Jacques Ellul- Prophetic or Apocalyptic Theologian of Technology?*

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).