Review: The Presence of the Kingdom, by Jacques Ellul

Review: The Presence of the Kingdom, by Jacques Ellul


I’ve read quite a few of Jacques Ellul’s books over the years but I just got around to reading his first book, which was written in 1948: The Presence of the Kingdom by Jacques Ellul https://amzn.to/2ls7k8J


I had high hopes for this book, and I wasn’t disappointed. Ellul can be a challenge to read. And the fact that he wrote in French, and everything he wrote must be translated, doesn’t help. But it’s mostly his thinking that is challenging. Most people, including myself, simply haven’t thought about things as much as Ellul did, so it’s hard to get a grasp on his thinking.

The Presence of the Kingdom is the easiest of his books that I’ve read thus far, and this is probably because it’s his first book and the many thoughts he later fleshed out are, in The Presence of the Kingdom, in a more germinal stage.

This makes the book more interesting to me because, although he expands upon his ideas in later books, this book allows me to think for myself, and try to imagine where we should go next, as though he never wrote another book, which is exactly what Ellul was hoping for when he wrote The Presence of the Kingdom.

We need to know where we are before we can know where we need to be going. We need to realize the trouble we’re in and how to get out of it. We need to reach the world for Christ by living a different style of life in the world around us.

If you want to know why politics and wars never solve problems but only create new ones… if you want to know why we can never say “no” to the latest new technology… if you want to know why communication technology has created a lack of genuine human relationships… if you want to know how we can reach the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ… buy this book. You’ll be very glad you did.

Rarely, after reading a book, do I feel like buying a case of them and passing them out to neighbors, friends, and strangers on the street. But with The Presence of the Kingdom I feel like doing exactly that.

“At the present moment we are confronted by a choice: either a mass civilization, technological, ‘conformist’ — the ‘Brave New World’ of Huxley, hell organized upon earth for the bodily comfort of everybody — or a different civilization, which we cannot yet describe because we do not know what it will be; it still has to be created, consciously, by men. If we do not know what to choose, or, in other words, how to ‘make a revolution,’ if we let ourselves drift along the stream of history, without knowing it, we shall have chosen the power of suicide, which is at the heart of the world. But we cannot have any illusions; confronted by the power of organization, our revolutionary knowledge can scarcely be used. On the other hand, where are the men and women, at the present time, who have a true sense of ‘revolution’?”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 31)

“We do not have to strive and struggle in order that righteousness may reign upon the earth. We have to be ‘just’ or ‘righteous’ ourselves, bearers of righteousness. The Bible tells us that where there is a just man justice prevails… Thus justice is not a goal to attain, or a balance to be acquired, but it is the gift of God, free and inexplicable, which exists in our life so that our means are not intended to ‘bring in’ justice, but to manifest it.”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 66)

“When I speak of ‘life’… I simply mean the expression of the Holy Spirit, working within us, expressing himself in our actual life, through our words, our habits, and our decisions. Thus what we need is to rediscover all that the fullness of personal life means for a man standing on his own feet in the midst of the world, who rediscovers his neighbor because he himself has been found by God. In the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit we receive the answer to this work of God, and we are bewildered because we are no longer very sure about the way forward, which no longer depends upon us. The end, as well as the means, has been taken away from us, and we hesitate as we look at this way which lies open before us, whose end we cannot see; we have only one certainty, and that is the promise which has been made to us of a certain order, which God guarantees: ‘Seek ye first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all things shall be added unto you’ (Matt. 6:33).”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (pp. 77-78)

“Day after day the wind blows away the pages of our calendars, our newspapers, and our political regimes, and we glide along the stream of time without any spiritual framework, without a memory, without a judgment, carried about by ‘all winds of doctrine’ on the current of history, which is always slipping into a perpetual past. Now we ought to react vigorously against this slackness—this tendency to drift. If we are to live in this world we need to know it far more profoundly; we need to rediscover the meaning of events, and the spiritual framework which our contemporaries have lost.”

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom (p. 138)

My life isn't mine anymore

My life isn't mine anymore 


“As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter.” (Romans 8:36)


Too many self-professed Christians are missing the power of love — and a proper understanding of the New Testament’s completion and fulfillment of the Old Testament.


Jesus didn’t defend himself, although he could have (Matt 26:53). Instead he prayed for those who murdered him (Luke 23:34). Stephen didn’t defend himself, he imitated Jesus by praying for those who murdered him (Acts 7:60). James didn’t defend himself when he was murdered with the sword (Acts 12:2). Eusebius tells us Peter and Paul died martyrs’ deaths in Rome (Ecclesiastical History, Book II Chapter XXV).


None of the Christian martyrs defended themselves. They’ve always prayed for those who persecuted them. This is what Christians do. Their love is expressed to the lost world by their unwillingness to react to hatred and violence in the same way as the lost world reacts to hatred and violence. Their love is expressed in a desire to imitate their Savior. All those who follow Christ will be persecuted (2 Tim. 3:12), sometimes even unto death and, as Christians, we are not to fight back and defend ourselves, we are to pray for those who persecute us.


“For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:” (1 Peter 2:21-23)


No one says this is easy to do. Not to fight back goes against everything within us. But that’s the point. I can’t react as I used to react. I can’t react as my flesh wants me to react. I have to be different. I have to be like Jesus. That’s what the lost world needs to see: a living example of the new life the crucified and resurrected Savior gives to his followers. Christians live their new lives by the power of the living Son of God, who loved us and gave himself for us (Gal. 2:20), and not just for us but for the whole world (1 John 2:2).


A life lived by the power of the Holy Spirit doesn’t look like the lives lived by people in the lost world. It doesn’t look like the life I used to live. A new life lived by the power of the Holy Spirit will look strange, unnatural, and foolish to people who don’t know Christ as their Savior.


The cross of Christ and his resurrection are foolishness to the lost world (1 Cor.1:18; Acts 17:32) .

And always will be. The followers of Christ who live their lives filled with love and forgiveness for those who deserve neither will always appear foolish to the lost world.


This is the whole point. It’s not supposed to make sense to the world. The Christian’s love is supposed to look oddly different — and be strangely compelling — to those who are lost.


“God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).


“And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Corinthians 5:15).


My life isn’t mine anymore. My life belongs to the one who loved me, was delivered up for my offenses, and was raised again for my justification (Romans 4:25).

One Woman‘s Transformation from Other to Self

One Woman's Transformation from Other to Self: A de Beauvoirian Gender Interpretation of Kate Chopin‘s: The Awakening 

Thesis statement: By using Simone de Beauvoir‘s understanding of women as Other opposed to Self in The Second Sex, I will demonstrate how the character of Edna Pontellier, in The Awakening, transitions from Other to Self. 

Simone de Beauvoir tells us that, historically speaking, men have long set themselves up as the One, the Absolute, the Subject, and the Self; therefore relegating women to the place of Other: “She [woman] is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.” 

Simone de Beauvoir tells us men have been defining women negatively for thousands of years: “‘The female is a female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities,’ said Aristotle, ‘we should regard the female nature as afflicted with a natural defectiveness.’ And St Thomas for his part pronounced woman to be an ‘imperfect man’, an ‘incidental’ being. This is symbolised in Genesis where Eve is depicted as made from what Bossuet called ‘a supernumerary bone’ of Adam . . . Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being” (de Beauvoir). 

Early in The Awakening (p. 33), Edna Pontellier begins to realizes that she is not, in fact, an Other— that is, a being defined negatively—but that she is, rather, a Self: “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was beginning to realize her position in the universe as a human being, and to recognize her relations as an individual to the world within and about her” (p. 33). The character of Edna is caught-up within the patriarchal Self/Other cultural milieu of her time but she does not feel as though she properly belongs to it: “In short, Mrs. Pontellier was not a mother-woman . . . women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels” (p. 19). 

Simone de Beauvoir describes the patriarchal Self/Other milieu, in which Edna is Other simply because she is a woman: ―When man makes of woman the Other, he may, then, expect to manifest deep-seated tendencies towards complicity. Thus, woman may fail to lay claim to the status of subject because she lacks definite resources, because she feels the necessary bond that ties her to man regardless of reciprocity, and because she is often very well pleased with her role as the Other” (de Beauvoir). 

In The Awakening, Edna is not at all content with her role as Other but she finds it difficult to break free of this role, which is constantly imposed upon her by the dominant patriarchal culture of which she is a part. The difficulty Edna has in learning how to break free of these patriarchal, cultural restraints is described metaphorically by the author: “Edna had attempted all summer to learn to swim” (p. 70). Edna’s “learning how to swim” is the author‘s metaphorical description of Edna‘s learning how to be free or liberated—in the feministic sense—of patriarchal dominance. The first time Edna senses freedom, and the first time she realizes herself as Self rather than Other, is when she swims out to sea; and the experience terrifies her: 

“As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself. Once she turned and looked toward the shore, toward the people she had left there. She had not gone any great distance—that is, what would have been a great distance for an experienced swimmer. But to her unaccustomed vision the stretch of water behind her assumed the aspect of a barrier which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome. A quick vision of death smote her soul, and for a second of time appalled and enfeebled her senses. But by an effort she rallied her staggering faculties and managed to regain the land” (pp. 70-71). 

As she swims out into the sea, Edna seems to be “reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself,” and when she turned and “looked toward the shore” she was aware of “the people she had left there.” Edna‘s awareness of the people she‘s left behind, by swimming out to sea, represents (metaphorically) her hesitancy to cut the ties to the oppressive, patriarchal Self/Other milieu of which she is a part, which de Beauvoir speaks of, and Edna‘s perception of “the stretch of water” as “a barrier, which her unaided strength would never be able to overcome,” represents her present inability to lay hold of the freedom and independence (i.e., the realization of herself as Self rather than Other) that her swimming out to sea or “reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself” represents. 

In this episode, the exploit of Edna‘s swimming out to sea functions (metaphorically) as a mode of existential, feminist transcendence. As de Beauvoir points out, such “exploits or projects . . . serve as a mode of transcendence,” (de Beauvoir) yet when Edna catches a glimpse of her potential freedom—a brief moment of existential, feminist transcendence—she shrinks away from it in (deathly) terror, and it is only by great effort that she manage to swim back to shore. Edna resists, here, that which (alone) can set her free: the liberating ability to transcend the artificial boundaries that patriarchy has imposed upon her which limit her existence to that of Other. Edna tastes feminist liberation, but this taste of freedom frightens her and she swims back to shore. She fears both her separation from the world she is accustomed to and the world of feminine liberation, and she senses that in order to gain the freedom she desires and the freedom she has glimpsed in this one, terrifying moment of liberation, she must swim deep into the unknown. 

It is not until the end of The Awakening that Edna finally embraces, what I believe to be, her one, true Lover; whose desire for her is simply that which Edna desires for herself: to become a Self rather than an Other. A hopeless romantic—with an artistic, mercurial temperament and given to fantasies—Edna makes the romantic, realistic, and courageous decision to embrace the only, true Lover who is able to speak to her feminine soul; the only, true Lover whose sensuous, feminine touch enfolds her body in its soft, close embrace; the only, true Lover who can help Edna to embrace her feminist liberation: the sea. 

The author of The Awakening, Kate Chopin, personifies the sea as a feminine Lover in precisely this way: “The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace” (p. 34). Standing naked by the sea, Edna‘s transcendental, feminist transformation—from unenlightened Other to enlightened Self—begins: “How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! How delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known” (p. 301). Here, on the beach, Edna realizes her new-born Self. This time, in swimming out to sea, Edna will realize (i.e. make real) that which de Beauvoir speaks of: “There is no justification for present existence other than its expansion into an indefinitely open future” (de Beauvoir). 

Edna knows she will only find herself as Self by losing herself as Other within the deep, sensuous, open, and limitless embrace of her feminine Lover, the sea: “The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace. She went on and on . . .”

This time Edna will not retreat from her new-found existential, feminist transcendence, because “[e]very time transcendence falls back into immanence, stagnation, there is a degradation of existence . . . the brutish life of subjection to given conditions – and of liberty into constraint and contingence” (de Beauvoir). Edna, now, has lost all desire for “life” as an Other and she embraces completely—although not without nostalgic longings—her new-found existence as a Self: “She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child . . . She thought of Léonce and the children . . . They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could possess her, body and soul . . . The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies . . . ‘Good-by—because, I love you’ . . . but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.” 

This time, Edna is not afraid, and she swims deep into her Lover‘s eternal embrace. When she looks into the distance, the old (deathly) terror “flames up” for an instant, but then sinks again. Edna is no longer afraid; she embraces her Lover and in doing so she embraces her Self. She hears her father's voice and her sister Margaret's . . . the barking of an old dog chained to the sycamore tree . . . the spurs of the cavalry officer as he walks across the porch and she becomes one with her Lover, the sea, who—alone—helps Edna to realize her true being: “There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air” and Edna becomes one with the world—earth, sky and sea. Here, in her Lover‘s soft and sensuous embrace—and only here—does Edna become one with herself as Self; she is no longer Other. 

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I wrote this paper for an English 380 class with Professor Larry Shillock at Wilson College in 2010