A Subversive text

I have finally read some Ellul (for a book group that I belong to). A friend of mine has been bugging me for about three years to read the dead frenchman. The Subversion of Christianity is an interesting text which make broad and powerful claims about Christianity today. Ellul is arguing that all has been marred in Christianity (kinda) and that what we call Christianity is really just an “ism”, “denoting an ideological or doctrinal trend deriving from a philosophy” (pg. 10). He claims that true Christianity is;
1. the revelation and work of God accomplished in Jesus Christ
2. the being of the church as the body of Christ
3. the faith and life of Christians in truth and love

Being true to his French roots, Ellul decides to call true Christianity “X” and Christianity is the bastardized practice that many of us are involved in today. It all started with the entrance of philosophy into Christianity, or actually into Judaism. Ellul almost one-up’s Milbank Theology and Social Theory (posthumously and preeminently) claim that Christianity lost its way with the Reformation. Ellul claims that Hellenization of Judaism and Christianity was the beginning of the end. From there, even a rightly thought out idea or theory would still veer in the wrong direction because of the rotten foundation. Yet further in the book Ellul uses scripture from the Hellenized New Testament to argue against other subversions of Christianity (the drive for political power, for example). Hmmm, can one use flawed sources to argue against a flawed system? Ellul makes some great critiques of Christianity’s compromise with the state, with Islam (a fascinating chapter), with the separation of the sacred and the secular (again driving one to think of Milbank), with morals, and a drive for power. Ellul also has a great chapter about powers, and evil akin to Walter Wink’s work on the Powers and principalities.
Where I am unsettled is with Ellul’s conclusion. The Holy Spirit will make everything right, even if it is just for a moment. Is this a realized Eschatology resting on a wholly pnumatological causality? Or in other words, if we have f**ked up Christianity so much, do we have any hope of getting it right, or do we have to completely relay upon the actions of God, specifically the Holy Spirit, to experience the true Christianity that was intended? How much can we do, and how much is out of our hands? I think it is important to rely upon the Holy Spirit. I think it is important to get messy, not have things under control, to let go of our own desires and see where things lead. Yet I would also like to think that there is a relational nature to the Holy Spirit. I would like to that that not only does the Holy Spirit act, but we respond. I would also like to think that at times, despite ourselves, we act in a good and almost pure way, and the Holy Spirit can respond. It is a messy ecclesiology, theology, eschatology, but it is one where we can’t place all of the control in the hands of humans who have a tendency to screw up everything that is touched.