To Will & To Do Quotes

“In the technical society, the Normal tends to replace the Moral; we no longer require man to act morally, but to act normally. The Normal is no longer an Imperative of conscience; it is obtained via average behavior, whether this is determined statistically, by psychological evaluation, etc. Everything tends to confirm this predominance of the Normal. More and more often, a criminal is not considered to be a man who has done wrong, but a sick or abnormal person who must be cured, to bring them back to average behavior. Likewise, the highest virtue required of man today is to say that he is not adapted.... The principal goal of teaching and education today is to produce young people who are adapted to society.”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I

“[L]et us forcefully remember that faith, not morality, makes the Christian life; and that faith is not centered on the Good, but on Jesus Christ.”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I

“What makes a man a Christian is his confession that Christ is his savior. Pagans may behave very well, but always only according to the human standard of the good; the objectivity of their work can never testify that it concerns the very will of God. For... only God can judge what is good in our works; it is not our affair, and we are not capable of doing so.”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I

“The requirement of God is Holiness. Now, all accumulation of virtues, good works, lofty sentiments, right intentions - all this is not Holiness.... Holiness is of another order; it is never a succession of just and pure acts, and these latter do not necessarily express it. All the good that man can do remains the good of man and never becomes the Holiness of God. Yet, this latter is what God expects of man, nothing less. There is an impassable abyss between the two. No value created by man, no accumulation of such values can attain the Holiness of God, which is not a morality raised to the absolute level, nor perfection, but the very life of God.... There is no bridge that man can take up to God. Glory and thanks be to God: he descended to us, he came to the earth, he crossed the abyss, and it is here that we encounter him[.]”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I

“What God decides has nothing in common with caprice; what he ordains for man to do or not do does not derive from the fantasies of a tyrant whose law coincides with his power. The movement that regulates the relation of God with man is the history of the covenant of grace, throughout which God is faithful and constant. Consequently, the good is ultimately not incoherence. All of God's orders are situated within the framework of the history of the people of Israel and the history of Jesus Christ; all his prohibitions cannot be generalized, as they presuppose that good coincides with the will of God.”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I

“[T]he very act by which man wants to decide on what is good, to know the good by himself - this act is sin. Sin, therefore, is not disobeying a morality; it is precisely the will to determine this morality independently of God, a will that is simultaneously a lust, a will to power.”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I

“In the Bible, the Good does not precede God, the Good is not God; the Good is the will of God. All that God wills is good, not because God is subordinate to the Good, obedient to this Good, but simply because he wills it. It is not the Good in itself that determines the will of God; it is the will of God that determines what is Good. And there is no Good outside this decision.”
― Jacques Ellul, To Will & To Do: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, Volume I