Jacques Ellul- Prophetic or Apocalyptic Theologian of Technology?*

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