope, at the same time that it is its means and expression. ... Prayer is the assurance of the possibility of God's intervention, without which there is no hope" (273).
"Without hope, reality becomes an unbearable mechanism, a continual damnation, a source of hear and apprehension which cannot be appeased" (275).
December 1, 2021
I’ve been slowly and deliberately re-reading this astonishing book. It remains a profound, bracing theological exploration of a biblical hope. As some have pointed out Ellul joins with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s notion that we live in the world as if God does not exist. Ellul though states in more emphatically. For him, is is only from the posture of God’s absence/abandonment that authentic hope is even possible. The shut door with no possible human solution available. This is the ground of radical hope that fully engages God to “come, now! Save us.”
June 18, 2024
Pas sure d’avoir tout compris mais ce que j’ai compris, je n’y ai aucunement adhéré. Peut être sur la critique des théories totalisantes (Marx, Freud) et un besoin d’absolu, grande limite.
Sans doute que ce n’est pas par ce livre qu’il eut fallu commencer Ellul
Sans doute que ce n’est pas par ce livre qu’il eut fallu commencer Ellul
September 26, 2024
A theological discussion of hope in history. Somewhat technical, and I'm not sure that the translation did not harm the language. Also, familiarity with the era in which it was written helps.
May 11, 2014
Ellul, as alway, is thought provoking. Written a few decades ago, he talks about the condition of the church being as if God had abandoned her. This is akin to the Old Testament stories of God turning his back on Israel when Israel no long need him. The church, says Ellul, is living quite on its own strength trusting its own techniques. Is there room for God in a technique driven church. Ellul thinks not. He addresses issue of politics, doctrine, and programs. He is critical of mass appeals.
If this was appropriate in the 1970s, it's all the more an issue today. Where is there room for the Holy Spirit as our churches grow based on he means and hows? Where is God when the church is a bureaucracy of business?
If this was appropriate in the 1970s, it's all the more an issue today. Where is there room for the Holy Spirit as our churches grow based on he means and hows? Where is God when the church is a bureaucracy of business?
November 2, 2013
Martin Luther's edict "The just shall live by faith" was a necessity in its time as the burden of works lay strapped across the shoulders of medieval Christianity. But what message should the church have been shouting from the rooftops in the 20th century? Ellul makes a case the in an era of constant disillusionment and horrors (genocides, wars, the Bomb) the most needed message Christians could offer a mixed up world reeling from catastrophes was that of Hope in a time apparent abandonment? Where was God in all this?
June 6, 2013
A prophetic and disturbing text. A truly disruptive work, which will shape my thought for a long time.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews