Jacques Ellul- Prophetic or Apocalyptic Theologian of Technology?*

Jacques Ellul-
Prophetic or Apocalyptic
Theologian of Technology?*
In Season Out of Season: An Introduction to the Thought of Jacques
Ellul. By Jacques Ellul. Based on Interviews by Madeleine
Garrigou-Lagrange. Translated by Lani K. Niles. (San
Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982).
he natural beauty of Rio de Janeiro's coastal flatlands enclosed
Twithin rock mountain barriers serves as the setting of a modern
city constructed with attention to the cultural residues of Europe.
The natural and cultural attractions of the city lure the people of
Brazil to the friendly bistros and gleaming beaches, the enticing
restaurants and colorful football matches, as a leisured, if not
leisurely, return on hard work within a nation struggling to modernize.
In relaxing at one of the sidewalk cafes that ring the beachfronts
of Copacabana and Leme, one might puzzle over the seeming
paradox of, from above Corcovado's 2,310 foot peak, a one-hundred
foot figure of Christ the Redeemer dominating this city of leisure
with outstretched arms, until the reality of the city etches itself onto
the glare of its image: penny merchants of myriad goods stalk the
beaches amongst both the very wealthy and the very poor who share
nature's waves. Thieves of various ages cruise the sands while the
daughters of poverty struggle to survive in packs around the plush,
modern high-rise hotels. Rolls Royces edge past the sub-teen shoeshines
who attempt to earn sufficient means for their families' survival
in stilted shacks over stagnant water. It is this reality of the city
that captures the paradoxes of modernity with which Jacques Ellul
struggles in coming to grips with modern society and technology.
His answers suggest that one must look upward toward the statue
that dominates the city whenever one's gaze rises above the streets.
But alas, electricity is used to flood the towering figure as it maintains
its vigilance into the night.
For many years now, Jacques Ellul has advanced the most consis-
*The author thanks the Vanderbilt University Research Council for support and
Scarlett Gower Graham for her criticism.

214 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
tent critical analysis of the role of technology in tranforming man
and society, and has been recognized, especially in the United
States, as the spokesperson for human existence as it is threatened by
technological absorption; From the appearance of John Wilkinson's
translation of Ellul's La technique ou l'enjeu du siecle (1954) in 1964
as The Technological Society, few serious discussions of technology
as a social issue have avoided attention to Ellul's rhetoric. He has
provided the framework for discourse concerning technology by
stealing the presumption of argument from those scholars who see
technology largely as the means for improving human existence. In
the literature, Ellul reigns supreme as the anti-technology
spokesperson, the theorist most vocal in laying bare the dehumanizing
aspect of progress based on the process of exploiting all available
means of transforming and organizing production and management
under the , principle of efficiency. Moreover, Ellul's prescriptionscarefully
constrained in his works on technology per se in order to
maximize attention to "the problem"-are now being studied by a
wider audience than the small circle of Protestant readers who
would have found his version of Protestant theology interesting.
Social theorists of the reputation of John H. Schaar and Norman O.
Brown have begun to give critical attention even to Ellul's
theological texts and prescriptions.' Thus, in analyzing the work of
Ellul by placing this newest volume into the context of his corpus, it
is essential that the two themes of his critical analysis be advanced.
The first is the assessment of the phenomenon, technology, as it
dominates modern existence. The second closely related theme is his
personal religious prescription for dealing with this domination.
These themes revolve around the modern city, which serves as the
representation of the technological system in its full development as
well as the symbol for non-spiritual existence.
The many books of Ellul that are available in English translation
cannot be adequately summarized in a single essay. In reviewing his
overall position as very personally summarized in the interview format
of In Season Out of Season, one must pick and choose among
twenty previous translations, not to mention more than a dozen
books currently unavailable in English. 2 In this essay, therefore,
1. John H. Schaar, "Jacques Ellul: Between Babylon and the New Jerusalem,"
democracy, Vol. II, no. 4 (Fall, 1982): 102-118, and Norman O. Brown, "Jacques
Ellin: Beyond Geneva and Jerusalem," democracy Vol. II, no. 4 (Fall, 1982): 119-126.
2. See (235-236) for current list of Ellul's books. All parenthetical page references in
the text are to In Season Out of Season.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 215
Ellul's critical stance on technology and his plea for the spiritual life,
the "two lines of study" he consciously planned for his life work
(175), serve as our guide to the "ensemble" of his works which he
himself warns cannot be treated as a source for founding a "school of
thought" (193). Let us begin, then, by placing the first theme in the
context of the literature.
`Technology' and Political Theory Before and After Jacques Ellul
When classical political philosophers introduced the critical
assessment of the social and political consequences of technē, they
raised concern over problems of technology at the very beginning of
the Western political tradition. Their recognition that technē was
neutral in the sense that it must be guided by human ends, but that
advances in technique introduce new potential ends, led them to
worry about the control of technological innovations in society. As
Leo Strauss put the point, "The classics demanded the strict moralpolitical
supervision of inventions; the good and wise city will determine
which inventions are to be made use of and which are to be
suppressed." 3 Technē was viewed as artifact, as humanly created
means to an end, and therefore properly to be subjected to
evaluative standards before particular technological innovations
and inventions are adopted within a society. To be sure, even Plato
recognized the positive potential of technological improvements, at
least to the extent that he knew that the public would desire improvements.
After acknowledging Plato's conservative position
toward forces of change, Mulford Q. Sibley writes:
Yet the inevitability of social change in the existential world is recognized, for
one of the functions of the Nocturnal Council is to send clever men abroad to
gather suggestions for collective changes-including new technology-which
can be introduced gradually and rationally.*
From the beginning, then, Western political thought has recognized
the potential conflict between the desire for the fruits of improved
technology and the possible costs of unthinking adoption of new
techniques.
The key to the classical position on technology is the commitment
3. Thoughts on Machiavelli (New York: The Free Press, 1959), 298.
4. Technology and Utopian Thought (Minneapolis, Minn.: Burgess Publishing Co.,
1972), 13.

216 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
to human control of innovations in technē through deliberative
reason. The problem that had to be overcome was, for the classical
theorist, thoughtlessness in political-social choice, not the removal
of technē per se. The experience and results of applying new techniques
to the procedures of production could well lead to improvements
in methods that also carry negative consequences. It is
the latter unanticipated consequences that the classical theorists
wished to control by rational assessments. This is the recurrent tension
found in various warnings about technology as diverse as those
of Plato and Alexander Pope. Readings of Plato's utopia in the
Republic that assert he supports a no-growth recommendation fail
to take into account the fact that the point of the text was to
demonstrate the potential consequences of thoughtless or unthinking
acceptance of uncontrolled change. Plato could see in his own
culture that technology affected society and man. Thus, the
"modern" problem of technology is not so modern after all. It is
rather a recurrent problem of balancing man's capacity to develop
means of controlling and restructuring physical nature against
careful assessment of the proper values and purposes to be imposed
as limits-humane limits-on that potentiality. The primary task in
understanding technology is to grasp the phenomenon comprehensively
and precisely enough with our theory so that we can better
understand the normative and empirical consequences associated
with technē and its changes.
Although the problem of social and political assessment of
technology has long been part of social research, the problem of
technology seems more central in current thinking; in part because
of Ellul's writings. Perhaps this currency has increased because of
the omnipresence of machines and computers, or because of our
awareness of such phenomena as organizational growth or the
knowledge explosion. The increased sensitivity may be based on the
fact that new techniques now are being developed more directly out
of scientific discoveries rather than serendipitously occurring as
Jerome B. Wiesner characterized the advances that led to the industrial
revolution, as acts of "practical men and based upon art,
observation and common sense." 5 It is not necessary to resolve fully
whether the definitions of technology have recently shifted in an
essential way in order to recognize that its classical defining
characteristics have remained stable. Techne, or the means for con-
5. Where Sciēnce and Politics Meet (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 31.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 217
trolling, developing, and restructuring nature, is generally the same
sort of thing if applied to carving marble in Attica as it is if applied
to building a space shuttle. It is nonetheless important to explore
whether the scope and procedures that have evolved permit a better
understanding of `technique' and `technology' so as to improve our
understanding and thinking about the phenomenon. It is this question
of enlarged scope and impact of technology wherein Jacques
Ellul's explication of technique and technology are important for
assessing the range of problems and issues that currently attract most
of our attention in evaluating the subject. Then, particular
treatments in the field of technology studies that are relevant to sorting
through these issues and problems can be briefly explored in
assessing Ellul's arguments.
Ellul's discussions of `technology' and `technique' provide perhaps
the most comprehensive overview of the problems associated with
the phenomenon. His many definitions and usages give one more a
general conception than a precise concept of `technology' because he
attempts to focus our thinking on the emergent qualities of
technology within society. Although he himself in a footnote calls
Max Weber's formal definition the "first satisfactory" one, it is instructive
to introduce it as a contrast with Ellul's own efforts in
order to see the different concerns guiding their analyses. Weber
says:
The term 'technology' applied to an action refers to the totality of means
employed as opposed to the meaning or end to which the action is, in the last
analysis, oriented. Rational technique is a choice of means which is consciously
and systematically oriented to the experience and reflection of the actor, which
consists, at the highest level of rationality, in scientific knowledge. What is concretely
to be treated as a 'technology' is thus variable.°
Weber is serious about the range of applicability of the term because
he sees it applying to activities as various as the techniques of love
and war, prayer and legal decisions, painting and sculpture. "All of
these are capable of the widest variation in degree of rationality.
The presence of a `technical question' always means that there is
8. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, trans. A. M. Henderson and
Talcott Parsons (New York: The Free Press, 1964), 100-101. Ellul cites this passage,
though his translation is significantly different (see especially the lack of 'totality' in his
reading of Weber) in the first footnote to Ch. 2 (at 330) of The Technological System,
trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New York: Continuum, 1980).

218 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
some doubt over the choice of the most efficient means to an end."
Weber gives rather precise and unambiguous meaning to the term
while recognizing the applicability would be wide-ranging. Ellul's
conception is looser and less neutral than Weber's concept.
The "Note to the Reader" in his Technological Society introduces
Ellul's special view of his subject.
The term technique, as I use it, does not mean machines, technology, or this or
that procedure for attaining an end. In our technological society, technique is
the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for
a given stage of development) in every field of human activity. Its
characteristics are new; the technique of the present has no common measure
with that of the past e
The first obvious difference between Weber and Ellul comes not
from the terms `technology' and 'technique'-problems of
etymology are discussed below-but from the totality of means to an
action (Weber) and totality of all social means (Ellul). This difference
is especially noticeable in conjunction with Weber's attempt
to define for all contexts and Ellul's claim that each context is
somehow without common measure with other contexts, thus
leading to a new definition of `technique' for our "technological
society." (One suspects a difference in purposes guiding their respective
techniques of definition, and that Ellul's elusiveness may be the
most efficient means to his end.) Ellul's definition and his opined
novelty of the characteristics he isolates provide a summation not
only of the book it introduces, but also of his many works on the
overall theme of technology. Not only does `technique' refer to the
totality of efficient, rational human, innovations, Ellul also treats
_ this totality as a holistic phenomenon. The definition's defining
characteristics identify what technique is; the treatment introduces
an accompanying characteristic of a Weltanschauung that is potentially
an insidious and pernicious determinant of social action. The
accompanying characteristic is what Ellul sees as a new force to be
reckoned with by societies. Indeed, "technique," in Ellul's summary
interview responses, is "the fundamental element of society" displacing
Marx's 19th century economic determinism (175-176).
The collection of individual techniques is not the force that
7. Weber, 101.
8. Trans. John Wilkinson (New York: Vintage Books, 1964), xxv. This book was
originally published in French in 1954.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 219
dominates man according to Ellul. Together, techniques are a reservoir
of means that independently could be treated under Weber's
definition. What he attempts to show under promises of being
neutral toward his subject is that the totality of techniques has the
additional characteristics of totality as such; that is, technique has
become so dominant as to impose a structure on all human action,
including politics.° "Nothing can lay claim to action; it is acted
upon by technological process. Nothing can regard itself as
autonomous; it is the technological system that is autonomous
...."1° This mode of analysis transforms the accompanying
characteristic of Ellul's definition-totality-into the defining
characteristic (no surprise at all if seen in the context of all of his
books) which in turn does permit him to raise some very serious
questions about technique for political theorists, but the tautological
trickery of incorporating an accompanying characteristic into the
definition prevents anyone from answering the questions from
within the structure of his arguments. Thus Ellul's statements do not
permit specification of technique as a concept (which can be treated
definitionally and placed into testable hypotheses about its consequences)
separate from the theoretical claims themselves. The merging
of the thing and its consequences leads to an holistic view. That
Ellul merges concept and theory is best shown by example:
Technique is not an isolated fact in society (as the term technology would lead
us to believe) but it is related to every factor in the life of modern man; it affects
social facts as well as all others. Thus technique itself is a sociological
phenomenon, and it is in this light that we shall study it."
This interest in how technique relates to individual and social action
is the central one for many political theorists. What Ellul may
miss by his failure to distinguish definitional and theoretical differences
is the guidance from classical and modern theorists he so
often labels as empty. The rise of classical philosophy was to a great
extent based on the refusal of Socrates to ignore the impact of science
and artifact upon man. The Socratic turn, so well isolated in Francis
9. On the very negative political implications seen by Ellul, see both The Political Illusion,
trans. Konrad Kellen (New York: Vintage Books, 1972) and Propaganda: The
Formation of Men's Attitudes, trans. Konrad Kellen and Jean Komer (New York: Vintage
Books, 1973).
10. Technological System, 12.
11. Technological Society, xxvi.

220 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
McDonald Cornford's Before and After Socrates, 12 places the human
consequences for man as the proper starting point in assessing
science and technology, thus introducing politics as properly in control
of technē in its application. Though Ellul raises many important
issues, questions, and problems, his definitions, because they merge
concept and theory, remove what the Western tradition has treated
as the proper means for resolving these very issues, questions, and
problems. The important distinction between technicians and politicians,
recognized in Robert K. Merton's foreword to The
Technological Society, 13
provides the key to Ellul's lock. The only
means of controlling modern technology, with its seemingly
autonomous laws of growth, is politics; but then, that was also true
of pre-modern technique as well.
The distinction between `technology' and `technique' is more difficult
to draw in English and German than in French because in the
former `technology' is often used to mean "technique" as well as
" technology", just as the German word `Technik' can mean either
English term." Roughly following the Greek distinction, `technique'
is the "means for action," while `technology' is the "science or theory
of techniques. As Ellul relates:
Originally . . . 'technique' ... consistent with its etymology, meant a certain
manner of doing something, a process or ensemble of processes. Diderot thus
speaks of the "technique proper to each painter." But rapidly, as machine and
its industrial application came to dominate, `technique' (and then `technology'
in English) began to designate the processes of constructing and exploiting
machines. People now more frequently employ the plural. These were then
studied by a science called technologie.. . . This science consists in describing
and analyzing these techniques, . . . in tracing their history and investigating
ways of improving them. 15
This distinction permits Ellul to isolate common features of
technology and he specifies the "overriding feature since its origin:
efficiency. People could now say that technology was the ensemble
12. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932).
13. Technological Society, 10.
14. See translator's note, 106, of Weber. The etymological roots of the terms apparently
are not reversed from the Greek in Romanian usages, but are in specialized
usage in the field of technology assessment: see Daniela Rusa, "Terminology for
Technology Assessment," paper at the 1982 I.P.S.A. Congress, Rio de Janeiro, where
"Tekhnikos, tekhne = art, skill, mental and practical ability "
"Tekhnologia = treatise or discourse on the arts" are defined.
15. Technological System, 24.
and

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 221
of the absolutely most efficient means at a given moment." 16
Ellul
thus gets back to Weber's definition of `technology' with the addition
of "absolutely most efficient" added to "means," thereby adding
an animism to the means: inefficient means at any moment fall
out of the class `technology'.
Ellul's premises of definition become less opaque as he introduces
his view that technology is more than an instrument. Ellul sees
techniques as instruments with the added thrust that the instruments
are means that mediate between nature and man. He sees
growth in the quantity of mediations having qualitatively changed
into a technological object." This mode of mediation replaces all
other human bonds from the arts, magic, myth and symbols. Thus,
the technological object prefigures all other relations, all means to
human ends. According to Ellul, this qualitative shift was more than
additive: `By combining and universalizing, observers had now
given it a kind of autonomy and specificity." 18 This emergent quality
he uncovers, however, was hidden in his definition all along,
awaiting release by tautological assessments. One can be convinced
that the increased role of technology raises problems deserving of
assessment without presuming that at some state "more" releases a
genie from a bottle. By failing to state and test the obvious assertions
about the consequences of size of technological growth, Ellul constructs
his conclusion within his definition: a technological society is
one dominated by a technological system; a technological system
"fashions society in terms of its necessities" although only as its
"determining factor" because the technological system is not the only
factor. 19 All he needs to do then is persuade any modern society
and its members that it is a case of a technological society, and the
stage is set for acceptance of Ellul's prescriptions. This prefiguring of
the problems of technological assessments by the macro-analytic
sociological stance should perhaps receive some praise because it
makes very clear that the assessment of technology may require different
concepts and theories at different levels of analysis because of
its potentially negative accompanying characteristics of unconstrained
growth. 20 But research based on less encompassing
16. Technological System, 261.
17. Technological System, 34.
18. Technological System, 27.
19. Technological System; 18.
20. Technological Society, xxix.

222 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
definitions allows for careful assessment as to whether the "accompanying
characteristics" always are present, and why. This simple
definitional correction neutralizes not only the prefigured
sociological claims about man in technological society, it also leads
toward ways of testing them. Most important, it frees our theory
from the pervasive fatalism that suggests that modern man is
submerged by a technological determinism unless and until (a) we
kill each other off in war, (b) God decides to intervene, or (c) we are
transformed by a spiritual revolt (perhaps stimulated by Ellul's
theological works?). 21 We can check Ellul's gloom only if we introduce
the possibility-the classical possibility-of humanly controlling
technology through politics. On the other hand, Ellul's
works are important because they rivet attention on problems that
must be studied, albeit by more rigorous methods, in research on the
relations between technology and society.
The Consequences of the Technological Society:
Technology, Man, Freedom, and Politics
The characteristic of the technological society that troubles Ellul
the most as he reviews his work in sociology and theology seems to be
the logic of the world that systematizes and orders the social existence;
Ellul argues that he himself is in self-contradiction on the
problem of order:
Here again I am in complete contradiction with myself. By preference I am a
man of order. I like everything to unfold without a hitch, for my day's schedule
to be precisely planned. I am unhappy in disorder. . . . But I cannot tolerate external
and formal order.... order is born from disorder, and imbalances alone
are creative. Freedom, too, is never established once and for all; it has to be
reconquered, lost, and gambled for again. So I would not say that I am a man
of order but rather a man who believes in the necessity of a constantly renewed
action (222).
21. Technological Society, xxx. The literature that is important in coming to grips
with Ellul's purposes can best be explored in The Meaning of the City, trans. Dennis
Pardee (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1970); The
Politics of God and the Politics of Man, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972); and The Ethics of Freedom,
trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdman's Publishing
Co., 1976).

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 223
Were it not that Ellul's theology is individualistic, thus removing the
positive role of community, one could see a serious connection with
the ideas of P.J. Proudhon when Ellul says that Christianity
"prevents society from locking itself into a finished system"
(221-222). Ossification and fixation, those side-products of standardization,
are for Ellul "not only the supreme evil, but the evil: it
is paralysis, entropy, repetition, identicalness, unity, duplication "
(223). Unfortunately, Ellul's model of freedom in diversity
resembles more a solipsistic anarchism than a humanitarian one; it
attacks society's order rather than suggesting a communitarian
order.
The attack on technology is essentially an attack on the world.
Ellul sees the human condition as a drama:
God does not want to rule everything; the world is extraordinarily uncertain,
dominated as it is by sin. But within this world are at work grace, the covenant,
and the promise. God does not reject his creation, but his relationship with it is
one of tension, of conflict, and of pardon (204).
This "rethinking" of the Protestant line removes, for Ellul, God as
the source for his attack on Technique: the source is sin, the sin of
the city. The questioning of technology can therefore be broached as
an attack on human weaknesses, as it were, that are the consequences
of our wickedness; one denies not God's order in challenging
the technological one. It is a search for an answer to the question
of whether there exists an alternative to the logic of technology, " can
there be an evolution that would not be the absorption of all society,
the molding of man and society by Technique?" (205) After
discounting the cultures of the Third World, human nature,
mankind, and nature as potential dialectic oppositions to Technique
(205-207), Ellul settles on the theological solution (207-208). Not.only
is God not the source of the technological society, God provides its
only potential opponent. Man's freedom is simply found in following
the Word in the midst of the technological society.
The dialectical opposition of religion, for Ellul, can be seen in
small openings of a deepening of faith in negative contexts such as
scientists becoming acquainted with the God-hypothesis and committed
Christians in Russia (211), but it will not be a major intervention
because we are in "a period in which God is silent" (210). This
hope that is generated by small openings is based on faith in human
intermediaries acting for God, but must be much less expansive than

224 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
which he possessed in his earlier efforts to transform the Reformed
Church of France (84-97). Indeed, all of Ellul's efforts at organization
and working within institutions seemed to lead to negative experiences:
these negative experiences no doubt affected his thinking
about organization and the problems of technological society.
One of the most instructive reminiscences by Ellul deals with his
early experiences in politics. In the 1930s, in collaboration with Bernard
Charbonneau, Ellul organized small, revolutionary groups as
an option to the ordinary conceptions of political parties by other
Marxists (38-44). The efforts for concrete action of this sort did not
receive institutional support. The connection with the groups broke
when Ellul took the Professorship at Strasbourg in 1938, and the
groups disappeared with the war. The young Marxist professor with
anarchist, anti-nationalist tendencies was fired by the Vichy government
two years after his assumption of the position, thus giving him
"no other way to act" than joining the Resistance (47). The fact that
he was in the resistance group of the Gironde region led to his inclusion
in the post-war liberation city council of Bordeaux. A brief
eighteen months of experience greatly affected Ellul's views of
politics and its potential for action.
Though the longevity of it was less than two years Ellul believes
that,
in retrospect it was very important. Basically, this experience determined many
of my later political and administrative analyses. I learned how little room for
action a politician has and how heavy the administration is. And this was the
case even during a troubled period, when from all appearances we were starting
almost from scratch and the old structures were open to question. So that is
where I learned, for example, how incredibly dependent we are on administrative
departments (53).
This brief exposure was translated into a truism about political control:
Ellul had to trust department heads for technical information
rather than his own rational evaluations, thus. convincing himself
that a technocracy, ultimately uncontrollable by a democracy, must
emerge (54) . Because of the importance of the antipolitical stance in
all of his major works, his words on the experience are worth extensive
reflection:
We arrived on the scene like choirboys with our sincerity, our certainties, and
our revolutionary intransigence. And we found ourselves in company with some
seasoned old foxes who knew how to conduct a political meeting and how to
block it. The political networks were immediately reformed. Dating from this

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY
defeat and these manipulations, I developed a mistrust and even a hatred for
political circles. I'm not just talking about the political ruling class but about the
lower levels-the section and committee leaders on the local level (56).
225
The negative practical experience was very important in structuring
Ellul's later thought. Though his investigation of propaganda in
a modern, technological society is a valuable study in the
mechanization of political language corroborating Orwellian fears
of transforming the individual and public opinion, and his study of
illusion makes clearer how technology transforms politics itself
(176), the explanation of the fatalism within these political works is
found not so much in the political system studied by sociological
techniques as it is a projection of early political disappointments
projected onto the studies. 22
No psychoanalytic argument is
necessary because Ellul explains his loss of illusions and his
"definitive" break with politics in these words:
Try to understand me. I had seen the failure of the Popular Front in 1936; the
failure of the personalist movement, which we intended to be revolutionary and
which we tried to start on a modest scale; the failure of the Spanish revolution,
which had great importance for Charbonneau and me; and the failure of the
liberation. All of this formed an accumulation of ruined revolutionary
possibilities. After this, I never believed anything could be changed by this route
(56)
The move from revolution to revelation was too complete because
the possibility of politics never was fairly explored. The young
prophet of transformation was ineffectual, perhaps because he was
trained with a transformational rather than a political sense. The
move from Marxism to Protestantism and technocriticism was not so
far as it might seem: a complete system of thought based on
economic determinism was replaced by a two-part system that
maintained a sociologically-determined closed system perspective
(technocriticism) with the solace of a human dimension for the individual
in Protestant theology. Ellul needed a sense of the political
in his new package of beliefs no more than he did as a transformational
revolutionary. The difference is that Marx's apocalypse is
displaced by a grander scheme. The human actors, who may fail to
22. The conclusion of The Political Illusion seems to leave all hope destroyed except
for the slim possibility of conversion: the fact that planning and efficiency are part of
democratic survival transforms democracy into illusion. If the arguments were structured
to permit hope and openness to multiple modes of conversion, the books would
not seem so bleak.

226 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
respond to a prophet, cannot affect his theories. So much for
political resolution of the problems of a technological society!
For Ellul, we have already noted, human nature and nature fail
to provide models for limiting the growth of the behemoth,
technology. The force of his sociology is to show that technology
permeates all human activities and prepares us through education to
feel at home, so to speak, in the technological system. He presumes
that all semblance of the arational, experiential aspects of human
existence are controlled by Technique. What he does not do is deal
with community or the human values experienced and brought to
consciousness through reflection in those settings. Though he worries
that technicians ignore the philosophers of technology, "whose
only audience is within the circle of philosophers and humanists," he
fails to explore whether the reason the technicians close their ears is
a lack of willingness to hear because the technological system is
autonomous (Ellul's claim) or because the philosophers speak
nonsense in their own technical language which is unrelated to
human experiences. 20 Without a serious grasp of human nature,
nature, and consciousness, one puzzles over what it is that a
philosopher might say. Except for the theological solution, there is
no serious exploration of consciousness except in the negative discussions
of how the technological society insinuates itself into each
man's consciousness. For Ellul, this is enough. For a nonrevolutionary
political theory, unfortunately, it is not.
Human freedom and choice are therefore limited to following the
theological solution. Ellul saw the Ethics of Freedom 24 as the
counterpoint to his studies on technology (183). The freedom he sees
is the choice of following God's commandments as promises rather
than as imperatives: " A path is opened up before you. God is he who
23. The Technological System, 145. Much of philosophy has become technique, but
even so, the assessments provided-if they are to be of value in political choice-must
be written in a fashion that permits their use in serious political deliberation.
24. This book is the best of the many theological texts for comprehending Ellul's use
of the Word to unsettle "the evil" of order: "to sum up, I do not think the true issue is,
as it was thought a long time, that of entering an order (of life and the world) which is
willed by God as it is, and of staying within this order by vocation. The point is rather
that we enter a disorder which, even though it seems to be ordered, has in fact been
shut up by man, so that moment we try to express our vocation in it we upset things
and call them in question." This sounds revolutionary, but he immediately concludes:
"When all has been said, nothing has been said, nothing has been done. Yet all has
been done, for who can go beyond the Word?" (510).

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 227
continually frees us from all that hinders" (80). Ellul sees freedom
... at the center of my whole life and whole work. Nothing I have done, experienced,
or thought makes sense if it is not considered in the light of freedom.
This is so, first, because the God revealed in the Bible is above all the liberator.
He creates for freedom. And when men break their relation with him, God
respects this act of independence. The only problem is not the metaphysical
question of freedom but how to be assured that we are liberated by God in Jesus
Christ, and how to live this freedom. Hence an ethic of freedom (183-184).
One can properly decide to be a disrupter of the social logic by
following this ethic of freedom, but the despair over political cornmunitarian
activities he also sees prevents any pursuit of shared
freedoms in society-they, of course, are but illusions. We are free
to save ourselves, but not the city.
What Can We Do to Improve on Ellul in Political Research?
The model of the technological society, and now system, in Ellul's
works remains unchanged in this most recent effort, though he
promises to dramatize a bit less than he did in The Technological
Society because he thinks people now are "without hope",(223-224).
The technological society has, with its integrated subsystems,
become the evil of contemporary existence. Had the prophet the
hope that he could destroy the system's inner logic, he no doubt
would. He is, for good or evil, the prophet unarmed. As we explore
his thought, we can isolate many negative consequences of unconstrained
technological growth. Unfortunately for applying his
thoughts about technology through action, we confront the fact that
he presents little more than an either/or confrontation even though
he has a maxim, "Think globally, act locally" (199). He wants no
case by case assessment of technologies, which would be, of course,
the necessary prerequisite for serious political analysis. Because it is
impossible to imagine social rejection of technology per se, the
development of an understanding of the subject must go beyond the
caricature sketched by Ellul, guided by the questions he suggests.
Following Ellul, it is appropriate to ask whether the phenomenon
has shifted qualitatively in recent years to become something
generically different. If so, what has changed? The scope and depth
of applicability of technology has greatly increased in advanced
societies. And indeed, the productive structures are viewed as postindustrial.
Electronics rather than mechanics composes the heart of

228
THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
most current technological innovations, with "knowledge" of all
sorts--not just the knowledge of "the physicists, the chemists and the
engineers"--driving the modern economy. 25 The forces behind these
changes are likely; as Emmanuel Mesthene points out, economic in-
terests pushing toward improvements. 28
The changing forms of
technological advance, however, remain aligned with Frederick W.
Taylor's principle: "one best way to do a job."2 7 What is different is
found in the source of the innovation. As Kenneth E. Boulding labels
it, "folk technology" was replaced by "science-based technology"
starting in about 1850. 28 The difference in how the source can be
characterized before and after is captured in Francis Bacon's
aphorism:
The study of nature with a view to works is engaged in by the mechanic, the
mathematician, the physician, the alchemist, and the magician; but by all (as
things now are) with slight endeavor and scanty success.'
The "after" picture entailed in Bacon's obvious hope is powerfully
articulated by Weisner in Where Science and Politics Meet:
I am intrigued by the analogy between biological evolution and the present
human enterprise. There are two special ways in which the similarities show
up: in the evolving and progressively more sophisticated technology that is applied
to the solution of problems and in the growing size and complexity of the
human organizations which are being created to deal with business and social
problems. In these man has found a speedy substitute for continued biological
evolution to aid him in the hardships of the environment.' 0
Shift there has been. The change is not in the meaning of
technology, but in the sources of technological growth.
This shift does not necessarily mean that all of the negative
emergent qualities Ellul fears inevitably must arise. Technology has
always been able to cause social change. Long ago George Unwin
25.Peter F. Drucker, The Age ofDiscontinuity: Guidelines to Our Changing Society
(New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1978), 265-286.
26. Technological Change (New York: New American Library, 1970).
27. David E. Whisnant, "The Craftsman: Some Reflections on Work in America,"
Technology as Institutionally Related to Human Values, ed. Philip C. Ritterbrush
(Washington D.C.: Acropolis Books, L.T.D., 1974), 111.
28. Ecodynamics: A New Theory of Social Evolution (Beverly Hills and London:
Sage Publications, 1978), 29.
29. The New Organon, I.v.
30. Where Science and Politics Meet, 23.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY
recognized "No Act of Parliament could permanently restrain the
forces making for a fundamental redistribution of economic functions,
and for the establishment of a freer, but more complex and
more divergent, system of social relations. "31 Indeed, Karl W.
Deutsch, who sees society as commencing from a "group of individuals"
united by a division of labor, saw that technology can
and does affect social structure, but that social patterns, such as
"chattel slavery" can, in reverse, affect the growth of technology. 32
What the newer pace of innovation in technology means is that
problems can be generated more rapidly than societies are currently
structured to evaluate and control them, thus permitting those interests
supporting change for economic or other reasons an enhanced
chance to innovate before social or political assessments can be
made. In contemporary context, societies can through legislation
decide how much study of unanticipated consequences must be pursued
before freeing, say, drug technology. Pressures for cures (and
profits) will weigh against any slowdown in innovation, but
counter-arguments, also heavily structured froni -a sciencetechnology
base, may be important enough for governments and
publics to respond with constraints. Wiesner's evolutionary analogy
can be expanded with "political selection" introduced as a process
corresponding with evolution's "natural selection." "Technical imperatives,"
as noted by David Nobel, "define only what is possible,
not what is necessary; what can be done, not what must be done.
The latter decisions are social in nature." 33 The problem is in the
need for better recognition of poor social-political adaptation rather
than too much technological capacity.
The politics of science and technology have become subjects of
research, especially in the fields of science policy and technology
assessment. The relations between growth and constraint by public
policy are subject to research, but only if one avoids the generality of
Ellul's level of analysis. Governments not only can limit the development
and applications of particular technologies, they can stimulate
31. Industrial Organization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1904), 140.
32. Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of
Nationality (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1953), 29-30.
33. Quoted from America by Design (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977) by Colin
Norman, The God that Limps: Science and Technology in the Eighties (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1981), 25.
229

230 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
the growth of technology in the modern context by supporting "pure
sciences" which can be later translated into technology. 34 Almost
every example of research in this field, however, requires attention
to particular techniques and the consequences of their usages, not
the holistic conception of technology in Ellul's sense. The important
distinctions must be made, therefore, once the substance of a particular
area is known. Discussion of one field of possible
technological growth requires expertise in the possibilities and consequences
of that technology, as is well illustrated in the field of
genetics research. 35
In social research, then, it seems the distinctions among
technologies must depend upon the research problem being approached.
And the problems may require concern over totality as an
accompanying characteristic if we wish to explore the impact of
technology on social and/or individual belief structures in considering
the effects of rationalism from technological impulses upon the
traditional cultures of societies, or in considering the adaptation of
new elites into developing societies. 3B But the concern over the problem
of totality requires that we study other social elements in relation
to `technology' and its social institutions in order to see whether
problems change or whether applications simply vary. The politics
of technology seem no different in kind in ancient Athens and
modern states.
The patterns of technological growth, though stimulated by social
level interests, arise from particular organizations. The innovations
arise from the periphery. This is to be expected because
even science-based technology arises from collections of specialists
who are united as a profession with "its own characteristic constellation
of ideals and ambitions, to which anyone who takes it up as a
34. On politics and government stimulated creation of technology, see Don K. Price,
Government and Science (New York: New York University Press, 1954); J. S. Dupre
and S. A. Lakoff, Science and the Nation (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,
1962); and Avery Leiserson, "Scientists and the Policy Process, " American Political
Science Review, LIX, no. 2 (June, 1965): 408-416.
35. The role of substance as precondition for technology assessment is seen in Robert
H. Blank, The Political Implications of Human Genetic Technology (Boulder, Colorado:
Westview Press, 1981).
36. See for example David Apter's "Notes for a Theory of Non-Democratic
Representation," reprinted from NOMOS X in Some Conceptual Approaches to the
Study of Modernization (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 295-328.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY
231
professional career thereby commits himself." 37 The difference between
a scientific community per se and a technological one is that
in a scientific community work is judged by the profession itself
whereas technology is additionally judged by external demands
(e.g., the potential in the economy and possibly negative side effects).
Technical fields, including even law, are, according to
Toulmin, subject to rational development and grow in a fashion
parallel to the sciences as they attempt "to serve common human
needs for more effective and useful goods or materials, equipment or
services." 38 But these advancing communities lead to technical orthodoxies
that can be seen as the Balkanization of culture, dividing
and replacing more traditional standards for production or replacing
technical freedom from the external constraints from nature and
government with self-imposed professional constraints."
Technological professions are thus constrained by two kinds of
limits: professional, technical constraints and social, economic and
political constraints. The former are particular group-individual
limits; the latter societal-systemic limits. These latter are the important
and proper political limits that Ellul's either/or attitude denies.
Advances in technology do, of course, shift the societal, systemic
structures. 40 The impact is put well by David S. Landes:
. two things remain and characterize any modern industrial system: the rationality,
which is the spirit of the institution, and change, which is rationality's
logical corollary, for the appropriation of means to ends that is the essence of rationality
implies a process of continuous adaptation. These fundamental
characteristics have had in turn explicit consequences for the values and structure
of the economy and society, consequences that center in the principle of
selection by achievement. . . . industrialization is, in short, a universal solvent,
and its effects are the more drastic the greater the contrast between the old
order and the new. 4 '
37. Stephen Edelston Toulmin, Human Understanding, Vol I, The Collective Use
and Evolution of Concepts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), 382.
38. Human Understanding, 364-367.
39. The recognition that new technologies and inventions are important as social
cause is captured by the statement: "Culture, in a word, had been Balkanized; and in
the process it had been bureaucratized as well." Allan Janek and Stephen Toulmin,
Wittgenstein ' s Vienna (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973), 249.
40. Langdon Winner, Autonomous Technology (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press,
1974).
41. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development
in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1972), 546.

232 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
The study of the impact of technology, however, must be carefully
based upon the differences among the societies: that is, the " universal
solvent" affects advanced and developing societies differently
and these differences are lost if the focus of analysis remains on
emergent rather than visible dimensions. It is true, as Wiesner points
out, that transition through previous eras of technologies is not required
for use of new means, and the common base of science sug -
gested technology works to help a country to "join the parade . .
well along the line of march." 42 Nonetheless, we must also recognize
that, because science and technology are separable with the latter's
being exportable, "technology," in the words of Kalman H. Silvert,
" is a human universal to be found under any social conditions. "43
The importance of dividing in order to conquer the study of
`technology' is evidenced by what is known about political, social
and economic development. Rationalistic, efficiency-oriented
technological sub-communities may exist side-by-side with older
modes of technology, and even traditional means for controlling
nature side-by-side with the use of magic. The problems entailed in
a society of this sort are different from, though no less important in
studying `technology' than, those of an advanced industrial society
being transformed technically by the computer chip. There is an
analogy between advanced scientific-based technology and even
rudimentary social practices that is obvious in Sigmund Freud's
statement: The technique of animism, magic, reveals in the clearest
and most unmistakable way an intention to impose the laws governing
mental life upon real things." 44 The contexts within which
technologies advance, and the theories to explain them, require care
in distinguishing folk and science-based technologies and how these
interrelate in societies that are at different levels of economic
development.
An interesting subfield is emerging that deals with the valuechange
consequences of technological growth. At one level, on
42. Where Science and Politics Meet, 142.
43, "Conclusions," The. Social Reality of Scientific Myth: Science and Social
Change, ed. Kalman H. Silvert (New York: American University's Field Staff, Inc.,
1969), 228.
44. Totem and Taboo (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 91. See Fred W. Riggs,
"'Technology', A Developmental Perspective," 1982 I.P.S.A. Congress, Rio de Janeiro,
on the side-by-side technologies. For a contrast with Ellul on the threat to religion,
etc., see Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Science and Christ, trans. Rene Hague (New
York: Harper and Row, 1985), 205.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 233
Ellul's level of analysis, theorists such as Herbert Marcuse see the
norms of efficiency, rationalism, and material success cutting off
human concern about other types of values. 45 The same problem is
articulated by E. F. Schumacher, but with the desire to turn our
human interests toward non-Cartesian thinking. 46 The problem can
be articulated by many metaphors, and Loren C. Eiseley is articulate:
The human form, originally so variable, has been narrowed into one new channel
whose primary emphasis involves the rise and development of the human
cortex. An enormous spectrum of possible behavior, or possible adaptation, a
spectrum so broad that it clashes and contradicts, is the product of that
brain.... One of the things that troubles us now is that in this great whirlpool
of modern civilization, the centrifugal power, represented by modern science
and technology, Western man is sweeping away all other societies."
All of these kinds of statements, though important warnings about
what to study and what unanticipated consequences might arise,
provide little in the way of improving theoretical knowledge about
technology and society. Just as Victor C. Ferkiss can warn of
linkages of liberal society serving technology and economic power
relations,4 8 or Richard J. Bernstein can warn us against missing the
distinction of Marx between technology and class control over
technology as the source of alienation, 4B these works point to problems
that require the development of less sweeping pronouncements
and more research designs to answer the underlying questions.
To move from the lofty sphere of general interpretations to the
political problem of technology assessment, the need to forecast requires
a framework for projection that incorporates both the
autonomy and the control possibilities of technology. The questions
to be answered concern the limits on human autonomy by context
45. One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).
46. Theoretically, A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Harper and Row, 1977) is
superior to either Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York:
Harper and Row, 1977) or Good Work (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).
47. "Alternatives to Technology," The Environment of Change, eds, Aaron W.
Warner, Dean Morse, and Thomas E. Cooney (New York: Columbia University Press,
1969), 171.
48. Victor Ferkiss, The Future of Technological Civilization (New York: George
Braziller, 1974), 29. See also his Technological Man: The Myth and the Reality (New
York: George Braziller, 1969).
49. Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 49.

234 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
(knowledge about possible social, economic, and political consequences),
the limits on autonomy by content (knowledge relevant to
technological possibilities), and the limits on autonomy set by conflict
(knowledge of power relations affecting political choice). 50 Indeed,
much of the concern over the autonomy of technological
growth is offset by recognizing how well organized are those who
fear what technological growth seems to have become. Consider
that The Club of Rome volume, The Limits to Growth, has over a
half million English copies in print with a total two million copies
available in thirty languages; that Solar Age has a 40,000 circulation,
and a lobby of 30,000 members; that 10,000 to 15,000 environmental
groups exist in the United States with 15,000 more in
West Germany; and that the Unites States' "Friends of the Earth"
group now has twenty-three international affiliates including El
Salvador and Thailand. s ' These facts indicate shifts in the context,
content, and conflict bases for technology assessment; that is,
technology assessment decisions must account for the changing
levels at which decisions to limit are made and at which consequences
are evaluated (context shifts among subnational, national
and international and among individual, group and societal
factors), for the changing technical possibilities and newly
discovered consequences (content shifts), and for the changing
balances of influences in the decision processes (conflict generated
by new groups or groups newly aware of consequences). It is this
complex of changing aspects that social science must master in
technology studies.
What Can We Do to Improve on Ellul in Normative Analysis?
Ellul's assessments of technology are most valuable heuristically:
his arguments serve to counter the uncontested faith in technology
that might develop if one ignores the fact that rapid advances in
technological growth, which have improved the condition of the
city, carry important consequences for the individual and society.
His "big bang" approach to the subject is in part justified because
many of his contemporaries have moved far beyond even John
50. These variables, especially context, are in part stimulated by Bertrand de
Jouvenel, The Art of Conjecture, trans. Nikita Lary (New York: Basic Books, 1967).
51. Building a Sustainable Society (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 339-348.

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY 235
Stuart Mill in articulating their faith in unlimited progress through
scientific rationalism. At this level, the arguments of Ellul are
valuable because his rhetoric forces one to see that the threat of a
society dominated by an interconnected set of specialized subsystems
becomes a problem that demands attention in order to balance the
threat against the positive benefits received by material improvements
in the city. This positive contribution in isolating an important
subject for political discourse is nevertheless unfavorably
matched by his approach. His rhetoric is designed to challenge any
positive discourse deliberating the proper control of technology
rather than to isolate how the positive benefits for mankind can be
assessed and pursued without our losing humanity in the process. He
is successful in raising a debate issue of universal political importance,
but his own vision of the resolution-the theological solution-leads
him away from deliberation into hortatory. If all shared
in Ellul's vision, the debate could end. We turn to the Word, reject
the city, and all is well with God's world.
The losses for the city would be tremendous. Technological
developments have made possible many human advances that certainly
cannot be denied as humane improvements: food, shelter,
and health care, alone, provide examples enough to introduce great
caution in viewing technology as simply .ehumanizing. 62 One can
view the city as filled with sinners, and raise one's gaze above the
streets, but it is difficult to ignore the fact that the streets are filled
with the people whose future can be most affected positively by the
52. It is altogether too easy to sit in the comfort of.a chateau and contemplate the
dehumanizing implications of modern technology without considering the many
aspects of human existence that are dependent upon the improving technologies we
employ (contrast 224-225). The retirement regions of the world give reality to the
health improvements made in advanced economic nations just as the need for
technological assistance in less developed nations give reality to a need for
technological expansion: the new breathing mode of immunization is a potential
technical means for removing measles, etc., in a quick, efficient and painless way.
Surely the possibilities opened up for constructive leisure by new means of production,
many already well known and practiced by the leisurely theory class right now, cannot
be, ignored in contemplations of a more humane existence. The means of man's overcoming
the horrors of poverty are just as much products of technology as are those that
displace particularized human action. What student of culture lives without technically
advanced sound reproduction devices available for their pleasures in listening to
traditional music? On Christian withdrawal see John Yoder's two books: The Christian
Witness to the State (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life, 1964) and The Politics of
Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1972).

236 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
technology. In his concern for spiritual renewal, the human consequences
of material poverty are too much ignored. Insofar as he
speaks to those whose material plenty is sufficient, the effort to turn
them from greed and toward the life of the spirit can be only
praised; insofar as he speaks for those of plenty seeking only their
own spiritual rewards, others must pay the costs for their transformed
experience.
There is an irony worthy of note in Ellul's "theological solution"
to his problem of Technique. The technological society transforms
human existence, traditionally understood, into a technically-based
existence. Community is replaced by society with a vengence, leaving
mankind divided into a set of atomistic individuals playing their
roles within an autonomous system. The processes of the system and
efficiency of the procedures dominate all. Man, in his spiritual being,
is estranged. The irony is found in the fact that Ellul's theology,
being based on the particular relation between an individual and
God, too, is clearly atomistic. The spiritual renewal is not social, it
worries not about the relation between the City of Man and the City
of God. The spiritual man is just as individuated as the technical
man. This irony cannot be taken lightly in a culture that many see as
liberal-turned-Narcissistic. The solution of an individual's choosing
to follow the Word not only buildsa barrier between the individual
and civic concern for the city, leaving politics and society as one
finds it, it actually makes more rigid the structure of the
technological society by providing a belief structure that separates
spiritual and civic activities. Ellul's theology can provide indirect
"diffuse support" for the technological system by removing the question
of its legitimacy from one's concerns. Religion serves the affective
function for a technological system. Follow the Word with
friends, colleagues, and neighbors, to be sure, but Ellul himself
failed in earlier efforts (in left politics and within the Reformed
Church of France) to bring about change in institutions and practices
through organizing mediating groups (56 and 84-90). He providesa
personal spiritual solution that permits one to ignore the city.
Ellul's rhetoric employs an old tactic that is questionable. If you
can set forth two options (unconstrained technology versus the
Word), and show that one (unconstrained technology) is so
distasteful that we must avoid it at all costs, then the other (the
Word) becomes the only choice. Since the Word can be followed, we
must accept it as our only solution. If everyone had Ellul's personal
experiences themselves, perhaps the argument would hold: After his

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY
death, and only then, he promises the story of "my conversion-a
very spectacular conversion. ...an historical account of this com -
plete about face... (215-216). He entices the reader with the
confession that it was a powerful conversion because he "did all I
could to fight God, yet I couldn't erase from my mind those three or
four hours I had lived. They were the fruit of neither illusion nor circumstances.
It was no use, I really had experienced them" (218).
Well, we have not. Perhaps his promised pages will permit a
hermeneutic walking in his shoes, if you will, but his current exegesis
of his experiences and his reading of the Word do not permit us
to grasp his theology as one can with, for example, Karl Barth or
Soren Kierkgaard.
Ellul's criticisms of technology are so vehement that his work
brings to mind the words of Friedrich Nietzsche on the study of
history: "The fact that life does need the services of history must be
as clearly grasped as that an excess of history hurts it." sa We need the
services of study into the unintended consequences of technology,
but we can develop a "super-technological" philosopher, the
equivalent of Nietzsche's "super-historical" philosopher, who
translates insight concerning the limits of human action into an intellectual
anomie concerning the achievement of any human pur-
53. The Use and Abuse of History, trans. Adrian Collin (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1949), 42. In fact, it seems that Ellul has become an intellectual of abstraction
on the level of the most extreme modern thinkers. Both his abstraction of
"technological society" and his "theological solution" seem to me to fit, ultimately, the
challenge to modern thinking leveled by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West,
trans. Charles Francis Atkinson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), II, 144:
Abstract thinking consists in the use of a finite word-framework into which it is
sought to squeeze the whole infinite content of life. Concepts kill Being and
falsify Waking-Being. Long ago in the springtime of language-history, while
understanding had still to struggle in order to hold its own with sensation, this
mechanization was without importance for life. But now, from a being who
occasionally thought, man has become a thinking being, and it is the ideal of
every thought-system to subject life, once and for all, to the domination of intellect.
This is achieved in theory by according validity only to the known and
branding the actual as a sham and a delusion. It is achieved in practice by forcing
the voices of the blood to be silent in the presence of universal ethical principles.
It is possible to apply in irony these words to Ellul's "system" of thought. Indeed, his
system seems to fit his own discussion of propaganda delivering the individual "from
his own self." See Propaganda, 160.
237

238 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER
poses. Indeed, Ellul's criticisms of Marx's apocalyptic, universalistic
theories might be applied to his own: "When Marxism becomes
dogmatic, it is actually a lie (61)." Ellul's approach to theorizing is
ripe for slipping into extreme claims and dogma:
I see reality, and in this reality I know how to distinguish the dominant facts
and tendencies for the future. And then I draw conclusions, whereas most of my
colleagues are fixated on the current phenomenon (which is doomed to fall into
decline), or else they are bogged down in the past. But when I make these
evaluations, they are not scientific, they are not scientific predictions. That type
of evaluation usually turns out to be in error (219).
With this self-understanding of Ellul's "realist" position, the potential
for dogmatic theorizing is high. It is not only counter-scientific
reasoning, it is counter-classical reasoning as well.
The questions that Ellul forces us to confront must be viewed
through diverse lenses if we are adequately to deal with the
phenomenon of technology. The questions concerning the autonomy
of the technological system must be answered by weighing the
possibilities of a human association that wills the system to serve
natural ends (man, family, community, church), and therefore a
system pressed toward Gemeinschaft, against the threat of a
technological system's rationality replacing even the rational will of
a society's members selecting their own ends, and therefore becoming
a supra-Gesellschaft. (This must be done with recognition that
someone must introduce any Technique.) Moreover, the assessment
must be placed in an historical framework so that the assessment can
be seen in proper perspective: might Ellul only be "fixated on the
current phenomenon (which is doomed to fall into decline)"?
Most important, I think, Ellul's questions must be seen in a
political context that treats the problem from a human rather than
an individualistic perspective: the decisions and choices concerning
Techniques affect not only the people of a community, or of a nation,
but now the world. Growth in the less developed nations is interconnected
with the most developed just as the employment and
survival of the least well off in a society is affected by its decision to
slow down economic growth. These questions raise what are essentially
moral problems that must be resolved by the city. A personal
ethic such as Ellul's that transforms the questions of the city into
nonquestions, largely because of the structure of the technological
system, not only is inadequate, it is inhuman. It denies human experience
as the foundation for human consciousness by presuming

ELLUL-THEOLOGIAN OF TECHNOLOGY
that human nature does not permit man to act willfully upon the environment
after his reflecting upon his experiences. This presumption
is the most dehumanizing of all for it turns man into a plastic
container that merely processes experience, the perfect technological
man. Ellul's normative analysis can be improved by simply restoring
man, society, nature, and experience to their proper places. For
those who have not had the benefit of Ellul's conversion experience,
these restorations also provide the only path to consciousness of God.
The reality of Rio, then, is really not so unusual. The extremes of
wealth and poverty, natural beauty and artifact, sin and survival
merely make clearer the paradoxes of the political. The material and
the spiritual coexist in the city. The struggle to develop tentative
settlements in the city through deliberations founded on the realities
has no certain resolution. Ellul's rejection of the city for the statue
has strange similarities with gnostic solutions for society. Revolution
and revelation share the characteristic of missing the reality of
human existence by focusing on the presumption that the day to day
human condition is transformed by an abstraction. It is in the
recognition that there are no solutions for these paradoxes that life in
the city can be appropriately maintained through political settlement.
Technology and theology are both necessary. Only then can
one fully grasp the important fact that Christ the Redeemer reaches
out to Rio as an essential and integral part of the city.
Vanderbilt University GEORGE J. GRAHAM, JR.
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