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MONEY ANDPOWER

By JACQUES ELLUL

foreward byDavid W. Gill

Translated byLaVonne Neff

INTER-VARSITY PRESSDOWNERS GROVE

ILLINOIS 60515

To my wifewho endures the problems of

money with me

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THE PROBLEM OF MONEY: FROM THEORY TO REALITY 33

contemporary. I am here trying to remind us of these foundations,because wisdom for today is already inscribed in them. The church islike "a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what

is old" (Mt. 13:52).

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MONEY 115 116 MONEY & POWER

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complete, but it must not be total if we are going to be legalistic and turnit into a hardship. Consequently, total giving must never be the productof ecclesiastical rules or sociological fads. It is an individual act and

cannot be the basis of behavior required of all Christians. Total giving isneither an economic system for handling money nor a danger to thestability of society. Total giving, always the exception, is a sign and aprophetic act.

It is a sign because it makes visible the grace of the invisible God.It is a witness of God's total gift to humankind.

It is a prophetic act because it announces the last days. This total

consecration of money to God is an element of the kingdom of heaven inthe midst of us, announcing the greater and final reality of God'skingdom. It is an element of the kingdom of heaven because it meansthat God's grace is worth giving up everything for-but this renunciationdoes not mean leaving things to go their own way; it does not in anysense mean that money is given back to Mammon. It is rather asurrender into Gods hands, and thus it is a reintegration. For ultimatelyreintegration is what lies ahead for money, when the power of moneyadmits its submission to Christ. This is one of the last-day promisesannounced in both Old and New Testaments.

Two matching texts, Haggai 2:7 and Revelation 21:24-26, show,as the old order disappears and the new is created, that money andriches will be given into the hands of the Lord. Everyone will crowd intothe heavenly Jerusalem to bring what is most precious to them. It is thenthat God proclaims, "Money belongs to me. This affirmation is true onlyin the eschatological perspective. It is not unimportant to note that inHaggai, it is the "LORD of hosts" who says this, in other words, the"Lord, chief of the powers. This implies the disappearance or the total

subjection of these powers, Mammon among them. Returning money toGod is only one of many signs of this subjection of the rebel powers.

At the end of time, the power and the story of money willsimultaneously be finished, and money will take its rightful place increation.

At the end of time we will be called to participate by giving everything.We herald this total gift, which will manifest Gods glory on earth. Thenand only then will we find once again the meaning of our life.

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173 AFTERWORD

the poor class, to the regime which makes them a class, to theexploitation on which this regime is built, to the evil of this exploitationbecause the poor are good, to the fight against this regime, to politics orrevolution. . . . But this is exactly the type of reasoning which from the

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y yp gbeginnings of Christianity has led theologians to extract from the biblicaltext judgments and behaviors that, outside their social context and acentury or two later, look like monstrosities. We can no longer begin toimagine how Christians could have come to such conclusions.

At the origin of the Inquisition, of Constantinianism, of theCrusades, of Cesaropapism, of the idea of money as a blessing, therehas always been a just, biblical and true starting point. But themultiplicity of arguments leading us further and further from the text,

producing a construction that matches the ideology of the age (and thattherefore looks obvious in that milieu), leads to appalling perversions,emanating from the Prince of Lies. Today, starting with the profound,fundamental gospel truth about the poor, we are watching the sameperversion, the same slap in the face of Christ. For the poor, who thinkthey are being liberated, are each time thrown in to a slavery that isworse than the former one.