An Authentic Calling: Representing Christ and His Kingdom through the Church

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An Authent i c Ca l l i ng: Represent i ng Chr i s t and Hi s Ki ngdom through the Chur ch

of all acts. It is their orientation. It is the condition of the rest of the Christian life. Freedom is not, then, one of the elements in Christian ethics or morals. Without it there would be no ethics. The Christian life is set within it. Again freedom is not an attitude that we can put on or put off as we please. We are so accustomed not to bring freedom into our Christian thinking that it does not occur to us that it is the situation on which everything depends. We are ready to accuse ourselves of not being just or loving. But we hardly ever dream of questioning our lack of freedom or asking whether we are expressing it in the totality of our lives. If we are theologians, we may well argue that this situation is made for us. We are free because we have been freed. Freedom has been acquired. It has been given. We have become free. There can be no altering this. It has become more or less a constitutive element in my life and nature. Why, then, should I worry? It is part of the new nature with which I have been invested. I cannot lose it since it is secured to me by grace . . . . . . Now this message finds so little place in the teaching of the Church that we never find even the slightest reference to it in our catechisms, nor is there any investigation of Christian life on the basis of freedom. Manuals of ethics either ignore freedom, or ten tatively place it among the virtues, as Paul does not do, or find a place for it in the description of human nature. Freedom is nowhere presented as a global situation which ought to find expression in each of our acts. Perhaps this is something which is taken for granted. But the question of the visible and concrete manifestation of free dom is never taken as a starting-point . . . .It is a theme which has vanished from the Christian horizon. The believer is not concerned about knowing whether he is free nor is he worried in the least about ways of manifesting his freedom. In my view this is the very thing that explains the insipidity of the Christian life, its lack of meaning, its failure to make much impact on society. Works of love and service may be multiplied, justice may be demonstrated, and faith may be expressed, but none of this is worth anything without freedom. ~ Jacques Ellul. The Ethics of Freedom . Trans. by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976. p. 104-105.

A. Definition of the call to freedom in the story of the Exodus, Exod. 3.2-10

1. Recognition of cruel bondage under Pharaoh’s oppressive hand, Exod. 3.7 (ESV) – Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt