Today we continue our reflections on The Subversion of Christianity by Jacques Ellul (trans. Geoffrey Bromiley; Eerdmans, 1986).
The world
worships the six false gods of Olympianity: the gods of
politics, war, technology, sex, money, and consumption. They are the
conventional gods of power and base their control over us—and ours over others—on
falsehood, indifference, and death.
In contrast,
Jesus is the one true god of freedom, truth, freedom, and vitality. He
frees us from the six Olympian gods to share his light, love, and life with
others.
Beginning in the
200s, and fully by the 300s, the Church suffered permanently from subversion
through success. It became quantitatively Olympian and lost its qualitatively Christian character.