One of the most interesting recurring themes in Jacques Ellul’s writing is one that contrasts reality (or facts) with truth. As Ellul distinguishes them, facts are what are and—implicitly—what must be conformed to, whereas truth is what ought to be. Ellul’s The Humiliation of the Word explores this distinction at length, but it crops up in plenty of his other writing. In fact, I’m currently reading his Présence au monde moderne (or rereading it, depending on what one considers reading the original French after reading the English translation last year), and I’m delighted to see that he makes this distinction as early as this 1948 book.

I love it when different books I’m reading come together in interesting ways. That happened recently while rereading Joseph Spencer’s 1st Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction and restarting (this, time, in English) Jacques Ellul’s The Humiliation of the Word. In this post, I want to take up a distinction that Spencer makes in his book, suggesting that:

Question’s about the Book of Mormon’s truth tend to be of two sorts. First, we want to know whether it all really happened. Second, we want to know whether it really shows us who God is.