In Chapter 3 of Ellul's book, entitled "Money", he tries to grapple with what money "really is." Perhaps this seems obvious, but Ellul is struck by Jesus' personification and divinization of money in the gospels. Jesus says, "You cannot serve God and Mammon." Note the word "serve." As Jesus describes it, money presents itself as a rival god, as a spiritual power that can enslave us. In short, money is not some inert technology of exchange. Money is a power, a personal power with goals and intentions. Here is Ellul:
[When Jesus calls money "Mammon" he] personifies money and considers it a sort of god...This personification of money [means that] we are talking about something that claims divinity [and it] reveals something exceptional about money, for Jesus did not usually use deifications and personifications.
What Jesus is revealing is that money is a power. This term should be understood not in its vague meaning, "force," but in the specific sense in which it is used in the New Testament. Power is something that acts by itself, is capable of moving other things, is autonomous (or claims to be), is a law unto itself, and presents itself as an active agent. This is its first characteristic. Its second is that power has spiritual value. It is not only of the material world, although this is where it acts. It has spiritual meaning and direction. Power is never neutral. It is oriented; it also orients people. Finally, power is more or less personal. And just as death often appears in the Bible as a personal force, so here with money. Money is not a power because man uses it, because it is the means of wealth or because accumulating money makes things possible. It is a power before all that, and those exterior signs are only the manifestations of this power which has, or claims to have, a reality of its own.
We absolutely must not minimize the parallel Jesus draws between God and Mammon. He is not using a rhetorical figure but pointing out a reality. God as a person and Mammon as a person find themselves in conflict. Jesus describes the relation between us and one or the other the same way: it is the relationship between servant and master. Mammon can be a master the same way God is; that is, Mammon can be a personal master.
Jesus is not describing the particular situation of the miser, whose master is money because his soul is perverted. Jesus is not describing a relationship between us and an object, but between us and an active agent. He is not suggesting that we use money wisely or earn it honestly. He is speaking of a power which tries to be like God, which makes itself our master and which has specific goals.
Thus when we claim to use money, we make a gross error. We can, if we must, use money, but it is really money that uses us and makes us servants by bringing us under its law and subordinating us to its aims...We are not free to direct the use of money one way or another, for we are in the hands of this controlling power.
Longtime readers will be familiar with what Ellul describes here, how in the biblical imagination we are pushed around, bullied and enslaved to "the principalities and powers." The three most talked about powers in Scripture are Sin, Death, and Satan. All caps are used for each of these because, as Ellul points out, in the Bible these are described in personalized terms, as powers with agency and intention. Jesus adds to this list a fourth power--Mammon--that can enslave us as well.
Sin, Death, Satan, and Money.
These are the demonic forces at work in the world, the "paranormal activity" of the unclean spirits that haunt and possess us.
