If we can, we must: the inexorable logic of “technique”
John H Tuesday 17th July, AD 2007
A recent discussion on the BHT regarding the use of audiovisual technology in church prompted me to resume reading Jacques Ellul’s book The Humiliation of the Word. I find Ellul compelling but also rather hard work, and had previously ground to a halt about a third of the way through the book.
One of the key concepts in Ellul’s work is that of “technique”. He argues that it is technique – the development of methods and technologies for maximum efficiency – that drives modern society, rather than cultural, philosophical, religious or economic forces. I’ve found this argument very hard to get my head round, probably because “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it” (yes, that’s right, I just watched An Inconvenient Truth…).
However, while reading The Humiliation of the Word last night I had something of a “lightbulb moment” regarding Ellul’s concept of technique (assuming “lightbulb moment” isn’t too technological an expression to use in this context!). Ellul’s argument in The Humiliation of the Word is that we live in a society in which the “image” is triumphant (and the “word”, correspondingly, is humiliated). On p.148 he argues that it is “technique” that lies behind the “image explosion”:
The multiplication of visual techniques has produced this invasion of our eyes and thoughts by images. We produce images only because we have certain equipment. Without technical tools no triumph of images would be possible. First came the printing press, then photography and the explosion that followed it: cameras, linotype machines, television; and now artificial satellites that never stop producing images.
Hence Ellul rejects social, economic or psychological explanations for the image-saturated society of today:
The universe of images is a result of technique alone, and not of some human intention, some philosophy or economic structure, a need for profit, the class struggle, or the Oedipus complex. These pseudointellectual “causes” are advanced in every modern interpretation.
This then leads Ellul to make a more general point about the social effects of technique:
[W]hen a technical possibility exists, it must be applied. We moderns cannot leave our discoveries inactive, or relegate potentialities to the realm of the merely possible. This attitude opens the door for the creation of needs or habits imposed on people by technique’s power and weight.
Or as Ellul goes on to summarise this:
In the world of techniques one necessarily proceeds from what is possible to its realization.
In other words, we do these things because we can. And once we can, we must.
One reason we fail to notice how technique is driving this process is that we quickly find “after the fact” justifications for what technique has produced. To take the example of images:
When the multiplication of the means used to produce images is thrust upon us, a justification for this is found immediately. But, again, all this does not take place because people wanted images, television, or the satellites they have created. They were created by technique’s process of development and then their consumption was found to be pleasant, good, and intelligent (obviously, “pleasant to look at, good to eat, and capable of awakening intelligence”).
Ellul’s argument here immediately called to mind areas of technological development such as genetic modification or embryonic stem-cell research, areas in which moral or economic concerns are routinely swept aside in the name of “not standing in the way of science”.
It also helps me understand both why the introduction of ID cards in the UK is inevitable – because if we can do it then we must, driven by the inexorable logic of “technique” – and why the reasons put forward for their introduction have been so unconvincing and changeable: one minute to combat benefit fraud, the next to control immigration, and then to prevent terrorism. ID cards have been described as “a solution looking for a problem”, and Ellul’s perspective on “technique” helps illuminate why this might be the case. Once ID cards are introduced, we will quickly find so many uses for them that we will wonder how we ever managed without them.
However, what makes Ellul’s arguments so discomfiting is that he refuses to allow us to take the position (one with which Christians are probably most comfortable) that technology in itself is morally neutral, and that what matters is the choices we make concerning its use. Instead, Ellul argues that technology – or rather, the “technique” that lies behind it – is in itself an idol, and one that possesses a power that overwhelms our ability to pick and choose from its works.
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Perhaps one of the things that most concerns me about technology in worship is that it destroys the simplicity of worship, moving it more in the direction of spectacle. The simplicity of worship is so important because worship is the place where we are most in touch with reality and it gives us the eyes with which to truly see the rest of life. Where even our worship is mediated by modern technology the enacted parable of the liturgy can become obscured. We are also at risk of presuming that our technology is part of the natural order of things.
Coming before God with all of our technological marvels and wizardry just seems wrong to me. Worship should steer clear of such spectacle. Such technology can be something that we hide behind to some extent to avoid being naked in God’s sight. People hate silence and simplicity because silence and simplicity promise no dazzling distractions. In silence and simple environments we are at risk of catching our own eyes, which is a terrifying experience for most human beings. Silence and simple environments are conducive for states of mind that are more contemplative. Such a state of mind is very hard to reach in the modern technological church. Silence and the absence of anything except the very barest of technology draws our attention to the three things that really matter: God, our brothers and sisters, and ourselves.
I believe that there is particular danger of losing sight of the primacy of the spoken word in worship. If there is one practice that really annoys me, it is people reading along in their Bibles during the Scripture readings. The word read from a page simply does not affect us in the same way as a word received through the ear. The eye is the organ of judgment and places us over the word, in the position of those analyzing and judging it. When the word is received through the ear, it judges us. Reading from a page is also a very individualizing way of approaching the word, precisely when we need to be addressed by the Word of God as members of the assembly of God’s people. There are also scientific reasons why people do not take in and retain information as well when reading along than they would do if they just listened.
Audio-visual technology also tends to serve to make the sermon a rhetorical event, which is the last thing that it should be. The pastor should address the church from a seated position, as a father might address children. Like a father addressing children, the pastor should avoid any rhetorical excesses, hand-waving, and flashy presentations. He should address the community directly as the people of God entrusted to him as an undershepherd and not speak as if he was not already bound to the people he was speaking to.
There is plenty of evidence out there that most uses of PowerPoint presentations actually discourage understanding. However, people persist in using them, because they look clever and professional, which is exactly what the church should not be aiming for.
God has provided us with certain ways to communicate within the Church and it would be great if we actually learnt to communicate using such means before we consider adding anything new. Most technology actually discourages human and bodily interaction. Pews block us off from one another and prevent us from walking around. Personal Bibles prevent us from hearing the Word of God as that which is addressed to us as a community. Modern Christians do not practice the kiss of peace (many don’t even greet each other within worship), nor do they kneel in prayer. As worship becomes more and more technological and more and more visual, it tends to become less and less physical. If we put the bodiliness and humanity of our worship first and the little technology that we used was used to support and encourage this, I would be far happier.
Al: thanks for this. Ellul has some very specific criticisms for elaborately liturgical worship and the use of icons. I’m not sure I can follow him all the way on those (they reflect his Reformed perspective) but I agree that simplicity in worship – in the sense of straightforwardness rather than minimalism – is desirable. Everything must support and point toward the Word.
I like your idea about the pastor sitting to address the congregation. Do you know of any churches where that is practised? Whether we can make that a hard-and-fast rule, though, given the frequent biblical references to people standing to preach, is a different matter.
Plus there is a more practical matter: standing in a raised pulpit has a practical aspect in terms of audibility. Sitting down to preach – or stepping down from the pulpit to a lectern, as many (including my pastor) do today – is something that can only be done in many churches if electrical amplification is in place. So again we find ourselves back with “technique”!
If there is one practice that really annoys me, it is people reading along in their Bibles during the Scripture readings.
Amen! A piece by Doug Wilson converted me to this point of view some years ago, and now I always keep my Bible closed during the readings. I tend to open it during the sermon, though – I think the example of the Bereans should encourage us to compare what our pastors tell us with what Scripture says.
Many of Ellul’s works, including The Humiliation of the Word are online here.
The problem with Ellul is that he believes technology to be the result of the fall. This is the main reason for his technological determinism. He makes technology the master of man, not man the master of technology. It’s also the only way that anybody could claim that technology in itself is an idol. We can let technology become an idol, but it is not an idol in itself. Likewise, we can let technology become our master, but there is no reason it has to be.
Al, your comments about silence and simplicity are very similar to some things I’ve been thinking about recently, although I wasn’t thinking specifically about the context of worship. For example, “information technology” is designed to give us more “noise.” That’s it’s entire purpose – to send more information to our eyes and ears. Some of this noise might be used for good (reading an email from a friend) and some of it might be used for bad (wasting 2 hours on YouTube). In either case, however, in our everyday use of information technologies we are choosing noise over silence (note: we are choosing it, it isn’t inevitable). The more we decide to use wireless internet, Blackberry’s, iPhones, iPod’s, etc. the more we are choosing noise over silence. It doesn’t matter if we only use these things for good purposes, the very fact that we use them has moral ramifications.
Macht: thanks. I used the PDF version of THOTW for my post, but linked the dead tree copy partly because I think the “Jesus Radicals” are stretching “fair use” to breaking point with their online copies!
The problem with Ellul is that he believes technology to be the result of the fall.
Well, isn’t it? In Genesis 4, tool-making arises some time after the fall, and indeed arises from the line of Cain.
He makes technology the master of man, not man the master of technology.
And I think he may have a point. There is a strong parallel with money, where we may wish to imagine that humanity is the master of money – after all, we created it, it (literally) bears our image, we trade it and earn it and spend it – but Jesus identifies money as an idol that has mastery over us rather than the other way round. And of course even as Christians we cannot live without technology any more than we can live without money.
John,
I don’t personally know of any churches in which the pastor sits down. I agree that this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. However, I don’t think that there are many examples of people preaching standing up as you suggest. There are surprisingly few. In most cases of regular teaching the teacher sits down to do so (e.g. Matthew 5:1; Luke 5:3; Acts 16:13). Jesus speaks of sitting as His standard posture for teaching (Matthew 26:55). He also speaks of the seat as the place from which authoritative teaching is given (Matthew 23:2).
Public orations, defences at trials and the like are different sorts of things and account for almost all of the supposed exceptions to the rule. Paul’s speech on Mars Hill in Acts 17 is hardly the pattern that regular preaching to the people of God on the Lord’s Day is supposed to follow. I think that the pattern of Luke 4 — and the general Jewish pattern — is a good one: the preacher stands to give the public reading and then sits to instruct the congregation (the situation in Acts 13 is slightly different, presumably because Paul is not officiating, but is invited to give a word by the synagogue rulers).
The seat from which the teacher taught would generally have been on a raised platform, to make him more audible. The seat/throne is the place of rule and authority and the preacher occupies this position because he represents the Lord Jesus Christ, who is seated at the Father’s right hand.
I suspect that the Church has departed from this pattern primarily because it has adopted a different model for preaching. Under the influence of Hellenistic culture and perhaps the architecture of some of the civil basilicas that were later adapted for Christian worship, preaching became more of a rhetorical event. Another problem is the assumption that sermons should be ‘evangelistic’ in the sense of being addressed to outsiders as much as to insiders. Every sermon should be measured by the touchstone of the gospel, but this is not the same thing as addressing the unbeliever outside the Church in every sermon.
The Church is to be addressed and governed as a household and the authoritative teaching of the pastor ought to be akin to the way that a father teaches his children and leads his family (this also helps us to understand the ways that women can and cannot teach within the context of the community of faith). The relationship between pastor and congregation ought to be very different from the relationship between orator and audience, but our preaching frequently obscures this. Consequently, our understanding of the role of the pastor is not as clear as it ought to be.
It seems to me that biblical preaching is quite simple in style and is not addressed to outsiders or a general audience, but to those who belong to the community of faith (though not just to those who are faithful at the present time). Preaching should address people’s consciences in the presence of God. It should also deepen their grasp of biblical truth and instruct them in how to live lives pleasing to God. Ideally the voice need not be raised as it is in most sermons today. The preacher should speak to the congregation as family and such speaking should not generally need to go to any great rhetorical lengths to get his point across.
Perhaps one of the advantages of avoiding amplification technology as much as possible is that it limits the degree to which churches can grow. The pastor is leading a household; he is not a mere public orator. The audience can never be too big for the orator, but a family can be too big for one father to lead. By modelling themselves after public orators, many pastors are neglecting their task of guarding and feeding a particular community, addressing themselves merely to an audience of generic individuals. Such churches tend to become driven by personality cults. This is one of the problems that has attended the ministries of great ‘preachers’ such as Martyn Lloyd-Jones. For all of his gifts, Lloyd-Jones had a preaching-centre, not a church. He was not the sort of person that I would want as a pastor, though I have benefited much from his biblical insight.
So you want the pastor to address his flock like a father addressing his children, but you don’t want him to raise his voice??? There are some delightful domestic vignettes chez Halton I could offer up in response to that.
Agree with the difference between churches and preaching stations. The difficulties suffered by Westminster Chapel post-MLJ – difficulties that even Iain Murray can’t entirely smooth over in his biography – are a good illustration of how an apparently successful church can be hollowed out in such circumstances.
I very much appreciate Elluls insight on this particularly evasive idol in our culture. But I see it as an Idol. God’s creation is good, indeed very good. Any aspect of His creation can be idolized. But the fact that something can become an idol does not mean the thing is bad in it self.
Like the idolization of sex in our culture we should denounce the idolization of technology. But like sex, technology has a necessary place in life.
Indeed God’s first command to humanity was to name the animals which could be understood as scientific taxonomy. Learning and understanding creation is thus a part of God’s plan for us.
Ed: Ellul addresses the question of work/technique in the early chapters of Genesis here (PDF version here). Not read it all yet so can’t comment further – just passing it on as an interesting link.
John,
LOL! Yeah, I know what you mean. We had plenty of those moments in our house while growing up.
What I was referring to was the ordinary way in which parents teach their children. When voices are raised they are not raised for quite the same reasons as they are in many sermons. When teaching his children the father does not generally raise his voice for mere rhetorical effect.
I am fed up of being subjected to sermons where the preacher engages in rhetorical browbeating of the congregation. A faithful pastor should not usually need to shout about truths and errors at the people of God. People who are subjected to such a bullying preaching style where pastors shout about how important certain truths are and how evil certain sins are are most probably spiritually damaged by the experience, just as a child would be in a house where parents continually go about ordinary communication with raised voices.
Raised voices (not just speaking loudly for the purpose of amplification) have an emotional effect on us. We might need to shout at children when they are being persistently disobedient, as a means of forcefully stopping them in their willfulness. Shouting is a means by which we try to break someone’s will when it is contrary to us. By communicating God’s truth in such a manner we present the truth in a manner that dares people to try to disagree. Shouting is an essentially agonistic form of communication and, as such, should not be the ordinary way that we communicate a gospel of peace. Teaching by shouting and raising one’s voice is not the way that you ordinarily address mature, free people, which is exactly what the gospel declares us to be.
By teaching people with a calm voice, pastors can lead their congregations into a confident, rather than a fearful and intimidated faith. The infantilization of evangelicalism has much to do, I believe, with evangelicals’ predilection to such domineering forms of leadership. Any movement towards a more mature church must take account of this problem. Preaching should encourage us to become a confident people, with the ego strength to act as mature men and women of God. A lot of this comes down to a commitment to lead by means of the authority of Scripture, rather than by sheer force of personality.
The oratory model of preaching is not directed so much at a particular community and its particular problems. When a father raises his voice in teaching his children it is because he is rebuking his children for a particular sin that they are guilty of, or something like that. When the preacher who follows the orator model raises his voice he is not generally raising his voice at an unfaithful congregation, but raising his voice as a rhetorical way of making a more general point. In making the same point the father would not usually want to or need to raise his voice. Unless he is in a very unruly church, the biblical pastor will not need to raise his voice much at all, even when rebuking. This was my point.
Al: understood. Our own pastor can get quite loud when preaching, but I think he escapes your charge of “rhetorical shouting” because (a) it’s a small congregation and hence this is still a very relational context in which he is preaching, (b) there is not a hint of browbeating or intimidation about it, and (c) that’s just what he’s like anyway.
Interesting post, John. Preaching centres – good one Al!
Technology and what to do with it has been a concern of mine for a long time. I’ve spent all of my working life in primary economic activities – farming (organic) and geology (diamonds). This has obviously placed me in some tension about technology. Ellul might have a point about technology as ‘idol’, however, the idol-state of something is determined both by actions and thought. For instance, to my mind, and in my actions, Thor is a mythical character. To the mind of some of my forefathers, he was an idol that needed overthrowing. Maybe that is not the ideal analogy, but technology as appropriate means to an end is not necessarily idolatrous, however, the word “appropriate†is important here. Technology as an end in itself approaches idolatry I guess.
But we also have to define technology. To somebody 4000 years ago, well-made hoe such as what I could go and buy at any garden centre today would be excellent, even advanced technology. To somebody 4000 years into the future, this PC I’m using would be darn primitive. But it’s all still technology. But buying a hoe for the sake of owning one is stupid – and idolatrous. However, buying one to use in my vegetable garden is a good thing.
Context and reason matter – therefore it is important to think about the Church Service in itself before acquiring / denying technology. For instance, central heating in a Saskatoon winter is important – it will be somewhat problematic to serve holy communion at -30 C! Having a PA system might require more thought, but if it is only to assist averybody to hear, it could be beneficial. When the technology is used as a means of attraction / retention, or when it is used to shift the focus as Al maintained (facilitating preaching centres over and above true churches with Word AND sacrament), then it is certainly problematic.
Oh yes – one last thing about images: I would say that although Ellul has it right in complaining about our image centred culture, I think it is important to add that it is a TRANSISTORY image culture – nothing of permanence. The TV image appears and disappear, the billboard gets replaced. However, permanent images, such as the features of a Cathedral, are less prominent now than what they were before. This is an important qualifier, and one that needs more contemplation, when thinking about our “image centred†culture.
It just seems like an odd position to take – in a perfect world, with no technology, we wouldn’t have spoons or tables or bowls or bicycles or pianos or organs or pencils or paper or telescopes or microscopes or any other number of things.
Ellul’s argument rests on what I would call a Platonic view of “perfection.” I’m not even sure why he equates God calling man “good” with “perfect.” For Ellul, created, pre-fallen man is in a state such that “there was nothing to invent, for his invention could be nothing but a diminution of [God's] finished work.” How Ellul gets that out of the text, I don’t know. How is the invention of a telescope – a tool that enables man to get a better look at more of God’s creation – a diminution of God’s finished work? Another problem is that Ellul sees “mediation” as fallen (I refer you to Jamie Smith’s The Fall of Interpretation for an answer to that). His argument against technology as a created good rests on the belief that our pre-fallen state is one where everything is immediate – no mediation required. So for Ellul, a telescope is a mediator between man and the rest of the world and in a world where everything is immediate, mediators aren’t necessary.
I think part of the problem may be Ellul’s metaphor of the broken mirror. The mirror of creation is shattered he says and we are left to cobble the pieces back together, often through the means of technique. I think a better mirror metaphor would be to say that after the fall the mirror isn’t broken – rather the mirror is reflecting false gods. The mirror of creation is no longer directed toward the one true Creator but towards the gods of progress, of material prosperity, of and many others.
Macht: at one point in (I think) THOTW, Ellul refers to the “Trinity” of contemporary idols being Money, State and Technique.
What is striking is that all of those are things that we simply cannot live without, and yet all are (I think Ellul would argue) idolatrous forces opposed to God and under his judgment.
So I think his strictures against technique have to be read in the light of his linking technique with money and political power. These are all things that ought to create a serious tension in the Christian life, as things under God’s judgment and yet as things we cannot live without. But in practice Christians have proven to be all-too comfortable with them.
This is where I could do with someone like Rick Ritchie (who’s far more familiar with Ellul’s work than I) turning up. Rick, you there?
[...] Congratulations twice-cooked, DM! Pazzo’s or the watering hole of your choice anytime. BTW, I’ve included some Wendell Berry essays in my political philosophy class this Fall. One of my central questions will be: Is it possible to exist in contemporary society in a way not defined by the norms, attitudes and expectations of our culture or community? Since it is in our immediate Kentucky neighborhood, I think the agrarian and local economy movement is a way for students to see in more than just a theoretical manner a way of life suggested and modeled that doesn’t seem remote. Probably read some stuff on the Kibbutz movement, too. And in honor of John’s recent post, some Ellul to go hard as only a crypto-Marxist Calvinian-anarchist can. Posted by: Joel Hunter @ 11:56 am | Trackback | Permalink [...]
[...] 18 Jul 2007 Ellul alert Posted by Tim under BlabberBlog Anytime Ellul is discussed all should bow.   As usual,his critics glide over the surface and miss his profundity. [...]
Because I seek enlightenment, I am cross-posting this comment here and at Macht’s Prosthesis.
But first, an aside in reaction to Alastair’s first comment above:
This is wonderful. If every thought, word and deed of mine were on naked display, I’d run away from every human relationship, even my wife. I don’t think I could stand it. The everydayness of life allows me to forget that that is the very situation in which I stand before the holy God. So I bring the idle busy-ness and noise across the threshold of the sacred where I and my fellow believers have carved out a place to meet with God together.
A friend of mine, a young Catholic and supporter of the Latin Rite, puts silence at the top of his list of reasons the Tridentine Mass is such a blessed relief to him and liberating for contemplation of Christ, the Creed, introspection, etc. Gone were the distractions that he came to dread from implementers of the newer liturgy that place a high value on novelty. In his view, the intended enhancement of lay participation aimed for by the Novus Ordo backfired, and that congregational involvement under it is mostly rote and sheep-like. Interestingly, he has found that the Latin Mass has improved his internal participation and is more conducive for instruction. And yes, I am amused that my Latin Rite brothers and sisters sound like Puritans!
End aside. Onward to enlightenment…
This confrontation between Ellul and the reformational view of technics interests me. Is there much interaction with Ellul emanating from the Dooyeweerdians? I’ve seen some recent things written by David Koyzis. I don’t know either side well enough to be able to explicate the subtle points of convergence and divergence. My initial take on the matter of Technique, however, is more sympathetic with Ellul. I don’t agree that he’s poorly construed the relation between creation and sin. For example, the standard “cultural mandate” text precedes the “fear and trembling” of the possibility of law-breaking introduced in Gen 2:16-17; it isn’t clear to me from Gen 1:26ff that Edenic life was from its beginning constrained by a dread-inducing prohibition. Oops, my Kierkegaard is showing…
It seems to me that when we size up the historical realities of technics, that we may have passed an omega point where Technique is so powerful that its position of mastery over us is occluded by its very ubiquity (I’m reminded of Verbal’s comparision of Keyser Soze to the devil). Somehow, we believe that cell phones, life-affirming pharmaceuticals and text messaging are strengthening communal bonds and enriching life together. Or at worst, they’re ethically neutral, just the newest forms of the Technical System’s efficaciousness which, like the superhero’s powers, can be used for good or ill. It seems to me that this relatively uncritical appropriation of technology is only possible if we’ve effaced historical consciousness. I realize that there’s a danger of reductionism there. So I need to listen some more to reformational interpreters and continue to hope that there’s really critique in the New Critique.
I suppose I’m a bit trepidacious about a project of redeeming culture which pays at best scant attention to cultural memory, particularly in the material and performative alterations to life. There’s much analysis of “Here’s where we are now;” but I wonder if we’ve reckoned adequately with how we got here (i.e., beyond the ideological) and what kind of commitment we’ve unreflectively made to Technique. It’s tiring business. But the critical component to cultivation is absolutely essential if we are to avoid the mighty conforming idolatries of the age (e.g., Youth, STEM), eliding stewardship with subjugation. Yet God seems to spare us, usually, from the worst we could do.
I’ve responded to Joel in my comments. I won’t repeat it here.
[...] Again, Ellul probably has the right analysis: the encroaching of state power is largely driven by “technique” rather than the positive decisions of any particular political party. Hence this encroachment can only be resisted by resisting “technique” itself – and no mainstream political party is going to stand up and oppose the technological advancement that is technique’s most obvious manifestation. (Indeed, I wouldn’t say that I have reached, or even want to reach, Ellul’s position on this issue.) [...]