The 'city' in Ellul and The Epistle to Diognetus

In his pivotal work 'The Meaning of the City' (Sans feu ni lieu: Signification biblique de la Grande Ville) French professor of law, theologian and author Jacques Ellul identifies 'the city' as the spiritual, though concrete, phenomena in which humankind's rebellion against God gets its actual expression in such things as power, money and technology.

For this reason the city is also the concrete locus of God's work in Christ. The liberation from sin and death is in practice a liberation from the spiritual and material powers dwelling in the city. The dialectics of salvation (the Kierkegaardian double-movement?) becomes concrete as a movement between city and desert:

"No longer does man belong to the city, exactly as he no longer belongs to the crowd, because his individuality has been affirmed by his encounter with Jesus Christ. He was made separate, set aside when he left the city to go out into the desert. And this is accomplished in a double movement. When he leaves he is freed from the power of the city. The spirit of the city no longer dominates him, because Jesus Christ has vanquished this spirit. [...] The second movement is the return to the cities. For Jesus sent the crowd back to their towns. But while it is a return, something has been changed beyond recall." (The Meaning of the City, p. 132)

Ellul's work was highly influenced by modern 'dialectical theology', Marxism (though critically) and similar traditions: Though being a material fact, the city nevertheless produces a moral and spiritual reality, which holds humankind captivated. Through God's 'no' and 'yes' to Man, Man is freed from these powers - even if the powers are not as such destroyed, but overcome and 'contained' in the new creation. Hence we're not going back to a lost Eden. Our destination is the heavenly Jerusalem.

In spite of (because of?) its modern character, Ellul succeeds in expressing a view of the city that is compatible with ancient Christianity. At least this seems to be the case if we look at The Epistle to Diognetus from the 2nd century. In this the author writes about the Christians in the world, that:

"while they dwell in cities of Greeks and barbarians as the lot of each is cast, and follow the native customs in dress and food and the other arrangements of life, yet the constitution of their own citizenship, which they set forth, is marvellous, and confessedly contradicts expectation." (5.4, Lightfoot's translation)

"what the soul is in a body, this the Christians are in the world. The soul is spread through all the members of the body, and Christians through the divers cities of the world." (6.1-2, Lightfoot's translation)

That Christians follow the native customs wherever they are, does not mean that they subscribe to the 'ethical ideals' of the world. Just as Christ in a sense went ‘under cover’, taking on human flesh, in order to conquer death, the Christians overcome the world and its morality exactly while they obey the laws of the world.

But if this is a somewhat 'negative' fact, Christians simultaneously imitate God in the 'positive' sense:

"happiness consisteth not in lordship over one's neighbours, nor in desiring to have more than weaker men, nor in possessing wealth and using force to inferiors; neither can any one imitate God in these matters; nay, these lie outside His greatness. But whosoever taketh upon himself the burden of his neighbour, whosoever desireth to benefit one that is worse off in that in which he himself is superior, whosoever by supplying to those that are in want possessions which he received from God becomes a God to those who receive them from him, he is an imitator of God." (10.5-6, Lighfoot's translation)

In the epistle, imitation of God is not in the abstract. To imitate God means to imitate the incarnate logos, Jesus Christ. God’s philantropy is revealed only in His concrete relationship with humankind, in His plan of salvation. For this reason, imitation of God does not mean acquiring abstract Christian ‘virtues’, but must always unfold in concrete relationships.

As in Ellul all this has a 'political’ meaning. The city is where the powers of the world converge. The Church is specifically present here rather than elsewhere - e.g. as with the 'Desert Fathers'. Not that Christians cannot live in the desert (or the monastery), but such desert-dwelling is relatively unimportant compared to the Church’s task in the city.

Jacques Ellul and the author of the Epistle to Diognetus seems to agree, that Christians are to imitate God’s love where it most clearly contradicts the norm. But not by changing the norms, rules and laws of the world through moralism or politics - such would require the use of power and would be incompatible with imitating God. Instead, Christians are to “surpass the laws in their own lives” (5.10, Lightfoot), by imitating the self-sacrifical love of God. That is why the Christian life is truly “paradoxical” (5.4).